Colors colors...

Concerning organizing my room into colors:

I organized my closet and my possessions by color for many years throughout middle school and high school.  This was not to be artistic, it was one of my many ocd tendencies.  Doing this again now under my own free will feels strange.  It was difficult for me the first time around to let go and let things just be, and as my room is currently in the state that it was for many stressful years, I can't help but remember all that stress.  I remember it, but I do not feel it now, which is a good thing I suppose.  Now I can focus more on the spacial relations and implications brought up rather than the need to have everything be straight, as well as color coded.

I am thinking about a specific part of Joseph Albers' book Interaction of Color. He writes, "As it is with people in our daily life, so it is with color."  He goes on to say, "Therefore, we try to recognize our preferences and our aversions -- what colors dominate in our work; what colors, on the other hand, are rejected, disliked, or of no appeal.  Usually a special effort in using disliked colors ends with our falling in love with them."

I definitely have a bias towards the color blue.  It has always been my favorite color because my dad and I are the only ones in my family with blue eyes (the other three having green, brown, or hazel eyes), and it always made me feel special and connected to him because of that. I noticed that of the things I own that I purchased (things which came in multiple color options), the majority are blue.  I know the color blue is tied into feelings of calmness and serenity.  Maybe this is why I have purchased almost only blue things when I have a choice.  I bought my dresser from walmart and it is blue. I remember it came in different colors, but I don't remember considering other colors or deciding on blue.  Organizing all my stuff by color has brought it to my realization that I have a subconscious bias towards blue and it has influenced me more strongly than I would have thought.  My dresser, my blankets, the Greek flag on my wall, my towel hanging on my chair, my yoga mat lying on my floor, the tie-dye sarong hanging on the wall above my bed- they are all blue! I think this is weird now that I am thinking about it so much.  Perhaps the color blue reminds me of my family and so that is why I like it so much? I am not too sure.  Maybe it's as simply as, it's just my favorite color and that's all there is to it. I really don't know.

Hubble pictures

These pictures really blow my mind! I was thinking today about the evolution of painting after the invention of the camera. And how now, some painters are so realistic that their pieces look like photographs, and some photographers try to be "painterly." These photos look very painterly to me, although I'm not sure if I could give a definition of what that means exactly. I love the colors and the overwhelming sense of mystery.  I imagine these leave almost everyone in awe after they see them for the first time.

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/show/nebula/

My Geocaching "adventure"

Yesterday I went on four geocaching hunts.  Unfortunately I was consistently unsuccessful at every spot.  I don't know when everyone on the planet got an iPhone.  Am I the only one who doesn't care about apps?  I know not everyone has an iPhone, but sometimes it feels that way to me.  Well, I still have my brick of a flip phone and unless some stranger off the street offers to buy one for me, I have no intention of getting an iPhone.  So doing this geocaching challenge was, well, challenging.  It was challenging mentally, and emotionally.  To find the locations I joined the geocaching website so I was able to see the coordinates of the caches.  I found a website that allowed me to type in the coordinates and would then show me a dot on a map of pullman.  I drew my own little makeshifts maps as best I could and replicated the location of the dot.  I was not too worried because it seemed like these things would not be buried beneath the ground.  Maybe they actually were.

I was able to do this in the first place just because my mom decided to come visit me for the day.  I don't have a car or anything so it was nice that she came with me to do it and let me use her car.  The first spot was at a SEL sign on Terreview.  I really thought it was going to be right by the sign, but there was nothing but bark.  I walked under the scratchy branches and through the bushes, but I didn't see anything noteworthy and decided to give up after ten minutes of looking rather than drive myself crazy searching for something that might not even be there. 

The second spot was at the intersection of Terreview and Grand.  The map online showed that it was on a trail right off the road.  There was a trail there, and again I walked around looking behind everything and under everything, but I didn't see anything.  My mom was giving her input and I know she was just trying to help but she was confused about how the whole geocaching thing was supposed to work.   She kept asking me what exactly we were looking for, where it was, isn't it supposed to be here?  So as my frustration grew, hers did too and the "adventure" started to feel more like a sentence.  I tried to stay positive, but because it was hot and tiring, my mom was having less and less fun.  

The third location was Terreview Park.  There was a gazebo right where the dot was on my map so I was confident that I would find something at last.  Again, I was left itemless.  I walked around the whole park basically, looking under bushes and I even looked all over, and under, the playground equipment.  I did see the birdie for badminton and a wiffle ball in the bushes. So that was pretty exciting.  The best part was that there was a large family there playing on the big toys, flying kites, and hanging out in the gazebo.  They were watching me the entire time I was snooping around, and their glares let me know that my creeperness was not welcome.  I definitely felt like I did not belong there at that moment.  Nobody asked me what I was doing (for all they knew I could have been looking for a lost diamond ring).  The kites were really lovely to see against the blue sky, I'm glad I got to see that.  Now I am thinking about kites more, maybe I'll paint one.  Or I'll do a painting of something else but inspired by a kite. Hmmm...

So the last spot was at Military Hill Park.  At this point, I had got my mom a large ice tea and I parked the car under the shade so she could wait peacefully in the car and cool off while I went searching.  I walked around for about fifteen minutes, kind of mentally gave up, and sat down in the shade and called my boyfriend to say hi.  I had a nice conversation with him about both of our mothers' capacities to stay calm in uncomfortable situations, and then I walked back to the car and woke up my mom from her nap.  

I enjoyed getting to see parts of Pullman that I had never seen before.  I had never been to Terreview Park or Military Hill Park.  Even though my mom and I were kind of arguing the whole time, it was nice that she wanted to come with me to try it out.  She said that some of her friends had done it before and I could tell before we had even started that she was already eager to tell them about it.  So because I don't have an iPhone or a gps, I basically just got as close to the spot on my "replica" map as I could and i just kind of aimlessly walked around.  I had never heard of geocaching before this, and I still have no idea what I was looking for. A box of some kind?  Were all the items supposed to be together in a bag or was there no specific container holding them?  I looked up what geocaching was all about and I guess it's just a way for people to go on treasure hunts and feel connected to their community.  I think I would have been more successful if I had a gps.

One thing I did really like:  at the spot on the trail at Terreview and Grand, I was walking around beneath a large pine tree and for a moment I got a sensation and a memory of a place called Turnbull Wildlife Refuge.  It's a refuge that is next to the town I grew up in and my dad would take us there all the time. We'd walk on trails, climb little hills, see cool animals (or just their footprints or poop sometimes), and the smell of pine needles fills the air.  When I was that close to pine needles the smell brought me back to being a little kid and playing in Turnbull. And then I smiled, and I was happy to think about Turnbull again.