December 2009 – hexachromatic

the eye of the beholder

“Sometimes they discussed Charlie Tommie a mixed-breed Mikasuki and full fledged scavenger who had all or most of the sorry traits of the red, black, and white races, but the feller they mostly talked about was Henry Short, whose color was in the eye of the beholder, according to how you turned him to the light.”

—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.

greenish eyes

“When I stopped, he stopped, too, regarding me out of greenish eyes as bright and cold as broken glass and nodding his head to indicate he knew my game.”

—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008

That silver glint in them blue eyes

“ ‘Do you remember what he looked like, Paul?’ Letitia inquired dutifully.

‘A-course I do! That silver glint in them blue eyes made a man go quaky in the belly.’ ”

—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.

his eyes never fit his smile

“Leslie wasn’t good at jokes and his eyes never fit his smile. If a June bug flew into his eye, you would hear the smack of it; those eyes were as hard as shiny stones.”

—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.

We feel pleasure and we call it beauty

“Animals are wired to feel better and better when they are helped and so they feel pleasure when they find food or shelter or a mate. When we see the proportions in the golden ratio, we are helped. We feel pleasure and we call it beauty.”

—Adrian Bejan, in “Why golden ratio pleases the eye: US academic says he knows art secret”, December 28, 2009.

there are colors that we cannot see

“At each end of the solar spectrum the chemist can detect the presence of what are known as ‘actinic’ rays. They represent colors—integral colors in the composition of light—which we are unable to discern. The human eye is an imperfect instrument; its range is but a few octaves of the real ‘chromatic scale.’ I am not mad; there are colors that we cannot see.

And, God help me! the Damned Thing is of such a color!”

—Ambrose Bierce, “The Damned Thing”, 1893.

the thousand nameless jewels of Barsoom

“[W]here are the words to describe the glorious colours that are unknown to earthly eyes? Where the mind or imagination that can grasp the gorgeous scintillations of unheard-of rays as they emanate from the thousand nameless jewels of Barsoom?”

—Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Gods of Mars, 1918.