Color theory
Riffing on yellows and blues that fill my days in a new city. And 5 recommendations.
The days here alternate in an exact pattern: rainygray, sunnywarm, rainygray, sunnywarm. Every time I strip away some layers, the temperature drops again. False spring, I think. I hear from locals that the pollen is over-the-top, make a mental note to re-up my allergy medication.
My first spring in the Deep South, I stepped outside one morning to find the cars were coated in egg yolk paint. Not paint, though. Pollen. I’d never seen such a thing. And so much did I see it that my left eye — just the left — was moved to tears for a week straight. A half-crying woman in the South. The allergist gave me an understanding head nod and explained how there were two ways of having allergies, and offered a second prescription to cover my existing sneezy blind spot.
Yellow here is the sudden bursts of daffodils calling to you with mouths like gramophones — in people’s front yards, on the hillside along the highway where our car breaks down in the rain. The memory of all the miles she survived is drenched in golden light: amber, California, sunrise, stoplight kisses until the car behind honks.
My yellow fanny pack hanging by the front door feels aggressively optimistic some days. Yellow through the heart of the Pride flags hung in our neighbor’s back patio, flitting in the breeze like prayers. In the squirrel’s belly fur as it scratches a back-ear itch, one questioning eye on me at all times. The Valentine’s Day flower exploding in my hand three weeks later. This is what draws the eye on those rainygray days.
We have to stop talking about the rain. It’s not LA anymore. Fill the spaces with other things, like…Like what? I haven’t learned the city’s small talk preferences. I eavesdrop on the train to feel it out, but mostly hear the grating backflip of one loud TikTok blending into the next, or half of a phone call, or nothing at all. Occasionally someone walks by flexing: You know what I mean? When someone’s on the phone but spitting something vicious, a good soundbite, a power play meant for the audience around them more than for the person on the other end of the line. They want you to know they’re winning the argument, to be on their side.
“He just sleeps with people to make friends,” I hear a passerby say as he struts past me on the train platform. I gasp without meaning to. Whenever I catch people loudly gossiping about friends in public, I think of those tweets (“If your name is Taylor and your friends are at this bar in the West End, they’re talking mad trash about you right now!“). My mom says when your ear starts ringing it means someone’s talking about you.
The buzzed head of one of my fellow passengers catches my eye on a Saturday night. Blue hair, cropped gloriously close to the scalp so it’s like a glowing blue halo. Ears bedecked in shiny hoops over a faux fur coat, a book in hand, and long eyelashes batting at someone eccentric across the way. Electric blue woven through someone else’s braids in the next car. Nothing’s oceanic here. Not the river and not the blues. It’s 6 p.m. sky, everyday jeans, the museum stickers thumbprinted on a city trash can. Practical. Ann Peebles humming in my ears, I-can’t-stand-the-rain blue. Overnight rainstorm delivering cleansing, earth-saturating blue. Making way for coming greens.
Recommendations
The origin story of the Seinfeld theme song. Ever wonder what those bubble-popping noises are?
Culture Digested, Divorce Season: Why personal narratives on marriage and its demise are still falling short.
Haley Nahman’s return to Substack after having a baby is a gutting, moving portrayal of early parenthood.
Alicia Kennedy is writing a food memoir and is deep in memory work, rejointing fragments.
Questlove interviewed Brittany Howard about her career, her new album and more. In a testament to her genius, Howard said the way she found fellow musicians in her rural Alabama hometown was by teaching herself to play various instruments and then tutoring classmates.
Have a great week,
Isa
Rummaging is written by Isa Cueto and edited by Annie Cappetta. To support our work, subscribe and share.