Potassium Burns Purple

Using examples from nature, science, geometry and the colour purple to prove that a life stuck in the middle is not all bad. In fact , it's pretty good.

I live below the 45th parallel south, that theoretical halfway line fixed between the South Pole and the equator. Which just happens to line up perfectly with my theory of myself as a middle-of-the-roader, a midway middler poised at mid-on and nearer to the bat. Even those of my Irish ancestors hailing from Westmeath align—the word meath meaning mide (middle). My Scottish ancestors too, hailing from both the Highlands and the Lowlands. The English mob, from east, west, north and south, I also meet somewhere in the middle.

Living in the middle means being between north and south, east and west. The centre of a compass rose. Between sunrise and sunset—midday—my favourite time of the day to wake up. Adding to this, the fact that I was born to a Protestant and a Roman Catholic, means I’m destined to remain on the fence about much.

Perhaps I’m like the bubble in a spirit level, forever wavering, seeking balance. Or, the needle of a compass, no matter which way you turn me I cannot be discombobulated. However, being spatially challenged—too easily confused, too prone to turn left instead of right, to push at a door that requires pulling and far too closely acquainted with that feeling one gets when one has forgotten where one has parked one’s car—blows that theory. In other words, my unsteady inner compass constantly fails to point due-anything to a satisfactory level.

Let me stray away from the middling idea for a moment. I’d like to entertain the idea as mooted in the Neko Case, k.d. Lang and Laura Veirs song Atomic Number. The idea that you can be your own atomic number. In my case that’d be Number 19, the number for potassium, an essential element identified on the table of elements with the letter K. See where I am going with this? Like the spirit level, no matter which way you hold up the name Kay—‘K’ is how you pronounce it. Therefore, arguably, I am potassium. The fact that potassium burns purple, only adding to the appeal.

Alternatively, I could be the living example of a geometrical equation that reads as follows: Let M be the midpoint of a chord PQ of a circle, through which two other chords AB and CD are drawn; AD and BC intersect chord PQ at X and Y correspondingly. Then M is the midpoint of XY. (It’s way over my head too. Geometry lost me when the teacher started to ask for formulas to determine the circumference of a circle, with radius.) The most interesting thing about that particular equation is its name. It is known as the Butterfly Theorem. This is because once the intersecting lines meet, it creates the shape of a butterfly. Of course this appeals to my creative side. I will always ‘get’ an image, no matter how mathematical. The only mathematical equation that makes sense to me is the dearth of images = the death of maths. However, personally speaking, the mid-point in any Butterfly Theorem should be K, not M.

Oh dear. I fear that all this theorising has only left me standing in the golden mean with piecemeal, half-baked, mangled equations and a potassium butterfly with a headache. Tell you what, let’s go with the butterfly. It’d have to be a purple one. The Purple-Washed Eyed-Metalmark (Mesosemia lamachus) with one eye spot on each wing. Eye spots that abruptly appear when the wings open, tricking complacent attackers into thinking they’re suddenly faced with a larger and potentially dangerous animal. It’s something every middle-of-the roader, like myself, needs in their armoury—that extra pair of eyes. It enables us medium types to keep looking out (for potential enemies?) both ways at the same time. Certainly a better example than the Dingy Purplewing butterfly who lacks eye spots and whose favourite food is dung.