Mood Indigo

It's interesting how a few choice words can make our thoughts do a 180-degree turn.

"Indigo" was definitely a good description of my thoughts yesterday. Something unseen - a little wanderlust, maybe? - kept my mood in the realm of depressing hues. It didn't help matters when the oldest told me that my hair was looking "stripey". They were supposed to be subtle highlights. I doubt that I'll let my stylist talk me into that again.

Anyway, I was reading a column in the paper this morning in which the writer was talking about Tom Robbins' book, Jitterbug Perfume. In it, Robbins makes the point that beets ("the most intense of vegetables") leave the body the same color as they enter. Ewww, I know. But stay with me.

From the epilogue:

"At birth, we are red-faced, round, intense, pure. The crimson fire of universal consciousness burns in us. Gradually, however, we are devoured by parents, gulped by schools, chewed up by peers, swallowed by social institutions, wolfed by bad habits, and gnawed by age; and by the time we have been digested, cow style, in those six stomachs, we emerge a single disgusting shade of brown.

"The lesson of the beet, then, is this: hold on to your divine blush, your innate rosy magic, or end up brown. Once you're brown, you'll find that you're blue. As blue as indigo. And you know what that means:

"Indigo,
"Indigoing,
"Indigone."

Divine blush... rosy magic. That's what I want in my life. As much as I love the blue hues, I don't want to wake up one morning and find myself "indigone".