Hues

1.19.06

In researching real estate in Guanajuato I came across a tiny little apartment, nesteled in a hillside, whose exterior walls were a bright pumpkin orange. The sight of it brought a smile to my face and I immediately wanted to go inside. The interior pictures revealed a lovely, tiled kitchen and living room with more of the same orange tones, furnished in Mexican style.. The thought of it, being in it, made me happy. The next apartment in my price range was colored a bright Tunisian blue on the outside, a little cooler to the eye and inside was much darker, no imagination in the decor. A lovely patio triggered thoughts of coffee al fresco in the morning. I think of people's whose homes I know and how some make me want to stay a while and some don't and I realize that color plays a big part in how I feel in a place. We recently repainted our living room in what I now learn is the cool new color of the year, wasabi. Our decor has always been in the cool pine greens and the room offers respite from summer's heat. It's quiet and restful. The master bedroom however, is more on the orange, warm tone range and the rest of the house in pine and greys. I have always chosen colors for their effect on ambiance and mood. And now seeing this little piece of light againt a hillside I think about what it means to make a home.

My mother fell in love with Morocco and lived there for a couple of years. She was my age and I realize now going through "the change." She had always loved their art, the food, the landscapes. These warm reds, ochres, oranges, siennas are shared between Mexico and this arab land and I now wonder if she and I don't have more in common than I know. The home she made for us, was also of cool colors, teals, beiges, light blues, tans. This temperature permeated all of our relations as well; everything kept under control, no outbursts, just little jabs and sharp pins in carpets to let us know we were all alive every now and then. I wonder if her fascination with Morocco (and mine with Mexico at the moment) had more to do with her perception of a certain heat that was lacking in her life. Ironically though, or perhaps not, she ended up moving back to teh States and taking all those cool colors with her up North to her last house in Michigan. Did she not find what she was looking for in that great desert country? Was it too hot to handle? Or did she find herself there and that very person was all she could be, wherever she went?

We know that marketers use colors to sell products from cars to candy. They speak to the rods and cones in our eyes, with rainbow messages. I wonder why, deep down, certain hues represent different emotions: red - passion, anger; yellow - happiness, blue - thoughtfulness, calm; black - death and despair. I imagine they are associated with nature's palate: our beating blood red hearts, welcome sun after winters night, the absence of color as our eyes close for the last time. My bedroom feels warmer and cozier than my living room, just from how the light hits fabrics and reflects back into my face. A room too busy with "stuff" drives me nuts. Yet the classically sparse modern Italian cocaine white landscaped motif leaves me shivering and eager to leave or at a minimum spill red wine on the leather couch, leave stains on the bear skin rug, yell. Color consultants match clothing to people's personalities; I'm a "winter" supposedly, my Hungarian coloring best set off with blues, blacks, lilacs, mauves etc. I rarely wear reds, never yellows or orange, yet these are the colors that spoke to me from that hillside abode.

When I think of a country I think of colors. Meeting the Tunisian the other day reminded me of azure blues, their doors that reflect the sky and the Mediterranean. I think of Zaire in dusty ochres, pale browns and few colors other than the women's wraps. I think of the U.S. as a cacaphony of fake colors, from strip malls to teh artificial blue glow in people's living rooms. I think of France with greys and whites (like their cheeses) and green vineyards. And now I think of Mexico and heart tones. All of a sudden I am reminded of my first foray down there when in college. A month in Cuernavacas and perhaps my first taste of a different culture and a language I loved as a young adult, verbal and playful and a certain Abelardo Albarran, a youthful crush, a boy with brown eyes who could look into my own and hold them.

Perhaps this is the call I feel, to wrap myself in a warm, pozole colored shawl, to taste the peppers and terracotta in life again. To wash it all down with a red wine, rather than the white swill I am so used to. Freud would say its' the womb calling. Jung, conjunctio. Aries, my fire sign ignited. Perhaps I should re-paint the house instead of dreaming a new one. But would a fresh coat of paint, change what's inside? Shall I better kindle the fire within, nurture embers in their vari-hued glow, simply blow more oxygen into that furnace? Or seek out the rainbow's arced journey wherever it can be found?