This Word Collage was created at Zee's Writing Studio, in Ithaca, New York, between February 28 and March 1, 2012.
65 women, teens and children contributed to this list, as part of a 5-minute warm-up at the start of each Writing Circle.
PaintedParrot will usually feature the work of individual writers, but for this first posting I thought it would be fun to see how the collective consciousness of dozens or writers responded to the suggestion to "write something you know about color."
--zee
We painted the walls a buttery yellow to match a small vase. I've tried to capture the pinkish orange of the sunset with paints, but it always looks gaudy. When I walk in the cold, my nose gets red. I am known for wearing black. The color red makes me feel alive and warm. I've had silver hair since I was 30-something. Purple just feels right most of the time. I remember that when the Berlin Wall fell, I knew the people in Eastern Europe were celebrating the return of color. Black and white have always been too stark for me; I'm drawn to shades of gray. I love fuchsia and orange together. I dream about yellow every night. I have had more arguments with my parents about whether things are orange or pink than pretty much anything else. Wearing red or raspberry pink makes me feel daring. I used to wear a lot of blue suits to work. I love the pink glow of the sunset on the mountains. Turquoise and fuchsia are perfect accents for white hair. I've worn a blue L. L. Bean jacket for more than 15 years. Sometimes when I want to say "pink" I inadvertently say the word "yellow" instead. Blue makes me remember Germany. I want to make a quilt: lime green, aqua, and some hue of purple — periwinkle perhaps — and grey. My left eyebrow turned white overnight. Yellow is encouraging. I once had a blue parakeet. I feel like a superhero when I wear colorful tights to work. There are many days in my life when I am obsessed with red. In college I took a class in color theory. The rug in my childhood bedroom was an orange and yellow shag that I cleaned with a rake. The tattered green pillow sleeps on my side of the bed in my absence. My orange shoes are very comfortable. The sunset hangs red to the left of my house. My sheets are lilac and silky to the touch. Yellow daffodils bloom in the backyard every spring. I always liked the 1962 peacock blue station wagon. I think the color purple is otherworldly, don't you? Yesterday I bought a dress that was green in the store, but when I got home it was brown. The walls in my house were gray, chosen and painted by my husband. There is more yellow in navy blue than you might think. My mother's favorite color is neutral; she says it goes well with everything. The pink and yellow houses next to each other on Coddington Road look disgusting. Strong color strongly influences my mood. Blue is my color of tranquility. Waldorf schools don't use black crayons. I like to paint with other people. Mixing new colors, especially complimentary colors, is thrilling to me. My daughter loves indigo and gold. When archaeologists try to reconstruct color patterns on old fabric, they assume it was once red where the holes are. I've heard that gray is the new black. I loved coloring books when I was a child. I don't like watermelon pink, which may account for the way I gobble up watermelon slices so fast and save the seeds for the chipmunk. I have never met a blue I didn't like. My car is caramel-bronze-pearl — or so they told me. At the age of three, my grandson suddenly denounced pink and told me to give the new pink shirt I bought for him to his girl cousin instead. Dark blue is the color of the night sky in winter. Orange peeks through the falling blanket of night. Dive into the lake — you see through green glasses. What is "taupe," anyway? White is thought of as plain, but it is really full of ideas and bursting with desire. Green brushes my toes with bright cool grass. Some say that black is the absence of color, while others say that it is all the colors in the world. I once had four favorite colors but now I have just one. When I squeeze my eyes tightly shut, I see bright green. The color brown makes me hungry. The neon colors somehow caused the restaurant to be exceedingly dreary. Oranges are the color orange. Yellow reminds me of you. Green, in a certain shade, can represent a dismal life. One of my favorite colors is the white that happens when snowflakes are mixed with sky and you're looking up into the air and everything is clear and pale and pure and bright. Looking into her cerulean irises did for him what a prism does to white light — it split him into a thousand shimmering colors. Colors are emotions that people can only explain with a picture. Black and gold show the spirit of a wolf. Chocolate chip cookies taste green. Gray is such a restful color. Where are those yellow daffodils? By March I'm sick of reds. I write in a green notebook. I am knitting a lacy blue scarf. I'm watching for the pink tinge of new buds on the trees. I bought my sister a scarlet silk kimono. The walls are primed with white paint, and seem eager to know their new color. Autumnal colors make me feel sensual. I am attracted to clothes that are the color of my eyes. My favorite item of clothing is my little black dress. "How is my earth-tone matching working for me?" asks my color-blind boyfriend. Finally, tulips — the yellow-red stripy ones, stretching over the side of the vase. The red color on the bottom of his boots gave him away. Not all red watermelon tastes the same. I have mixed feelings about colorless rain. My jacket is the exact color of the soil in North Vietnam. When my father died he left behind his color. Red, white and blue draped across his coffin. Blue were his uniforms and blue is my heart. Wearing yellow makes me feel like I'm flying. I'm lucky that I've never lost my purple socks in the laundry. This morning, spring's first red cardinal scratching seeds in the snow. I paint in red when I'm angry, when I'm sad, when I'm happy: I paint in red. My black and white life is full of color. In the woods I see the patterns of the leaves against the sky, the shapes of the trees, and empty spaces between the clouds, but I don't see color. Deep forest — green frog ribbits rivulets of friendly greetings. Blue, ice blue, was the color of my mother's eyes; they saw everything. Sunset colors are my favorites right now — pink, orange, anything lit up. He belonged in a Blue state and she belonged in a Red state. A wise old woman told me that it is good for your eyes to look at the green of distant hills. Johnny Cash said of his closetful of black clothes: "It's dark in there." I always thought that freshly-mowed lawn smelled blue. A friend did my colors and told me I was a "spring." She couldn't remember where she'd left her lavender self. When in doubt, orange will do! You were wearing silver, the color of the moon, and I thought to myself, "Priestess." Red is best. Gray: is it science and spirituality smushed together? Stop signs: red, danger, slow, stop, safe, listen. Brown earth, green trees; I am wearing them today and they are rich. Orange walls, not too bright, are cheering and warm. It's said that there is no such thing as a totally black cat; gray stripes appear in a certain light, or white hairs appear randomly, here and there. She walked in a halo of red umbrella reflected by the rain on the sidewalk.
