Vivid

Photo by joeball

One of the longstanding questions in philosophy has to do with the metaphysics of color.  You can ask the traditional “if a tree falls in the forest” question about it: suppose there were no beings in the world with the ability to perceive color; would the world still be colored?

Imagine a long time ago, (even before Derrick was drunk) before there were any living things; was the sky blue and the sea green?  If the appearance of color depends upon the experience of an observer, then apparently not.

But it’s hard to believe that even if no one had been around to observe it, that the colored pencil shadings of the evening’s slowly-setting sun would not have been equally vivid.

For the British empiricist, George Berkeley, the solution is easy: to be may be to be perceived, but, fortunately, God’s always around doing the perceiving.  And since He never closes his divine eyes, color—and for that matter, shape and number—are always there.

And this, perhaps, is another way of saying that even way more earthly—and far more myopic eyes—like my own, are opened ever wider with every aspect of the ride, starting with the impressive sight of Long Island Ice Teas (‘not for the faint of heart,” according to the bartender) to bike gang flags flapping in the breeze to fires that make their own pit as if by magic.

Ultimately, there’s more to see than meets the eye, which is, perhaps, another way of noticing that perception involves a more robust conception of sight, one that includes the feel of the air on your skin, the pounding in your eardrums at another yelled “YOLO,” the scent of burning wood, (that wisely ends up not migrating after all to another location,) and even the taste of various intoxicants that contribute to an already intoxicating night out on two wheels.

You gotta see it to believe it, and even then, it remains unbelievable.