Colour Vision: #3ABF23

by Ant Stone on July 14, 2010

in Czech Republic,Features

This week’s experimental travel writing feature, Colour Vision, takes on hex colour, #3ABF23. To the naked eye, a simple green but when I stir it into a broiling vessel containing my own travel experiences, I see an altogether different thing.

If you like the literary experience you’re about to encounter, I’d really appreciate you showing your support in the comment thread, or drop me a note via the contact form Either way, I always appreciate good feedback.

Three-ay-bee-eff-two-three. Fresh. Lighter than a thousand blades of grass, yet, perhaps too yellow to be sat aside the Green Fairy; she who once bleached my youthful bliss in Prague.

Green is the colour of glazed envy. Green is the colour of a slain environment, spattered in warriors daubed in foreign paint. Green is sickness on a distant sea. Green is the colour of the game of golf I never played.

That’s enough from me. This experience is designed to evoke feelings in thee as well as I. Look at this expanse of electronic-ink. Smear it on yourself in a flash of verdancy.

Five seconds. Four to go.

Four seconds. Three to go.

Three seconds. Two to go.

Two seconds. One to go.

One second. None to go.

What a rush! How do you feel? Are you filled with the glee of #3ABF23, or utterly disgusted by it?

Are you naked on the outside and curdled in the middle, or simply sat atop your chair like an abstinent — slightly blue — child?

To me. This curious colour is making me sick. Almost vomit. It’s a cliché, I know. (I wrote it). But that’s what I’m experiencing as my incessant stare becomes caught amid its gooey trap.

HELP! Somebody, HELP! My gaze is stuck in this endless patch of self-created green.

I am sorry, reader. For it was I that led you far into this infertile illusion. And now you’re trapped too.

We are swaying. Up. Then down. On a sea we cannot see. On a boat that cannot cope. We are pushed and pulled by an invisible tide. We are swerving around Asian hairpins at 100mph. Now suddenly we are standing on the precipice of a new life.

Five. Four. Three. Two seconds. One. None.

Our gaze, once stuck, is now soaring through the skies above a rolling landscape of a hundred greens: This is Norway. This is Yunnan. This is Kerala. This is Walpole.

We follow that gaze and suddenly we are falling.

Falling towards a thousand blades of grass, and they’re getting lighter. I see them now. They’re thick and coarse, and sharp. And you are falling too. And then I see her. And now I know her.

The Green Fairy; it was you, after all.

Quite a rush, right? If you’re new to Trail of Ants you may be wondering what on earth I’ve been consuming. This freestyle writing is perhaps my favourite indulgence, and is reminiscent of the earlier stages of Trail of Ants.


In fact, there have been quite a number of developments in the style of writing I portray here. Subtly changing with my environment.

In case you’re wondering who in God’s name, the Green Fairy is. She is absinthe. An infamous, aniseed-flavoured liqueur found in many parts of the world, but said to have originated in Switzerland. Truth is, the drink is more translucent than #3ABF23, but for some reason I kept typing — perhaps until I had satisfied her.

Indeed, the drink is so powerful that one night I joined an American friend of mine for a few beers in Prague, in turn we attracted the company of a couple of Canadian girls and in turn we order a bottle of absinthe.

The next thing I knew, I woke up on a train swarming with brightly-coloured ravers, the kind that would rip your clothes off and seduce you for days. I got off the train, to discover I was now in Berlin, on the day of the famous dance festival, the Love Parade. An extraordinary event, which attracts around 1 million revellers.

Suffice to say, the party continued…

Do you have anything you’d like to say about this particular piece? What was your experience with #3ABF23?

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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

Darcy July 14, 2010 at 1:43 pm

Have you tried those new buttons of yours in firefox? not working perfectly just yet…

Ant July 14, 2010 at 2:03 pm

Thanks Darcy. They display OK in my version of Firefox — I’m just struggling to get them right in Opera, Safari and Chrome! My beginner level CSS is shining bright.

When you say they’re not working, what are you experiencing?

singlewithluggage July 15, 2010 at 8:11 am

La fee verte! She’s a metaphorical concept of artistic enlightenment and exploration, of poetic inspiration, of a freer state of mind, of new ideas, of changing social order… and I think a nice concept for life. If I could have said it better myself, I would have. That was lifted from another site.

Ant July 15, 2010 at 9:12 am

Beautiful. I like her association with the liqueur. Not sure what beer’s would be? Perhaps a staggering, odorous troll? Regardless, she’s an enigma I welcome.

Gillian July 16, 2010 at 5:14 am

I love the colour series and the free flow writing that goes along with it! Cheers!

Ant July 16, 2010 at 6:14 am

That’s wonderful — I had thought no one cared much, but it seems I have an audience. therefore, I can declare my prose shalt continue unhindered.

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