I Got That New Retina Screen
by Robert Witmer
I was wondering. What if God made us different colors: blue, red, green, whatever? Some things would have to change. For example, consider the biology of the eye. The cone cells in the eye are sensitive to particular wavelengths of light.
Geckos, for example, have excellent color vision at night, making them adept nocturnal hunters. Giant clams observe the world through hundreds of pinhole eyes, sensitive to three different colors of light, yet they are unable to combine the information, though they can detect movement and close their shells.
Because of the biological predilection of the human cone cells, we have established particular relationships between words and specific colors. The poet Arthur Rimbaud pointed out the connections between colors and vowels, and the painter Wassily Kandinsky insisted that color affects our emotions. How would we navigate the change from anger to joy and sadness to surprise?
Then it dawned on me. These were dangerous thoughts. Start messing with God’s plan and, before you know it, we are transmogrified into traffic signals: Stop. Go. Proceed with caution. Depending on the discretion of the officer. In the end, I suppose, we must live along the limbic pathways of our accorded nature, where vision joins the sunlight and the rain, slowly giving way to a rainbow.
Copyright © 2025 by Robert Witmer
