Color Spirituality: From Color to the Mind of Color

When we look at the world form shapes our view. Secondarily and not always far behind we see color. Prevalence whitewashes inquisitiveness and so at long last nearly sixty in years I begin to investigate color theory.

The web is awash with sites that introduce color theory: hues, values, saturation, tints, tones, shades, complements, harmony, primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary colors, etc. This is essential information in understanding colors.

As important and more difficult to find on the web is theory-in-practice. After studying the theoretical I can better understand that tree and the shades of green in the form of leaves and the formlessness of the leaves’ shadows.

Integration of this information, integration of the theory requires another step in ones personal involvement. I’m looking for a website that will take me further into color theory by doing what Nature is doing.

On a beautiful clear morning with bright sun in the middle of summer the leaves are a rich green where the sun’s light reflects directly. Underneath there are shadows in relationship to the neighboring leaves. As the sun moves, as clouds pass underneath the sun, the hues, values, and saturations shift. This is also true watching the leaves and shadows from early Spring through Summer. How is this translated through color theory? This is the color theory-in-practice I seek on the web.

Polish

NYC is often considered a very unique place to live and work. This uniqueness seems most often to be viewed either as highly refined or bizarrely out-of-touch, depending upon whether or not you live here. I’d like to present a third view — NYC as a microcosm of the world and where we’re going. NYC as overcrowded, overbuilt, overconsumed, overhyped, over-the-top, etc. This doesn’t discount the first two views, but subsumes them.

It’s seems likely that the world is becoming more like the bizarrely out-of-touch NYC than the highly refined, mostly because the latter is a gross exaggeration of NYC and the former isn’t. Refinement exists in citadels only. This is a dirty city. Leave your apartment window open for a week during the summer. But you can’t. Your windows are sealed. It’s a price you pay for refined living.

You’ve got to have a plan for navigating the city’s coarseness. Step outside your fortification and your beautiful shoes are likely to get dirty; you’ve got to dress down to walk the streets. So you take a cab and tiptoe between the curb and your destination fortress; a plush club, bar, or restaurant. When you come out, the plan is implemented in reverse. The coarseness is ever-encroaching. It’s elemental to city life; refinement isn’t.

Then there are the people. There are wonderful, generous, kind people here. But how do you find them? They probably aren’t your neighbors, so there isn’t much conversation in apartment hallways. You probably don’t work with them, though drinks are fine with coworkers; after a few, you don’t really know what you or they are saying anyway. Intimacy is a rare and invaluable commodity. Those relationships are secured like your navigational plan. You weave between thousands of people to get to your friends. You ignore thousands of people as you overlook the city’s dirt.

I’m not really writing about refinement and intimacy. The point of this diatribe is the thousands and the dirt. Actually it’s not. It’s about the navigation, the discounting, the avoidance. These are the things that proliferate as more people crowd into a space. But they’re like your shadow, like a photographic negative, like a vacuum. They go unnoticed or at least unacknowledged. Which means more and more of your life is walled out, leaving less on the inside. That’s why the hollowness becomes more pronounced and why you have to move quicker, laugh louder, spend more. It’s why you have to accept mind-numbing as a given in your life. And why, as you get older, you wonder what happened to what was lost.

Here’s the kicker. NYC is a microcosm of the world and where we are is where the rest of the world is going. It doesn’t have to be this way. But it is. It’s been escalating, in waves, along with the quality of our polish.

Small Potatoes

Humans can adjust to nearly anything. Certainly on the scale of human experience, adjusting to the Parking Dance is small potatoes. Sure, it takes time, but if you’re work is flexible a lot of it can be done just as easily while sitting in the car.

So … Monday/Thursday, Tuesday/Friday. All other days of the week are gratis. Begin in the latest Tuesday/Friday spot. Every Tuesday and Friday, move it to an earlier time slot. When you get to the earliest Tuesday/Friday slot, your next move is to the latest Monday/Thursday spot. Move it to an earlier time slot every Monday and Thursday. That’s the dance.

When you are in that earliest Monday or Thursday spot, move the car to a meter for a few hours on the very next Tuesday or Friday morning. Feed the meter until just before 12:30 pm then move the car into an 11:30 – 1:00 pm Tuesday/Friday spot.

Whatever time slot, if possible, always arrive a half hour before the end of the street cleaning period to avoid parking competition.

That’s the dance! Any questions?

Continuing the Dance

I’ll start with a bonus point. In recent years, Wifi has made the Parking Dance much more tolerable. It’s nearly always possible to find an unsecured network. At the moment, I’m in my car, the street cleaner has passed, and I’m waiting ten more minutes for the legal free parking period to begin. I just moved from a Monday/Thursday 11:00 – 12:30 pm spot to a Monday/Thursday 9:30 – 11:00 am spot.

You see, I had to move the car before the street cleaner arrived at 11:00 am today. One option was to sit in the car until 12:30 pm, move the car for the street cleaner, then pull back into my spot after it had passed. The option I chose was to move into an earlier time slot. I picked up my car at 10:15 and arrived at my current spot a few minutes later. Because I arrived early enough, a little over a half hour before the end of the parking period, there were only a few cars waiting to park on this block. Voila! No competition for a space. The street cleaner had already passed, so I pulled in and now … only three minutes before I’m free to leave.

Back in a bit.

The Parking Dance

It’s probably the same in any city. There is free parking on many streets with a caveat — the street signs detailing the hours for street cleaning. Your car can not be in that spot during those hours. If it is, count on a parking ticket. Even if the street cleaner passes early within that period of time, do not leave your car early. You will be ticketed. Remain in your car until the very … last … minute. You might even wait an extra minute. Then you are free to leave until the next street cleaning period.

In NYC, my experience is primarily in Manhattan, the street cleaning block of time is an hour and a half. That’s a long time to remain in your car. It seems longest during really hot or really cold days. But you needn’t offer up the full time to the parking gods. There’s a trick. It’s called “The Parking Dance.” It can cut your commitment by nearly two-thirds. Here’s how to shuffle through it.

First, limit your dance to a specific section of the city. Let’s take the Upper East Side for our example. That covers the area from 59th Street to 110th Street, but we’ll focus on a smaller piece, from 62nd to 96th between 1st and 5th Avenue.

There are five different time zones: 11:30 – 1:00 pm, 11:00 – 12:30 pm, 9:00 – 10:30 am, 8:30 – 10:00 am, 8:00 – 9:30 am. I listed them in the order of the dance’s steps. First you park in the 11:30 – 1:00 pm spot. You move to the 11:00 – 12:30 pm spot. From there to the 9:00 – 10:30 am and so forth.

But knowing the steps is only one part of the dance. You must also know the street cleaning days for these narrow your options. Street cleaning occurs on Mondays and Thursdays on one side of the street and on Tuesdays and Fridays on the other side of the street. To dance the dance … oops. Gotta go dance. Back in a bit.