Turquoise Discus Fish Room

Sometimes colors can remind us of lost friends or lovers. Seeing turquoise discus fish reminds me of a long lost lover who passed on. She was a beautiful woman inside and out and she always loved turquoise. Everything she owned was that color.

Not everything but many of her things. She looked great wearing turquoise earrings. Of course she had a matching turquoise top. I think I did ask her once why so much turquoise.  She didn’t answer at first and it’s still somewhat of a mystery but… I think it had something to do with her belief that she was a reincarnated Medicine Woman from a Native American Indian tribe that made turquoise beads.

To this day, when I see turquoise I think of her and Native Americans. But it all makes me smile.  She hardly ever wore other colors but that was cool. I told her I had the same obsession but with the number 4.  Every time something good happened to me it was a 4 day, I’d tell her. She at first didn’t believe me but as the four days rolled around, she became a believer. And I became a believer in her story.  She said she had a dream one night that she was the Medicine Woman and she helped lead a group of her people over the snow-capped Rocky Mountains to escape the blue coats chasing them out of their ancestral homes.

I said that story sounds familiar and I showed her a picture I’d painted of a great Indian Chief who had done just that.  She smiled and asked why I painted the picture.  I told her that when I was a teenager my dad sent me to Boy Scout camp in New Mexico.  Near the camp lived a tribe that worshipped the number Four.  No way she said. Way, I said.  So when I see the blue God she worshipped–Turquoise–in any of its forms, whether it be a discus fish or another woman’s earring…I see the Way…I become The Way…I am The Way.

By Robert Gluck

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