steps away from turning over a new leaf

place: 2600 block of Hastings St E (CAN)
mood: downpour

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for TUESDAY 2 OCTOBER 2007: let it rain

place: a dimly-lit corner of another unidentified alley, Granville Island (CAN)
mood: gloomy

The commonly heard, "feeling blue", is a colourful expression a person may use when they are experiencing anything from saddness to a more serious depression. But I wonder... how come there isn't a similar expression, "feeling grey," to describe my emotional state when I am feeling downright dreary and dismal?

Discouraging and disheartening are two other adjectives I automatically associate with the grey hue. Such mental associations linking colours to emotions are so common place that you might have a tendency to assume that everbody else in the whole world thinks similarly to yourself in regards to the various colours, but these ties are cultivated and reinforced culturally.

What is the first sound, shape, or scent that comes to mind when I look at the grey tones? In class, my discusssion group didn't overlap in answers as much as the other group did. Although, there were some general tendencies: warm orange brought jazz music to our ears, cool yellow triggered images of plastic and plasticine, warm green reminded us of grass, cool green made us feel lonesome and at peace, and both warm and cool blue delivered us right to the ocean. We may have differed in our answers because of our diverse cultural backgrounds, various upbringings and environments. Prime example would be my one word assocation to the colour green: peaceful. Brian's answer was 'miltant', which is in complete contrast to my response, and his reason for his psychological association was because his younger self was in the cadets, whereas, I was not.

Colour associations and metaphors are so common place that a lot of the times, you don't really catch them unless you are intentionally looking for them - or if you happen to be taking a colour theory class at the moment:

"I loved you with a fire red-
Now it's turning blue, and you say..."
- 'Apologize', by One Republic