There are people who walk around wearing bright red sweaters, that I know they knit themselves, out of gathered yarn. I imagine how their lives were planned out with the goal of making a red sweater. All they had to do was keep pulling and tugging on that red yarn until they had it spun into a nice ball of yarn to knit with. That's what I imagine anyways, but I'm sure that in reality, those sweaters are full of differently colored threads. There are surely traces of blue, ocher, gold, brown, maroon, teal, emerald, and periwinkle knit in amongst the brilliant red. The reason that the red shows up so well is that the people wearing those sweaters are the ones adding the hue of brightness.
I've seen one of those red sweaters folded and tucked away in the closet of a good friend. Its color was a shade above a muted brick red--dull and dampened. But let me tell you, once he put that sweater on, the whole room lit up and the circulation in my hands improved.
Today I found a scrap of red yarn lying on the ground. It was half buried in the dirt--frayed and neglected. I wasn't even sure what it was until I picked it up, but once I did, a drop of rain falling onto my palm cleared away the brown shades of earth and let the red shine through. I took that scrap of yarn and washed all the dirt away, then I tied it in a knot onto a safety pin and fastened it to my own gray, wool sweater.
(I found this tucked away in an old journal as I was packing up my belongings. What I like best is the image of every person I know having a red sweater somewhere, tucked away in their closets, or left, half-finished on the knitting needles.)
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