This summer there's been an upsurge of art projects around town, most of them springing from the need for summer activities, especially for local programs that need to keep kids out of the extreme heat. Once evening rolls around, there are movies or music in the park, sparking a sense of community. Sidewalk rainbow art seems especially prominent in the evenings around the park--no rain yet to wash the chalk away. The colorful sidewalks raised questions about colors, and then olo, and once that started, olo kept coming up on social media feeds, in the strange, annoying way media feeds repeat. Later though, olo led me to a new sense of the hidden harmony of Life.
You might be asking, "What is olo?" Ah, it's a hidden mystery, officially "discovered" in April 2025 by a team of scientists from UC Berkeley. Olo is a color, defined by some as an "imaginary" color, because it apparently is not known to exist in nature. Olo was "generated" by researchers through adaptive optics that map individual cone cells in the retina, and then fire micro-doses of a green laser beam, specifically at the M-cones, producing an intense, saturated blue-green shade of color. Through a complex procedure of lab color-matching tests, light, and washouts, 5 research subjects were able to see that color. The researchers concluded that the olo is outside the range of human view, except under the laboratory protocol. But, if human vision cannot see something, does that mean the color is "imaginary"? Nature abounds with life and capacity that we have yet to recognize. The scientific debate on olo continues, but further studies in this field hold potential for deeper understanding of vision, color, brain function and healing. What other wondrous possibilities does nature hold?
My intent here is to point to the vastness of what we do not know about ourselves, each other, human capacity, and our relationship to nature. The history of humanity, is the history of discovery. Our capacity for imagination is an aspect of our ability to discover. I remember as a child, someone throwing out the challenge, to "imagine a color no one has ever seen." I couldn't get there, couldn't conjure an image beyond what was known, or taught. Now, I sense the vastness of what has yet to be discovered. That vastness includes the likelihood that we as human beings are more alike, more in core agreement, than we have yet to acknowledge, simply because we have sprung from the same source.
This week as summer still thrives, consider a fresh perspective of the underlying harmony of life. Harmony includes the rhythms, sounds, movements that are in accord. It includes agreement. There is so much in the world right now that provokes conflict; the tone of summer becomes dissonant. Is it possible to catch a glimpse of a symmetry hanging just beyond the perimeter of our understanding? Can we give way, even if others can't? (Susan Nettleton)
https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/O/OjibwayAnony/OjibwaySong/index.html https://allpoetry.com/poem/18768773-Olo-by-Extrem https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/S/StevensWalla/housewasquie/index.html https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/K/Kabir/Guestisinsid/index.html