A Place in my Past:

The first time I entered All Saints Anglican Church, aged ten, I was struck by the stained-glass windows. The one that appealed to me the most that morning was Jesus tending to his flock with a lamb at his feet.

The sun was shining through the stained glass that acted like prisms sending shafts of different hues onto the clothing and hats people were wearing. Colours always did attract me from an early age. Red was one I did not particularly like, because I associated it with anger. I have seen red auras around people when they are very agitated. Red can also be sexual passion.

Purple being a secondary colour sometimes produces a similar effect. Pastels are synonymous with quiet and calm. Yellow, the colour of the sun, was a happy colour, tints of blues are pleasant experiences. Greens and oranges the two other secondary colours can be nature's harmony, money, enthusiasm, or excitement. Not everything in my childhood memories are connected with colour, but many are including adult recollections.

The effect of the colours and the artistry on the windows was a feeling of calm, warmth, and peace with myself. The longer I gazed the more minor noises disappeared which increased the emotions I was experiencing. It was not a cathexis with the images in the windows, because I didn't begin to have sexual feelings until I was older, but the feelings gazing at the windows did become intensely felt.

The moment was shattered by the organ playing an exuberant hymn. But it did stay in my memory banks. It's still there for me to recall.

The connection I made with the shepherd was not Jesus. It was the person closest to me—my grandmother. The lamb was me.

The reason I connect red with anger is based on physiology. When people get angry, the heart beats more blood and circulation increases to the face, and the extremeties of the ears, noses, hands, fingers and toes. If you are a keen observer of people, you will notice the increase of the blood supply. If you are in danger, you're more alert to signals and colours that people send out. The only auras I've actually seen around people are red. Red auras are used by some people as self-defense mechanism that alert them when there is possible danger to their physical safety. It is the first colour children are able to see, yellow usually comes later and then blue.

The other associations I made with colours were formed over time starting before kindergarten when my pallet of colours were expanded beyond the primaries. The connections with more complex emotions were matched with hues, tints, shadings.

Most of the emotional experiences that I stored are in technicolour – none are black/white or shades of grey. My daydreams are in colour and so too are my infrequent night time dreams.