See the World through Rose-Colored Glasses!

So many good things come in... pink. Strawberry sorbet from musical ice-cream trucks and cotton candy at the street fairs, summer sunrises and kiss-swollen lips, blushing cheeks and fields of waxy tulips, gemstones and star fish... Pink is the color of lightness, of joy, of whimsy...

 

No wonder the idiom "rose-colored glasses" describes hopeless optimists, those of us who see reality in a soft, rosy glow of hope, those who find beauty in the smallest, most mundane things. Often though, the phrase is uttered with a kind of smirk, with a kind of mocking pity, often it is meant to ridicule those who refuse to sink into bleakness of day-to-day life -- the dreamers, the fools!

 

Its origins remain  a mystery to this day, although there are a few interesting theories. The idea of an idyllic rose-colored worldview can be traced back to at least the 17th century. Some suggest that the popularity of romantic imagery in Victorian artwork inspired viewers to associate optimism with the rose gardens and deep reds they saw. Viewing the world through rose-colored glasses could be an extension of adding extraneous roses to liven up a painting or decoration.

 

Others talk of early mapmakers and their special corrective lenses. Because map making required a great deal of attention to detail, mapmakers needed to keep the lenses of their eyeglasses especially clean and scratch-free. It is believed by some that these mapmakers would use rose petals to clean any dust or other contaminants from their lenses. The rose petal's natural oils would protect the lenses, but often left a rose-colored stain. Therefore, viewing the world through rose-colored glasses would be the equivalent of focusing all of one's attention on the smallest details and ignoring the realities of the larger world around him or her.

The idea of looking through filtered lenses was a familiar one by the 19th Century. Some people may have been accused of looking through blue or green-tinted glasses, which would have altered their perception of reality. Perhaps the same concept of a filtered worldview was applied philosophically to eternal optimists who preferred a sanitized or filtered version of reality to the one they were forced to live in by circumstances beyond their control.

One of the most entertaining theories suggests that the "rose-colored glasses" were not eye wear at all, but rather bar glasses. Viewing the world through the bottom of a glass containing red wine or rose-colored spirits might be considered the same as cockeyed optimism. Whether the soft-focused worldview was inspired by alcohol or an optimistic philosophy, it was argued that a person looking at a situation through rose-colored glasses was making a conscious choice to accept or not accept certain realities.

Whatever the origin of the phrase may be, I am a firm believer that our world is as bleak or as bright as we paint it in our minds, in our hearts and in our vision. I believe in recognizing loveliness in the most overcast day, because if you look close enough, if you really open your eyes, you would see the colors, glittering just under its surface, not only the pinks, but the full thousand-hued rainbow of possibilities. Trust me, it's there. So, if all you find around is drabness and greyness, don't look away, don't avert your eyes, instead look for that shimmer of brightness. Be that dreamer. See the world through rose-colored glasses!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

  

 

 all photos via Pinterest

 

 

 

 

 

 

Light Up the Night!

Parks and gardens are among some of my favorite things; I prefer the overgrown, unruly kind, the kind that suggests that if you wander long enough you might discover SECRETS... like a castle with a Sleeping Beauty still immured deep within its walls, or plump, scarlet-capped mushrooms with white gills like lace around their pale stalks and hallucinations leaking from their centers, or glistening snails slithering over green shrubbery like liquid pearls, or robin's nest full of warm, turquoise eggs. It could be enchantment... or toads. It could be anything. All you have to do is pick a meandering path and follow it and keep your eyes open and ready to see.

 

Gardens at dusk are a thing of dreams, full of hidden magic, of fey, of shadowy, twilight beauty. And at night they are a world of mystery, of looming trees, of sweeping inkiness, of unseen nocturnal creatures known only by their call. Have you ever explored the woods in the dark? Have you ever felt the excitement and awe of wandering in the warm summer shadows? It's amazing! Amazing!

Summer nights ARE mysterious, and if you add glowing garlands, twinkling lights strung between the trees, candles flickering on the empty wooden barrels, paper-shaded lamps suspended from the boughs you find yourself immersed in Midsummer Night's Dream. It's wonderful. Spellbinding.

 

Last Saturday at the Light Up the Night: a benefit for Descanso Gardens, Troy and I walked the lantern lit trails, heard coyotes sing in the nearby bushes, picked our way through the smoky blackness by the moonlight, listened to owls deftly pluck their prey from the whispering creak, shivered at the night-sounds we couldn't begin to guess and danced to our flashlights. It made us feel young, adventurous and silly. It made us think of druids and ancient rites, starlit dances and pagan festivals. It inspired us to transform our own backyard into a place of enchantment and sit there in the candlelight-pricked dark, talking to each other and touching and laughing and watching the branches like black lace overhead.

It struck me how much the adults need the mystery and romance of a little Fairy-Tale, how delicious it is to talk in whispers, how beautiful it is to hold your loved one's hand in the almost-dark and watch the shadows dance over each other's faces. All it took was a few LED candles and a string of warm, clear lights.

 Descanso Gardens at dusk...

 

...and at night!

 

 

 

 

Thank You, Bees!

 

A few years ago, when Troy and I first moved into our house, we surveyed the backyard and to our delight found not only a tiny, sun-yellow shed that became my beloved painting studio, but also several pluot, pomegranate and fig trees scattered around it wild and untended. I looked at them and saw mouth-watering visions of pies, cobblers, homemade preserves and other goodly savories. The visions were too sweet to ignore. Besides, my mother-in-law, Judy, lives on a farm and makes growing large, beautiful plums seem as easy as eating them. How hard could it really be? I thought. The pies beckoned. I stocked up on gardening tips, tools and fertilizer and went to work watering and pruning and feeding, feeding and watering and pruning. Nothing. I tried coaxing, tricking and even shaming the trees into behaving like a proper orchard and bearing fruit. Not a single pluot. Eventually I gave up, admitted my pluot-rearing incompetence and went back to buying pies at our neighborhood bakery. Imagine my surprise when last Sunday Troy came to the kitchen carrying a BOXFULL of vibrant, gem-colored fruits he had just picked off our trees, ripe and perfect. The pluots had brilliant garnet centers and sweet citrusy flavor. Really pretty to look at and too delicious for words.

 

 

 

We ran outside to marvel at the heavy, fruit-laden branches and wondered why all of a sudden the trees decided to gift us with a harvest. Was it warmer weather? More rain? (It rained TWICE this spring). Sun flares? Some kind of foreignland air vitamins brought over from across the Pacific? When we heard a low, thrumming noise overhead, the mystery solved itself. Bees. Lots and lots of bees. A whole hive tucked under the beams of my studio -- buzzing and matching sun-bright yellow and very, very lively. We owed the health of our trees, the plentiful gorgeous fruit and the many delicious concoctions-to-come to bees.

 

Once we saw the hive, it was amazing to realize how much it had transformed our backyard; the trees thrived, the flowers bloomed, everything seemed so much more vibrant and colorful and lush than before, flush with vitality, humming with life. It was also humbling to see the delicacy of the system holding everything in balance: bees, trees, fruit, people, like a very fine scale. One tiny change, one imperceptible shift and the whole thing would collapse, fall over, break. A sobering thought. A little frightening, too.  

 

Now I share the studio with my bees; me -- inside, them --  out. So far, the arrangement has worked pretty well. When I paint, I can hear the steady hum of the hive, and it's reassuring and soothing and wonderful, kind of like the roll of the ocean or the pulse of a heartbeat.

 

 

As for my visions of pies and preserves, they came to pass and there was deliciousness all around. Troy went on a jam-making-marathon resulting in a heavenly concoction that is ambrosia, amrita and nectar all rolled into one. It's finger-licking-good and quite possibly addictive.

And I baked a cake! 

 

 

And then another!

Thank you, bees! 

 

 bee pictures via Pinterst

 

 

 

 

 

A-Z of Unusual Words

When my brother and I were little, we used to play a game where we would open our parents' large, leather-bound dictionary at random and hunt for words -- the odd, occasionally giggle-inducing words used so seldom that we wondered who invented them and why. We rifled through smooth, heavy pages and shouted our prizes to each other at the top of our lungs. Whoever found the strangest or the funniest word won. As an adult, sometimes I still catch myself obsessing over these curious, obscure words, words like cacography (bad handwriting) and autolatry (the worship of one's self), whiskerando (whiskered person) and mabsoot (happy), nelipot (someone who walks without shoes) and wanweird (an unhappy fate), yuke (to itch) and -- love this one! -- strikhedonia (the pleasure of being able to say 'to hell with it').

The Project Twins, also known as James and Michael Fitzgerald -- a seriously talented Irish graphic arts duo, have come up with a series of illustrations that visually represent rarely spoken and heard of words. 'A-Z of Unusual Words' defines the meaning of such words as imaginative, whimsical graphics.

Some of these words are veritable tongue-twisters, but they are also chock-full of awesome and so are the illustrations. Look! Look!!

ACERSECOMIC -- A person whose hair has never been cut.

 

CACODEMONOMANIA -- The pathological belief that one is inhabited by an evil spirit.

 

FANFARONADE -- Swaggering; empty boasting; blustering manner or behavior;
ostentatious display.

 

HAMARTIA -- The character flaw or error of a tragic hero that leads to his downfall.

 

JETTATURRA -- The casting of an evil eye.

 

MONTIVIGANT -- Wandering over hills and Mountains.

 

OSTENTIFEROUS--Bringing omens or unnatural or supernatural manifestations.

 

POGONOTROPHY -- The act of cultivating, or growing and grooming, a mustache,
beard, sideburns or other facial hair.

QUOCKERWODGER -- A rare nineteenth-century word for a wooden toy which briefly
became a political insult.

 

SCRIPTURIENT -- Possessing a violent desire to write.

TARANTISM -- a disorder characterized by an uncontrollable urge to dance.

  

ULTRACREPIDARIAN -- A person who gives opinions and advice on matters
outside of one's knowledge.

 

VERNALAGNIA -- A romantic mood brought on by Spring.

 

 YONDERLY -- Mentally or emotionally distant; absent-minded.

 

ZUGSWANG -- A position in which any decision or move will result in problems.