Showing posts with label color. Show all posts
Showing posts with label color. Show all posts

Monday, September 19, 2011

Original Myths-How Flowers Got Their Colors, Scene 1

Copyright 2011-All Rights Reserved


1. Honeybee, Hummingbird, and Butterfly

One morning, shortly after the beginning of things, a spring shower drenched Meadow, after which Rainbow, lustrous with colors, appeared in the sky.


photo credit: http://www.freenaturepictures.com/



At the north end of Meadow, Honeybee looked out of the beehive and said: "What a perfect day for my first time to collect Flower nectar."



Honeybee had spent her childhood inside the colony, learning the ropes. Now she was 21 days old--an adult and ready for her first foraging flights. Today, she was flying to the center of Meadow where, it was rumored you ought to be able to get a really big nectar load from the combine of Flowers there.

Before she left, she was told by the Nectar Gathering Supervisor that finding and gathering nectar from Flowers was just a matter of color cues. That is, a Flower's color would always guide her straight to the nectar pouch. Furthermore, the Supervisor said: "You are expressly instructed to look for blue and violet Flowers because we bees are especially attracted to these hues."

Honeybee was the type who could be relied upon to follow instructions. Sometimes, she could be a little anal about it. Most of the time, however, this trait of hers served her well. When Honeybee flew away from the hive, heading for the center of Meadow, she felt good about having been carefully instructed and she thought she was fully prepared to do her job.

When Honeybee got to the meadow, she noticed Hummingbird beating his wings at light speed as he flew back and forth, inspecting someting pale and ghostly growing amid the green blades of grass.Close by, Butterfly was doing the same, darting to and fro from one gray thing to another.



As Honeybee drew closer, she looked down at the pallid cluster of sickly looking things languishing in the middle of Meadow. She could not tell what they were, not could she see Flowers with colors anywhere.

Round and round, she flew for several minutes, looking for colors to cue her. But she found none. She was confused, so she bzzed over to Hummingbird and asked: "Is this the centerof Meadow? I was told I could find Flowers here, but I don't see any colors like blue and violet to guide me to them."

Hummingbird was just as perplexed as Honeybee. "This the right place, babycakes. Matter a fact, I been lookin m'self for orange or red Flowers to turn me on to the mother load. Been lookin for an hour and I cain't find nuthin," he admitted. "Les ask Butterfly. Them butterflies pretty good at figurin things out."

They zoomed over to Butterfly who had paused and was staring at the gray things below her. "Pardon us,"said Honey bee, "do you know where Meadow's Flowers are? I was told to look for the colors at the center of Meadow, but I can't see any colors at all. There's nothing down there except for the green grass.
So I don't know where to look."

"Same here," said Hummingbird. "It's a problem cause I gotta take in a load  a necta so's I can pay the rent, know what I mean?"

"Well, I think I've figured it out," replied Butterfly, stroking her chin. "Those drab, colorless things sticking up between the blades of grass are Flowers. At least, I believe they are."

"Say whaat?!" Hummingbird was so astonished at the very idea that he stopped beating his wings for several seconds.

Honeybee stopped bzzing, and just hung in the air speechless. She couldn't comprehend the idea. It went against everything she had been taught about life and how the world functioned. When she recovered herself, she proclaimed, "Whoever heard of Flowers without colors!"

Butterfly, who was something of a detective, had a very logical mind and she replied: "Whoever is right! But we are at the center of Meadow where Flowers are supposed to be, and, as you said, Honey bee, there's nothing down there except green grass and some pallid looking things that could possibly be Flowers. As a famous detective once said, 'Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of butterfly--or a honeybee--can invent!'"

Next: The Flowers, Scene 2

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Original Myths - How Flowers Got Their Colors, Prologue

Copyright 2011-All rights Reserved

1. Prologue


At the beginning, all things came to be in this dimension by vibrating themselves into being from the engergy of All-Spirits. Each thing, as it came into this dimension was to bring its own particular color with it.

And so, the shining Sky children--Sun, Moon, Rainbow, and Stars, came to be by rippling and shimmering themselves into the heavens.






Then came the Four Sacred Elements: Earth, the Pillar, manifested itself by whirling and spinning faster than the eye can see, while Fire, the Resplendent One, flickered and crackled; Water, the elixir, surged and gushed; and Wind, the Sage, wafted and danced itself into existence.









One by one, other things vibrated themselves into existence, like Mountain, who came to be by quaking and thrusting itself up so that it stood tall and mighty against the sky, and like Valley, who dipped down so that it lay snugly beside Mountain. Plains and Meadow and Trees and Grass blazoned forth by rolling and zigzagging into the spaces where Mountain and Valley could not fit.





Then Flowers wiggled and waggled themselves into being so that they peeked out between blades of Grass sprouting on Meadow. But, alas! Something had happened to them as they vibrated!

This is the story of what (happened). And who (was brave enough to find out). And how (everything was put to right).

Next Time: Part 2- "Honeybee, Hummingbird, and Butterfly"

Saturday, April 23, 2011

My Photographic Eye III: Tones (and Textures)

Copypright 2011-All Rights Reserved

                                                       
                                                                     Tones 

Sky and Sea
    Light and Reflection
       Color and Contrast



                    

         Green Ocean, Streaks of Light, Flotsam



  
                   
           
     Golden Glow in West Hollywood

                      

              Lavender Wild Flowers




         

                               Blue Sky, Clouds, Glowing Sunset
            
    

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Family Album 5


Copyright 2009-All rights Reserved


Avice Evans Lennon (December 4, 1905 – September 30, 1998)


Aunt Avice was Uncle Frank’s second wife, and he was her second husband. A year or two after he divorced Aunt Helen, which was around 1960, he and Avice got married. Aunt Avice was a professional woman in her own right—a pharmacist and business woman who owned College Drug Store on the West side of Knoxville, in Mechanicsville, just down the street a piece from Knoxville College, a Black college that dates from 1876. Actually, she was the first Black female pharmacist in Knoxville, having gotten her degree as a registered pharmacist from Xavier University in 1950.

I think Uncle Frank wanted to marry Aunt Avice because she was a I’ll-stand-by-you kind of woman. I don’t believe he was well and was probably looking for someone who’d see him through. Aunt Avice, unlike her predecessor, was an honorable woman who did just that with much compassion and love. After everybody in my family had died, the only relative I had left was Aunt Avice, who was living with her sister, Aunt Teenie (Armentine Pickett, one of my “no-relation aunts” from years back). I loved “The Aunts,” who, in their golden years, were good-looking women with snow white hair and a hearty sense of humor; they also happened to be super-sized, die-hard Laker fans. Once, I had baseball caps made up for them with sequined letters showing each of their names on the backside, and inscribed on the front with the words: “Laker Fan”. They wore the caps while they watched the games, yelling at the players, screaming in joy when one of them made a basket, and generally having such a good time that you’d have they were ringside at all the games.

Aunt Avice was the relative I came out to back in 1990. The others were dead by then. Most people who’ve read my book, The Mee Street Chronicles, want to know what she said once I phoned and told her the truth about my sexuality. In a syrupy southern accent, she said something like: “Why, honey, I don’t care about that.” During the same conversation, I told her I was getting married at my church in Los Angeles to a woman, and she replied in typical Knoxville fashion: “Is she a nice girl? If she is, then that’s all right.” They don’t make ‘em like Aunt Avice anymore. She was one of those Black Knoxville women with true grit. And true heart. She laid down to rest a bit at age 93. I hope she’s restin’ good.

Friday, July 13, 2007

L.A. Observations Series -2 : Gardens

Copyright 2007- All Rights Reserved


I just finished watering my garden. That’s one of the things I love doing. Besides the delight of getting to stare at the greens, reds, and purples that make the primary colors of my garden, when I water, I get an added bonus. The water releases the oxygen stored in the flowers and plants so that when I get a whiff of it, I get put into this mellowed out, peacefully happy frame of mind. Which was a state of mind I tried to find when I was drinking and never could.

Today, while I was out there, an orange and black butterfly of intricate design and delicacy came by for a visit. I was glad to see it. Besides being lovely to look at, butterflies pollinate plants. We need them to do their job to get our food and to keep the plants and flowers going. Problem is, they’re not coming out in numbers anymore. Because of climate changes and the effects of global warming, they say the butterfly population is decreasing. Dying out, they mean. And I’ve been worried about that. So I was fascinated to see the lone butterfly today. I don’t see them often at all anymore.

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1981, the first thing I noticed was the beautiful gardens everywhere. A rainbow of flowers lavishly landscaped in the yards, oleander shrubs waving pink and rose and white blossoms at you as you drove the freeways, the white yucca blossoms of the desert, or the huge beaver tail cacti sprouting yellow or pink spikey flowers…it was all so lush to me. So beautiful against the background of Santa Monica mountains tipped with snow. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

People in Los Angeles love to garden, I think. My neighbor is a container gardener; she has a jillion plants in pots of every hue and shape. Down the street, there's another neighbor whose front yard is devoted to herbal plants grown hugely gorgeous; their exotic smell draws me every time I pass. I can never resist poking my nose into their fragrant branches. Several blocks away from my apartment, at the residence apartment building for seniors, I see pots and pots of flowers and shrubs on the small patios outside of their living rooms. And I stop by to peek at the flourishing garden some of the seniors keep outside the building. It overflows every summer with yellow squash vines running here and there, green onions, red lettuces, green beans, cherry tomatoes, and a whole lot more plants that I can’t name. I envy the gardeners their green thumbs.

Some would say I have one, too…a green thumb, I mean. Maybe, I do. I never knew one way or another until I got sober and started putting that energy and time into planting and digging that I used to put into drinking. (I had to do something. My engine was revving like mad when I was newly sober. Nature abhors a void, you know.) I think I put in about 8 gardens or more in various spots in the yard where I used to live. Suffice to say, I was forever digging. I had white and red and lavender and pink roses. I had white jasmine trailing through the branches of a pine tree. I had lemon trees, walnut trees, fig trees, apple trees, blackberry vines. In containers, I had red, rose, peach impatiens, geranium angel winged pink begonia, purple lobelia, and whatever other gorgeously-colored flower I could find.

Color, you see, is my weakness. Something about how my eyes are drawn to the light. Something about how my eyes love how light reflects from some objects and absorbs from others to illuminate and paint a palate of primary, secondary, and complementary colors…what we call the color spectrum of reds, greens, blues, yellows, and magentas. Gardens show me a color spectrum so gorgeous that sometimes I just get filled up. They do something really, really good for my soul.

I saw two particularly beautiful public gardens just lately at the Fullerton Arboretum (http://www.arboretum.fullerton.edu/), a most relaxing and beautiful place where they have desert and water-wise plants, ducks waddling and wading all over the place. The other was the South Coast Botanic Garden where they have gardens specifically devoted to titillating our sense of smell and our touch sense, and where you can buy the most lusciously beautiful plants for little or nothing (http://www.southcoastbotanicgarden.org/). Do yourself a favor and find a garden to meander through. You won’t regret it.