2.11 Favorite color

My favorite color was blue—when I was very young. I associated blue with the open sky, and with the open ocean; with long summer days at the beach, making sand castles, holding my head under the rush of surf and watching seabirds playing in the air.

As a young man I came to believe that there was no objective basis for a favorite color—that all colors are made equal. I concluded that it is a sign of intellectual weakness to pick a favorite. Later I decided, al la Ayn Rand, that everyone should have a favorite everything, so I chose a favorite based on the notion that purple is the least common color in nature—that it must be manufactured, it is artificial, it is most likely a Glorious Work of Man.

Later I rebelled against all things soulless. I found my capacity to enjoy flaming red and sparkles and violent colors that make the eyes burn. My favorite was hot-pink—because I could. Because no cultural sexual stereotype would stop me from liking whatever I wanted. I became more and more self-assured. I liked canary-yellow. I liked pastels. I liked whatever others would shy away from, whatever was too bright, too clashing, too gaudy, too gay.

Then one day I went to Hawaii and swam with the dolphins in Kealakekua Bay. And there I looked down, into the soundless depths as shafts of sunlight cut, the only thing visible, through the clear water. The dolphins swam easily past and below: nothing but matte azure cut through with sunlight.

And then I remembered that my favorite color is blue.

2007.6
Inspired by a December 2003 email
to Steve Clarian