Month: November 2011

From the moment I could distinguish color, red was my favorite. With red as a basis I wore every color in the rainbow, often at the same time. My father called me “Gypsy” because of my penchant for bright colors and shiny things.

Somewhere in my mid-30’s I got fed up with trying to match colors. You go into a store and see a nice green sweater, should go great with your blue suit. Get it home and no way, jay – total color disaster, so back to the store it goes. I decided I would only wear black and red. Easy peasy, everything always matches. I bought everything in twos – one in red and one in black. Even shoes. Sometimes I would wear one red shoe and one black shoe – on purpose.

In the late 1980’s I was given an amethyst necklace. It looked nice against my black sweaters but I didn’t have any emotional relationship with the color. Then in the late 1990’s I became addicted to purple. Dark purple, not adolescent teeny-bopper purple. Eggplant purple. Amethyst purple. And yellow once again hit my radar. Purple and yellow – Yes. Love it. Super. But I was still wearing red. It was still a sort of favorite color but not my favorite favorite color.

Green has always been a problem for me. I’ve never really cared for it. Something about green puts me off, tho I must admit my bathroom is now dark green and yellow. There is a gem stone called citrine and while it comes in many shades I prefer the greenish-yellow color. While I wouldn’t wear this color, I might decorate with it and I’ve just purchased citrine earrings. I think that’s as close to wearing green as I will ever come.

But back to red – where it once made me feel up and happy now it makes me emotionally uncomfortable – throws my psychic balance off. Now there are many theories on color and their meanings, I’ve spent quite a bit of time today refreshing my memory, none of it was really helpful. I want to ascribe some deep meaning to my change of attitude towards color.

As you get older your hair goes gray, your skin gets lighter (at least for us olive-skinned folk), so do your eyes – maybe everything about us lightens up. Including our hearts and souls…moving through this particular life, heading on to the next – lighter, brighter, wiser…from base red to light-loving yellow that illuminates the mystical purple. (Yeah, I know – weird mood today huh? Must be the weather.)

My favorite photos are of things they way they are. Plays are my favorite literary form – all conversation, no authorial presence telling what what should be shown. Books that have a lot of description, of people or places, get passed by or those paragraphs and pages are skipped. I care more for people than plots. It doesn’t matter much to me what happened, I am more interested in the people who made it happen and why they did it rather than how.

I’ve never been one for metaphors (tho I admire writers who do it well; well enough so it is finally my image and no longer theirs.) . I want to say it exactly the way it is. Precisely. I want it to be substantial, of substance, concrete, if you like. I want the words to have weight and shape and form – so you can hold them, touch them, see them on all sides – three-dimensional – but to be what they are. Perhaps that’s why I don’t write poetry any more, and when I do it is so different from what I did in the past. Statements of fact? Not flights of fancy. More a story, perhaps.

If I take a photograph it’s because what I see interests me. Or I want to document a moment. It never occurs to me to turn a picture into something else. I want to capture the image of something the way it is. Another person sees beyond what something is to what it might become, or perhaps once was, and so the photo is manipulated to show that, or that image created with paints or pen and ink. And so I can admire your thought process or your inner vision but can’t use mine own. Of course it might tell me much about you, more than you’ve ever told me in conversation. What you see that isn’t there except in your own mind’s eye can be revealing. But I’m not your shrink. And what is is interesting to me.

Which seems to contradict that I am more interested in what makes people tick than makes clocks tick.

But not so. I want/try/ do see what is – be it a tree or a person – without interpretation. to experience what is for only that and nothing more.

(Added when replying to a comment:

The altering of images to create new images is an old art form – whether a palimpsest or a collage or developing photographic negatives in a particular way. Nowadays we have photo editing software for digital photos…Photoshopping to create something new is a technique I admire but would never use (other than for cosmetic purposes) – my creativity doesn’t lean that way. I’m sure there are people who would like to be ablre to create images with paints or pen and ink but their talents don’t go that way – so a photograph manipulated to an image that is in their mind’s eye…well, it’s an artistic technique. I personally find most of them not engaging on an emotional level – I always admire the technique. Just as in “great” art – often there is no connection to the painting – but I admire the artist’s abilities. Art is, at minimum, a two-fold thing, the emotional connection and the intellectual appreciation for the technical execution. I suppose that’s sounds like the scores in many athletic competitions – so many points for “technical” and so many points for “artistic expression”.)

but rather this is my little diary or note pad or stream of consciousness. Actually writing in the “stream of consciousness” style is very difficult – has anyone read Finnegan’s Wake? Thought so, me either.

I am still confused by the Occupy protests/movement/whatever the hell they are calling it. I so don’t get the point. They are complaining about rich people getting richer. If they are smart that’s what rich people do. There was something I read that they want all student loans to be forgiven – I kinda discussed that on someone else’s blog. We recently explained how loans work to my step-daughter and her husband. Obviously basic economics/finance/accounting is not part of the general curriculum in schools nowadays. If it were we wouldn’t be in this economic mess – just little things, you know. Like you don’t commit to a mortgage that will have monthly payments higher than your net income (never mind higher than your gross income).

I read something about how these folks are protesting social and economic inequality. So? And? Of course there is social and economic inequality – how could it be otherwise. WHY should it be otherwise? We should all be equal in the eyes of the law, not that we are unfortunately. But otherwise? No babe, we ain’t all equal. Never have been, never will be (I hope). And shouldn’t be. Nor should I have to explain why and how people aren’t equal – (difference in intelligence, talents, abilities blah blah blah).

Do I think that a society has a bounden duty to it’s less fortunate citizens? Yes, of course. There are people who, no matter how hard they try, don’t have the ability to make a decent life for themselves. Society has a duty to help them. Society does not have a duty to put a chicken in every pot or a car in every garage. Some people are going to eat peanut butter and ride the bus. That’s just the way it is.

Which just takes me back to why all people are not equal – that horse is so dead.

On the other hand – if the greed gene could be isolated and eliminated the world would be a better place BUT we still wouldn’t have social and economic equality. No way, no how, never. Not gonna happen. There will always be someone bigger, smarter, prettier, faster – whatever. Someone just a little bit more than someone else.

I’ve been saying this for years and years and years. Since I was a kid. Yes, it is that simple that a kid can figure it out. So why the hell aren’t we working from that basis and going forward?

Probably greed – and laziness. I know, I know, I’ll stop now –