Set In Stone : Short Novellas

Novella n°3 : What if you fell in love with a colour

I remember the strange combat between my mind and myself, trying to understand, even partly, this bizarre feeling that kept coming back, haunting me. I had fallen for a colour, it was just that, and yet it meant a great deal. This colour, which I'm too afraid to name, just like when you are scared of telling your friends you're dating this boy, has lots of variations, tons of different shades, different meanings, different connotations. It is considered ugly by some, unattractive by others, but I can't help but falling in love (muttering Elvis' song as I kept trying to shake what was left of the tea off) with it because of the memories it brings.

People have tendencies to fall for the known and the safe, people want to feel accepted in a way that they're not let down or designated as outcasts if they have made different choices in the past. That is why, when asked which colour they fell for, they'll say "Ocean navy blue, turquoise, vivid red or sanguine orange" Any shade of a bright colour is going to be to their liking because it is safe, warm and normal.

I fell in love with a colour that can repel, because it's the colour that's proper to things that aren't clean, because it's a sad and old shade, because we've been seeing it forever and don't want it to be part of our life anymore. When asked what it reminds them of, people will say all kinds of things, from wood to mud, from dirt to dried blood, from the very tea I finished drinking moments ago to cardboard. You probably know which colour I'm talking about by now, I finally said it.

Brown. It's the name of it. It has tons of different shades that go all the way from orange to black. It can be light; it can be dark. It can be a slight brush or a consistent and huge block. It can light up a room as well as darken it, and its very nature holds so much memories that it almost seems like a Pandora box I'll never be able to look away from if I attempt to open it.

But let's say I open the box, let's say I let myself be tormented by those feelings and fragments of past life, What would happen? Which would resurface? Would wounds reopen? I've been asking myself this question for some time now, each time it came back to my mind and begged me to fall for it. But now I did I don't even know where to start. (As I am writing this, my tea is now cold and thoughts just fixate on the paper, the feelings I have for this colour aren't hard to form words of, opposed to what I thought).

The first feeling, the first fragment that comes to my mind when I open the box is furniture, wooden houses, chalets, chimneys and wooden flooring. More than being something that I love, it's something that's entirely part of me, and it's brown. It's safe, it's warm, it's comfortable, feelings we want to feel when imagining the ideal relationship, it just makes sense that it's the first thing that came to my mind when I thought of the colour I had fallen for. A part of me thinks it's also about the scents I smelled during this time, and the fact that it is now over, that leads me to strong feelings. When I think of wooden furniture, I also think of an antique store, of a brown carpeting, restauration and odours. Vinyl, glue, fresh cut wood, rain on the asphalt. I think of my grandparents, candles, carving, pottery, sculpture.

All those things that are so dear to my heart are associated with brown. And if it was personified, if it was alive and breathing, it would be a middle-aged man more than a young one because Brown isn't young. Brown has been through wars and conflicts, brown was hated and loved, praised and condemned. He is someone silent, someone calm, caring and loving, but he is also centuries old, wise and reliable.

I probably associate him with fictional characters: Morax, God of Contracts and King of Liyue, or Achilles, Golden hero and saviour, perfect child and wise youngster. Those two people, that have power and strength in common, as long as devoted loyalty and desire for stability, have also differences, their age, their lifespan, their way of achieving their quest. But it represents well the two-sided personality of Brown's character, his devotion and passion, he even sometimes reminds me of Dream, King of the Endless, choleric figure meant to be good, learning every day to heal from his past isolation.

Although Brown was personified many times, he wasn't perfectly portrayed and something was always missing. However, he always left traces where he went, and that's why Nature is so fond of him, more than any human actually, except me. Indeed, if I ever break up with him, it's going to be impossible to regain any composure by successfully forgetting him because everything reminds me of him. Nature loves Brown so much she portrayed him anywhere she could. Autumn is the season they met, when she fell in love with him, rain's for when he feels alone, leaves are to keep the lonely stem company. He is deeply hated by most men and adored by nature in a way it feels unfair.

Something that will always remind me of Brown, in a different way (that is why, after having refilled my cartridge pen, I skipped a line), is music, especially jazz and record players, but also lyrics from many different songs, especially one from Adele that goes "Everybody here is watching you, because you feel like home, you're like a dream come true. You look like a movie; you sound like a song and my God; this reminds me of when we were young." But also, many other quotes which, for me, just make sense. It would be hard to explain without being too vague or metaphorical, but seeing this colour is not something that comes up without a smell or a sound. Wooden flooring squeak, forests rustle, varnished wood has this sweet artificial scent and dirt has got this primary odour that has been here since the first dawn. That is why I associate brown to songs I listen while staying immobile, staring at some object, which happens to be wooden brown because half of my furniture is.

However, Nature was not done with Brown and had to get him to appear, to be reminded of, paid homage to, in many other edibles, us human, happen to consume. Maroons, beans, cocoa, coffee, tea, nuts, coconuts. She was so fond of him she had to get the most resilient and reliable food to be matching his colour. Though she also gave him animals, such as cows, cats, dogs, horses, boars, bears, leopards, rabbits, moles, mice, hamsters. Strangely she gave him the animals humans came to befriend later, but I doubt it was intentional.

Because we were mentioning the fact that I fell under a spell, and keep fighting to stay controlled by it, Brown also reminds me of witchcraft, witchery, potions and wands, cauldrons and hats. In fact, he probably is a witch himself, personified father of all sorcerers. He can transform a human into a mouse in a snap and see through lies because he deceives in a range that's beyond our mortal understanding. He has leather-covered books, stacked by hundreds in dusty bookshelves that resemble an attic and he has to wipe the cover to see the title whenever he wants to read one. He also has strange shapes, shoved in formol, bottles sealed with wax. He has a cabinet, small room with paper from all sources piled to the ceiling and on the bureau, envelopes and pens that strangely contrast with the rest of the room because they always were immaculate.

(Maybe you are seeing this paragraph and wonder when will this desperate love letter towards a personified colour end, and I understand, but you must hate Brown (the colour) to be able to think this out loud)

However, unfortunately, these feelings are only a fantasy of my disillusion, a cry for love in a world that won't give it. While writing this part, I've often had moments, maybe hours (Even I couldn't tell) where I just kept my eyes on the wall without moving, not thinking, just fixating on the wooden planks, awaiting an idea that was worth enough for me to move and look back towards the darkened paper that had lost its sweet gleam as soon as ink gave it meaning

As much as I would want a God to fall in love with me just like Psyche did with Eros, I'm afraid it's compromised. Because the one last thing that Brown reminds me of is aging. I'm slowly losing the prime I'm at, and Psyche was beautiful enough to be considered able to surpass Aphrodite, I'm afraid I can't. I'm at my highest peak and I'm right about to fall, said Mitski, and brown also reminds me of it, because the colour is eternal, because the feeling of comfort it brings cannot match the sentiment of artificiality the other colours bring. It's the one colour that feels real, it's the one colour that's truly natural, and it's the one colour that comforts me by saying that decay is normal, and that it will accept me no matter how I look, because in the end, we are all ending up in a brown wooden box surrounded by dirt, don't we?