Cerulean (August)

The census is taking a while. Pink messages show up warning of delays. I start thinking of new questions. Favourite Australian animal? Wallaby. Favourite colour? Cerulean. Team? Collingwood, what else? Questions aren’t accepted in answers. Maybe I will ‘Save and Exit’. The little time lapse circle goes round and round. It was easier with paper. Half an hour turns into midnight confession. Why not do this by state? Or first letter of surname? The Bureau’s computer is experiencing slowness. Favourite millionaire? Francis of Assisi. Favourite month? August, whatever!!!!!!! Exclamations aren’t allowed in answers. Do you wish to leave the page?

Cerulean (January)

Language has ghost words awaiting the necessity of invention, or that pre-exist before exciting new meanings. Consider the Brazilian language Pirahã. It has no colour words, only terms for bright and dark in general. Things are described using comparison (leaflike, sunlike) but with no fixed terms (green, yellow). Nature abhors a vacuum. Pirahã speakers refer every day to colours, but have no generic words for them. Colour evolution seems to come entirely from poetic naming of objects. Sitting in Australia in January, it’s hard to believe that ancient Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Hebrew had no word for blue. Let alone cerulean.