Ends of Fragment

“I am obsessed with colour,” she whispered, “I am obsessed with colour,” she said, then she repeated, “I am obsessed with colour, it means so much, so...colourful...so...full of colour, fantastic, I want my world to be colourful all the time, everything, bright and cheery.” She thought in colour or so she thought, she though her coloured thoughts were the brightest thoughts, thoughts that were dazzling, unsubstantial in content but dazzling in colour. Colours banging against one another within her stated boundaries of chaos, fabrics, patterns, designs. She likes the phrase “eye popping”, she wanted everything to be eye-popping, like a 60's shop window, an explosion in a paint factory, an explosion in a panty factory, an artistic explosion, of any kind. No room for mixed feelings whatsoever.

“Everybody is disturbed in some way, everybody is working on some instinctive level, a level of reaction, a level where you are reacting, reacting to the stream, to the great stream, the constant stream of colours that are just like punching you in the face. Everyday, every waking hour, like you're thinking god's own thoughts, mad coloured thoughts, again outside the boundaries. I still love looking in shop windows though, not so bothered about going in, not shopping, just looking at the colours in their compositions, set up, just there to be looked at, that's their purpose. Is that some higher purpose, to be their outside, nose against the window, looking, staring, taking it all in al the colours. That's what I like doing best, me, alone.”

She thought about her clothes, her style, her package and scrabbled contents of bits and bops and tops and bottoms and eyes and nails and shoes that made her up. Hair and skin and flesh tones scrubbed over and away and replaced with the colours, the tones, the rainbows and the heat. The red heat of colour, the blue heat of colour, the yellow heat, the green heat, those hot heats, the burn, the burning sensation in the retina, turning inwards, hitting the brain, blurred at the edges, the enormous waterfall of colour, flowing one to another over edges, hedges, windows, shop windows, back to those windows, displays, shops and the random colours. Things put in there by stupid girls and thin men, placed as if on purpose, for effect but creating, for her another effect altogether. Other effects, in the mind, in the heart, when the colour truly hits the spot.

“In twenty years time, there will be more colour, more. The sun will burn more brightly, turning up those colours, amplifying them, making them pulse in the cerebral way, pulse like a pulse, steady and rhythmic, colours that pulsed and danced. Much more than average, more than average, always more than average is so much more than average,” or so she thought.

“Whatever this is it isn't art, whatever it is, it's not what it is, it can't be just because you say it is, things can't just be what you say they are just because you say they are, that's what your parents would say, say things that are always about must or have to. So I'm not really bothered about art, I'm not really bothered about anything except taking in those colours, sucking them in, taking them in, stealing them like they were things you could shop lift or something, found things that have been claimed, found so that they suddenly start to matter, then they just turn to colour, colours I have found. I like to find colours, I like that feeling of shock and surprise and then embarrassment. Embarrassed by colours and their effect, overwhelming. More colours to play with. That's what I want.” She puffed a cigarette, the ash was hanging long on the burning tip, long, ready to drop, drop on the carpet, drop and stain, a grey stain. Not coloured.

Little tiny stitches, in fabric, little tiny holes, cuts and thread, like punctuation marks, stops, starts and pauses inside your head, gaps in the neurons, spaces between, important spaces between the heroic gaps, gaps that can be filled with colour, buttons, jewels, more bits, more detail, colour catching light catching spectrum bending, making the colour come alive, “I am obsessed with colour,” she whispered. “I remain there, I remain in the colour, that is where I am.”