A Rainbow of Sensation

Color is a feeling as much as a visual phenomenon - even those without sight can experience aspects of its nature.

Blue is cold or merely cool, depending on much of the color there is. A dark shade can feel like ice cube raising goosebumps on your skin and sending you running for a sweater, while a lighter shade may make you a bit torpid, or melancholy, or even calm. Violet, an even shorter wavelength of light, blends in with the nighttime sky, absorbing the blackness of space until you can't distinguish one color from the other. Red burns like fire, setting your world ablaze, dominating and consuming everything it touches. It is the color of anger, a poker stabbing into your heart and turning your insides raw with its passage. It is also used to grab attention and indicate urgency. When the sun drops below the horizon for the night, it is the last color to remain, a piece of the day's heat, both literal and figurative, prickling the skin.

We respond to colors by emotion as much as by visual recognition. Colors paint our lives in formulations of who we are at the time.