On Color & Everyday Patterns
Ooh, boy, Deidra and Laney Rob a Train made me tear up so much. Here we are at the intersection of race, class, and humor, and there was such a good spirit in the film. Kudos for a feel-good film that was more light-hearted than other films I've watched lately.
I've really missed that. The cheeriness of youthful triumph.
Anyway, I spent the day on an odd note: came to my morning class to find it canceled, tried to figure out my poorly-drawn map of New York for practice, chatted with a professor before discovering she brought a puppy with her.
I spent the day staring at the clouds, my pens--everything that could bloom with color, could create shapes and patterns. My favorite clouds are lenticular, the pens I adore are 0.5 mm or thinner; I've long been fond of earthy hues, but recently my taste in stationery has grown more colorful. And that's for the better, in my opinion. We spend so much of our lives trying to find the right Instagram theme, the right wardrobe combination, and we end up never being able to settle because our world is filled with such a bright spectrum of colors.
This is a story about patterns.
People are organized. It might not be in the way they decorate their room, or decorate their thoughts, but there's this organization built from aesthetics, from hopes and dreams. People might not be organized in the weight of their reality, but for many, their hopes are concrete in the reality they dream in.
I know so many people who hope to have an apartment. Just an apartment, they don't dare dream of a house. They dream of softer comforts, like sifting through soil to find the perfect combination for a balcony garden. They dream of decorating a place they call their own, where they can search for a timeless movie they've loved since they were children should they ever have a bad day. It's such a solid dream, an apartment and financial security and a cup of the familiar and the classic.
The undergraduate history lounge has been so welcoming lately.
Earlier this morning it was bright & sunny before the shade shifted.
Managed to get an understanding of all the reading I have to catch up on,
which has been overwhelming me for the past few days.
Today I dreamt of a new approach to color--new, at least, to what I've always known. I've preferred shades of brown for the longest time. Lace has also been a priority (and honestly, still is). Nowadays I'm more open to shades of green and a variety of floral. I like to think floral paved the way for everything, swept up preconceived notions of what an earthy style is like, and reminded me that yes, an earthy style includes pops of color, too.
It has been abysmal trying to love my selfies lately given the glare in my glasses,
but I'm working on it. I'm working on digging that confidence I had two years ago.
It's easier to feel happy when you realize that the world is so beautiful. I haven't been feeling this as of much lately, and I don't know if it's a phase or if it's the undercurrent of something wrong with me emotionally. So on the days that I can stand wispy clouds & the tide of students below, I try to enjoy it. I had the opportunity to smile so many times today, whether it was at messages from my friends or new searches on Instagram, or even writing down my plans in a catastrophe of Staedtler inks.
A bit of everything, to remind me where I've been & where I'm going.
Not everyone has the opportunity to decorate their walls the way they like. Sometimes it only stretches to planners or bullet journals. I have the privilege of being able to stare at my wall and find all sorts of gorgeous, wonderful pops of colors and styles. My taste in colors & patterns seems to reflect itself a lot more on my decorations, and I'm content with that. I don't have the leisure (or sense of color compatibility) to match colors in fabrics, so my walls are the only way I can relay these hopes of mine--I want to be this colorful, I want to be this graceful and vivid and ever-changing, and that's how I try to approach each day, even if most days I'm not feeling it.
I'd have the worst of days and I'd see my wall, and bam: there's that reminder that once upon a time, I had a really vivid goal of what I wanted life to be, and since I'm made of all my past selves, there's still a touch of that person waiting to come back.
I thought I would be bothered by my smiles, my laughs, especially frozen in smiles. In seventh grade my teacher told me I had a really nice smile, and I've kept that to heart, even if I've been bothered by the way my top lip leans back, or the way my tongue presses against my teeth. And you know what? That's all really adorable. I've got cheeks with inconsistent blush patterns, I've got eyes with inconsistent sparkle, and that's just it. Humanity is inconsistent, nature is inconsistent, but that's because we are constantly moving. We are constantly moving, reaching new paths and finding new roads to travel onto, so don't blame yourself if you can't change. Patterns are varied, you are varied. We're composed from every color stream we've grown up with. Some show this more than others, some prefer a minimalist look for clarity. I don't blame them for their preference. If that helps organize their thoughts, that's okay. The color is in the smile, in the twinkle in their eye. The color is in their favorite foods and the cinematographic sequences they've loved as kids.
Patterns, really, are just a colorful reflection of humanity.
Don't be afraid to love color. It's a part of you.
Keep shining.
Yours Sincerely,
Dianne
