Anaranjado

An ode to orange.

For no particular reason, I've been really into it for the last year or so. It started with a shirt I've had forever but only recently discovered, if you know what I mean. Then it branched out into a new sweater, running shoes, a gargantuan spatula from the kitchen store at COPIA (specifically for flipping quesadillas, FYI), and now a stripey summer bedspread.

Even my business card for the literary magazine I'm helping a friend launch—more on that soon—will be the right shade of orange, and I didn't even have to ask. Our designer randomly assigned it to me. Sometimes things just work out.

One of my necklaces stolen in June was a beautiful oval carnelian that I found on my last trip to the homestead. I'm on a semi-vigilant quest to replace it.

Orange!

When I worked at UC Press, we published an elegant book of Pablo Neruda's odes. He didn't write one for orange, sadly, but he did manage to honor pretty much everything else you can think up. By way of sendoff, here's an excerpt from one of my favorites, Neruda's "Ode to My Socks":

Audacious socks,
my feet became
two woolen
fish,
two long sharks
of lapis blue
shot
with a golden thread,
two mammoth blackbirds,
two cannons,
thus honored
were
my feet
by
these
celestial
socks.