Something Quite Unusual

Her skin was purple, the lightest shade more like a white that had been tinted, that would appear as a purple haze when lighting was just right. Her hair shone like a yellow daisy with marshmallow-colored streaks highlighting the top most layers. Her skin had a blush to it that could only be referred to as a mellow shade of lime because that was what the Sun brought out in tanning for the time spent daily planting vegetables, herbs and trees within the space that was a garden. A bright orange, bibbed and bowed apron with harvesting pockets covered a white gauze dress that was for purpose to let air and light flow freely through and it waved and fluttered as she danced about in merriment, jumping for joy as she went about her daily chores. And one could slightly see the silhouette of her tall and slender body showing through it if they looked hard at her when a light came through it from behind her. She liked to sew and garden and would very often be prancing to and fro, from one task to the other like a ballerina — bugs and bees and butterflies making sure to keep her company — and a little dog named Puggles curled up in a ball on a blanket near the door sleeping because he was old and feeble and couldn’t dance like she could any more. He just waited for her, patiently, because he knew that later they would snuggle and she would kiss him.

Mostly she just whistled or spoke in a secret language to the critters all about her. It was generally very quiet except for the preferred music of the air and tree leaves being moved by it or the rain tapping when it fell — which seemed to be quite often. Bugs spoke too softly for any other ears to hear, but she could and together they made a kind of chorus — the bugs with their sound, the birds theirs, humming bees and her harmonizing whistle accompanied her dancing. She was something quite unusual and if anyone ever saw her, they never did again because she moved about the span of space and time so freely that it was a miracle to catch her in the first place — she was hiding in a secret place that she refused to release the address of mostly because it wouldn’t be where it had been, the next time.

She didn’t like to cook much but loved to have some pretty dishes with blue daisies painted on them and a teapot that looked like a rabbit. She always thought she’d have a soiree but as she knew, she was seldom in the same place long enough and people for the most part didn’t know quite how to find her or how to keep with where she went if they ever managed to. So, instead of wasting time cooking and washing dishes, she ate raw fruit and vegetables over the sink to catch the drippings and just spent the nights snuggling Puggles and looking at her pretty dishes while reading a book with pretty pictures formed by written words.

There was another purple person she kept running into in the margins but they never seemed to be in the same space long enough to know if they could really get along. She thought she caught him dancing and for a split second she heard a whistle, but poof, he left her dimension almost as quickly as he entered. She always kept one or the other of her magenta eyes out for him just the same and was always delighted when she thought she saw his colors fading in and out or moving in the clouds above — thinking he might be on the look out, hoping to find a way to see her too and maybe they could each stay a little longer.

Puggles was ready to snuggle and she was through with her chores and the purple man had failed to show up on that day. She ate her dinner, over the sink of course, and grabbed Puggles after he ate too and they both plopped on the bed and pulled up the multi-colored patchwork quilt to warm them. Puggles wanted to be on the top because he got too hot if he got under it — so she got him made comfy and grabbed her book and turned the light just on the book so she could read it.

Tomorrow they would do the same thing for the most part over again because they liked to. There was plenty of spice and lots of things nice and all of the colors of the rainbow. They would dance and sing and garden and Puggles, of course, would sleep curled up in a ball on a blanket near the door so he could keep his sleeping eyes upon her while she floated about the garden in her white dress. There were many chores to do and all of the time in the world to do them and there was nothing to be sad about. They had everything they needed.

She kissed Puggles goodnight, patted him on his head and said she loved him and offered that they wake up happy in the morning. Puggles licked her face and closed his eyes, scrunching just a little to make himself more comfortable. She read a little and turned the light out, scrunching just a little too.

 

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Honor Of Labor

What can only be said of something that is blue is nothing like what can be said of something that is purple or is that a lie? Purple can only be because of blue and so on through the spectrum. There are three primarily exclusive colors and if they are spun around on a wheel fast enough they make white light — that isn’t truly white. Seems that black is the only thing that can be trusted as it is the absence of any of the others when light goes missing. So the truth is there, it’s really a matter of seeing.

Wavelengths.

Isn’t it interesting that veins look blue until they are opened or pierced. As it turns out it’s a matter of how light travels through the skin. Blood is always some shade of red.

Did the submarine in the Fantastic Voyage float through red or blue blood?

What does it mean to be a blue blood? — People who stay out of the sun, people who don’t have to labor, people who set themselves apart by avoiding intermarrying Moors who had darker skin so their skin remained light and their poorly refracting red blood through their lighter skin made them look more blue in their whiteness — so they become more noble by extraction of the things that made other people lesser by their own and seemingly everyone else’s interpretation. It started in Spain.

So why does everyone want a tan or do they?

It might be a good thing to do in respect and honor of labor.

 

Her Favorite Room

There’s a little room on one side of the house that was added on by other owners somewhere along the line. It’s just under 70 square feet total — 7’6″ one way and 9’3″ the other — just a little bigger than a prison cell which is 6 feet by 8 feet as a standard. It has two doors that can let the prisoner free at any time though — one that opens to the outside right under a huge scraggly tree and the other into the living room — which was as big as the house was before adding this wing on and there is no barbed wire except for a barbed-wire heart hanging on the scraggly tree. The add-on goes the full depth of the house so, past the feet that makes the little prison room is what they divided for doing laundry and it’s somewhat bigger than the 7’6″ of the mudroom — but not much and comes off the kitchen and then goes out to the back.

She calls the little prison-sized room the mudroom because she imagines the other people made it as a way of coming in without landing right in the living room and a place to kick off dirty shoes because the door that leads outside is on the front of the house. Visitors have a lot of trouble trying to figure out where to go because, beside the two front doors, there is a studio.

She gave up on kicking off dirty shoes because she traipses in and out all day long and mostly for gardening reasons, so what she does now is keeps extra flips at the door and exchanges wet, dirty ones for less than wet and dirty ones, but still manages to bring in lots of silt, sand and organic stuffs that the kitties love — outside stuff to sniff, sniff, sniff.

She doesn’t come in through the mudroom because the door is trouble for various assorted reasons, so unless it’s a particularly wonderful day outside and the kitties are in the studio, the door stays locked and things are stuffed under it to keep critters like snakes and tarantulas out — she has both of them living outside and wants to keep it that way even though some have already come in to visit.

She took a shower with a tarantula once — it was a Psycho kind of scene. Another time the whole city police force lined up in front of her house to all come in to find a snake. Every single cop she knows of, working in her city, came through her house that night. One really big policeman came out holding a tiny snake and took it across the street to release it in the schoolyard! Mind you, she had called for animal control.

She painted the mudroom Your Highness — an ACE Hardware muted purple color — a very long time ago and has never looked back. It doesn’t make her feel happy per se, but it doesn’t make her feel sad — just makes her feel like herself since that shade of purple says a lot about herself to herself. She’s thought about changing colors, but never does. It is just the right intensity not to reflect too much light so makes the little room a perfect retreat because of its cocoon like nature. The ceiling is low and can easily be touched and the two-in-one window that takes up most of the width of the wall on the south, sloped side is up high and has glass that slides from bottom to top for letting breezes in through screens.

The little room has a sofa that just makes the fit along one wall. She’s tried every arrangement possible and always goes back to the sofa being there. She uses it like a lounge. There are a total of seven pieces of furniture in the tiny space — the sofa, a round coffee table, a nightstand that acts as a side table for a lamp, a little vintage wooden cigarette stand — that has been in the family forever and gone from her to her sister and back to her with her sister adding more colorful paint embellishments — with a smaller lamp on it for subtler lighting and magazines, a swivel chair in the next corner going round and then a three shelf cart that holds a TV for watching VHS old movies that can be seen from the sofa or the chair. The seventh piece is a wooden stool that just fits behind the TV cart and often has a big dictionary on it for looking up good words.

It’s her favorite room to go to when she really wants to relax throughout the course of the day. And even though it is on the west side and therefore gets the setting sun and even though it is horribly insulated because it was a stick-built add-on with a flat roof, a fan is enough in the summer and a little space heater heats it up real fast in winter because it’s so very small. And there is a curtain at the door to keep heat in or let heat out — depending on which is being the bother.

Her sister came to live with her for a few months many years ago now. She’d give that room up in a heartbeat if she could bring her sister back. The room was just big enough for a twin size mattress and the rest of her stuff spilled out into the living room. Her sister loved to keep the door open so she could look out to the scraggly tree and beyond. They had five dogs between them and two cats so after awhile, it became such a nuisance to be worrying about doors and cats getting out that they just flung it all open and the cats had a free-for-all. One of them ran away. He was 14 years old and very beloved but her thinking was that he had wanted out for all those 14 years so it was a gift she would finally give him since it was all too much for her and her sister to keep up with and her sister had to come first. He stayed around for quite awhile but she watched as he kept creeping farther and farther atop the fence footer looking out into the wild blue yonder. He finally made the decision.

Bye, bye Peter Rabbit. He was such a very good cat and they had loved each other well but he had been sick off and on and she wonders if maybe he left to die. Orphan Annie stuck around for many years thereafter.

The house had carpeting in it when she moved there but she hates carpet so it wasn’t very long before she yanked it all out and started painting the concrete floors.

So, she went in there today because the cats were already out in the studio and the screen door that she has propped up to keep cats out could be moved away and let her come and go freely — and while she was sitting in there this morning, she started thinking about how anyone can stand living in a prison cell without going out of their mind and felt very sorry for any of them if they don’t have doors where they can go freely out to sit underneath a tree.

She did think too though that six feet by eight feet is just about as much space as any one person really needs for feeling rather comfy and except for the control thing, she might be able to make herself happy in a little space like that. She’s often thought that she should get a little travel trailer, park it in the carport and convert the house into a sewing center except for all the city issues. The mudroom has served as a dressing room when she was doing alterations and many, many city workers came and went without asking any questions — a lot of cops wanting patches on their uniforms too — but plenty of city workers that might know lots about any codes that she was breaking. No one ever said a word.

It’s hard to believe that 1439 words can be written about one room, but since her days of reading Thoughts Of Home in House Beautiful eons ago and that being the main inspiration for her to want to start writing in the first place, she decided today would be a start of paying homage to that guiding force and every once in awhile now, she will put something in the category of Thoughts Of Home. She’ll try to do something better next time.