Awake.
This is my year’s Word. So it should define my stomping ground, my territory, my attitudinal homesteading rights. But I am having trouble proving up my deed on it. For one twelfth of this new year, I have been an abysmal failure, actually wishing I could be asleep for most of the hours I’ve had my eyes open.
I’ve been trying.
Kris wanted a nice, tiny little family-friends get together for Gin, and I made him one. But when you are dopey and self-pitying and working on a sure testimony of what a nebbish you really are, something that should be a fifteen-minute-to-prepare joy turns into hours and days of fretting. You have to keep taking your chin in hand and turning your face to the work—hard things like buying liter bottles of root beer and trolling the craft-aisles for cool little Valentine’s junk. And cooking. I cooked. I cooked a lot—just to make one actual dish. I bought the rest. It took actual shopping for just the right thing.
So I ended up with exotic veggie chips and homemade spinach-pie sandwiches on cool, gourmet bread and a nifty, inspiring table spread (I took no pictures) and even party favors, hand-made. It wasn’t spectacular. But it looked like something somebody had done on purpose.
This is not like me.
Here is my today story: as we were on our way to the vet last week (yep—again—puppy stitch removal this time) I saw the most amazing thing. We were whizzing down highway 89—the (for-a-while) secret fastest two lane collector in the county. It was once a farmy road, still dotted with little old rustic houses, all along the west side of the east side of the valley. As we were tooling along, I saw a flash—just a flash of red against yellow. About thirty seconds later I had it processed: a red wooden rocking chair on a yellow porch, lit up like a flame in a rare shower of morning sun.
I wanted to go back. I wanted to see this thing. But life is so stinking about moving along in one direction only. And the clouds ate up that day and the day after. Too many months living under a low ceiling and you feel like your eyebrows weigh fifty pounds apiece.
This morning, I could see light though my living room windows. Real sun light. Like in the old days when I was young. Last year. And right there and then, in the spirit of my Word, I was determined to go find that rocker and steal it with my camera.
I meant to feed the horses first. But when I got outside, it seemed like the sky was going to close up again. So I spit into the wind and drove off in the wrong direction (for horses), looking for glory. It struck me as I headed for the car—no, as I stopped on the way to the car, wanting to shoot that amazingly blue sky—that all those pictures I put up of the morning after that last snow? That at-dawn sky that I thought was so unusually blue? That air, such a rare and particularly delicious shade of honey amber? All the time, the world was probably just colored-as-usual, and you guys in California and Florida and other aberrant places looked at those shots and said, “Yeah. Blue. So?”
I realized: I am COLOR starved. It’s not cabin fever. It’s gray-and-beige fever. These days, any hint of color bursts like a miracle on my brain.
So this morning, I opened my eyes.
Not really, because you kind of have to squint when you’re on a photographic safari.
But I WAKED UP, and started seeing color. Every shred of color I could find. I was gone so long, getting muddy on my knees, standing in the middle of busy roads—camera against my cheekbone—that G finally had to call and make sure none of the horses had killed me.
And that’s what I’m going to show you here: what the woman saw.
This is the blue that caught my eye this morning and made me suspect that what I was thinking was miraculous was just – sky as usual. For non-winter challenged people.
Goodbye, little Tuck. Mama’s off hunting now.
The rocker that started it all. I was a little earlier this morning than that first time. But there it was, blazing like a ruddy star. What a sight to start your morning. BANG on the eye.
Next door, from the middle of a very busy street. At this point, I was just beginning to look at things.
House across the street. A lovely old place. But lovelier if you know it has a secret.
THIS is what you find when you expose for the lit up part of the world. A slumbering house with a lit up rocket in its back garden.
Tribute to my college photography days. Agricoli poetae amat. (All conjugations are off). I just really liked these guys.
Then I turned around and went to feed my equines. When I finished, and was coming out of the barn, I saw this: the green of the hay, the lovely mud speckled red of my Jedda. At that point, I didn’t even notice the blue in the rope. It was at this moment that I had the epiphany about color, and started trying to see it.
She turned her good side to me, so I had to take that, too. Notice the half-moon on her forehead. Doesn’t have much to do with color. I just love it.
Then I thought, hey – what about that poor robin’s egg blue broken tub, over there. And hey – that barrel. It’s red white and blue. How come I haven’t noticed that for months?
Really, the idea had been growing in my head as I made my way down the 247 foot graveled driveway. I noticed this: a turquoise cow ear tag. I think this one was actually part of the funky collar ornamentation Dal had on his Sheltie, . All kinds of tiny things end up falling off in this gravel.
I backed up and found this jaunty bit of baling twine and a splinter of frozen/broken safety fence. Yes, we are like a tiny garbage dump at this time of year.
The yellow tip of an electric fence post. This is what really sparked the idea. Tiny shards of color.
Glass. One tiny piece of red in all that gray.
Aha! How had I missed this?
And then I saw THIS. THIS IS A PROMISE.
I love that these hooks are this bright yellow.
And what about this? I could have shot the red one, too, and the yellow one. All of a sudden, I’m ROLLING in color.
Across the street. No north wind blowing. Colors at rest.
They could have painted this beige. BUT THEY DIDN’T. How many colors do you see? Red, orange, green, blue, turquoise –
And down the street. These blue recycling bins, and that touch of yellow and red down on the south side.
Whoop-dee-do!! Signs. And red panels, and Bob painted those uprights such a bold, bright blue. And the yellow cable sheaths.
Bob’s front door. A red front door. I want red window sills, moi.
Looking east, toward the mountain. Jim’s mailbox, just catching the southern tip of the morning.
Just so you don’t forget what started all this. I was afraid somebody would notice me, standing there on the shoulder of the street, staring at their rocker. This is a nice piece of furniture. Very LL Bean looking. There’s a foil wreath heart in the window of that old door, and a window draped with old lace. G loves the leaves on that old awning.
On the way home. The people on the corner, with their bright green panels and their orange exerciser. One of my blogging buds made me laugh the other day; she had assumed I lived in some little town out in the country. I should be so funky. No, we just live out in the old part of town – the part that used to be all open land, fields that kept time better than a wrist watch. We wanted to see the curve of the earth, not some neighbor’s big house when we looked out the windows.
Our neighbor’s mailbox. How considerate of someone to have slapped that bright blue tape on the hydrant.
Chaz’ car. And a green truck, headed west.
A crumb of Christmas – a bit of foil ivy. Our poor yard really looks like a trash heap, thanks to the valiant and unceasing determination of the puppies; they have disassembled things that had been lost to us – under porches, behind trees – for years.
And our equine swing. By then, I had to go in and get going on the day before M started writing us from Argentina. We had a long, happy conversation today.
And again, to bring it on home:
One last shot of that chair. I only stole it with the camera. If I weren’t such a downright honest gal, I’d take the truck with me next time.
So tell me – what color gives your heart courage/wings/relief in the middle of winter?
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