Trompe l'oeil

Lots of walking of late. Can't believe I hadn't passed these doors before. Or maybe I had, before they were repainted.

Someone chose this colour. But why? What informed their decision?

Most houses these days, like most cars and trucks, are painted unobtrusive colours. Every now and then you come across an orange house and you wonder why.

Last summer I saw someone in their front yard planting a monkey puzzle tree. The house behind them -- an Edwardian Builder like the house I live in -- was painted a pumpkin orange (semi-gloss), with a lavender trim (latex). I stopped to rub my eyes.

"Hi!" said the planter, smiling.

"A monkey tree!" was my reply.

"A monkey puzzle tree," she said getting to her feet, brushing the dirt from her knees, still smiling.

"I stand corrected."

"You do! Got something in your eye?"

"Yes, your house."

She laughed. "You don't like the colours, do you."

"Well," I began, "it's not that I don't like them so much as I wonder what went into the decision to paint a house with them."

"I like them, is all." But she wasn't done. Nor did she seem willing to share the decision-making process. "What are you, an art critic or something?"

"As a matter of fact I am," I said, seeing no way out of it. 

"Oh yeah, who do you write for?" she said to the monkey puzzle tree.

"Well, first and foremost I write for myself," I said. 

"So you're not an art critic," she deadpanned.

"I write art criticism, essays on art, and sometimes I write with artists who make films, videos--"

"Well, I'm an artist," she said sternly. "A painter."

"I can see that from your house," I said.

"Only an art critic wouldn't get these colours," she said with some provocation.

"Only an art critic would wonder why you chose to paint a house with them, and to what effect," was my reply.

"Fuck you, creep! Get the fuck out of my neighbourhood!" And with that she turned and walked down the path between her house and the neighbour's. 

The garage up top is not far from the house I just described. Only now the house has been repainted. A neutral colour this time, its monkey puzzle tree a wizened, dried out stick.