IN PRAISE OF YELLOW

While pausing over an unnecessary function it struck me that yellow is a lovely and memorable colour. The label-hue of the tin of Rattrays tobacco, contrasting with the two-tone finish of a Comoy pipe, reminded me of my dad's desk back in Valkenswaard, in daylight, during spring and summer.
And also a semi-subliminal suggestion of green and shade outside.

There were a lot of trees in the old neighborhood. During summer it was always shady. Only when they started to modernize the town did that change.

Yellow is beneficial to the psyche, and dominant in many bookshelves, due partly to the presence of National Geographic magazines. When someone has subscribed for several years the evidence takes up at least one row, sometimes two or more. And buying copies with interesting articles to augment the collection at second-hand bookstores adds to that.


Yes, I realize that what I'm saying does not compute. So many people only read about celebrities nowadays, and only on line, that concepts such as 'book shelf' and 'second-hand bookstore' are completely opaque.

Very well then. For those people: Christina Aquilera, Elton John, Ben Afleck, Kim Kardasian, Anne Hathaway, Beyoncé Knowles, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Jessica Alba are all MARRIED TO EACH OTHER!
As well as involved in a religious cannibalism cult headquartered at 1062 South Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles, where thousands of illegal aliens from Guatemala and Costa Rica have been EATEN.
They were deliciously basted with balsamic.

There, you happy now?

Oh all right, one more: Justin Bieber is actually a zombie.



Yellow is the colour of bright interiors in Naarden during the early sixties, daffodils in our garden, forsythia blooms in spring, cheerful vistas, the Spui Plein in Amsterdam during autumn, Indonesian foods, MacBaren's Virginia No. 1 (ready rubbed), imperial yellow porcelains from the Ching Dynasty, creamy amber, fallen ginkgo leaves along Clay between Leavenworth and Jones or down near the Ping Yuen projects in C'town, restaurants on Polk Street that welcome the peckish, street lights, deep porticoes of apartment buildings located on Washington, Jackson, and the stretch of Hyde Street in between, cozy living rooms behind a veil of fresh spring leafery, a bistro four blocks away where one might dine........

Unfortunately, it is also the dominant hue of several fast-food places, which ruin the attraction by plainness, ugly surfaces, and a greasy atmosphere made even more unappealing with a general reek of fryer funkum.

But ignore that! Think instead of golden turmeric, crisp lumpia, gulai ayam, ripe mangoes from Cebu, the sensual flesh interior of peaches, saffron rice, apricots, alder florets, Strelitzia, marigolds, chrysanthemum, and mirasol.

Someday I will have a study painted a warmer shade than ochre.
Yes, it will make my skin look a bit washed out.
Yellow hues do that to everyone.

But if I am the only person there, it will not matter.
The living room will be a variant of Sienna.
Sort of a vibrant brickish colour.
Flattering to others.




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