Outlandish Orange

2014-01-02 04.30.27

JoanBarrows2015
Photo used with permission from Joan Barrows (c)2015

Especially in deep winter, one sometimes needs at least a splash of orange.  Summer sun echoed in the orb of a buoy on a frozen sea.  A brief blinding illumination as a setting sun hits evergreens in a sea of crystalline snow.   Robins clinging to empty branches.  Papery roses imported from a much warmer climate.

Perhaps no other solitary figure has exhibited such anthropomorphic angst at the absence of orange as did Lorca’s Barren Orange Tree, robbed of its very identity:

“Woodcutter.
Cut my shadow from me.
Free me from the torment
of seeing myself without fruit.”

Something in the color orange is inherently merry.  It shouts; it commands our attention. In its vividness and expressiveness it seems to be the youngest child of the color spectrum.

A dash of it goes a long way.

A horizon of orange–blazing, rusty, saturated or more subdued–reassures me that what’s beyond my sight cannot possibly be nothing but black.

Orange Suns and Moons

Venus Transiting the Sun, Portland, Oregon
(c) June 2012 Joe Chipman

I’ve touched upon deep greens and blues, swaths of sepia, my proclivity toward seeing things in black and white, and some of the unintended side-effects of my fondness for bright red.

Today, thanks to a gift from one of my daughters, I am clad in the brightest of orange–an extremely high-visibility school color.

I have concluded it is nearly impossible to be dour for long while wearing neon orange.

My pal Dakota in hunter orange today

Continue reading “Orange Suns and Moons”

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