Red Light, Green Light, One Two Three

Remember that game? It was a schoolyard game when I was a kid, and I recalled the above phrase as I was folding my new hand and dish towels onto their rack in my kitchen yesterday afternoon.

I took down my red towels, and put up my new green ones. Spring, country, moss-colored luxury. Red light = Stop. Green light = Go. It felt rather metaphorical.

I’d bought the red ones several years ago for my last apartment, to go with the black, white, and red theme I wanted to have. And I carried them with me to this apartment. But, yesterday as I stood in the abundant radiance of Bed Bath & Beyond… I was attracted to the green. Apparently, with my few other purchases yesterday, I am moving from that former color scheme to a new one in my kitchen: mossy green, blond wood, and white. I like it.

It feels like spring. It also feels like change.

To me, the red now feels stark, instead of sexy or modern as it used to. The green feels soft, and cozy, and just a bit cheeky, like it’s about to tell you the punch line to a roll-your-eyes joke.

Last year around this time, I was invited to read some poetry of mine at a friend’s art show opening. At the time, I was in the thick of the awfulness of break-up land, and would rather slice my eyeballs with a razor than produce art. For me, art is a product of health and at least some healthy passion – be that anger, joy, or even contentment. As it was, I was quite depressed and lethargic, and “producing” anything felt like a Herculean effort. But I agreed.

During that time, as I was aware that I was not in any mood to create, that I was still in the contracted, inverted phase of winter, I noticed the copse of tall trees that I see out my kitchen window. Every day I see them as I write my morning pages, tall over the building next door, at least a hundred feet tall, and observe them going through the seasons of the year.

One of those March mornings, I noticed the trees were beginning to bud. I gasped. I’m not ready! I’m not ready for production, expansion, greenery. I want stark, barren, lifeless.

But, bud the trees did, and read poetry I did.

This week, I got an email from a woman at school inviting me to again participate in their annual open mic at the end of the month. And this year as I watch the trees begin to bud again, bolstered by their augur of Spring, I identify with their quiet expansion, and I answer, yes.

I can’t wait to see what I’ll write. :)