While I don't suffer from synesthesia, I do associate emotions with certain colors. Joy is bright. Joy burns. Joy is that intense, sort of eye-searing orangey-red that wakes you up, makes you sit up straight, breathe deep and feel glad you're alive. That's joy.
That's also the color of pyracantha berries. An appropriate name, from the Greek words for fire and thorn. The berries are the color of fire, and set against the bright green leaves, they seem even more vivid. The plant also has vicious thorns. Those will wake up the unwary even more than the color!
This photo wouldn't scream joy to anyone else, but that's what I feel when I look at it. I recently read a series of devotions on joy which distinguished it from happiness. The author argued that you don't need to be happy to experience joy--that joy is a more complex emotion, a sort of sharp piercing reminder that we are alive and experiencing the world in all its messy glory.
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