Roy and the Sky Writers

"I haven't seen that before," I said, looking at the rainbow pattern. "You know, those are kinda cool."

I thought she looked wonderfully Bohemian; ready for an adventure in a vintage travel trailer. To Oregon - or down to Baja and beyond. She could fill the soul of a VW van; puttering down the A-1A, all musical and happy and free - and free some more.

They reminded me of things like tie-dyed peace signs, just like the yellow and blue neon hair of that lady selling her shirts at the farmer's market.

They made me think of America, singing "Ventura Highway."
Ventura Highway
Ventura Highway
In the sunshine
Where the days are longer
The nights are stronger
Than moonshine
You're gonna go I know 

So simple and so complex, the rainbow. God's perfect PowerPoint projection of the palette he used to create the living experience. The geeks tell us it's just the visible spectrum of light. The height of wavelengths that shine into our retinas, our rods and cones turing them into colors inside our minds.

But in my Bohemian, tie-dyed worldview of the rainbow? Well, you'd need to know about the sky writers. Roy, G, and Biv.

Roy is the cowboy. On his palette are the pigments of dusty, rusty trails winding through the layered rock in Sedona. Hues infused with the magic of the Apache and Hopi. Like the faded rust of Zuni handprints in high caves.

Roy is all about scarlet sunsets. The tanned leather of rawhide and rein. And he rides a Chestnut brown gelding that kicks up Bell Rock dust, which floats into the sky, bending the spectrum with a cosmic lens that reminds us of the warmth and safety of Roy's campfire.

G is an emerald child, born among the flowers in the spring, among the vibrant green hues that signal new beginnings and innocence. Painting in so many hues and verdant pigments that they each seem just beyond clarity. Tones that breathe, that soothe, that flow. Colors that always - and only - exist between morning and night.

The emerald girl's colors are of the living, never burning and never freezing.



And Biv. To me, he's really Bob Dylan.

Dylan, a soul gifted to the world every few generations, whose role it is to paint the sky in his own special palette. Of chords and ballads that provide color for the most delicate and mysterious of wavelengths.

Colors of the guitar and the harmonica; of words - sometimes in sad, deep indigo tones. Sometimes in peaceful, soulful blue hues. And sometimes in the colors of the world in between; those of mesmerizing and mysterious violets. They are depth and wonder.

His words, his music. Blue, Indigo, violet.

Bob and his "Tangled up in Blue." Nobel-worthy tints.

But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind
I seen a lot of women
But she never escaped my mind, and I just grew
Tangled up in blue

And that's how we remember the rainbow. In my words.

"You should keep those," I told her.

I was thinking about all of these things. But I couldn't express why. Too many hues, too many reasons.

I was thinking about the cowboy, the emerald girl, and Dylan.

And a vintage travel trailer.