Why LivingWithPurple?

Purple has been my favorite color for longer than I can remember – for so long that it was my favorite when I still liked pink (before I stopped liking pink, and then started again because every color has its place, and because bright colors are exciting).  But it’s more than a favorite.  I’m almost militant about it.  In high school I wrote a pair of poems about it (you may be able to tell which pink phase this was, as well):

Ode to Purple (Anti-ode to Pink)

I didn’t want pink walls, but I got them anyway.
I wanted purple, because I like purple.
Pink is so….feminine. Not like me.
Purple is blue and red. Both very asexual colors.
There’s something sickening about pink,
like cotton candy, or bubble gum.
Maybe carnation. It just seems so….
I don’t know….fake.
But purple. Purple makes you look deeper.
Makes you look for that red and blue.
Makes you wonder just how two colors,
so different, can combine to form
such a perfectly royal color.

 

Ode to Purple (A Revision)

I never liked pink.
It always seemed like such a
fake color, imitating real,
like bubble gum or cotton candy.
I liked purple,
the majestic, royal color,
a combination of two essentials,
blood and water,
red and blue.
Purple makes you look deeper.
But I got pink.
Pink walls, pink carpet, pink covers.
All day I looked at little girl
falsity of roses and ribbons;
they made me sick, thinking
Is this who I am?

Pink isn’t even in the rainbow.
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue
and look, there it is,
the shade of perfection, purple.
Purple is in the sky all day long,
all night, in the rainbow, in clouds,
in flowers, in hair, in cars, in jewelry,
in crowns and robes for kings.
Pink just can’t even compare.
I see pink and think,
yuck, Mary Kay,
lacrosse girls,
brides maids,
tradition.

~*~

I’m not a poet.  I thought I might be at one point, but I quickly disillusioned myself (mostly by reading lots of poetry and realizing a) that I don’t particularly like reading poetry, and b) that the poetry I do like to read is so far beyond what I could write that I probably shouldn’t try) and then stopped writing almost entirely.  But that’s beside the point.  These may not be good poems, but they show you exactly how I feel about purple: it’s the most important color in the world.

If I could be purple, I would be.  Have you seen X-Men? I want to be Mystique, except in purple.  I want to have purple hair.  85% of my clothing is purple. 95% of my nail polish is purple.  When I was a rebellious teenager and I dyed my hair, I usually dyed it purple (or green, or blue, or red, or black…).  When I was a slightly less rebellious almost-grown-up and I dyed my hair, I would search out the most purple of the semi-realistic grown-up hair dyes.  I drew pictures of “Purple Woman” and imagined what would happen when she took a bath, and all the water turned purple like tie-dye.

This blog isn’t about purple.  But it’s written by me, and you can’t get to know me without getting to know a little about purple, and what it’s like to live with it.