united colors of me - part two...

Don’t get me wrong – I still love the color black. It is a color very close to, albeit not of my, heart. Some people say it is not a color. I say those people aren’t people. Given that I have such an illicit relationship with the color black, it is rare that I even flirt with colors.

Certain colors do claim to have the seductive powers to lure me, but I still insist on making stringent demands of them. I want my colors to do something, to be something special, something specific for me…

I want my yellow to be egg yolk yellow…

I want my green to be the color of the grass on this side…

I want my brown to be coffee bean brown…

I want my purple to be the color a bruise turns after 3 days…

I want my red to be wine red…

I want my maroon to be the color of the robes of Buddhist monks…

I want my blue to be the color of the song that Pearl Jam plays…

I want my orange to be the color the sky turns in the night when it is just about to rain…

I want my white to be the color of the pages of an old book…

I want my gray to be the color of cigarette smoke that Uma Thurman exhales in Pulp Fiction…

Oh and I love gum-ball machines…

united colors of me...

The title must have thrown you off. Those of you who have seen me know that I live in a largely monochromatic world. The only intelligent choice my wardrobe asks me to make is: the black Pearl Jam t-shirt or the black Led Zeppelin t-shirt? Some days, even life-altering decisions are easy because I see everything in black or white. Other days, even shopping for soap is time-consuming because there is a lot of gray.

But hey, before you pigeon-hole me as some dull old man, reading Tolstoy, attending ballet performances of The Black Swan, smoking cigars, listening to Pink Floyd and poring over the depressing details of life, let me clarify – I love color! I love colorful things, and here’s a list of some of them:

I love colorful clothes dancing in the wind on a long clothesline…

I love rows of colorful houses bordering a pedestrian-filled street…

And there are times when I use colorful language, and I like it…

I love colorful glass bangles on display in a local shop in Nagpur, India…

I love colorful eyes, oh how I love colorful eyes…

And I love (and I own) boxers in many myriad colors…(too much information?!?)

I love colorful cushions resting against the backdrop of a monochrome sofa…

I love colorful Christmas lights even after the holidays are over…

And I love people’s outlooks colored by their prejudices…

Oh and I love jelly beans…