Bliss

I always thought smells were the most evocative and and yet  evasive of all our five senses' subjects. (Objects. Whichever.)  A smell can waft out of nowhere and fell you with emotion. The smell can do this to you without yielding a clue as to what past event embodied the emotion. This is why I believed what I did and thought that our sense of smell was the most abstract of our senses.

My thinking changed after this morning's spree in Beckerly Lumber, the local source for Benjamin Moore Paints.  My aforementioned design consultant, whose name is Louise, had given me a list of the colors and finishes to buy, and for the first time in my life, I wasn't torn to shreds by color-choice doubts as my paints were mixed.  I came home lighthearted and full of zeal and pried open all the cans.  

Factually, spread before me were Dartsmouth Green (a deep, smokey teal), Blue Haze (an icy, pale, luminous blue), Zephyr glaze, Mercury glaze, and untinted metallic pearlescent base. Facts, though, had nothing to do with what  happened next. 

And I'm saying up front that I prize what happened.  Since I was free of color-choice doubts, it was this:  There was nothing but me and the colors. No thoughts, no surroundings, no time. With the sight of the colors, there came no associations, known or not, as there can with scent. The colors purely disclosed their essences, that's all. If I were forced to name something analogous to this experience, I suppose I'd have to say a divine revelation or vision (except those have content, as far as I know. I've never had one). If you think I'm being hyperbolic, then please just shut up, please--I'm trying to get something intangible out here, please! Even when I used to paint canvases, I never had such an experience of color. It has left my mind with such a deep and wholesome refreshment that I plan to have decor colors dictated to me from now on. (Be warned, Louise!)

So that was the bliss.

This looks like regular cans of paint. How can it be?