Gray Grey Day
Here in America, we live our lives for the most part in the gray, much less so than the grey. Do you know the difference? I didn’t until I Googled it and found out that it is one of the most commonly queried words in the English language because both spellings look right to us. The only difference between the two, which are both very commonly used, is that gray appears more often in American English and grey occurs more often in British English. And yet, where Fifty Shades of Grey was written by British author, E. L. James, Grey’s Anatomy was created by American Shonda Lynn Rhimes. But it seems, in a strange twist of irony, that Rhimes named the show after the well-known anatomy text called Gray’s Anatomy, written by Henry Gray, a British anatomist and surgeon. All we know for sure is that regardless of which shade it is, gray or grey, they are both somewhere between the extremes of black and white.
White is said to be achromatic, or devoid of hue, but in the reality of the spectrum of light, it is created by a blend of red, blue and green and thus has virtually all of the colors blended into it. It occurs quite often in nature in everything from flowers to snow and chalk and has been a symbol of purity from the earliest moments of civilization. White unicorns represent chastity and white lambs represent sacrifice. Churches have most often used the color to represent the most divine elements and modern architecture has used it to symbolize modernity and simplicity of style. Brides wear it to create the aura of purity and yet the color is historically the most toxic because it’s creation most often involved the highest portion of lead. Where Greeks saw the world in terms of lightness and dark, Romans were more refined in their consideration of white by having plain white or albus, where candidus was a brighter shade of white. The aristocracy of Europe was considered the white stocking crowd, such adornment not being practical for the typical working person. This carried on so far as the Twentieth Century until the White Russians were cast out by the Bolsheviks in the Great Revolution. We all grew up thinking that the only color appropriate for bed sheets or underwear was white, but have long since modified that obsession. By the same token, the RGB spectrum of light has been broken down by LED lighting and we can as easily enjoy color in our lighting as white light, whenever we choose.
Black, or course is the absence of light. It is, actually, the great absorber of light on the fundamental concept that the power of equilibrium forces light to be drawn to it to balance itself out. But it is also considered an achromatic color without hue, which is technically the same as white and even grey/gray. It’s representation as a manifestation of darkness, which very quickly puts it into the realm of evil in the manner in which humans most often think of the juxtapositioning of extremes. The Egyptians and Greeks made the underworld all about black and that easily carried through into the Middle Ages for witches and the worst of magic. The Romans again had to differentiate and used the word ater to mean a flat, dull black, while niger was characterized as a brilliant, saturated black color. And yet, as we turned the corner into the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, the color black took on a more reverent color and was used to represent royalty, clergy and jurisprudence. Everyone from businessmen to statesmen wanted the somberness and seriousness of black garb. The color of sable was always the richest of fur colors. It’s interesting that the color represents such a broad spectrum from elegance to mourning. And, of course, the urban elite of today have adopted it as the color of choice, even though it is equally used by the likes of The Hell’s Angels and the Goth subculture to express their anarchistic tendencies.
But gray/grew is subtle and almost passive, without obvious extremism on display. For mindless pleasure, Kim and I watch a variety of HGTV home and DIY shows where somebody or other is buying some ing on the cheap and trying to tart it up for resale. Whether it is a house that needs a kitchen redo or a chest of drawers that came out of someone’s grandmother’s attic, painting something a lacquer grey/gray is a perfect compromise that creates the maximum possible audience of buyers. It is chic and elegant looking without being either too bod or too drab. I know that grey/gray sounds like it might be drab, but it generally is not when accompanies with accessories in Tai less steel or brushed metal. It tends to fill that space between industrial mid-century and clean, modern generic. For many years Henry FOrd said you could only get cars in black and then we went wild for a while with every new color under the sun, being able to age guess a car just on the basis of its coloring. That has all changed and while I’m sure it varies from one region of the country to another, most cars are either black, white, gray or silver (I would call that another form of grey). In fact, 80% of all cars sold fall into one of those four color groups. I once was landing in Newark and flew directly over the new car lots where the RORO (Roll-On, Roll-Off) ships were unloading their cargo of new foreign cars. From the air, the lots looked to be filled with 90+% of cars in those four colors with the occasional red car and the even less frequent yellow car, just to keep it interesting. We tend to buy white cars, which are very practical out here in the land of endless sunshine, but for some reason, if we lease a car (as we tend to with our Mercedes), we get a more interesting color like our current navy blue, which followed our last red buggy. One of the more noticeable and popular colors for cars these days (enough so that I think it might just be a passing fad) is this flat, almost militaristic, gray car largely devoid of any shiny adornment. All the trim is generally a matte black and as such, makes a statement of some hip sort.
Today is the only day that the weather app says is going to be an overcast day. True to its word, that tended to leave the day pretty much gray with only intermittent bursts of sunshine. Gray days can get you down if you’ve planned some special activity that is enhanced by sunshine. But gray days also have value in several ways. First of all there is the fact that it takes a few gray days to appreciate the sunny days. That’s a little like saying you labeling punched in the face because it feels so good when it stops. I prefer the argument that a gray day is a good down day emotionally, giving your system a rest from all that surging serotonin you require every other day. It’s a day to sleep in a bit or to do chores which you may have forgotten or chosen to procrastinate about. I kind of like having a day in the early part of the week, like for instance today is Tuesday, to lay a bit low and catch up on things in order to come on like gangbusters towards the end of the week. As I look out on my weather app, I see that the rest of this week is to be 72° to 81°, with a 0% chance of rain on each and every day. That’s pretty idyllic, so much so that I’m glad I had something in between black and white today to allow me to appreciate a nice gray grey day.