The Ballad of a Robot

Interlude: Inked

Emptiness in a world of color.

-------x

Inked

--------x

I have a love-hate relationship with colors. Maybe because I'm an absence of them, or maybe because I'm a white sharpie with a pebble sized self-esteem and an existential crisis. Whatever it may be, I see colors in people. They can't see it within themselves so just leave it to a sharpie to see that.

Purple can start a happy story but instead, I'll start with red.

People have their fair share of reds, it's all about passion and intensity. Most people live for the things they love: art, poetry, sports. Red is powerful, that's why many people like it. They're ready to bleed for the things they love. I've seen that passion in a girl who owned me once, but never really used me much. She loves art. Her room was full of her artworks. They're all beautiful. She later put me up on sale when she decided to move out and go big.

Life has a mix of blues. It's like being struck by something calm but very refreshing breeze while the slow rain drops over you. Blue may represent serenity, but it also represents loneliness . Like the next person who owned me. He was an old lawyer. He showed calmness as opposed to his profession that's full of intensity. He didn't use me much either. I'm just there in his desk, watching the lonely swallow him up like acid as he looked at his wife's picture.

He, later on, gave me to his young son, not seeing me as anything useful. I saw yellow when the little one took me to his pre-school. I saw it when the other little ones drew the sun and how its face shows smiles and happiness. They made it seem like the sun isn't something that could burn us all up. Yellow is all about joy, but sometimes yellow represents pretentions, like the boy pretending that he knows nothing about his daddy being unhappy.

Green is timeless and eccentric, it's everywhere, as far as I can tell. It's the color that the kids in the pre-school used to draw the trees and the grass. It's the color that the little girl who took me from the pre-school used when she drew monsters. Green is different but being different doesn't make you something scary. People draw monsters, but when they're asked what makes the drawing one, they can't find any answers to it.

Orange isn't bad either. It's bright like yellow and bold like red. It's the color of the sun when it goes down before dark. Orange is for the unapologetic people, for the daring ones, like the little girl's brother. Again, I was not used. I just ended up sitting in his pocket as he rode that motorcycle. I don't think he ever knew that I was there. He stormed out after a heated argument with his parents because he wasn't sorry for any of the troubles that he had done. Little did he know, fire burns people and like the sunset, orange also signifies the end.

Now we're back to purple, the not-so-end of the beginning. After I got tossed out of the guy's pocket, I got picked up by these people who were the embodiment of purple. They're the in-betweens of the contrast. As far as I can tell, these people are anarchists, on their way to a protest. One of them almost used me to write something protest related, but then he realized that my ink can't be seen on white paper. He got frustrated then threw me away. Too bad, it would've been hell of an adventure for me.

I ended up in the cold surface of the road again. This is it, buddy. The end. Nobody's gonna pick you up. I thought to myself. I don't really know what the end is. I can assume that I lived my "life" to the fullest though I know that I'm still full and won't "die" unless I get drained. Maybe the end isn't the end but just a beginning of a new adventure. I had this inner argument about that with myself until someone picked me up and said: "A white sharpie! Wow, it looks full. This is so perfect."

She smiled and put me in her bag. What am I perfect for? The trash? Maybe .

I sat in her bag for hours before she pulled me out to reveal her room full of black paper. Some have drawings, some don't. Black paper with white drawings on them.

I envy colors but I envy black the most. Ironic that the absence of color is envious with the other absence of color. We're both empty, but that color's everything that I'm not. Black may be associated with terrible things but he's far more useful than me and I'm just probably projecting out my insecurities. But as I kissed the surface of the black paper, it dawned on me that black is vulnerable and protective and everything and then nothing. While black is an abyss, white is blinding. Black is my other half. Light won't exist without dark and everything should have both sides of the coin in order to exist.

Maybe this is my short life's purpose and nothing feels greater than knowing why I exist and doing it. For so long, I've been thinking that I was the most useless piece of writing and art material. Apparently, I'm not. Then there's this realization that I am also the mix of every color that I encountered. I, too, am everything and nothing. And what I missed when I see colors in people is that, they're all a mix of everything. Some colors may be stronger but it all mixes to black and white.

As the girl finished her artwork, she put me down and smiled at the piece of black paper. She pinned her work to the wall and went out of the room, still smiling. I looked around again.

Looks like a new adventure with a new perspective.