Word of the Week: VARIABLES
We live in a two-story, pink stucco building which has the word "Capri" as part of its name on the facade. The color and name make giving directions easier, make it harder to miss Other apartments on the block are less emphatic. And I'll bet they don't have pink bathtubs.
Yet our Capri quarters lose any exotic cachet, however slight, when compared to the varying shades of blue in Morocco's once-secret mountain city of Chefchaouen. (The link under the photo above provides history, background.) As I am so eternally drawn to colors, I wonder what variables may be at work as influences on mind and spirit in a blue city. Think of it.
It could be a direct line of descent from the Puritan Ethic that has kept my inner bohemian in mostly subdued wrappers for so long, always leaning toward, longing for deeply saturated hues as displayed in other lands, in clothing, in doorways.
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| China |
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| New Mexico |
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| Morocco |
One could not possibly remain unchanged, going from shades of black to combinations of lime peel, mango and blueberry. One can imagine the magnitude of shift made possible by changing the vista from politely, quietly American ordinary to the distantly, almost other-worldly vivid. I know I feel happier, I feel more myself when I wear anything that is a true red. Coloring my grey hair became too frequent and wearying a task though I know I would be altered by seeing a once-again red-haired version of myself looking back from the mirror.
I've written before that color is a language to me. It is also a vitamin, a tonic, an essential nutrient, a form of rescue and helium in the dirigible by means of which I will make my getaway. I may dream of Morocco's blue city, a round table next to the open windows, sipping a glass of golden tea while afternoon haze merges with shadowed robin's egg stairways before the market closes.
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| Paint pigment for sale, blue for the exterior, colors for the interior. |
