Purple is passé, or so it seemed to me as I
trolled through my brain for thoughts of it for today's topic. It's the color
once worn by the rulers of the Byzantine and later the Roman Empire, both long
gone. Purple was once the color associated with royalty, but most royal
families are now long gone. Queen Elizabeth struggles on, God love her. Not a
fashion statement at her best, her carefully matched purse which she
unfailingly carries appears to be of the same style she favored in the 1950's.
But even one as traditional as she, does not wear purple excessively.
When black was no longer
absolutely mandatory wear for funerals and periods of mourning, purple crept in
in its stead, here and there. But those days have also gone. There are no
longer rules, even unwritten ones, telling us what we must wear to a funeral;
anything goes.
Way back in my youth
there was this ridiculous song Purple People Eater, I imagine most people in
this room remember it well. It was #1 on the pop charts in 1958. Why,
for God's sake?
A song about this
one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple people eater? Were it to make a comeback
today, which I cannot envision, it would doubtless be taken as innuendo and
much made of eating purple people. But back in the innocent '50's most of us
sang along without a thought. One more piece of purple now extinguished, and I
certainly cannot say that I regret it's passing.
Another purple horror is
purple prose. It's a term used for flowery, over-descriptive writing,
especially that filled with euphemisms with reference to sex. This abounds in
romance novels, especially those set in the past when no-one ever spoke aloud
of intimate body parts and acts.
I found a wonderful online article about it, in which Deb Stover warns all writers to use it sparingly.* She talks of breasts being referred to as 'mounds' and erection as 'arousal',
of a penis as 'his sex', or 'his love tool'. Wait for it, it gets worse. She cites
such examples as, 'the raging beast of his desire', and, 'the raging monster of
his lust'! Good Lord! No wonder
Victorian mothers told their daughters just to lie on their back and think of
England!
All in all, I'm not
coming up with much to mourn in the passing of purple. And let's not confuse
purple with violet. Violet is OUR color. Violet is a 'real' or spectral color
with it's own wavelength on the visible spectrum of light. Purple, in the
strictest sense of optics, does not exist. It can only be produced, apparently,
as a composite color by combining red and blue.
One purple tradition
which I would love to see disappear for lack of need is that of the Purple
Heart presented to those in the military who are wounded or killed during their
time of service. This includes all those from the time the U.S. entered WW1 to
the present, and numbers over two million. Next year will be exactly a century
that the Purple Heart has been in existence. I sincerely pray it may be
abolished, or at least used rarely, in the following century; not because I
wish not to honor our war dead and injured, but simply because I want it all to
go away. I want the wars to end. I want us all to live in peace. But you have
all heard my peacenik rantings before so I'll end right here and take a break.
Then I think I'll
practice up a bit on my purple prose.
© 7 Mar 2016
About
the Author
I
was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to
the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the
Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30-years at IBM. I married, raised
four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting
myself as a lesbian. I have been with
my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years. We have been married since 2013.
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