Tasting DigitalColor

Dozensofpeopleweretangledinaninfinitelycomplicatedjunglegym,allunderwater.Iwatchedthem,buttheydidnothing.Theydidn’ttrytoescape.Theydidn’ttrytocrawloutofthemaze.Theyjustsatthere. Meanwhile,Iwasperchedatopaveryhighcylinder.Ihadanoption.Icouldstaythere,orwalkalonganarrowpathleadingtothewhitecity.Afriendofminehadalreadymadethatdecision.Hehadwalkedalongthefloatingsquaresteps,andarrivedatan-othercylinder. Ilookeddowntotheseafloor.Sharpwaveslayrightontopofthejunglegym.Theircontourstraveledallthewaytotwotallbuildings.Istood,puzzledforaminute.Theybuild-ingsfeltasiftheywereinanotherdimension. Wait!Oneofthetrappedfellowhadmanagedtocatcharopearoundthebuilding!Maybehewasgoingtosethimselffree. Thenasplitsecondlater,oneofthosesharpwavesIwastellingyouaboutdecidedtotransformitselfintoaseamonster!Heskyrocketedoutoftheocean,andwasaimedstraightfortherope.Itwasifhewasabouttocutit,leavingthatmanstrandedagain. Iwasofcourseworried,soIwavedmyarmsupanddown,hopingtocatchthemonster’satten-tion.Tomysurprise,itworked,andthemonsterchangeditscourse.Inowhadagiant,black,shadystraightformeonmynarrowcylinder. Ihadnowheretogo.Iheardmyfriendscreamtome,tellingmetotakethestepshehadtaken.ButIcouldn’t.Ididn’tknowwhy,Ijustcouldn’t.

“Change the channel, man” he said. “I’m sick of these weird visual transitions.” “You don’t like That 70’s Show?” “Not these experimental and over saturated, not to men-tion poorly green screened transitions.” “I thought you would like that part the most. You’re always dizzy, and look upside down.” “Just change the channel. You’re not making sense. What’s your problem.” “My problem is that...” he was cut off by the other man’s scream. They were no longer sitting on beige couch watching That 70’s Show. Everything vanished around them. First the floor, then one by one the furniture began to dissap-pear. In a matter of seconds all that remained was the men themselves, in an infinite black void. After the screaming stopped, there was silence. One of the men tried to speak, but no sound came out of his mouth. A loud switching/clicking sound jolted both the men. They were no longer floating in empty black space. Instead the color-ful swirls from the transitions of That 70’ Show filled the back and foregrounds. It began to twist and both the men began shrinking.

Moral Culpability vsFreewill

The little green people all stood there, motionless, as if they were waiting for an answer. Their eyes started straight at him, want-ing that answer. Some passed the time with food. Small golden particles grasped by the hands of an emotionless character. They didn’t know what to think, so they

ate. The person targeted by all these green creatures wore a white shirt, red tie, and belt straps. His face was indescribable; hence the green peoples silence. If they knew what he was, they would express it. But they didn’t. They didn’t know what to think.

Meanwhile, the turned dark, and thick blue rain clouds began to cry. The water landed on the middleman, and suddenly, the green people could describe him. The water had made him wet. Once they though this- while eating their golden popcorn- they also realized that they could have

described him as dry before. Why had they forgotten this? The shad-ows from the clouds made his face look dark, why was he not light before? In a matter of seconds the green people had a complete de-scription of the man. They though his pink mustache was too curly, his beard too fluffy, and hi shoul-

ders too large. They could finally think.

Thoughts are the

shadows of

our feelings

The Beautiful vs the sublime

Yuri was a very colorful turtle. His shell consisted of four colors: Red, Pink, Blue, and Black. He was very proud of his shell, and all his friends admired him. His life was good, and he was happy. One day, Yuri’s colorful scales began to fall off. At first, it was just a blue scale. Then the other colors began to break off as well. In just a matter of days, Yuri’s behind no

longer had any color. He would go days without poking his head out of his shell. He was completely embar-rassed. Yuri’s friends came to see him one day. They begged and begged for him to show his face, and let the sun shine on him. He refused. His best friend was able to convince him to at least speak and perhaps explain himself to the group.

“I don’t want you to see my face,” he told them from inside his shell. “Why not?” his best friend replied. “I’ve lost all my beautiful scales!” he cried out. “I no longer have any color. I’m just plain black!” His friends heard him begin to weep from inside his shell. “Turtles aren’t even really

supposed to have scales,” said a friend. “None of us have any colors like you did.”

The doct

ors lo

oked into

the m

icro

scope.

The neutr

al gra

y that

usually

fille

d the v

iew

finder w

as gone.

Inst

ead, vib

rant s

hades of o

r-

ange, red, a

nd purp

le c

overed e

veryth

ing.

This is

am

azing, o

ne of t

he

doctors

excl

aimed.

It's

beautif

ul, sa

id a

nother.

Would

you li

ke to s

ee it?

The snake that cannot shed it's skin perishes

I change myselfi change the world

The view from the sky left the human speechless. He looked at the altim-eter in front of him. 137K it read. One hundred and thirty-seven thousand feet from the orange and pink floor of the alien planet. His intuition told him some-thing was horribly wrong. The planet didn’t appear round to him. At his current altitude he could surely see the curvature of the planet, but no, he couldn’t even make out the slightest curve. What will they think of me? he thought. He had discovered a planet that wasn’t round. It wasn’t blue, green, or even the brown that covered his home planet: Earth. The majority of this alien planet was orange and yellow. He could just make out small ranges on the surface, and they all appeared to be a pink-ish orange color. There were seas of bright pink, and oceans of red and tan. It was like nothing he’d ever seen. He wondered if his discovery would change the world, and maybe people would remember his name.

Dear anonymous,

You wrote to me with one obvious question: What’s the dif-ference between solitude and isolation? Well I have now had plenty of time to both analyze and answer your question. My answer is “One is lighter than the other.”

I mostly responded to the prompts by writing a small, confusing, and dark narrative. For the most part there was only one vital character per story, and the story always involved him trying to deal with the aftermath of a tremendous problem. My favorite prompt was the one about how feelings are the shadows of our thoughts, mainly because it provoked a really interesting quick write. I enjoyed using the watercolors the most, because I feel I was the most successful with the color palette in that medium. I didn’t take too many risks. I explored strange styles of art, like my watercolor with futuristic lines and such, but I don’t consider that a “risk”. In my writing, the biggest risk I took, if you can call it a risk, was writing in the form of letter. I was anything but consistent during these projects. Some days my work looked really good, and I felt com-fortable with the theme. As soon as a new prompt came up though, my work would drastically change. I feel that several of my pieces are just plain horrible, while some are really artistic and have strong qualities to them.

Luc Delamare

10 ThemesMelancholySpeedpastpresentfuturefakedisordertimetaste