Gray

I’m tired of seeing gray. Ever since I’ve been small it has been gray. Never simple black and white, never the simple happy or unhappy or the simple optimism or pessimism. I suppose I should be glad that I have ability to search for and usually find the reason for hope in most situations. After all I am a human rights advocate and there is always source for despair, I am comforted by the few pockets of progress that are sources for joy.

After all I am also a survivor of a deceased father a reason for nearly any eleven year old child to see much dark shades of bleak gray and even the starkest blinding blacks that life has to offer. Such consuming dark hues that one begins to feel he may be stuck in tar and must crawl and fight to even have the hope to see the bright sunshine above.

And after all I am a product of middle class America with the gift of education and comfort of modernization. I have the ability, nay, the ability to even complain about color, its presence or absence.

One cannot forget that after all I am a descendent of a Holocaust survivor. While I weigh these feels of grayness, I must remember that my grandmother lived in a time that seems to be perfect for images of black and white. Perfect for black and white film. Not only perfect but less tangible, less scary in the absence of color, denoted at a distant then, not a recent now or not so far then, but a distant then. A time before color, a time where darkness denoted evil and lightness denoted good and the two were pitted in a battle for everything.

But I see the gray from that time, I even see the red. The red for the blood, pain, screaming, torture, senseless destruction and seemingly endless murder. The red of my distant relatives, the red of the Nazi flag, the red painting the map of Eastern Europe.

Red can also symbolize love and I’ve been told of this red too. The red blood flowing from the biggest hearts of their time, the warm red blood of individuals like the original White Rose who had big enough hearts to stand up against true evil. The warm red blood flowing in the veins and from the giant hearts of resistors risking their lives in save those with the mark of death: a yellow star.

But after all I started off talking about how I see gray, not red, yellow, black or white. Gray. I do perceive other colors, but I do not live them like I live gray. Since I was young I was consumed by books written about subjects that would not be a happy blue, a bright yellow or pure white. From the age of eleven while I was consumed by the dark tar-like black of the death of my father, I strived to see as much color and light as possible and as such I clawed my way out of this bog. Or so it would seem.

The darkness of all this continues to consume me. While I wear the green of the Save Darfur campaigns I feel gray. While I enjoy the yellow sun, brown chocolate, the tan skin of niece, the hazel eyes of a beautiful girl or many of the splendid colors of flowers, salads and the entire world, I feel grayness permeating my soul.

While I shift from poetry to prose, I still feel like I play the part of the poet. As the poet I have this impetus to shout my feelings and wear my heart on my sleeve. Yet how many of you taken the time to see the color my heart and really take note of its overcast tones and dreary appearance. Who among you will take the time to bring true color to my heart and more importantly true color to the world?

I am stuck in gray; I feel both the positive and the negative. I feel hope and despair. I try to enjoy life, but I am constantly reminded of death. Gray is not even a true color; it is a mix of both the absence of color and the mix of all colors. Gray is a mix of both everything and nothing all at once.

As a poet, I will let you onto a little secret of mine. I AM TIRED OF BEING GRAY. I do not want to enjoy colors as a passing hobby or as if they were part of a vacation. I do not want to live with the knowledge of black and the hope of white without the brilliance of color to embolden my hopes and make the promise of progress more vibrant. Most of all I do not want to be stuck in this tarry, gooey, cesspool of loneliness anymore.

I am a survivor of both a father and of Holocaust survivors, I am an activist of things most people do not even want to introduce into their nice white life and I am a poet. These things dance in the black, tucked away where many people do not allow themselves to go.

I am an uncle, brother, son and privileged member of the western world… all reasons to live in the white and perhaps the reasons the black is made gray. Yet WHY DO I FEEL CONSUMED BY DARK GRAY?

Why can I not color it? Why do these markers, crayons and panaceas do nothing? I use different techniques, patterns, combinations, but when I finish my Technicolor masterpieces… they all return to gray. Do I need ruby slippers to escape or does that only work when you can feel a particular variety of red? Show me the door, the paint brush, the way out!

Hold on… what’s this I see? What’s this I feel? Could that be color? Could it be vibrant greens, royal purples, soothing blues, loving reds and the gorgeous mix of hazel? Could you be here to rescue me from the gray and let me live among the colors? Or is this just a visitation? Is this just a dream? Will the bell ring and the warden shuffle me back to my dreary colorless cell? Will I wake up in my nightmare of world?

Please warden, let me sleep for a little while longer.