AMETHYST
This short story was from an assignment for FroSci
I. Blue
In the first moment of conception, light glossed over one’s face. A rainbow appeared after the rain. In the shadow, the silver cup shimmered. Amethyst was her name.
When the sky was this lipstick red, the clouds were bubblegum pink, and the trees were honey orange, they wandered. Flowing through the narrow streets with patterns strikingly resembling Sol Lewitt Wall Drawing #118, she stumbled upon a blue surface.
By chance, this was the second time she saw this blue surface.
Before that, she hadn’t yet understood it. In fact, she didn’t know how to fully experience it. No more, no less, the blue surface stood there stagnant. Her only perception of it was a wall with the color blue. A blue that is bluer than blue.
The second time was different. It was as stark of a contrast as the difference in composition when comparing Kadinsky’s Composition VII versus Flavin’s pink out of a corner (to Jasper Johns). The feeling that Amethyst went through was as visceral as the imagery that the book “In Praise of Shadows” by Tanizaki invokes, and as visceral as the smell of burnt apple wood.
With anyone else, when seeing this blue surface, they would surely have moved on. They wouldn’t have marveled at the ingenuity of the snow-padded textured wall. They would show a level of ignorance that is observable in the Time Sq station, ignorantly passing by lovingly lively murals without giving them a second glance. They would just see.
Amethyst was different. She felt everything. Her brain’s top-down processing allowed the full extent of her imagination, emotions, and creativity. Her heart skipped a beat, but then was accompanied by a steady rhythm that resembled Aphex Twin. Her eyes teared up a little. One hadn’t seen anything purer than this.
Amethyst stared deeply into the blue void. It took a while for the images to appear. It very much reminded her of Yves Klein’s painting. With this spontaneous thought, she laughed at the irony of seeing another blue in another blue.
If only Amethyst knew the artists were looking at nothing/ or at something, if only they knew how Yves Klein came into being. If only she knew that the creator had friends, that these friends divided this universe into three, each possessing a piece of that reality.
While Amethyst didn’t know this, she had something even more special. In blue, she saw her brother. A child-like body in hot pink floating around. His movement breaks the probabilistic wave of the East sea, splashing their hand around like a descendant of sea-loving Neptune. In the split seconds that the memory lived, dopamine in Amethyst’s brain was released. When one lives in Jackson Pollock, her brother turned everything into the landscape of Georgia O’Keeffe.
II. Mantis Shrimp
Her world is now Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Reflection Seascape”. Mystically teal, a faded white line strikes in the middle. Her eyes stretch in two ways.
She takes a deep dive. The first and most recent time she dived was a few years ago, when she was at the age that can’t seem to focus. Approaching the sea on a turquoise fishing boat made out of wood, Amethyst blazed through the dark wine sea. Awed in wonderment of the horizon, something she had never seen before living in the city.
Amethyst was living in a state of flow. Her body tingling with sensations similar to the oscillating motion of a mother lovingly rocking her baby.
SPLASH
Submerged under a sea glazed-donut, she wiggled her way down the depth of the ocean. With rays of light refracting around her, to the organism at the sea bed, she was an unknown threat. They hide in the fear of being caught, even when she meant no harm, some others peeking out from the opening eyes of the rainbow-nic coral reef, curious on her purpose and intention.
Out of them all, one stood tall and proud against her. A body the size of two fingers.
It looked like a type of shrimp that she had eaten earlier before the boat trip. Maybe it was the same one. Its flavor tone was distinct, a combination between lobster flavor, shrimp’s texture, and the sweetness of the ocean.
However, Amethyst wasn’t really interested in the act of eating, she was holding her breath in the amazement of its eyes. A glorious intricate fluorescent, metallic, glossy grey-like blue-ish body floating around; the eyes shone a particular tone that possessed the same power as seeing the Bean for the first time in Chicago. Enchanted.
Her cousin next to her then pointed out that it was a mantis shrimp. Being an animal connoisseur her cousin was, she pointed out to Amethyst of its powerful bullet punch, how the water is vaporized when it hits, and of its wonderful eyes.
The mantis shrimp twisted its head at a fifteen degrees angle, and in a human characteristic, wondered what these land-lover creatures are doing here at its dwelling place. Most likely, it probably was deciphering if Amethyst and her cousins were a threat or not. Using its rounded rose-tinted eyes, it must have looked at them through the vision of Alex Katz’s paintings, however, in a saturated and contrasted mode, borning aggressively color waves that even the most visually ignorant human being can hardly ignore.
III. Amethyst
Mantis shrimp can see the world through twelve different channels of colors. And each one of them consumes an aspect of Amethyst’s life. In her obsession over the shrimp’s eyes, like a virus, her brain slowly adapts to this newfound perspective. Like an artist, the surrounding environments become twisted, things become abstracted, and a novel world unfolds in front of her.
In those twelve channels, in the chaos of the moment, she finds comfort in the familiarity of the red, green and blue light. She, however, couldn’t sub due to the hue, to see the blending between these colors. Now, she sees the world through twelve distinct tones, her life is now a coloring book. She doesn’t know if it is great or not. Is it better to see nine more distinct colors than to be able to see the full spectrum of three colors?
With mantis shrimp, the ability to quickly process information of friend or foe through these twelve colors helps keep them safe, however, is it really necessary in humans?
With colors having an intrinsic connection to one’s state of mind, do these twelve colors create a new euphoria of emotion?
With twelve distinct colors, how would that affect the same blue wall she encountered earlier in the story?
Everything feels like a kaleidoscope in the moment
Colored light can dictate our circadian rhythms. With the assumption that in those twelve channels, three are known to Amethyst, she gains nine more colors that can dictate her reaction to the surrounding environment.
However, when so much of the beauty of light is located in its spectrum and softness, and the complexity of environment and emotion not only comes from its color but also the depth of the physical three-dimensional material, would her emotion differ from others?
Looking at her mother, Amethyst doesn’t view her with only affection and love, but now something even more. Her mother’s skin is one pure color, glowing outwardly, contrasting with all and every single surrounding tone. It is warm, but not antagonizing, and even when the blending of color and shadow isn’t mellow—more similar to a geometric abstraction painting than a gradient—there is still this new shimmering texture that is created from her own memories of her mother and the profoundly new gift(Rest for 10 seconds).
IV. Cross Dissolve
Imagine right now, while typing, your left-shift key on your keyboard breaks. It is unusable, and you have resulted in using the right-shift key—which you probably never used or even noticed before. If you use the right-shift key… Flip the scenario and imagine that instead. It is going to be hard in the beginning, however, over time, you get used to it. Maybe one day, it will come to the point where you feel more comfortable using the right shift.
Maybe this will be more accurate:
Imagine that, while typing, your keyboard suddenly gains an extra nine keys, all placed sporadically around a keyboard layout that you were used to before. In the beginning, you easily mistyped, however, over time, you learn, and become hopefully comfortable with the new layout. In fact, you probably also find new uses for these nine extra keys.
Your brain relearns. Those known colors combine with the unknown to create a totally different experience.
Scenario 1:
Over time Amethyst gets used to her new “power”. Human vision is supposedly great at seeing the difference between colors, while mantis shrimp is not. One by one, she was able to combine different channels together, slowly adding color to her visual palette. Like an artist, she experimented with her perception, and like an artist, the more she adds, the more diverse her visual language is.
Her eyes now live in a world where one’s imagination can’t even take place.
Scenario 2:
She could never learn, and never get used to the new perception of the world. In fear of being a visual outcast, to not be able to share the same visual experience with everyone else, her brain ignored this gift. It focused on what is already known. She shut off from the gift, shunned herself from expanding. Slowly, the mantis shrimp’s vision faded away, disconnected from everything else.
V. Split
Memories(Based of Scenario 2)
If Amethyst was able to shun away the gift, or if the ability is gone completely, how would it influence the memory of the event? Would she still be able to remember the color, or will it fade away with time? She certainly would remember the feeling of the discovery, the excitement that accompanied it when she first saw those new colors?
Is it even possible to fully get rid of the vision if that was the case? Is it now that she is color-blind in the memory?
With age, our cognition ability declines or changes. If sight is not something we can actively practice, but only use, what is the memory now when the only way to practice it is through the eyes?
How important is the change of visions to the linkage of self-perception through visual memory?
Still blue?(Based on Scenario 1)
The third time Amethyst encounters the blue wall, she stands in amazement. This time, she steps into the void in which Yves Klein created. In the void, she sees everything and nothing at all, her body feels tiny upon the discovery she’s just made. Never had she ever seen the light waves bouncing upon the surface, never had she ever noticed that light rays have a texture to them, that they weave together to create an untouchable fabric. With her eyes, she uncovers the truth. In her name, lights refract, shining through her crystal body, bouncing off the blue surface in search of something more.