Look At The Stars, Look How They Shine For You, And Everything You Do, Yeah, They Were All Yellow

--"Yellow", Coldplay

I've always been a numbers guy. Of any aspect of life, the universe, and everything I've ever been superstitious about numbers have always been at the forefront. While not bordering on obsession, given a choice, I would prefer to do everything in numbers that equal to eight. I would prefer to divide anything which could be divided into eighths. Hell, I would even prefer to remain an age that equals an eight (and don't you even think for one second I'm not as giddy as a schoolgirl that I shall be thirty-five next year).

However, right up there is my little predilection for being affected by an object's color. I tend to gravitate to colors almost as finely as numbers. Yet there is one huge difference between my affiliation with each. Whereas my enamoration with the number eight has been unflagging over the years, I have at different stages in my life been more likely to christen a particular color as my "favorite" over the rest of the hues of the palette. I don't know why this is. I don't know why I've never just sat right down and picked one particular as just being "my" color, but has yet to happen. Brandy's theory is that while numbers remain fixed as representing a particular quality, representing their logical associations, colors will always be more subjectively tied to specific feelings. As my innate personality shifts over the years, so does my affinity for any one color. The number eight only remains constant because it, indeed, is indicative of the constant personality traits that I hold to be eternal; it's the bedrock upon which everything else about who I am rests. Or, again, as Brandy puts it, I tend to think of my number as the trunk of my tree and my colors as the branches which twist and turn every which way as I grow older.

In the beginning I liked orange. I liked the way it looked and I liked the fact that not a lot of people had orange as their favorite color. That became an ongoing motif for me; I still tend to make decisions if not solely, then partly on the fact that it isn't the popular choice. Orange for the first few years of my life was the single most apparent expression of this sentiment.

Then somewhere in high school I switched to red and blue as my favorite colors. This would prove to be another ongoing theme, having two favorite colors. At the time I thought this pairing had everything to do with my discovery of Avonlea, a program where literally every character was wearing either red or blue for the majority of the episodes. Now I'm beginning to wonder if my changing horses midstream had more to do with a desire to please all the people I was meeting at the time, especially the girls I was beginning to strike up various permutations of friendships with. Suddenly, while I still maintained my need to be different, I started to adopt a sensibility of being able to see why other people liked particular colors. Rather than remain tunnel-visioned, I could better appreciate that there were a lot better reasons to choose a favorite color than just wanting to be different. Indeed, I think someone or someones just presented a better argument why blue and red were more worthy of my respect.

Lastly, I have become settled on the colors of grey and green as my most cherished two colors. You know, Breanne may have her ghastly obsession with orange (ah, my former love) and Toby may be chained to one of the two colors of her nickname's namesake, but I think I've just mellowed out when it comes to choice of colors. Green and grey are the two most neutral colors there are and I'm really keen into the idea that I should be an individual who wants to remain apart from the fray. I don't want to call attention to myself as being set apart, even though I secretly think I am. I want to be different without raising people's awareness of me. I guess that's who I've turned out to be, someone who has all these quirks that I have no plans of ditching, yet doesn't want people to judge him because of them. That's why I'm more prone to choose possessions with a color scheme of green and grey, even more specifically green on grey, because I want people to see me without actually seeing me.

I don't know--I don't possess a full explanation of why I liked certain colors and not others, but those are my snap interpretations of which colors have had an effect on me and why. Like I said, I think about these things way too much and that just so happens to be the thoughts on that subject which crossed my mind today.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers