Palette Of Emotion

It just occurred to me that true hatred is exactly like true love – all-consuming.

It’s a feeling worth experiencing. Of course, all of them are. There are those who run away from certain emotions that seem too dark or dangerous or ‘bad’. I say, what is a painting without the black lines to define it? And what is a song without the steady, brooding percussion or the sombre bass? So also, what is life without emotion? Or emotion, without the darkness?

I relate to emotion visually.

Laughter is bright, pale colours. Sunny yellow and sometimes blinding white.

Humiliation is a mottled dark green flecked with brownish-red.

Mischief is electric blue striped with pink pinstripes and shot with tiny yellow pinpricks.

Insecurity is a mud-brown cylinder with rust-coloured stripes. And it has little holes that ooze a sticky royal-blue something.

Adulation is gigantic waves of alternating scarlet and rust edged with greenish-yellow.

Glee is definitely bright orange and red and yellow balloons.

Fear is a ragged black cloth that’s threadbare in places and smudged white in places.

Peace is a silvery pool with traces of blue.

Anger is dark orange with navy-blue smudges fading inwards to red.

Rage is pure, undiluted blood-red.

Strangely enough, so is sexual passion.

Wrath, on the other hand, is black with a trace of maroon on the edges.

Mystery is midnight blue.

Happiness is like the air on a warm summer day. Ever so slightly tinted with pale lemon, sky-blue and flecked dusty brown and grey. Silver-lined and gold-flecked too.

And love? Love isn’t one colour. Love is like the super-adjustment that makes each bright colour brighter, each melancholy colour more livid, each pastel, more pallid, each dark colour, even darker….every single colour more of itself.

Hatred, quite similarly is like a shiny, transparent veneer that lies on top of the pallette. Except that is like tightly bound cling wrap that confines what it holds and displays it to full advantage. Or perhaps like a thin, hard sheath of ice around everything else.