The Yellow Hair and the Orange Face | The Embassy - Part IV

A journalist from a fictitious country attracts the attention of powerful forces that he does not yet fully understand

Mar 08, 2025

∙ Paid

With everything that has been going on the past few weeks, it remains as important as ever to be able to take a step back and assess where we are. Intriguingly, there is another way of accomplishing that by doing something counterintuitive: taking a step forward and staring so deep into the void that in our confusion we find an unexpected deeper meaning.

I sat down and looked at a picture of Donald Trump the other day. At first, I saw what I always saw. An unthinking, callous, and self-centered man who sometimes does or says the right thing for all the wrong reasons, but who through his very nature never follows through with it far enough to actually do some good. But then I looked closer. I saw the yellowy strands of hair like dried grass. The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. Then I looked at his skin. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulfur tint in others. There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down. The eyes look at me as if they know what a vicious influence their owner has. When I look even closer, I see pores and discolorations. I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness.

Perhaps it would be wise to mention now that these thoughts are not my actual thoughts about Trump, but some sentences I lovingly borrowed from one of my favorite short stories: The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Ever since reading that story, I have been fascinated with the concept of seeing things in your environment, in the seemingly mundane or the commonly dull, and through your observations finding ever deeper meaning or symbolism that can tell you much more than direct thoughts, while at the same time remaining open to multiple interpretations. Sometimes we can say a lot without actually spelling out what we mean or feel, but through our observations convey something that goes beyond words. Looking at the fragment I wrote above, what comes across to me is some kind of disgust or unsettling feeling, as well as a strange fascination to peer ever deeper into the picture to see what else I might unveil. Yet at the same time, it is never fully clear what exactly it is that I am trying to say. Perhaps it imbues you with a wholly different sense.

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.
~Fragment from The Yellow Wallpaper. The protagonist describes the yellow wallpaper for the first time. Already some kind of deeper, darker tension is palpable.

This week’s story will bring the interrogation at the airport to a close, and the protagonist’s thoughts will once again be drawn to the walls of the room he is in. There is this strange attraction to this seemingly mundane object, that seems to enthrall those who let their eyes wander through the room. I encourage you to think about times where you were mindlessly looking around you or think about this next time you are, perhaps drifting off during a meeting or lecture, or waiting for a bus or taxi to arrive, and think about what it is that you saw; what patterns revealed themselves to you in the pavement, what inner thoughts may have been projected onto the concrete wall beside you. What revelations might be revealed to you, what mysteries or future challenges might you be able to solve with them? The universe is but a canvas on which we project ourselves, and it is through our creations we reveal who we really are.

🚩The Embassy will continue in April. The break gives me some time to evaluate the story and to properly flesh out the parts that will follow. However, you can expect a different story published somewhere this month, a short story that neatly ties into the investigation into microplastics that I am doing for the journalistic part of this newsletter. That story will be available to all subscribers.