Until recently, I never knew...
Until recently, I never knew quite how to interpret the Daily Kaleidoscope. You'd think this wouldn't be difficult, since I was once researching and writing it. But I was stuck.
You see, as much as I love those original Crayola colors -- the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, black, brown (white, in the era of the eight-color box, meant you left that place uncolored) -- there is nothing for those of us who are riding the rainbow where colors mesh.
Here are my colors:
A side note... When Color Seasons were in vogue, countless folks tried to help me recognize my colors: "Black hair, pale skin -- oh, that's easy! You're a -- wait, you don't have blue eyes..." With age and Lady Clairol, and depending on the phase of the moon and how late I make my salon appointment, my hair runs between strawberry, honey, and ash (or straw and dishwater and dregs, depending on "Good Hair!" or "Bad Hair..."). The Season survivalists, clueless that I'm not born-and-bred a sorta-blonde, have me pegged: "Oh, reddish-blondish-brown hair, brown eyes, you're a -- oh, you don't have freckles -- give me a minute here...") If I weren't confused enough, given my knowledge that I'm sporting an entirely artificial hair look and today couldn't predict whether I'd be brunette, salt-and-pepper, or salt mine, at 57 I've developed what my tactful doctor calls 'Cafe Au Laite drops' -- what in my youth we brashly dismissed as 'liver spots'. Do THOSE count as freckles? At the rate they're multiplying, pretty soon I'll just be fully darker complected, light-haired, and dark-eyed, once again slipping into an uncategorizable Season category. Kind of like the Dog Days of Summer with hail.
It's always been hard. Even though I haven't tanned since my youth, I remember when I was tanned -- and the rage I felt at not being able to wear the favorite color of my school days: lavendar. You see, I tanned "olive". And despite my folks' assurances that many great beauties were olive-skinned (Sophia Loren), even I realized that she could have appeared in black-and-white movies and worn what she liked. I had to appear daily in technicolor, and lavendar gave my olive-toned skin a sickish green sheen. At least 13 years in the Ray Bradbury All Summer in a Day/ The Illustrated Man science fiction realm of Washington's Puget Sound gave me that clear, light (okay, white) skin that, while it took me out of the running for a true Season, awarded me with to right to wear lavendar.
Of course, the Daily Kaleidoscope does not deal in Seasons. But it's still problematic.
Inevitably, twice a week, I'm faced with the question on what I'm wearing: "What is the predominant color of... the top? the bottom?... you are wearing..." And I look down out of habit, but the answer is pretty much always the same. Pink or aqua. Less frequently but just as predictably, coral or lavendar. That's it, folks.
You might note that in the Daily Kaleidoscope, as in the original eight-color Crayola box, there is no pink or aqua. No coral or lavendar. At which point a normal person would shrug her shoulders and turn the page. Or the more imaginative would think of what they'd LIKE to be wearing, and ascribe themselves that quote or note. The more pragmatic folks read the Kaleidoscope, pick the answer they prefer, and dress accordingly.
Not me. Faced with such an unresolvable dilemma (can't lie, can't cheat, can't make it work, can't leave it), I have my own coping tool.
I fret.
Now, considering all the things I need to fret about, colors in the Daily Kaleidoscope seem like a small thing. Even I admit that. The country is facing ever more socialistic trends, the news is laced with daily drive-by shootings, the Arctic shelf is melting into the sea, Arizona's aquifer is disappearing, and Tiger Woods may not win the next PGA tourney, and the lack of pink and aqua and coral and lavendar in the Daily Kaleidoscope, one would think, would slip off the list of daily worries. But I'm nothing if not inventive and tenacious about fretting.
And my fretting has finally paid off. Just days ago I resolved the problem.
Now, in addition to not being a Summer, or Winter, or a Fall or Spring, I am not a Math Person. Just ask Aunt Bobby. Or my friend Dianne. Or my 9th grade Algebra teacher, who hollered at me as I quietly cowered in the very back seat, "Connie Millah!" (Distinct Southern accent, ex-Marine drill sergeant.) "If you add one Hahse to one Cow, you do not git one Hahsie-Cow!" Or ask my 3rd grade teacher, who tried to teach me fractions. (A bigger number makes it smaller? That goes against all logic, my friend.) So I can imagine your surprise to discover that I use Math to calculate my Daily Kaleidoscope.
But I use my vast artistic knowledge as well. And here's what I came up with.
Say I'm wearing pink. I take the quote or note for Red, add the quote or note for White; then, because there are TWO, I take every second word, scramble them up, and make one intelligent statement.
Today, I'm wearing coral. So... I take Red, Orange, and White; take every third word, scramble them up, and Voila! Use them to make my very own DK statement. I add these rules: Leftover words are freebies. Verb tense can be changed. Use something from each offering to create my quote's author. Here's today's:
Red: What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a (new dish)." - W. H. Auden
Orange: Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." - Francis Bacon
White: Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of (the ordinary)." - Cecil Beaton
is, taste, digest, are, be, be, be
and, and
to, against, of
a
mass, art, some, dish, some, integrity, creatures
new, impractical, commonplace
which, like, that
Daily Kaleidoscope:
If you're wearing coral... Here is the quote you should keep in mind:
Art is to impractical creatures like some taste of a new dish. -- H. Cecil Bacon
Why, my day IS looking up, with THAT fantastic prediction!