Month: October 2016

May 19, 1991

October 24, 2016

Yesterday, at supper, Crystal was telling us (the family – oh yeah, Keith wasn’t there and he didn’t even get in trouble when Crystal would have)…

                                                           This is interesting to me. Crystal, my older sister, was much more mainstream than my younger brother, Keith, and I. We were big nerds and rarely left the house. We were very self-sufficient so our parents mostly ignored us. My sister did normal teenage things like party with her friends, so my parents actually monitored her activities. But what I find interesting is that I noticed the disparity in the ways my siblings were treated, and seemed to find it unfair. I don’t remember noticing or caring.

…that she wanted to use the video camera to do a show for her French class. She was saying the names of the characters in the show and couldn’t remember her character’s name, so I go “was it Johanne?” and she goes “yes, how did you know?” Pretty neat, huh? My mom thinks I have ESP. I hope I do that would be cool.

                                                        *Eye roll* I was obsessed with Star Trek: The Next Generation at this age. I was a huge fan of Lieutenant Commander Deanna Troi, who had telepathic powers. I really wanted to be able to read other people’s minds, because social situations were very difficult for me. (I realize now that this was due to social anxiety). I was always worried that others were judging me so the ability to know what they were thinking would have been helpful. How disappointed I would have been to listen in on their thoughts and realize they were only thinking about themselves, as do we all.

Look at back of this diary.

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                                                          On the last page of the diary, I literally wrote “back of this diary”, and drew a half-assed fairy. ???

We just took the carpet out of my room (me and mom) and we put in a small one, and we put up my drawing table. It looks good. And the table is a handy thing, I like it. I hope Keith comes home soon because I’m bored and I want him to see my room. I think I’ll do some drawing now. Bye.  NY Art-Rejel <— rule in German, meaning art rules and with the NY in front it means Nicole Yager’s art rules and Nicole Yager is the ruler of art. It’s my new logo and I think it’s pretty cool, don’t you?!?!?

No, Nicole. No it’s not cool. It’s deeply embarrassing and ridiculous, and a bit random and weird. I mean, why German? I guess because my last name is German I took some mild interest in Deutschland. Thankfully I never revealed this silly “logo” to anyone else and promptly forgot all about it until now. And now, it shall be buried once again.

Orange

October 19, 2016

 

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Orange is the colour of joy, optimism, and cheerfulness. It is youthful without being infantilizing and warm without being hot. Apparently orange also stimulates the appetite which is no doubt why it’s often used in decor within fast food restaurants. I imagine many children have asked themselves why oranges, the fruit, are named after the colour, while strawberries are not called reds, and bananas are not called yellows. But in fact, the colour orange is named after the fruit. In the before times, the colour was called yellow-red, and the word orange as we now know it came into use in the 16th century. It was derived from the Sanskirt naranga, which literally means “orange tree”.

Orange is also the colour of autumn, and of the 1970s, so even though an autumnal palette simultaneously evokes warmth and the crispness of fall, it can also cause traumatic flashbacks to shag carpeting, brutalist architecture, and questionable fashions.

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Where I live, in Montreal, there is a metro station called Lionel-Groulx, which opened in 1978. This explains why the floor is patterned in circles of varying shades of orange. It is extremely trippy to look at and can even cause vertigo if you stare at it for too long, which you will because it is so mesmerizing. For my orangespiration board I brought Casimir, the French dinosaur from the ’70s, to Lionel-Groulx for a photo shoot and no pairing has ever felt more natural. But let’s not assume orange must remain in the ’70s, where it was deployed for evil. Orange is undeniably fun but can also be modern and edgy when done right. I won’t claim that I’ve successfully made orange edgy, but I’ve made it cute, and for me that’ll have to be close enough.

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I made this maxi dress because I wanted something to cover my legs in the summer so as to avoid wearing sunblock. As someone who is both anemic and Scandinavian, I cannot be out in the sun for more than two minutes without bursting into flames, but sunblock is gross, and I’m lazy. Turns out though that maxi dresses are kind of difficult to walk in. They’re great for standing still while the fabric sways in the breeze but when you’ve got somewhere to be a long skirt can trip you up, quite literally, especially if you’ve not hemmed it properly. How did women do it back in the day? I guess they were so busy being considered the property of men that getting their legs wrapped up in their skirts was the least of their problems.

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