Crossing the Color Line

I have a very large box of Crayola crayons.  I say very large because it has 96 different crayons in it.  It was actually given to me in a class I took my first semester as a Religious Studies major at California State University Northridge.  I've kept it for many years even though I don't really use the contents.  Today I'm looking inside and marveling at the colors.


With nearly one hundred crayons, there are a great many colors to see but I'm fixating on the greens and browns.  There are quite a few shades of each but neither can be categorized as better than the others, or more important than the others.  


But what if I want to draw a leaf?  To draw a leaf requires green and to give it depth requires various shades.  I can use granny smith apple, olive green, spring green, green yellow, forest green, yellow green, tropical rain forest or even shamrock.  


Except this particular leaf might be dead.  Now the brown becomes more important and like the green, it comes in a variety of shades.  Raw sienna, burnt orange, mahogany, sepia, indian red (which isn't called that any longer), tumbleweed, burnt sienna, tan, copper and bittersweet.


Although between the leaf being green and it being brown, it might go through other colors.  What if I'm drawing a leaf in the autumn and I want to capture the idea of the flaming foliage that is so beautiful just before the onslaught of winter?  Then I can go with the reds; maroon, purple pizzazz, wild strawberry, magenta, red violet, violet red, razzmatazz, brick red, cerise and fuchsia.  


Perhaps I should use orange; vivid tangerine, red orange, yellow orange or macaroni and cheese.


Also, the yellows; unmellow yellow, laser yellow and dandelion.


I might place the leaf in juxtaposition against the blue sky, which can be any number of shades of blue; sky blue (which seems like the most obvious choice) but also robin's egg blue, teal blue, denim, cerulean, turquoise blue, aquamarine, blizzard blue and cornflower.


Every crayon in the box is different than every other crayon, even if the difference is only a slight one but this makes every crayon unique.  Each can do something that no other crayon can do exactly the same way.  A green leaf is not identical to an olive green leaf or a shamrock leaf any more than a cerulean sky matches a sky blue one.  It's not a matter of one being better than the other but merely of being different.


Today is the twentieth anniversary of the Los Angeles race riots, which started on April 29, 1992.  It's a day I remember too well.  One of the aspects of this city that I love most is the difference of the people.  Having grown up in a neighborhood that was all too homogeneous,  I relish my adopted city where there is so much diversity.  Just as the box of crayons is made up of unique individuals, so is my city.  Just as each crayon is equally as important as any other crayon, so are the residents of my city.  Just as the loss of one crayon would be noticed, so would the loss of any of the diversity of my city.


As we reflect on the memory of that sad and horrible day twenty years ago, I will think of my city as being like this box of crayons -- very colorful and always brings a smile to my face.  And mostly, I will remember that it takes all of US to make the USA.