#folder: analyses

You ask: what color am I?

It should be a simple question of hue and base, but to really paint you in colors, we need a background.

What is a thunderbird? In all honesty, I have no idea. To me it brings up the idea of an old style warplane, small, fit for one--two at the most. It represents power and a balanced mixture of nature and machinery.

What’s curious about this is the two components: thunder and bird. Thunder in itself represents the precise edges and harsh sounds of bolts and screws that power an urban motor. It rumbles with force, never apologetic, never quiet. But creation is something humans’ lack creativity in: instead, we find innovation in the smooth curves of leaves, in the flutter of feathers, in the flight of a bird. The second component, bird, is a symbol of the never ending mystery of nature, of its infinite treasures, perfections, miracles. This represents you well.

Machinery is equal to technique and the refinement of it, but no matter how small or how big it is created, it is nothing more than a copy of a flap of wings, an efficient gliding through the air. You, in all your writing, expand and experiment. You use different steels and iron to fortify and shield your nature. You make your ideas fly better, they float with more force, they attack with more power. You always retain the chaos of life and the frivolity of living, all those intricacies that have no reason or constraints, that explode and reset. They have no ending or beginning, and you never attempt to encapsulate them with one. You give it no restrictions. Instead you take your nature and you make a hybrid in writing; you present it with a style that only accentuates the madness of it all. You don’t try to give reasons, you don’t hide it, you don’t disguise it. Instead you carve and dig, trying to unearth more of it. You aren’t addicted, just curious and your writing flows. It rushes with vibrancy that makes beautiful writing simply a decor for something more marvelous. You shave off the excess of verbose and present your ideas to their full, brimming capacity. Instead of printing a neat picture to show someone, you smother them in paint, you brush the colors into their eyes--so direct, so brash, unhinged from order. It’s a glimpse of the universe, and you don’t ever try to mold it into something more pleasing, more easy to digest. Your writing shows that you would rather die, choked, out of breath, life clogging your throat than to cut it with a knife.

Which brings us to color: what is unrestrained? What isn’t controlled? What do we accept without question? The sun. In a burst of oranges, reds, bright yellows, stained whites, it shines over us. The only difference is your writing, your expression in art. You take pieces of the sun, pieces of yourself, and you mix them together. You are a thunderbird, a perfect balance of machine and nature. Technology only aids you in translating the beauty of the sun to the common mind; you make it accessible to them, you become a vessel. Instead of the harmful rays you give them sequined sunlight, dazzling, gleaming, but human. You show that you embrace the fire within, the flames that lick at your very soul, burning you, forming you. You have a phoenix within you that craves for the cool of the ashes, the blaze of death. You are red, yellow, and orange. But, you’re dynamic; like the sun, you molder and decay at the edges. You rest, you grow purple on the edges--still powerful, still wielding light, but cool, a different energy. You’ve adapted to have it; violet gilds the fans of your plane, the chrome finishes, the details. But in all, you remain inexplicable, something we accept, we learn to indulge in, we adapt to. You, an ambassador of the sun.

But you are also a bird of light, refined with steel. You move, you aren’t static. You aren’t limited to anything; as powerful as the sea is, it can’t move past the wake of its waves. It can only reach and reach and reach, never fully moving. It’s tethered to the sand, perhaps that’s why it’s so angry. But you can fly, you can go up, down, to the side, past the horizons. A thunderbird has no limits. You have no limits. You swoop into domains that aren’t your own because you can, because you can float into the air and escape unscathed. You’re volatile; the only thing vast enough to house you is the sky.

Yet you let yourself be caged by flimsy delusions of love. You shed your steel to become a canary. Someone holds you in the birdcage of their heart, where you chirped, where you were adored. But that was then and this is now. You chirp, wanting to be adored again. But the human, unpredictable, uncaring, lightly selfish, taps away at keys; he’s distracted, he’s dropped his interest in the frown of his lips, the wrinkles in between his brows. A shield of effort blocks out your sweet, musical tune. But you, the thunderbird, a majestic creature trapped in someone’s ribs; you, that thought you were the beat that kept him alive; you, the untameable creature, now docile and dormant. You’re afraid to chirp louder in case he’ll get annoyed and let you free; but you’re also afraid to stop chirping in case he really does deem you unnecessary, replaceable. You forget you’re the sun refined. You forget you have steel feathers, a chrome heart. You forget that you created yourself; that you burned your fingertips when you wove the sun’s flames to yourself, warming you for once in your cold life. You relinquish all of your heat, all your passion for a man who taps away, a canary in a cage of bones. Yet you chirp on, an endless source, a religious devotion.

You are a dazzling red, a gilded orange, an infinite yellow, hot with the colors of the sun. You are a thunderbird; wild, unrestrained, the best of two battling worlds. And when the night falls, you are violet, energy in remission, the calm before a storm, red held hostage by the hues of blue.