Bunter Frühling

I can't even describe how delicious it is to sit at my computer, in my very own little office, with the balcony doors wide open and a warm-cool spring breeze fluttering the things on my desk. The fluffing leaves outside are a lovely sea green. (Well, until they get older, at which point they'll deepen into emerald.) The birds are twittering springily. Fat clouds sail by, alternating with golden sun. It all just makes me want to bust out in a John Denver medley! Ohhhh, I love the life around meee... I feel a part of everything I seeeeee...

I will also be very happy to chuck the winter clothes into suitcases this afternoon in favor of skirts and sandals. My winter wardrobe is really quite awful and monotonous. Black. Dark grey. Black. Dark eggplant purple. Dark blue. Hey, it's grey and wintry outside, how about I drape my body in somber winter shrouds! I was starting to feel a bit like Frasier's ex-wife, Lillith.

So you know what I did last week? Went out and bought a bright pink button-down top. It makes me look like a tulip. I love it. And a pinstripe turquoise blouse, too. These are probably the first articles of clothing I've bought in well over a year, actually; which could be due to money and priorities -- I'd rather travel and eat wild salmon than wear new shoes -- but I'm also sure some of it is because the things in shops suddenly look appealing again. Seriously, have the last couple of years been visually terrifying in the U.S., too? I might have tried to look for some clothes before now, but every time I entered a shop, eye cancer was lurking: mustard yellow, traffic-cone orange, hospital blue. Lumberjack patterns. Leftover materials from Tron. Naturally there are bigger concerns in the world than replacing a slightly threadbare (rich, Western) wardrobe; it just makes me scratch my head how clothing designers sometimes seem to value novelty over actual appeal. "Pleasing colors have been around far too long! Let's dye things horrible instead. It will sell! We'll call it trendy!" No wonder I just hunkered down in grey and black and waited for the spraypaint to pass.

What a pleasure it then was to wander into S. Oliver recently and be greeted by shades from actual nature! Hm, maybe I'd better stock up before the next wave of apocalypse chic comes around.

My stepmom has a great sense of color. I mentioned yesterday that Sarah had given us a multi-color patterned quilt, which infuses this whole room with cheer and bounciness. She also sent me, while I was running around in circles last winter looking for a pie pan, any pie pan, stainless steel would have been fine, a beautiful, ceramic, deep-dish, fluted, deep red pie dish. With a cream-color inner lining. It makes everything that comes out of the oven look sumptuous.

Isn't it interesting, how affected we are by colors? Sometimes I choose to cook something round just because I want to use my pretty pie dish. A bed is even more inviting when the bedspread looks nice. I have eaten things, magpielike, just because the colors were attractive.

It can work the other way, too -- my mom laughs her head off at Simpsons one-liners, but she just can't watch the show because, visually, it's an assault on her rods and cones.

I remember reading somewhere that home teams' locker rooms in sports arenas are often painted aggressive "fighting" colors, like black and red. The visitors'? Pale pink! Haha.

Color, color. Colors colors colors. If I had some crayons, I'd probably be drawing rainbows today.