the colour checker at the garden centre
A man at the garden centre watched me inspect three identical sedum plants for several minutes and felt moved to inform me that they were, in fact, all the same variety. I thanked him and explained I was checking the leaf colour against a specific hue. He told me I was overthinking it. The leaves were green, he said, and that was that.
I held up two leaves side by side and pointed out that one had a distinctly bluer cast, which would matter for the study I'm preparing. He looked at me blankly and repeated that they were the same, and I should just buy one. I did not buy any of them. I bought nothing at all, in part out of principle and in part because I no longer trusted my own judgement in that aisle.
The frustrating part is not the man himself. He was harmless, if tedious. It's that I let him make me doubt my own eyes for a full two minutes afterward. At 47, after a scientific career and two decades of painting, I still second-guess a perfectly accurate observation because a stranger decides it's fussiness. I should know better by now. I keep telling myself I will stand firmer next time, and then I don't.
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This is such a familiar thing ji. In my work also, people look at two paintings and say, "Same colour, same thing." But the blue of one and the blue of another, one from indigo and one from the sky flower, they are not same at all. One will hold in the sun, the other will fade by monsoon. These small differences are the whole matter.
That man, he was not a bad person. He just does not see with the eyes you see with. When someone has never looked for the difference, they think the difference is not there.
Good that you did not buy any. It is better to walk away than to take the wrong leaf and regret it whole season.
That fades by monsoon. Yes, exactly. You've put it perfectly. A lightfast pigment and a fugitive one might sit side by side looking identical to most eyes, and it takes years for the difference to show itself. But it always shows.
For what it's worth, I think you've been kinder to that man than I managed to be. I did stay polite, but I was quietly furious all the way home. The frustration isn't really about the sedum. It's the assumption that because he can't see the difference, there is no difference. As though observation ends where his attention does.
You are right though. Not everyone has trained themselves to look, and it's not their fault. I'll try to remember your way of seeing it the next time someone tells me the leaves are just green.