Colors of the Rainknot
Today, as is fairly frequent whenever I visit my parents, I got pulled into working at their office for a bit. I've worked there on and off since I was a kid, and one of their receptionists had called in sick, so could I maybe...? Yeah, sure, after all, I am Super-Tracy of the many useful skills! But I didn't really bring down any work-appropriate clothes for the trip. I mean, it's kind of cold, I'm a college student, and I'm on spring break, so, in my suitcase, t-shirts and jeans are reigning supreme. Luckily, I also have a younger sister who lives at home, so I took advantage of this prime opportunity to raid her wardrobe.
Now, my sister isn't a naturally tidy person, but she does have a habit of arranging things a certain way. When I opened up her closet, I found that she's taken the time and effort to go and arrange her closet chromatically. I'm the type to categorize things based on function rather than form, so I had to admit that her little textile rainbow was kind of neat to me. For so few items, it struck me as a perfectly reasonable system, but then I was reminded of this:
And I suddenly realized why I tend not to arrange things chromatically. It looks so cool, all the colors tidily arranged, but can you imagine what a pain it would be to try to remember the color of every book you own just so you could find them again? And this is just a private collection. Imagine if everyone thought this way! You'd have shelves that looked something like this:
That's San Francisco's Adobe Bookshop all rearranged and grouped by color for an art exhibit. It's the most gorgeous Technicolor nightmare a bibliophile could ever have. Can you imagine? That new bestseller you read about in the NYT? Yeah, I think it's over in the blue-greys over there or maybe the red-browns, I'm not sure. The Boyfriend is mildly colorblind, so I can only imagine what kind of a headache something like this could represent for him. Still, it looks pretty freakin' awesome.
I doubt I'll ever start categorizing anything other than crayons or pens by color, but it did make me stop and think a little about the choices we make and how they shape our perception of the world. I think it's a neat idea. I probably won't rearrange my closet after this, but maybe I'll go a little crazy and do something like arrange all of my books by typography.
Now, my sister isn't a naturally tidy person, but she does have a habit of arranging things a certain way. When I opened up her closet, I found that she's taken the time and effort to go and arrange her closet chromatically. I'm the type to categorize things based on function rather than form, so I had to admit that her little textile rainbow was kind of neat to me. For so few items, it struck me as a perfectly reasonable system, but then I was reminded of this:
And I suddenly realized why I tend not to arrange things chromatically. It looks so cool, all the colors tidily arranged, but can you imagine what a pain it would be to try to remember the color of every book you own just so you could find them again? And this is just a private collection. Imagine if everyone thought this way! You'd have shelves that looked something like this:
That's San Francisco's Adobe Bookshop all rearranged and grouped by color for an art exhibit. It's the most gorgeous Technicolor nightmare a bibliophile could ever have. Can you imagine? That new bestseller you read about in the NYT? Yeah, I think it's over in the blue-greys over there or maybe the red-browns, I'm not sure. The Boyfriend is mildly colorblind, so I can only imagine what kind of a headache something like this could represent for him. Still, it looks pretty freakin' awesome.
I doubt I'll ever start categorizing anything other than crayons or pens by color, but it did make me stop and think a little about the choices we make and how they shape our perception of the world. I think it's a neat idea. I probably won't rearrange my closet after this, but maybe I'll go a little crazy and do something like arrange all of my books by typography.