Clerestory | Columbus Printed Arts | Columbus, OH

I have a corduroy shirt that is

mostly yellow with a little green. A

friend told me the color was

chartreuse, named after a specific

hue of stained class used in medieval cathedrals.

Curious about its history, I

researched chartreuse. It is actually

named so because of its

resemblance to the color of a

French liquor called green chartreuse.

Maybe my friend was thinking of

Chartres Cathedral. She found a

better meaning.

Clerestories were a wall of

windows placed high in cathedrals.

They blocked out the dirt and

grime of houses, shops, and

humans that could be seen from

eye level. Light feel down from

above and windows framed the

sky, on earth as it is in heaven.

You are an instant convert, bathed

by divine, transfiguring light,

certain that you are not small but as

large and transparent and

beautifully porous as the sheath of

glass above you.

A friend shared an image with me

of a painting by Arcabas, a

contemporary French sacred

painter. The painting depicted John

the Baptist’s severed head displayed

grotesquely on a platter. My friend

called the expression on his face

conscious of his own death, and the

color of his corpse chartreuse.

I have strained and stretched to

unmoor it, but my spirituality

remains tethered to the cerebral;

the known, not the felt.