One can easily look at my right middle finger next to the fingernail and deduce I use a pen
or pencil a lot. But that doesn’t make me a writer. Writing stories and allegories, prose and poems, fiction and non-fiction come from the heart, mind and imagination. The fingers of my hand have been the instruments that have penned some of these things when my inspiration was active with life that was full of tumult, happiness and just plain curiosity.
In my youth I drew pictures of mostly sketches and cartoons. I tried painting, but could not get the hang of it. In my mid-twenties I began to form letters into words from the mind-art my soul wanted to paint. Drawing with stories is about as difficult sometimes as making an image of something you see.
The world is a big place. The military took me places I’d never expected to see. States and countries out there in this world have such different colors of people and culture. We, as a people, paint this world with what comes from our being. Some paint pastels of compassion. Some paint sharp intrusive colors of their will upon others. There are people who paint bright slick colors of happiness, yet we will still have some who paint the world with flat colors of depression and gloom.
When I got to my fifties I began to paint a mishmash of images from my mind. Some were flat colors, some were glossy. There were mountainous stories, but when you have mountains in your life, you also have lush valleys. Greens, yellows and blues of all hues stretched out across that decade of my life. Unfortunately there were some dark greys, reds and a smattering of black. I found life didn’t necessarily have the defined lines of color, but more like a splash of color thrown against life mixing together to make a blend of life I had not expected.
I gave up life as it was and put up a new canvas. The old painting I’d worked on for all my life till that time now sits in the dark corner of the room away from the light upon a new canvas. The sun shines brightly on it as my mind imagines the new images I’ve painted. Life and love have new meaning.
What colors do you use to paint the world around you?
Livin' Small 
Thanks to you — you can color me happy…
I can see that in your smile.
Funny – I was thinking something along these lines this morning. I wasn’t thinking in terms of colors, but more about what kind of voice I’ve used over the years I’ve been blogging. But I like the idea of writing being a way to paint with words. Sometimes I look back on my stuff and see something just utterly ridiculous and I’m embarrassed. Other times I read something and think it’s amazing, and wonder that I actually wrote it. So I was wondering if I read through all of my writings from the past six to eight years, would I sound happy, poetic, depressed? Maybe silly? Or inspirational? Probably some of each and that would make sense. Even if one generally feels happy, there are bound to be highs and lows to the days that make up the span of time. As it should be. I hope that most of my colors are bright and cheery, but I won’t fault myself if there are some dark and flat ones interspersed among all of my words.