Peeling the Orange: Top Half

It makes sense, I suppose, that in January, the deepest month of housebound winter, I would have the richest inner life.  This is the second January in a row that incredible inspiration and interlacing have sent me on a mysterious yet practical journey.

It all started the day I did my Epiphany house blessing.  Remember how I used a colored pencil because I didn't have any chalk?  Do you remember what color it was?  That's right, it was orange.  Why orange?  I didn't choose it for its significance, but mainly because it was the first light-colored pencil I came across.  Then later that day I found a poem that I wanted to print out and put on my wall for the year.  The only paper I had was bright orange, left over from a multi-colored pack I got a long time ago.  That was when I started thinking Hmmm.  Is this going to be an orange year? 

By now you know me well enough to see where this is headed.  Orange.  A color I've never thought much about, and all of a sudden, I'm surrounded by it.  I don't understand what it is about the blogosphere that seems to mystically corral themes into these little bays that I unsuspectingly swim into, but I like it.  And speaking of the blogosphere, it has not escaped my attention that Blogger's primary color is orange.  The combination of this with the orange pencil and paper immediately put it into mind that orange is my color for writing.

When I was homeschooling my oldest daughters, my very favorite thing to do was design unit studies.  There's just something about taking a theme and running with it, following where it leads, that satisfies me like nothing else.  But this is my first time with a color.  And what a journey it's been so far.  I can't even include all the places it's taken me, it's just too much.  And while it's fascinating to me, I doubt all of it would be to you.  Check out this clustering exercise I did with it though, and you'll get a sense of what I mean (you might even see your own name in this):

It's actually quite fitting that I did this, because clustering is a method of connecting and also dividing themes, and one of the main things I've realized about the meaning of the color orange is that it both divides and connects.

One of the most obvious ways that orange divides is in the lines down the middle of the road.  A more symbolic way that was brought to my attention recently was in a post at Diamonds in the Sky With Lucy, in which she described an experience of visiting with "prisoners in orange jump suits, some angry and entitled – others grateful to be alive and willing to transform one day at a time – some both. The only thing separating them and me is the color of their suit." Interestingly, this observation on Lucy's part indicates that she ultimately found a way to connect with the prisoners.

I've already mentioned writing, which is a major way of connecting for me, and also Blogger's prevalence of orange.  The Internet in general seems to favor orange, and of course, is a very popular tool for connecting with others these days. Another example of orange's connectivity would be school buses, which connect students with the school.  Orange is a major color of transportation (a form of connecting us to places) in general, is it not? 

Which brings up Eryl at The Kitchen Bitch Ponders, who posted about her recent experience of being on morphine in the hospital and finding herself in an "orange wind tunnel."  Another kind of transportation altogether.  I'll come back to this in my next post.

After reading Lucy's and Eryl's posts, the orange thing moved more to the forefront of my conscious contemplation.  And then I happened to read Life of Pi, a book which I spontaneously picked off my shelf one day, knowing nothing about it except that it was supposed to be really good, and guess what?  It's about a guy stuck with an orange tiger on a lifeboat full of orange things.  The narrator (who is Hindu, Christian, and Muslim) discusses this:

It seems orange--such a nice Hindu color--is the color of survival because the whole inside of the boat and the tarpaulin and the life jackets and the lifebuoy and the oars and most every other significant object aboard was orange.  Even the plastic, beadless whistles were orange.

Oh boy.  I could gleefully (and I think orange is the color of glee) write a whole paper about the symbolism of orange in this incredible novel.  But for our purposes, I will just point out that the presence of these orange objects on the boat (with the exception of the tiger) is for the sole aim of connecting the survivor(s) with a rescuer.  Also, and this does play into the novel quite a bit, a lifeboat can be a kind of prison, meaning that the function of the orange objects is the survivor's liberation.

One direction this novel brought me was toward tigers.  We are actually about to enter the Chinese Year of the Tiger, which gives me pause.  I thought about one of my favorite paintings of Father Bill:

Long story short, Sadhu Sundar Singh was an Indian Sikh who, at fifteen, had a profound vision of Jesus after having previously violently persecuted Christians. He immediately converted to Christianity and then spent the rest of his life talking passionately and poetically about Christ to anyone who would listen.  He also wrote, mostly parables.  His life was marked by strange and mystical occurrences, some of which are documented and some which are considered legend.  This painting depicts what Father Bill referred to as Singh's mystical meeting with the tiger.  Singh often used the tiger as a symbol of the violence and primal voraciousness in human nature.

Tigers are symbols of many things, but one of the most obvious is danger.  The association of orange with danger is also widespread.  Let's not forget about Agent Orange or the Orange Order in Northern Ireland.  Orange may be the color of survival, but it's also a color of war, violence, and even death.  It's the primary color of Halloween, after all. 

Orange is therefore also the color of fear, but this can, with a different perspective, be translated into alertness, noticing.  Which brings me back to the orange on the lifeboat.  In order to connect the survivor with a rescuer, attention must be drawn to the survivor's vehicle.  This is also the purpose of the many orange signs and symbols that exist on the road.  Pay attention, approach with caution.  (Interestingly, the orange traffic light - I'm sorry, it is NOT yellow - not only signifies caution, but it divides - connects? - the stop and the go.  It asks you to decide which you're going to do.  Will you speed up or come to a halt?) 

Another way of expressing alertness is wakefulness.  And isn't there something in us that associates orange with mornings, when the orange sun comes up and we drink our orange juice?  Then consider the color of a Buddhist monk's robe, garb which signifies a life of dedication to spiritual awakening.

So, putting aside the more personal and tangential directions I've taken this, let's review for a moment:  Orange (so far) symbolically relates to:

• connection/division
• imprisonment/freedom
• danger/safety
  
• survival/death
  
• transportation (movement/stopping)
• fear/wakefulness
  

I have no grand summary of Ultimate Meaning here, but it's been a boatload of fun playing with these ideas and images.  I'm beginning to think that orange is the color of synchronicity/serendipity/interlacing.

This journey actually has led me to some very practical applications, but I don't want to take you there just yet.  Because, let's face it:  orange, maybe more than anything else, is silly.  I mean, Tigger's orange, as my son pointed out.

And speaking of silly, here's one of my all-time favorite jokes:
Q:  What does an orange cone on the side of the road mean?
A:  "Psychedelic witch embedded in asphalt."

I'll leave you with this, which I dedicate to Dan Gurney, who reintroduced the poetic Tanka form to me recently:

Lines Written on the Hem

of a Buddhist Monk's Robe

Just because we know

that orange rhymes with nothing,

denotates two ways,
segments and defines the road;
orange is a sweet koan.

Me in my orange bandanna.
I'm counting Tanka syllables.