Roses are red, that much is true, but violets are purple, not fucking blue.
I have been waiting for this post all my life.
They are indeed purple, But one thing you’ve missed: The concept of “purple” Didn’t always exist.
Some cultures lack names For a color, you see. Hence good old Homer And his “wine-dark sea.”
A usage so quaint, A phrasing so old, For verses of romance Is sheer fucking gold.
So roses are red. Violets once were called blue. I’m hugely pedantic But what else is new?
My friend you’re not wrong
About Homer’s wine-ey sea!
Colours are a matter
Of cultural contingency;
Words are in flux
And meanings they drift
But the word purple
You’ve given short shrift.
The concept of purple,
My friends, is old
And refers to a pigment
once precious as gold.
By crushing up molluscs
From the wine-dark sea
You make a dye:
Imperial decree
Meant that in Rome,
to wear purpura
was a privilege reserved
For only the emperor!
The word ‘purple’,
for clothes so fancy,
Entered English
By the ninth century
.
Why then are voilets
Not purple in song?
The dye from this mollusc,
known for so long
Is almost magenta;
More red than blue.
The concept of purple
is old, and yet new.
The dye is red,
So this might be true:
Roses are purple
And violets are blue
.
While this song makes me merry, Tyrian purple dyes many a hue From magenta to berry And a true purple too.
But fun as it is to watch this poetic race The answer is staring you right in the face: Roses are red and violets are blue Because nothing fucking rhymes with purple.
IT GOT SO MUCH BETTER.
My reaction, only with coffee.
Hang on, need to send this to my literature prof
This was interesting. Then it was dead fucking hilarious.
Perhaps one thing that has always perplexed me is the idea that talking to another person is ‘difficult’. To tell the truth on things that you feel, or telling someone something that they need to hear. So many people bulk from doing just that, and then they live a life of misery involving other people in certain situations.
It’s not that talking to another person is hard, we do it daily, it’s the act of being honest that is so hard. ‘Rocking the boat’ or ‘upsetting the status quo’ is not something people like to do. We ENJOY being in a state that we understand, even if our bodies and minds detest it. So we don’t flat out tell someone they suck at sex, or that you wish that your mother would respect you, or that you wish your father wouldn’t talk down to you all the time.
That would upset the status quo.
Because after saying something honest, the next step is dealing with the reaction. Hearing your partner tell you that you’re ‘just weird and too picky’ about sex, hearing your mother destroy your self esteem, and hear your father just undermine all the accomplishments you ever made.
It’s exhausting.
So you don’t tell the truth. You make a choice. You stay silent and allow those things to eat at you.
Perhaps it’s not just the reaction we dread, but it’s also the TRUTH about a reaction that we dread even more. The fact that other people that we may claim or are told we have to love…
Just don’t love us.
Which leads us to a crossroads. Whether or not we want to continue pouring in love and effort into relationships that are all one sided…
And that is, perhaps, the scariest choice of them all.
I said it somewhere else and I’ll say it here, too:
People can have different limits with different people. There are many
things I am only okay with from one or two people that I would not be
okay with from anyone else. This goes for both casual encounters and play as well as established partners/relationships.
If you encounter a limit with someone and watch them do that same thing
with someone else? You accept that people have different levels of
comfort. You can’t raise a big public ruckus and go “how dare you not do this with me!”. It shouldn’t have to be explained why that’s a gross sentiment.
Marshmellowmilktea 