Traveller's Blues

...Blue, blue, electric blue...that's the colour of my room...

...Off we go into the wild blue yonder...

...Remember watching while your lightning blue eyes reflected sunrise...

Blues. Blues. I got the blues. Not a 'down-in-the-dumps' sort of blues. No, no, this is more a hankering, yearning kind of blues. Traveling blues, you might say. And it is not my fault. The precipitation of this state of mind I can lay squarely on the (digital) shoulders of the illustrious Braja...and for good reason. Because of something she did, I find I want to travel the world.

Travel the world and take pictures, that is. All because of a picture she posted, that shows the color blue. Not just any blue. A vibrant blue that made me ache to want to lay eyes on it in person. I don't have a link to it here, because the picture was taken by another person and posted on Facebook, and for some reason I did not feel right to copy paste it from another person's media feed. Silly, perhaps, but there you have it.

Anyway, the picture shows a blue she christened India blue, and I can believe it. Blue is my favorite color, hands down, so it is no surprise I found the image attractive. Yet, this picture transcended something in my mind, some threshold I knew was there but had not often noticed. This blue made me want to hop on a plane or a ship and go where I could see the color in morning light and sunset light and maybe that twilight shade as the sun slips below the horizon with the moon on the way up. I want to touch it.

I sat entranced by that color and wanted to touch all colors. I want to see the orange in a Siberian tiger's fur lit by the morning light. I want to see the the blue morpho butterfly in its natural habitat. I want to see the moon shine on the Grand Canyon, the color of old freighter's hull as it passes through the Bosporus, and the green sod of Ireland. It has become imperative that I see the opalescence of Lake Louise in Canada, and the saffron colored robes of monks in Tibet. I need to know the color of the Pacific while watching a sunset in Tierra Del Fuego.

I want to know the color of moss in the garden of a Buddhist shrine, somewhere in Japan. And I cannot clearly tell you why. I just know I need to know. I feel this need to travel the world and take pictures of these colors that inhabit my mind, fill my heart, exalt my soul.

I want to know blue. All the blues in the world, and the people who know those shades the best. Someday, if I am fortunate, I'll do just that. Until then, I'll continue to plot and dream of the day my rainbow heart can scatter itself into the world, and return home with some stories to tell of the colors I have seen. Join me, perhaps?

(And many thanks to Braja, and her opening of the window for me...)