Summary

22: One day the speaker’s friend is critically injured in a terrible accident. The speaker wanders Brooklyn, seeing the flashes of blue in peeling paint or light through water. At the hospital, the speaker stares into her friend’s blue eyes and they share fear.

23-25: Many writers have turned to color when they feel their mortality: Goethe in a period of depression, Derek Jarman while dying of AIDS, and Wittgenstein while dying of stomach cancer. Much of this writing is an attempt to explain color’s truth, rather than its physics. Goethe relates stories of vision loss or alteration from injuries both physical and emotional.

26-27: The speaker has heard that depressed people often experienced reduced color vision, and wonders what diagnosis would explain her heightened sensitivity to blue. A diagnosis is still not a solution, however.

28-30: The speaker and “you...