WORD
I actually sat a couple hours meditating on this the other day, and kept gravitating towards science words like biota, calcification and grotto. They were all great, but a stretch to find meaning. I knew I needed a simple word, and so I chose particle...at least for now. To me that means being a tiny part of a whole, almost insignificant but with absolute ramifications on the whole. Though it makes me kind of uncomfortable, it is good for me to think of myself as a tiny part of the mess of humanity, with me being responsible to it, and it being responsible to me. I spent too much of my life as a rugged individualist--feeling overly special, but also different.

COLOR
I got an image of an Indonesian gold headdress, and I knew that was the color, though it is really not a color--more of a process. It is gold leaf or gilt, and appears throughout history and cultures. I suppose the nearest color would be yellow gold. Here I am showing Indonesian arts, Byzantine mosaic, and an unlabeled photo--perhaps European Renaissance or Baroque period. It is not so much decadent as transcendental--often associated with religion, it reminds us of the divinity that is just on the other side of the threshold.

They used to gild picture frames hundreds of years ago in Europe, and that would make you look more closely at the scene inside, spend a few more minutes on it.

If I gilded something in my house right now--the couch, the water filter pitcher, my purse--it would cease to look like an everyday object and instead remind me that the world is truly special.

This kind of gold will remind me in 2026 it is not all about practicality and to-do lists. It is just as important to be in the moment, acknowledge rituals, allow for divinity, etc. And remind me to stick to goals that are wholly impractical, like reading long, bucket-list literature.