iguana
Chartreuse. The color of your creativity.
That phrase pinged around my head this morning. I wrote it on an index card, attributed it to L.L. Barkat, and pinned it to my bulletin board. But then I wondered, “Did she really say that—like that?”
Laura Barkat has unofficially mentored me for several years. Last spring I hired her as my official life coach, and we spent an intense month together while she helped me uproot and replant my writing life. She saw abilities in me that I didn’t recognize—like a talent for journalistic-style and humor writing and a penchant for adventure and taking on dares. Who knew? (Well, I guess I discovered the daring part back when I had that fling with T.S. Eliot.)
I told her stories about life in the little three-room (four if you count the bathroom, five if you count the porch) house where I grew up in the 50s and 60s. I told her how my mischievous—and sometimes rebellious—mother had painted the kitchen cupboards chartreuse and how one day when my parents were gone I used the leftover paint on the walls of our “screen porch.” I don’t know why we called it a “screen porch.” Maybe just because it was enclosed but unheated. It also served as the cottage-motel office and a place to store fishing poles and tackle boxes, boots and winter clothes.
Continued over at Tweetspeak Poetry with monks, home design, I Love Lucy, and more on color.
