Color Gravity

Pearly’s attraction to color was like an infection, or religion, and he came to it each time a starving man. Sometimes, on the street or sailing along the waterfront in a fast skiff, he would witness the sun’s illumination on a flat plane of color that was given (like almost everything else in New York) a short and promiscuous embrace. Pearly always stopped, and if he froze in the middle of the street, traffic was forced to weave around him. Or if he were in a boat, he turned it to the wind and stayed with the color for as long as it lasted. House painters were subject to interludes of terror when Pearly would burst upon them and stand close, staring with his electric eyes at the rich glistening color flowing thickly from their wet brushes. It was bad enough if he were alone (they all knew him, and were well aware of his reputation), but he was not infrequently accompanied by a bunch of Short Tails. In that case, the painters trembled because they would be punished afterward for the time that the Short Tails were obliged to stand in silence with their hands in their pockets, observing the inexplicable mystery of Pearly’s “color gravity,” as he called it. Unable to complain to Pearly, they would leave a few of their number to beat up the painters.” – A Winters Tale, Mark Helprin

Sean suffers from colour gravity, and we’re all the richer for it. Go see the others.