"Blue"

When I was a feral wolf child in the woods, I spent my days really looking at things.  I stared a dragonfly in the eyes while it glared back at me.  I looked at a crawdad's feet, not just the pinchy big claws, but all the little claws on the skinny legs too.  I touched the spiny fur of its shell.  I noticed how algae sways with the river current and how water bugs scamper across the water surface.  I listened to the birds singing and found the softest moss bed in the forest.

Why do we let this world of wonder belong only to children?  Not that kids today have the requisite infinite boredom to explore the world so minutely.  It seems nobody makes moss curl up with a finger touch anymore.

The other day I was entranced by the vivid blues and purples of my snowy world.  I started feeling like I "ought to" paint what spread before my eyes.  Thinking about what I "should do" takes away the beauty and just becomes a chore.  I decided not to paint the colors and watched the fat snowflakes fall.  It seemed like the absolute best way to spend my time.

The snow melted and the sun came out.  In the brief moment of sunshine between weather fronts, I walked to the store, a distance just far enough away to be discouraging, about 1 1/2 miles away.  I saw the word "blue" before taking my walk and decided to pay attention to blue things in my world: blue sky, blue jay, blue signs, blue dumpsters, blue trash on the side of the street, blue cars, blue coats.  Oddly, there aren't any blue houses.  Around here it seems they are only white or brick, except for one gray house and 2 beiges.  Nonconformists.  My house is both white and brick so I've clearly adapted to my environment.

I got up and refilled my glass from my blue water pitcher and noticed my next door neighbor's blue house with a blue appliance repair van in the driveway.  Okay, even when I'm trying to pay attention to my world the obvious can escape me.

I think this is really the point though.  How often do we really look around?  If we're zipping around in cars or glued to our hand-held devices, all those blue signs go by without notice.  Why would we notice blue dumpsters?  How long has it been since they replaced the industrial green, banged up dumpsters in the business parking lots?

I walked past a woman in a blue nursing home uniform.  She didn't look up from her phone.  Hey!  Let's interact!  Join me in the real world instead of just the virtual one!  Of course I didn't say that.  I just felt a little lonely for both of us.  Everybody is endlessly talking, but nobody is really saying anything.

I'm going to make an effort to take daily walks and to pay more attention to the world around me, not because I "should", but because it makes me happier than vegetating in front of the computer.  Who knows what other kinds of things are out there waiting to be noticed?

"Identical"

Is anything really identical?  Two silk carnations from the same manufacturer aren’t really the same.  They’re even less the same after filtered through our eyes and minds.  If I gave you these flowers, what would you do with them?  Stick them in a vase?  Decorate a hat?  Throw them away?

I pulled this drawing out of my archives and started thinking about why I did what I did.  I had bought wallpaper from an outlet store for $1/double roll.  I thought it was funny because the pattern was so big and bold.  Why not staple flowers to the wall?  It wasn’t any less strange than “Roger’s Rat Count” which had been painted on the wall by the previous tenants.  The painting of a rat had a tally of about 15 or 20 hash marks underneath it.  Roger was their cat.  I wallpapered around the rat count, because good art is good art.  I painted the thermostat to match the wallpaper, and laughed when my upstairs neighbors Pat and Matt came downstairs to change the setting and couldn’t find the camouflaged thermostat on the wall.  I hung up a basketball hoop and invited the next-door-neighbor girls to come over and play.  I glued brightly colored tissue paper on the door frame.  I painted the kitchen appliances and cupboards school bus yellow.

I was renting an old house on Franklin in Columbus, OH while going to college.  The house was built to be a speakeasy (an illegal bar) during prohibition, and the house definitely had its quirks.  I learned that everyone wore their coats at a speakeasy in case of a raid, so there weren’t any closets.  The rooms were huge, with a beautifully ceramic-tiled fireplace, and the kitchen had enough cupboards to stock plenty of liquor for the duration of the misbegotten law outlawing alcohol in the US.  There were 2 distinct advantages in renting the place, the first of which was the rent was $90/month.  The second advantage was that it backed up on the alley where all my pals liked to party.  I got real popular real quick for having a nearby bathroom.

Some years later, I have a regular house, with regular colors on the walls.  I don’t have a basketball hoop or a rat count.  While sensible colors make other people comfortable, is my life any better for sensible colors?

Growing up is a descent into conformity, and conformity sucks.  Why should we all march together in identical tempo?  Why should we get our hair cut the same way or wear the same clothes or paint our room off-white?  Oooo, live it up, paint it beige!

I don’t think most people like identical anythings.  It’s one of the reasons that people often instinctively dislike art made on the computer.  Things are too perfect to be real.  A good computer artist creates conflict and interest in that perfect medium.  A great artist does something different than the identical masses.

My original plan for this post was to write about my non-identical twin brothers, but obviously I took a sharp turn somewhere along the line.  Still, I found this picture on my computer and thought I’d share.  They were little kids when I happily living with a rat on my wall, and they shot some hoops in my bedroom.

You’ll have to excuse me now.  I’m feeling an urge to paint something yellow – or maybe red or purple or any color other than neutral…