the height of French fashion
“It was the height of French fashion around 1610 for a woman to wear a tulip the way she might wear a jewel.”
—Amy Stewart, Flower Confidential, 2007.
The Quest For A Blue Rose
“The quest for a blue rose is nothing new. The mere fact that it doesn’t exist, that it can’t exist in nature, seems to inspire all kinds of ludicrous attempts to force it into being. Roses are utterly lacking in delphinidin, the pigment that produces blue petal colors. No amount of crossbreeding can change that.”
—Amy Stewart, Flower Confidential, 2007.
Blue Light Boogie
“They did the boogie real slow
With the blue lights way down low”
—Jessie Mae Robinson, Blue Light Boogie, 1950.
rare clouds
His eyes
“His eyes were abnormally large, and round like those of a cat. The pupils, too, upon any accession or diminution of light, underwent contraction or dilation, just such as is observed in the feline tribe. In moments of excitement the orbs grew bright to a degree almost inconceivable; seeming to emit luminous rays, not of a reflected but of an intrinsic lustre, as does a candle or the sun; yet their ordinary condition was so totally vapid, filmy, and dull as to convey the idea of the eyes of a long-interred corpse.”
—Edgar Allen Poe, A Tale of the Ragged Mountains.
the hues of that arch
“Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch—as distinct too, yet as intimately blended.”
—Edgar Allen Poe, Berenice.
free lectures
“If you have attended the free lectures at the College of Misery, for a short time even, and have paid attention to what you have seen with your own eyes and heard with your own ears, you will reap a firm faith and learn more than you can express in words. He that hath eyes to see, let him see.”
—Vincent Van Gogh, July 1880.
the polychromatic hospital
“Color gives joy, it can also drive a person crazy. It can heal, in the polychromatic hospital. It is a formidable raw material, as indispensable to life as water or fire. . . . It can be dosed . . . in infinite degrees, beginning with the nuance and ending with the explosion.”
—Fernand L’ger, Painting and Reality, Transition, no. 25, 1936.
Blue plate.
The daily special.
—www.wordorigins.org, Diner Slang.
Bowl of red.
Chili.
—www.wordorigins.org, Diner Slang.