föstudagur, september 22, 2006

kjöt

I know no other name for the color of the flesh of the canteloupe but melon. This is not true of all melons. The honeydew is green and yellow. So, I think, is the galia. The canary is nearly white. The charentais is the same color as the canteloupe, which is interesting, but brings us no closer to an independent name for that color.

It is not even, as things are sometimes described in English, flesh-colored. This is perhaps the most short-sighted and racist color term of them all. Flesh---actual flesh and not skin of any shade---that is to say meat, kjöt, is of course red. At least the proverbial weak flesh (as opposed to chicken, frogs, crab) is red. That we can all agree on. The color of people beneath the skin is a great human commonality.

But the flesh, the kjöt, of the canteloupe on my kitchen table is not meat-colored either. It is still that creamy-seeming orange-yellow-pink called melon. It is a few days old, though.; biting into it, I am reminded against my will of flesh.

1 ummæli:

Oktober11 sagði...

Perhaps "canteloupe" is a color all it's own. Now when you look at something else similar to the flesh of the fruit, you can say "That's more like the color canteloupe." I refer to certain deep, saturated yellows as "mango." You know, color-vibrance-fruit.

 
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