Color Coding
Blue skies don’t portend safety, happiness, or joy. When the sky is gray, fear no tiger or bear (except inasmuch as one fears them ever). A pink sky in the morning fails to accurately predict a day full of orgasms. There is no color-coding.
When you meet a stranger, you don’t have to bother with checking their eyes for hazel. Hazel eyes don’t indicate untrustworthiness any more than brown eyes mean honesty, or blue eyes mean the person will hit you with a fish. People aren’t color coded.
In times of trouble, take a minute to catch your breath. Count to six. Count to twelve if it’ll help. Don’t rush over to the cabinet and dig out the purple towels and wrap yourself in them. The goblins underneath don’t care if you’re wearing purple or not. Purple clothes don’t tell them “this is a person to avoid.” They know there isn’t a color code that binds them. They’re not stupid. Don’t be stupid.
Just because something is green doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Green soda? Not good for you. Green bananas? Also bad. Green meat? Now you’re being silly. And at the same time, not everything that’s yellow or orange is related to madness. Bananas, again, and oranges. Those jumpsuits prisoners wear on television. Connie Chung’s show’s graphics.
The lighter the coffee, the less likely it is to taste bitter, because the cream and the milk and the half-and-half all mask the bitter. But that’s not true of everything. Cats aren’t color-coded that way. A white cat is not more likely to be sweet than a dark-colored cat. If anything the opposite is true. Cats and coffee aren’t related, just because they both start with the letter “C.”
There are only six colors, but Isaac Newton invented an extra one, stuck between blue and violet, because he was an alchemist and seven is a holier number than six. But that doesn’t mean that if you see six people you should look for the seventh, occluded, member of the group. Mr. Indigo doesn’t always participate, because Mr. Indigo isn’t really needed.