Inspire Me Thursday: Yellow

Strings Attached






















I've decided to start doing the weekly prompt/challenge at Inspire Me Thursday. If you don't know about this site, you should check it out. It's a wonderful idea, and a great way for artists to share their art and inspirations. The best part is that the art that's created doesn't have to be any particular kind - not even visual. Sure, there are lots of pictures, but there are also songs, poems, all sorts of things!

This week's topic is yellow. I thought about it, and realized that yellow isn't a color I usually gravitate towards, but it's been coming up an awful lot lately in my journaling. I've been strangely drawn to golden yellows and fuchsia-like purples, along with sometimes lush browns and greens. These colors signify summer to me: sated and happy. They suited my mood back then, you know, last week (so long ago!). But when I got this prompt I really did not feel like yellow at all. The thought of using yellow made me feel like a fake. I despised yellow. But, I decided to just slather a page with yellow and see what I came up with. I did, and it was fun, but I still didn't feel yellow. It was a rainy day(yesterday) , and I was still recovering from the terrible kidney thing (seriously - yellow? Really? Must you have such a cruel sense of humor, world?). Much later that day I was staring at my yellow page, and the brown bookmark of my journal. The colors were just so autumnal. It's kind of neat, you know, how our brain works. There are connections with everything to everything else, and our brain can find them. It's like our whole world is a piece of literature that we can pick apart and close read if we choose to (common saying of Fadi). Really, though. The idea of metaphors had to come from somewhere; it's not like they were invented for literature. They show up all the time in life - or maybe that's just because I've been trained to look for them - possibly even fabricate them. In any case, it's cool that it can be done. Here's this color that I'd associated with summer, and a reluctance to move at all, let alone move on, when all of a sudden it's paired with another color and it takes on a whole new meaning. Fall, death, acceptance, and starting. The color that connects the two seasons is yellow. It's possible to make a smooth transition, because of yellow. So here we are, to transitions. To bursting and dying and shedding, but keeping it all alive underneath.

Some (semi) interesting tid-bits about yellow:

• In Greece, yellow is the color of hatred. Do not give a Greek person yellow flowers. They will make him/her sad. Or, more likely, they will make him/her angry. You do not want a Greek person angry. Trust me.
• I own absolutely no yellow clothing, but I have the happiest bag in the world and it is yellow.
• yellow mixes really badly with purple and black. More so than most colors.
• If you mix yellow with red they make orange.
• Belle wears a yellow dress. She is also the best Disney female protagonist (because everyone knows that "Disney Princess" only actually applies to a few of them).
• I have a yellow flashlight on my windowsill.
• I have a friend with yellow galoshes. And so, I covet.-but I have brown ones with flowers so it's ok
• If your eyes turn yellow it's a really bad sign. Call Dr. House, or something.
  

(I ran out of real tidbits after the first one, sorry)