the exact grey of a wet concrete floor.

there's a moment right after the janitor mops the studio floor — maybe five minutes before people start walking through it again — when the whole room sits in this weird, temporary stillness. and the grey isn't grey, not really. it's more like a cool blue-grey, the kind you get in the shadows of a cloudy winter afternoon. but then the light from the big window hits the wet parts and it shifts into this pale, almost greenish tone — like sea glass that's been tumbled for too long. and the water lines, they spread out and branch off each other, and suddenly you're looking at a topographic map of some tiny island nobody's ever named. the mop strokes are the contour lines. the little puddles are lakes. i stood there with my coffee going cold and just watched it dry from the edges inward, this whole geography disappearing in real time. and i thought — that's it. that's the colour i've been trying to mix for the background of the piece i keep avoiding. not grey. not blue.