Momentary Kreuzberg Blue

For an instant the iron pillars that support the elevated section of the U-Bahn between Gorlitzer Bahnhof and Schlesiche Tor are turned blue by the light reflected from a traffic signal. This blue, which for the sake of argument I will call "Momentary blue", is the same colour that can sometimes be briefly seen in a petrol rainbow congealing in a puddle after a thunderstorm.

A shade or two greener than a veign or a fresh bruise, Momentary Kreuzberg blue is one of a number of colours that can be seen in reflected neon - a melancholy apparition that can never be entirely confirmed by a colour chart or Pantone sampler. It is an elusive colour, an inhabitant of the spectral spectrum that only drunks and animals can be bothered to observe. A colour that, were there any justice, should be valued more highly than imperial purple or insect crimson. Momentary Kreuzberg blue is simultaeneously the colour of memory and of forgetting. It is the colour of loss and regret but also of their antidote, a concoction of pale ink and Absinthe in a chalice of stale tears.