A hero’s only a lucky fool, you see
— Crooked Fingers
… whose frothy mouth bepainted all with red.
— Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Crimson: the color of 8-year-old Beatrice’s dress when Dante first set eyes upon her.
Watteau’s little red crayon.
Leonardo’s preference for red chalk to do his drawings.
The afterimages of red that haunt the childhood memory of Rilke’s Malte Laureds Brigge.
The reds we use to sketch the imagined, the incomplete, the not-yet….
Light travels at 186,000 miles per second.
Color is seen when a wavelength of light is reflected by an object and all other wavelengths are absorbed.
Each color has a different wavelength, but red has the longest wavelength.
In maritime space, the rule of “red right returning” means that moving boats must keep the red buoys to their right.
Boats and airplanes always have red lights on their left and green on their right wing or side.
The idea of going somewhere — with its colors, flags, markers, and navigational routes.
The Red God was another name for Priapus.
Maria Callas collected matching shoes and purses in her favorite color, red.
Red salvia.
Red tulips.
Poppies.
Bougainvillea.
Red anemone.
Snakeweed.
My loathing for red roses —
Shortsightedness is also called “an elongated eye.” It influences color perception, making reds, for example, seem more starkly defined.
WILLIAM GASS:
“Although the sensual is an experience of intense satisfaction and approval, it is not competitive. Things seen or touched or tasted this way are what they are: a red so saturated with its hue it mesmerizes the eye, an insect slowly rubbing together legs as thin as a line, a cottonwood puff lighting on a blade of grass, the trail of a finger across a thigh, the union of two voices through a series of compelling notes. The sensualist treats qualities as terms, not as relations. He gathers up relationships into entireties, not like a handful of straw but like the thatch of a hat.”
The deeper one goes into the benthic ooze of the ocean, the fewer the colors of fish.
Blue is the last color to go and red is the first.
Say from the Heart, Sire
Dipped my back in it
If the Tune drip too much
Have a tint too Red
Pardon the Cochineal–
Suffer the Vermilion
— Emily Dickinson