(CREATIVE NONFICTION)
AN ESSAY ON GRAY
ELISABETH FONDELL
AN ESSAY ON GRAY
ELISABETH FONDELL
» Gray, an overview
I. My mother always told me to never wear gray. “It doesn’t do justice for anyone,” she said. But that didn’t stop me from gravitating towards it, picking it up to try on in a clothing store, sometimes multiple shades at a time. Catalogs invent fancy words to avoid the plainness of the word “gray” but that does not change its bland truth. From the solemn grays of heather, charcoal, and lead to the rocky grays of slate, stone, and steel to the lightest grays of smoke, dust, and ash, gray is earthy and severe.
II. In my college days of pursuing private equity, I wore a full closet of gray. Ill-fitting and purchased secondhand, these clothes fit me as well as my aspirations. Wearing wide-legged, dark heather trousers coupled with charcoal pumps, I touted the wardrobe of a retired lawyer from the suburbs. She likely went on to tennis skirts at the country club in Florida while I masqueraded about in her remnant lead gray shadow.
III. Gray is the consumeristic industrial style, or rather style-less, decade of the 1990’s. Wall to wall carpet in light graphite, cul-de-sacs of identical houses, gloomy in their slate monotony, shopping mall interiors, airport bathrooms – all embody the lifeless color of mass-market quality and capitalistic realities against the gloomy backdrop of flickering fluorescent lights. As a young child I longed for this gray same-ness, wishing for a carpeted bedroom like my friends instead of the hardwood floors of our old farmhouse.
IV. Gray is the real color of communism, the color of the late Soviet era. Block upon block of towering apartments all made of cheap materials in varying shades of gray. Built frantically as temporary housing, remaining decades later as a grim testament to the failures of collectivism and conformity.
V. Transportation is gray: the roads leading away from here, the tarmacs and interstates, the frigid waters in March, the bridges. The linoleum of airport departure areas, commercial bus rides, concrete medians on our cross-country highways, all gray. The goodbyes I’ve said to those traveling away from me - these, too, are gray.
VI. Often to be avoided, gray area is unpleasant for many who would rather sit in the certainty of knowing. But for me, it’s a calm breeze, a refuge from the otherwise demanding absoluteness I rarely inhabit. What must it be like to be so certain, I think, knowing I will always be gray. Gray is safe.
VII. Gray is neutrality, the still waters of non-confrontation. I am awash with the gray of inaction more often than I should admit. Too conflict averse and timid, I choose to opt out, channeling my inner murky gray because gray never offends.
VIII. They call it gray matter, the mush of aging brains and collapsing intellects. Gray is the color of abyss, of absence, of what was, of what is no longer. It is the color of hospice, of preparing to die, of industrial hospital equipment in your home, of bleak and depressing medical supply stores.
VIIII. Gray is the trumpet of finality, the harbinger of death. Gray is the color of giving up, of giving in, of final breaths and hanging on, of the body saying no more.
» Gray, the torture
He died in late November. We didn’t realize it at the time but now looking back, photographs clearly depict the grayness of his skin. We should have known, so obvious it is now.
That November was grayer than usual on the prairie. The trees around us, gray. The ground, gray. The haunting silence and the death of our joy, gray. The horizontal expanse nothing but bare branches and an icy stone sky.
» Gray, among us
I didn’t notice it at first, charmed instead by the old apartment building with refinished pine interiors and a view of Lake Superior’s steel gray waters. It wasn’t until after he died that the Ashland Crematory and Funeral Home appeared on the corner amidst the Victorian houses. Sitting adjacent to my partner’s apartment I had never noticed it. But now I see it always. The gray smoke funneling up into the sky, a new constant.
His apartment is dusty, he complains about it often. Gray silt covers the bookshelves, gray dust bunnies make a daily appearance tormenting us with their airiness. The dust is unrelenting. As I wipe off the table by the window, my fingers become the light gray of neglect.
» Gray, onward
With each new dawn there is gray.
There is a beauty in gray. Gray is possibility, it’s the in-between, an outcome not yet realized, a challenge not yet overcome. May we live in the limitless hope of gray, indefinitely.
I. My mother always told me to never wear gray. “It doesn’t do justice for anyone,” she said. But that didn’t stop me from gravitating towards it, picking it up to try on in a clothing store, sometimes multiple shades at a time. Catalogs invent fancy words to avoid the plainness of the word “gray” but that does not change its bland truth. From the solemn grays of heather, charcoal, and lead to the rocky grays of slate, stone, and steel to the lightest grays of smoke, dust, and ash, gray is earthy and severe.
II. In my college days of pursuing private equity, I wore a full closet of gray. Ill-fitting and purchased secondhand, these clothes fit me as well as my aspirations. Wearing wide-legged, dark heather trousers coupled with charcoal pumps, I touted the wardrobe of a retired lawyer from the suburbs. She likely went on to tennis skirts at the country club in Florida while I masqueraded about in her remnant lead gray shadow.
III. Gray is the consumeristic industrial style, or rather style-less, decade of the 1990’s. Wall to wall carpet in light graphite, cul-de-sacs of identical houses, gloomy in their slate monotony, shopping mall interiors, airport bathrooms – all embody the lifeless color of mass-market quality and capitalistic realities against the gloomy backdrop of flickering fluorescent lights. As a young child I longed for this gray same-ness, wishing for a carpeted bedroom like my friends instead of the hardwood floors of our old farmhouse.
IV. Gray is the real color of communism, the color of the late Soviet era. Block upon block of towering apartments all made of cheap materials in varying shades of gray. Built frantically as temporary housing, remaining decades later as a grim testament to the failures of collectivism and conformity.
V. Transportation is gray: the roads leading away from here, the tarmacs and interstates, the frigid waters in March, the bridges. The linoleum of airport departure areas, commercial bus rides, concrete medians on our cross-country highways, all gray. The goodbyes I’ve said to those traveling away from me - these, too, are gray.
VI. Often to be avoided, gray area is unpleasant for many who would rather sit in the certainty of knowing. But for me, it’s a calm breeze, a refuge from the otherwise demanding absoluteness I rarely inhabit. What must it be like to be so certain, I think, knowing I will always be gray. Gray is safe.
VII. Gray is neutrality, the still waters of non-confrontation. I am awash with the gray of inaction more often than I should admit. Too conflict averse and timid, I choose to opt out, channeling my inner murky gray because gray never offends.
VIII. They call it gray matter, the mush of aging brains and collapsing intellects. Gray is the color of abyss, of absence, of what was, of what is no longer. It is the color of hospice, of preparing to die, of industrial hospital equipment in your home, of bleak and depressing medical supply stores.
VIIII. Gray is the trumpet of finality, the harbinger of death. Gray is the color of giving up, of giving in, of final breaths and hanging on, of the body saying no more.
» Gray, the torture
He died in late November. We didn’t realize it at the time but now looking back, photographs clearly depict the grayness of his skin. We should have known, so obvious it is now.
That November was grayer than usual on the prairie. The trees around us, gray. The ground, gray. The haunting silence and the death of our joy, gray. The horizontal expanse nothing but bare branches and an icy stone sky.
» Gray, among us
I didn’t notice it at first, charmed instead by the old apartment building with refinished pine interiors and a view of Lake Superior’s steel gray waters. It wasn’t until after he died that the Ashland Crematory and Funeral Home appeared on the corner amidst the Victorian houses. Sitting adjacent to my partner’s apartment I had never noticed it. But now I see it always. The gray smoke funneling up into the sky, a new constant.
His apartment is dusty, he complains about it often. Gray silt covers the bookshelves, gray dust bunnies make a daily appearance tormenting us with their airiness. The dust is unrelenting. As I wipe off the table by the window, my fingers become the light gray of neglect.
» Gray, onward
With each new dawn there is gray.
There is a beauty in gray. Gray is possibility, it’s the in-between, an outcome not yet realized, a challenge not yet overcome. May we live in the limitless hope of gray, indefinitely.
Elisabeth Fondell is an emerging writer and potter living in Decorah, IA with work published in Image Good Letters, Cosumnes River Journal, The Book Ends Review and more. She was recently awarded a grant to develop a body of work exploring food and the human experience available to view at elisabethafondell.com.