Red
Primary colors are unambiguous, unadulterated, pure. When I was a child, my favorite color was red, until the world began to enter my mind. Then my favorite color became maroon, or burgundy, the color of blood after it dries on the t-shirt, on the towel, on the sidewalk.
I was a dramatic kid, took acting lessons and went to drama camp. That all faded away as adolescence with its neglect and late nights and pursuit of boys and beer came in. The last drama camp I attended included lots of song and dance and I remember singing in a circle, each of us with a line about our favorite color, looping it into the rainbow, me singing way too low for a twelve-year-old : burgundy in the rainbow. Ah, the melodrama, me singing low and deep and too seriously about the color of spilled blood.
People like to ask children their favorite things. Sometimes they ask adults this, too, their favorite dish, their favorite place to go on vacation, their favorite television show. My five-year-old son has problems committing to favorites when pressed. There are too many nuances, too many variables. But he does have a favorite color: orange, the color of the flame, of the sky as the sun extinguishes itself in the bay, the color of pumpkins.
Committing to a color is easy at first. You know what you like. You only have so many choices. But then the rest of life marches past, the periwinkles, the variations of flesh tones, the espresso and eggplant. How can you choose?
I don’t do favorites. OK, I may have a favorite block in my favorite city (The 1700 block of Q Street NW in Washington, DC). Sometimes I have a favorite beer. I can list a handful of writers who are my favorites. But there are too many subtleties out there to hold tight to one thing and say that it is the one I prefer. I dress in blacks and greys. The room I sit in has shades of ocean green and earth-bound tan. My blood is scarlet, then burgundy, sometimes black. It is life in its infinite variety.
From a prompt, red, barely edited from the original. Last week's writing partner picked it as his favorite of my writes, so here it is, a little blog filler. More in-depth writing coming. Eventually.
Image by nahlinse.