Yellow sadness is the surprise sadness. It is the sadness of naps
and eggs, swan’s down, sachet powder and moist towelettes. It
is the citrus of sadness, and all things round and whole and dying
like the sun possess this sadness, which is the sadness of the
first place; it is the sadness of explosion and expansion, a blast
furnace in Duluth that rises over the night skyline to fall
reflected in the waters of Lake Superior, it is a superior joy and
a superior sadness, that of revolving doors and turnstiles, it is
the confusing sadness of the never-ending and the evanescent,
it is the sadness of the jester in every pack of cards, the sadness
of a poet pointing to a flower and saying what is that when what
that is is a violet; yellow sadness is the ceiling fresco painted
by Andrea Mantegna in the Castello di San Giorgio in Mantova,
Italy, in the fifteenth century, wherein we look up to see we are
being looked down upon, looked down upon in laughter and
mirth, it is the sadness of that.
~ from My Private Property (Wave Books, 2016)
