Orange you glad?
...written on 9.04.01, @ 11:48 p.m.
Tales of Kim's Life in Japan
I visited a site tonight that inspired me in many ways. I even wrote the guy a fan letter. Oh sheesh, I continue to be silly in my old age. I don't care, damn it! My twinkle always shrinks when I deny myself my little impulses. And who wants a shrinking twinkle? Do you? I thought not.
I am now in love with the color orange. I never thought it could happen! It has happened gradually since I have been in Japan, for I remember cringing at hearing the word "orange" when I would ask the students their favorite color. "Mine is purple!" I would declare, when it was my turn to name my preferred color.
Yet, now I find myself smiling when my visual orbs alight on orange appliances and such. I have an orange instant camera called "Cheki". I lusted after an orange Sony AM/FM CD-Cassette boombox, but waited too long and had to get a powder blue one instead. I would have gotten an orange rice cooker, if I hadn't already bought "Reaf". Orange is a very popular color in Japan and apparently it is wearing on me.
Me wearing orange is a different matter however, and something I will never do as I am a "winter" and look best in royal purples, blues, and reds and my favorite standby, black.
Being a "winter" in clothes and make-up, I surrounded myself in my apartment in Athens, GA with those same royal colors as well. Here in Japan, though, I have been steered by the wallpaper on my fusuma doors to decorate in leaf and spring greens, but I've been wanting some oomph and looking for a color I could use as an accent for my living space.
I found that color the other day on the cover of the Narada Smooth Jazz CD. Papaya orange! They had it next to a wall painted with a sea turquoise and a sky blue with a light gold and a lighter orange. I took the CD cover with me to the stores yesterday and today and matched it with some scarves and cloths that I now have draped over every light source in my living/sleeping room. I bought some matching beads as well so I can decorate the matchstick placemat I have hanging over the TV to hide it from view.
The largest cloth I bought was a deep papaya color and really too dark for its original position spread over the crescent moon shaped bean bag pillow, but it works beautifully hanging over my rice paper lantern. The scarf has a wonderful irregular ribbed texture that is illumined by the light beneath it and from afar looks like a heart in the middle of the room. It goes well with the Sara Midda print I have in the corner, with the three people flying in the sky on big inflated hearts, with one woman on the ground holding the tail of a heart that is deflated and out of commission. I mean that's one way to look at that picture, but since you all know I am an optimist, I happen to know that the woman is smiling because she just received her package from the Home Shopping Network that contains her "Handy Dandy Flying Heart Pump" and that in no time at all she will be flying the friendly skies looking for love. That's the way I look at it anyway.
So now I'm under a papaya colored heart in the middle of my room, in a shower of its mellow light, eating Haagen-Dazs' Dulce de Leche ice cream. Such a sweet sensual delicacy, oh, and the ice cream ain't that bad either.