Tag Archives: Color

Popcorn, Chocolate, and Candy

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Popcorn, chocolate, and candy.  Hansel and Gretel were attracted to a house in the forest made of all these treats, and made it inside where they found a witch who pounced on them and locked them in cages with the intention of turning them into slaves, and then, when she got bored of them, she would make them into sweets.

This story is about temptation and the result of subcumbing  to it.  The characters are children, who perhaps, if they existed in the real world, would not necessarily know what temptation is.  They are attracted to things that are sweet, and think that everything that looks like a candy color or the colors of the playset at the playground, are the most fun and the best colors in the world.  They would not know that there are “fifty shades of grey.”  Or, coming from an artist’s point of view, that there are as many ways to create grey as there are tubes of colors being sold at the store.

So, are the children themselves to blame, when they go towards the things that make them happy?  Would they be able to see the candy house in the forest and know that, inside, lurks evil of the type that changes lives forever?  Children only see as much as is shown to them.  And I do not doubt the reality of Hansel and Gretel’s story.  Candy is sweet, nice, and it seems, always available.  These are not character traits of something that can kill you.

It is the witch, who only wants to keep building her house, that is the criminal.  She has spent time creating the situation.  She has lured children, her prime victim, to a desolate place in the forest.  She enslaves them, possibly making them do the house work (in the house she is building), and then when they are exhausted, she makes them into sweets to hang on the walls of the house, to decorate it, and to declare achievements and claim.

The problem is that there is a prey and there is a hunter.  Both these parties have very little possibility to live out their lives, unless they work on it.  The hunter, like the witch, wants the things he or she has seen in dreams and in places where he or she cannot go.  So, living in the forest, the easiest thing is to create that surprise in the forest–a place of rest, interest, and seemingly endless happiness.

What are these things?  Are they items of greed?  Or are they birthstones, yet to be made into something that life can appreciate?  Why have the hunt inside a forest?  There is no reason for any of it….  Do the witch, or the children, deserve to live the lives they live?

Are these reasons enough?  Or do we have to keep trying until we get the issue, the reasons, and the methods right?  How much time, how much money, and what will be required to justify all of this?  Who on earth would want to risk their lives, or even risk dying, just to achieve a questionable future, as there is no absolute promise of a wonderful future.

The Art Gallery

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Portrait of a Lady with Lap Dog

Portrait of a Lady with Lap Dog

PabloPicassoSculpture0002

I was at the Art Gallery a few months ago, and I took my sketch book with me.  I stopped in front of a Rembrandt portrait and sat down on a portable stool.  I took out my pencil, and began, in the middle of the public, to sketch the painting.  It was not sculpture, and it had bright colors, but the combination was a muted result.  In any case, as I started to sketch, and as I finished it, in about ten minutes, I noticed that she did not have her nobility as in her painted portrait.  Maybe it was my mood that afternoon.  Maybe I felt overwhelmed and surrounded by regality, but my sketched portrait looked different.

There is an apprehension, completely opposite to her almost smugness, and comfort and confidence.  She wears heavy clothing, with many folds, and has a complex necklace, a bracelet, as well as a tiny dog that announces her nobility.  She is almost young… perhaps she is in her twenties, but the result of my pencil sketch, she is an old woman of forty.

I was by myself, and was not hurrying, or finding reasons to dally.  Even though I was not satisfied with my sketch, I did not feel defeat.  I got up, and began a dialogue with myself about the paintings I was passing.

I am very picky about what I like to sketch.  There were many paintings with the only interesting thing about them, their color.  Sometimes, the actual portrait or the colors of the landscape create a stiffness that I try not to copy into my sketch.  So, I ended up in a room full of paintings on the walls and four sculptures in the middle, in glass casing.

This time I took to the twentieth century.  A Pablo Picasso sculpture, just titled, “Head of a Woman” was one of the four sculptures.  It was in bronze, and played with light in a reflective manner.

Again, I sat down on my portable stool, and began a ten minute sketch.  This time, I only had light to help me understand.  It was not about personality, and it was not about status.  It was an abstract, conceptual idea of all women.  As I looked longer at it, I almost felt as if Picasso had successfully created a sexist and age-ist and racial derogatory statement.  The shapes in the head were sharp and angular, and it suggested a tallness, perhaps what a soldier would have, wearing a helmet and anticipating the entry into a battle on the field.

When I finished with it, neither sketch completely satisfied me.  I wanted to do something else….  But also, I had spent an hour already in the gallery.  I had to be at dinner reservation, also, downtown, in another hour.  So, I was in between hours, and I was feeling the pressure of the weight of time.  So, I made a deal with myself.  I wanted to be able to return to the Art Gallery, a tall artist, capable of doing art.  So, I decided to go to the special exhibitions of Contemporary Artists in one of the smaller exhibition rooms.  It was filled with paintings the size of the walls in the gallery.  Nothing like the paintings I had sketched.  They were filled with color, very neon, in several rooms, and also what could be considered rude, awkward, and dense.  I was glad I did go to this exhibition as it satisfied my need for Art to serve a public good and to do a public service.  As for the beauty of art as a reason in itself for existence, I still felt that this does not exist.  Irregardless, I am a fan of Art Galleries, and I will walk into a gallery for no reason other than to look at the work.

My Favorite Friends

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Daisies have white petals and yellow centres.  Much like the Cadbury Eggs, a filling of white and yellow surrounded by chocolate.

The field and the hill are scattered with them, growing in small bunches, and, swaying in the wind.  They are the most beautiful weed, and if you encourage them, they will cover the lawn.

When this happened in our backyard, in the summer, I stood with a lollipop in my mouth, sucking, and gazing at all the daisies.  I felt as if I had a daisy in my mouth, its sweetness filling and savoured.

I remember one day, because I was wearing my favourite dress–a baby pink, A-line flare.  I lobed that if I crouched down my dress would spread outward and cover my feet.  I looked like a pink bell.  I spent those days, in my pink bell dress, laughing.

The days were always sunny, and warm, but not too hot and humid.  I also remember because the freezies we had didn’t melt and become sugary water in blue, purple, pink, or yellow, those colours of the rainbow that taste like colours of the rainbow.  Now, in these summers, water droplets cover the length of the long freezie and make holding and eating one a slippery mess.  I love the cool blueberry in my mouth, and the quite cool sensation of holding something frozen, but keeping dry.  Those days, were a long time ago, and the earth has made so many rotations that it has probably rotated out of that particular orbit.  Alas…. Time changes everything!

One day, many years later, when I didn’t wear the pink dress any more, my boyfriend came over to our house.  It was an ordinary day, except that it would be the first time he came to our house.  I was excited, as he had casually just called on the telephone and said he would be riding his bicycle over and would be arriving in the next half hour.

It was summer, and I was quickly …  maybe I was in a panic….  I was trying to decide if I should wear something a little more suited to seeing my boyfriend, who was quite brand new at the time.  When he had called I was lounging around in an old pair of shorts and just any old t-shirt.  Part of my consideration was what we would be doing.  If we were going to go out for a walk in the ravine….  Then I wouldn’t really have to change into anything “nicer.”  I was not exactly making enough money to purchase all sorts of hiking gear, so, wearing any old pair of shorts and an old pair of sneakers would probably be all I needed.

Being the guy that he was, and probably still is, now, he arrived in twenty minutes.  He rang the door bell, and i rushed to open the door.  I had not changed…  as I just immediately made the decision that I didn’t want my little brother and sister bugging us.  He came in, and had a pop and sat and talked with all of us.  I was thinking constantly of taking off without my little tow-alongs.  My mother expected me to looke after my siblings during the summer holidays sine they were younger, but, they could survive being left alone for an hour without the supervision….  Not that I was especially responsible at the time.

We did take off not long after the pop was finished.  I asked, quite suddenly during a lull in the conversation, whether my boyfriend wanted to go to the river in the ravine with me?  My brother and sister were quick this time…  and I was grateful…..  my boyfriend immediately said quite excitedly that we should go, while my sister and brother said that they’d stay at home.  I didn’t have to be the one who said they couldn’t go.

The ravine and the river were not far away…  within two minutes we could be in a forest of trees and deep into a woodchip, pine needle floor that would lead to a small river that we could follow far, and even get lost in.

My boyfriend had never been to this part of  “Green Space” within the city, and I felt almost lost, surprisingly, as I began to think about how to show him around it.  He made it easy, however, keeping up an easy flow of conversation.  He never once asked where we were going….  As apparently, my statement from the beginning about going into the ravine and finding the river was enough for him.  This made me believe that just going to the river was enough.

There were several places that we could stand at right beside the river, and several places where the river would become shallow enough that standing on the edge we could reach our hands in and literally touch the sandy bottom of the stream. This is where we stopped and stood looking at everything surrounding us.  A few times, my boyfriend picked up a stone and skipped it across the water.  Sometimes it went far enough to go beyond just the middle of the stream.  this was the first time I had seen someone, in the flesh, do the skipping stone across the water.  It was impressive, and I felt in awe of my boyfriend.  I had thought, always, that it was just movie magic, but apparently, anyone could learn how to do it.

As we stood longer at the side of the stream, we began to notice the things just in the water.  Surprisingly, there were schools and schools of tiny fish.  They were silvery, and tiny and darted, faster than the striking of lightening, everywhere.  As soon as I saw them, I was utterly delighted.  I had never thought it possible that there would be life inside the tiny river in the ravine.  It did not seem wild enough to support any type of life.  Where would all the food come  from?

We stood looking down at them, in awe.  Suddenly, my boyfriend declared that they were definitely guppies.  Before this, I had only seen guppies in the pet store.  The ravine river was murky, from the sandy bottom and the slowness of the water which encouraged the water to be become murky with decomposing foliage.  I was very impressed.

We laughed, at the darting fish.  A few times my boyfriend put his hand and fingers in to cause the guppies to suddenly change direction, in an attempt to pick up one of the guppies, but they were incredibly fast.  It was exciting to see the quickness of silver which, given the sunlight, made a quick “spark” with the sudden turn the fish made.

As we grew tired, slowly, we suggested to each other, as we stood up again, by the side of the river, that we should go home.  My boyfriend dried his hands on his pants, and we turned around and started to head home.  This time I  did not feel myself looking everywhere in a scattered manner, to try to find something to say or to do.  I felt that my boyfriend and I had had a happy afternoon.  As we slowly walked, by boyfriend reached for my hand, and we held hands, lightly, walking without intention, out of the ravine.

We were holding hands, me in complete contentment and thinking that I had a cool boyfriend, when he let go suddenly, and running towards some thicket of bushes and trees, he picked a bunch of daisies, and offered them to me.  I was surprised by his gesture and accused him of vandalism and thievery of public property, causing the both of us to laugh.  I accepted his bunch of daisies anyway, reminding him that I had a backyard full of them at home already.

We were not a couple for more than a year-and-a-half, and i have not seen him since, but this particular afternoon is an afternoon I will forever remember, it being so pleasant, the sun being up, the way things worked without effort, and the way I didn’t feel as if I was always looking at the future and wondering if there would be future, given the sad circumstances.

I am someone who saves the things I love.  And that afternoon is saved, with the daisies and the silvery guppies.  And the memory of a kind boyfriend who made being a teenager exciting, and something that felt safe and full of being in love.