i’m writing a paper on the last picture show, and there’s a part where mcmurtry writes, “he drank more bourbon and watched the intermittent lightning yellow the plains.” so how come yellow is the only color that’s widely used as a verb?
why couldn’t i say “her long straight hair greens my eyes with envy?” or “in antarctica, the purity and flatness of the snow would blue the sky at the horizon?” or “the harsh glare of the doctor’s examining light served to purple the veins in his forehead?” i suppose i could say those things, but you don’t see it very often. why is that? i mean, sure there are words like whiten and redden, but those add a suffix, so they don’t really count.
anyway, enough of that. i’m off to yellow the whiteness of a tissue by blowing my nose into it. goodnight.