Anger
Banked Heat
Goal-blocked charge. Frustrated energy looking for a redirection. Anger is directed at an obstacle and wants to move it, which is what separates it from contempt, which has already dismissed its object.
The word
Old Norse angr, which meant grief and affliction, from a root meaning narrow, tight: the same ang that gives anguish and angina. In Middle English the word slid from sorrow to rage. The body keeps the old meaning; anger still begins as a constriction.
The feeling
Heat with an address. Something blocked the path, and the whole system reorganizes toward moving it: jaw, hands, blood pressure, vocabulary. Attention narrows to the obstacle and time speeds up, offering actions faster than judgment can review them. Underneath the heat it is often protecting something softer, a hurt or a fear that found this the safer exit.
Against its neighbours
Contempt has stopped engaging; anger cannot stop, it wants the obstacle moved and stays in contact with it. Anxiety shares the ancient root, the narrowing, but has no object to push against; anger knows exactly where to push.
In the work
Pressure without discharge. Colour held at the top of its range and denied release. The composition points at something outside the frame.
No work carries Anger yet. The element is named and the table is not finished.