Colors and Lines

  I've written blogs where I say how colors are important to me, very important.

 

Take for example our small cabinet. Every time I walk by there's a small shiver of joy as I look at the color and design. I would love to know the artist who painted it. Why did they choose that shade of yellow or green? Was s/he interrupted as s/he worked to answer the phone, make lunch or do some errand that couldn't be postponed? 

I bought the cabinet from a local antique store. It was on the street with other furniture. As a non shopper, it is not my nature to buy things, but I knew this would bring me great pleasure. I still waited a day figuring if it were still there, I should buy it was. I was and I did.

Months later, I still love it.

The colors in this advert caught my eye. The copper of the pants with the copper of the background. The three baby blue lines of various depth. The white moving from the middle upward to the right. Even the skin tone matches the background. I still don't know what the product is, but the color use brought me pleasure.

I also react to lines and balances. For example the spout on the Catalan wine bottle points directly at William Tell's weapon, an invisible attachment. Spacing and lines create moods. The invisible line also runs through the rear of the woman. There is something about the balance that brings me pleasure.

Never do I look at the tiles on our coffee table without being transported back to my visits to the Alps. I can almost hear the brook gurgle. We used to eat at a restaurant situated in a spot like the one on the tiles. The salad was often greens plucked from the nearby fields and forest. Unlike real life, the cows on the tile are odor-free.

At this point in my life, I'm trying to keep my life as simple as possible. I want the time to enjoy small things, a flower sticking out of a crack in the pavement, the fact that a plant we thought was dead is now in full bloom, sitting at a café talking to old and new friends, a well written sentence in a book I'm reading, my husband and dog next to me in bed. The list of possibilities is endless.

I find I have less and less patience with time wasters such as taking hours to straighten out a computer problem or even going through the ever-increasing safety precautions on my bank account. I still don't understand why my credit union decided I needed to change my user name making the procedure almost impossible. And another bank suddenly stopped making automatic payments to my landlord and insurance. One was easy to solve, the other far less so.

I've come to the point I don't want to order anything on line. More than once I've completed what seems like endless forms for a gift only to be told they won't ship to where I want it to go. Or when they say I need a code. The code arrives but it isn't the correct number of digits or maybe it comes in the next day long after the form has disappeared forever into the great digital neverland.

I shudder about 60% of the time when my husband says, "We need to buy." Why? Do have something that already does the job? Will we need it in a month? A year? How much time will it take to buy it? What will have to be moved to accommodate it? Will it have to be dusted? What can we get rid of to make room for it? Admittedly the 40% of his ideas are good. I sometimes feel sorry for him dealing with me.

I now feel free to say no thank you to things I don't want to do, people I don't want to see leaving me time and energy for those I do want to see. 

I do claim to be a COW, Cranky Old Woman. But I'm a COW that loves color, lines and as much simplicity in my life as I can eek out.