"Green Versus Orange" [by Joe Lehman]

A smart man who has entered middle age should remain on a never-ending quest of introspection and self-analysis. The literary parallel to life’s span is in Charles Dickens’s short tale “The Child’s Story.” An unnamed wandering traveler interacts with ethereal versions of himself at every stop he makes, starting from early childhood, through adolescence, into middle age and then finally old age.  

In his interpretation of the traveler’s meeting his early childhood self, Dickens [left] describes mainly physical sensations and how the newness of the world and its design imakes its impact: “The sky was so blue, and the sun was so bright, the water was so sparkling, the leaves were so green, the flowers were so lovely, and they heard such singing birds and saw so many butterflies, that everything was beautiful.” 

 

When you are born a synesthetic, as I was, the development of physical sensation has a hundred times more potency. A quick google search of synesthesia defines it as a “rare neurological condition in which stimulation of one sense involuntarily triggers experiences in another sense.” I have, in the past, written several lengthy poems and essays covering my various experiences in that neurological condition, including the unique way I have seen letters and numbers, words and years. I expect to write something about "Voyelles," the sonnet by the teenage French poet Arthur Rimbaud, in he assigns colors to the vowels.

 

Case in point: I reached the age of awareness when I was five. I remember the 1988 Presidential race: my first taste of observing politics in America. In my kindergarten class, that fall, we wrote letters to the Republican and Democratic nominees, the sitting Vice President George H. W. Bush and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, respectively. And both of the candidates (or one of their staffers) sent a letter back to the class. 

 

I cannot remember anything from what was written in Dukakis’s letter except that it addressed us a bit more formally than Bush’s did. Dukakis began with “dear class” while Bush said “dear kids.” Ironically, the stiffness of Dukakis’s manner made him seem more authoritative in my mind compared to Bush’s casualness. I say ironically, because I suppose being seen as casual must have humanized Bush with the rest of the electorate, and could very well have contributed to his commanding November win. My first lesson in politics then was that a warning not to be aloof from the desires of the masses, or you'll wind up on the losing side. 

 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. How does having synesthesia come into play here? I’ll explain. We, the class, held our own mock election where the students could cast their ballots for either Bush or Dukakis. I synesthetically experienced the essence of George Bush as a brownish-orange color, while Dukakis evoked the essence of a springtime greenish color. Both colors were sufficiently masculine. The orange color seemed more disciplinarian though, and the green seemed mercurial and lax. I like green better. I went with Dukakis as my vote. I don’t remember who won in my class.

 

It has been written elsewhere that Dukakis intended his campaign to be about issues, while Bush preferred his to be one of symbols. In recorded histories of the ‘88 election, one reads a lot of descriptions of symbols, with Bush looking like a sure winner standing before the American flag, reciting the pledge of allegiance, and eating apple pie. These contrast with the forlorn symbols of prison inmates shuffling through revolving doors and Dukakis’s ludicrous photo op in a battle tank, wearing a helmet that made him look more like Snoopy on one of his imaginary dogfights with the Red Baron. I don’t find many descriptions of what the issues were, but it is clear that Bush successfully defined Dukakis as soft on crime and national defense. Of course, I don’t remember experiencing any of that. But I’ll always remember the orange and the green. 

 

Go figure.