I have decided to update everyone on my progress toward achieving the two resolutions i made for 2011, as well as provide a modicum of content relevant to this blog's Original Intent (which has subsequently been amended by a long Bill of Rights, Wrongs, and Revisions, all of which are to be interpreted liberally and not literally, in case anyone reading this in 200 years might wonder). First on the list of resolutions, as evidenced hereby: i continue to survive. Unless you're a conspiracy theorist and believe i have met an early demise and someone else is the author of these odd ramblings. In which case, you would not only need to suspend your disbelief that there could be two people with such an enormous propensity for tangents, but would also need to believe that someone else stood to gain both from my demise and the continuation of this blog, the financials of the former and logic of the latter would challenge the credulity of even the most dedicated tea partier.
Secondly, i have made progress in increasing my use of the color orange. Although i technically resolved to "wear more orange," and while it looks like i'll have another 3 week reprieve, my financial future is CRAP (Continuing Resolutions Are Pernicious), and so I questioned the wisdom of purchasing the perfect orange Valentino linen blazer on Gilt.com that would have done much to spruce up my Congressionally-challenged wardrobe and increase considerably my ocherous vestment options. I now question that questioning, but it's too late now - the sale is over. So i've expanded the role of orange in my life more generally, and thought i'd make March, normally a month associated with color (albeit green) All About Orange.
Perhaps "wearing more orange" seems an odd New Year's resolution, but my goal was a resolution that was both attainable and worthwhile, and i believe the world could stand a little more orange in it. I had a long purple phase in middle school, and then a bright yellow year that was inaugurated with the purchase of a fake fur coat of a citrine shade and style most frequently likened to the plumage a certain avian character on Sesame Street. The rest of the 1980s were a blur of terrible teals, fuchsias, and other awful concoctions. I'd always admired orange in its boldness and unwillingness to rhyme. (Perhaps also underlying my earlier love of purple.) But it wasn't until i was 20 that i discovered the magical power of orange.
Have you ever noticed how people sing about Paris in the spring and the summer and the fall, but never in the winter? Okay, Ella Fitzgerald mentions how she loves Paris in the winter, when it drizzles, but she's lying. Nobody loves Paris in the winter. A Parisian winter is grey skies spitting grey drizzle on grey buildings overlooking a grey river from grey streets over grey subways full of ashen faces. It is cold, clammy, and claustrophobic with its shroud of precipitous clouds. December to March is like a four month funeral procession - everyone wearing black, of course - with February stretching out to what feels like seasonal purgatory - a seemingly eternal mist of bleakness. Sometime in early March of my Parisian winter, after a monumentally horrid spring break and shortly before what must have been midterms or papers, i came across a sweater at a store on the Champs Elysées that stopped me in my tracks: in a sea of black knitwear was this arrestingly orange - as in nearly Home Depot orange - sweater. It radiated heavenly joy and hope of a better future against all probability like the baby Jesus in the manger and i spent what i recall as being a small fortune for this acrylic angel of happiness. I am guessing it was not a flattering sweater from the looks of horror on the faces of my BCBG host family, but whenever i wore that sweater, it made me smile - like it came with its own happy force field. It got me through the rest of college and law school before i finally parted with it. That sweater opened up a whole new world of color to me, and while i try to choose more flattering styles and less jolting shades, orange has proven to be a highly versatile and convivial friend.
So the first thing I'm going to share as part of All Things Orange is my favorite poem - I think of all time, but it's so hard to pick just one, so let's just say it's in the Desert Island Poems basket. It is also appropriate/ironic for my role as the General Contractor of this possessed house:
Why I Am Not a Painter
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.
- Frank O'Hara (1957)
The second thing I'm sharing in All Things Orange and the modicum of construction-related news is a photo of the new kitchen pantry, a work which i have titled Ode to a Parisian Winter:
A step-by-step guide to transforming your former stairwell into a pantry, complete with new light and orange baseboard trim will be featured in the next installment of All Things Orange.
Secondly, i have made progress in increasing my use of the color orange. Although i technically resolved to "wear more orange," and while it looks like i'll have another 3 week reprieve, my financial future is CRAP (Continuing Resolutions Are Pernicious), and so I questioned the wisdom of purchasing the perfect orange Valentino linen blazer on Gilt.com that would have done much to spruce up my Congressionally-challenged wardrobe and increase considerably my ocherous vestment options. I now question that questioning, but it's too late now - the sale is over. So i've expanded the role of orange in my life more generally, and thought i'd make March, normally a month associated with color (albeit green) All About Orange.
Perhaps "wearing more orange" seems an odd New Year's resolution, but my goal was a resolution that was both attainable and worthwhile, and i believe the world could stand a little more orange in it. I had a long purple phase in middle school, and then a bright yellow year that was inaugurated with the purchase of a fake fur coat of a citrine shade and style most frequently likened to the plumage a certain avian character on Sesame Street. The rest of the 1980s were a blur of terrible teals, fuchsias, and other awful concoctions. I'd always admired orange in its boldness and unwillingness to rhyme. (Perhaps also underlying my earlier love of purple.) But it wasn't until i was 20 that i discovered the magical power of orange.
Have you ever noticed how people sing about Paris in the spring and the summer and the fall, but never in the winter? Okay, Ella Fitzgerald mentions how she loves Paris in the winter, when it drizzles, but she's lying. Nobody loves Paris in the winter. A Parisian winter is grey skies spitting grey drizzle on grey buildings overlooking a grey river from grey streets over grey subways full of ashen faces. It is cold, clammy, and claustrophobic with its shroud of precipitous clouds. December to March is like a four month funeral procession - everyone wearing black, of course - with February stretching out to what feels like seasonal purgatory - a seemingly eternal mist of bleakness. Sometime in early March of my Parisian winter, after a monumentally horrid spring break and shortly before what must have been midterms or papers, i came across a sweater at a store on the Champs Elysées that stopped me in my tracks: in a sea of black knitwear was this arrestingly orange - as in nearly Home Depot orange - sweater. It radiated heavenly joy and hope of a better future against all probability like the baby Jesus in the manger and i spent what i recall as being a small fortune for this acrylic angel of happiness. I am guessing it was not a flattering sweater from the looks of horror on the faces of my BCBG host family, but whenever i wore that sweater, it made me smile - like it came with its own happy force field. It got me through the rest of college and law school before i finally parted with it. That sweater opened up a whole new world of color to me, and while i try to choose more flattering styles and less jolting shades, orange has proven to be a highly versatile and convivial friend.
So the first thing I'm going to share as part of All Things Orange is my favorite poem - I think of all time, but it's so hard to pick just one, so let's just say it's in the Desert Island Poems basket. It is also appropriate/ironic for my role as the General Contractor of this possessed house:
Why I Am Not a Painter
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.
- Frank O'Hara (1957)
A step-by-step guide to transforming your former stairwell into a pantry, complete with new light and orange baseboard trim will be featured in the next installment of All Things Orange.
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