On Painting Metal Chairs

The Day

Air conditioners are humming. Every house up and down the block has a mechanical whir completely idiosyncratic and wholly identifiable. Today humanity’s faux weather machines barely keep up with nature’s passion for the warm and sultry.

Cars and trucks roll by. Loud exhausts and grinding gears provide the bass rhythm. The birds on this green plot, and those in the next yard, and the yard after that, tweet and trill and whistle in descending circular melodies. Their songs along with the noise from a moderate breeze now shaking verdant leaves on ancient trees are the melody and harmony of today’s unique, one night only, symphony performed in an American suburban backyard.  

Yellow

Solitary yellow chair, quite bright and new this day. 95 Fahrenheit so I sit in the shade and not in the still drying yellow chair. When dry from a full can of Rustoleum, the yellow chair will be a beacon marking each day’s transition from midday to midnight.  We need a constant point like the yellow chair to fix our gaze on and keep us anchored to the here and now. It is a visual prayer for awareness, compassion, and understanding. No fears, no anger, just wakefulness to a world that surrounds us and holds us close.

Red

Who should sit in the red chair? Not a timid person. Not a person who doubts their every action. No, the red chair belongs to someone who feels a burning desire to claim it. To properly take a seat upon the red chair one must be filled with passion and vitality. The red chair looks forward with no regret for the past. The red chair demands you look beyond the horizon for what wonders will come next. Perhaps, the red chair belongs to you.

Green

The green chair asks not who should sit in it but when one should sit in it.  The color of summer leaves at peak green, this chair is a mechanism of mystical transport.  The green chair must be used when an escape from the same old same old is demanded. One sitting in this chair may visit the hills of Ireland, the fields of Brittany, the forests of British Columbia or just maybe the vineyards of the Douro River valley all without twitching muscle or scanning a boarding pass. When you sit in the green chair and close your eyes your spirit is free to fly to wherever and whenever it is that brings you to joy, to those places which elicit a gentle smile.

Blue

So blue, so dark, almost a capture of the essence of late evening, the blue chair is for those needing solitude.  Capturing the spirit of early night’s peace, this chair is for those who are tired, who ache, who need a refreshing drink of ice-cold water to revive their wearied souls. The blue chair does not demand, instead it accepts and comforts. Worries and fears, apprehensions and suspicions are banned from the minds of the blue chairs occupants. The blue chair is clear water in a river flowing to an infinite and endless calm sea.

Take a seat my friend.