In defense of beige

I'm pretty sure hugs are beige.

Welcome to my deeper dive into everything Unfixed! In this new series titled “In Defense of…” I delve into a quality, experience or object often rejected, misunderstood or discounted in our culture. Ten years ago I never thought I’d be making a case for living in an unfixed body and exalting its virtues. So it got me thinking, What else have we been conditioned to reject? What unassuming beauty or opportunity awaits us when biases are examined and we embrace a life holistic? I invite you to join my horizontal playground where duality commingles without hierarchy or preference, recovering the parts of ourselves, our lives and the earth longing to be part of the conversation.

All the p’s (prose, poetry and photography) are by yours truly. 🤍

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For a full-beige immersion, listen to Arvö Part’s Spiegel im Spiegel while reading this essay.

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A team of astronomers recently reported, after surveying and then averaging light from over 200,000 galaxies, that the universe is beige. Upon their discovery, they reached out asking for suggestions for names, and some of the responses included: Cosmic Latte, Cappuccino Cosmico, Big Bang Buff, Cosmic Cream, Univeige, Cosmic Khaki, and my favorite, Primordial Clam Chowder.

If the universe is beige, I argue that hugs are beige too. Let me explain.

It is conjectured that the human brain releases large amounts of the compound N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) during death and dreaming. Sometimes dubbed “the spirit molecule” this alkaloid can cause intense psychedelic experiences, which might explain the imagery some experience during sleep or upon exiting this world. As a child, teetering on the sand-drift of sleep, I would sometimes experience my own Dimethyl-trip, a strange ballooning in my body always accompanied by an expansive color beige. Fawn-hued innocence filled and then pushed my physical borders out and out and out until my form held itself within an infinite border of cafe au lait. I became smooth. I became safety. I became the lasting hug that never lasts long enough. I became round and full and front-middle-and-backlit buoyancy. But just as mysteriously as it arrived, I would shape-shift into sharp and jagged, like wrinkling newspaper, both the shape and sound tearing holes into my inner landscape. I called it my “Creamy Crinkly” experience, always much preferring the cream to the crinkle. Even now, I recall her unbound expanse but remembering it in my mind is very different than feeling her swoop in and knead my existence into a cosmic loaf of bread.

It’s impossible to recreate this experience, though I have tried. She appears when she wants, and much less frequently as an adult. But I’ve found a stand-in. At least once an hour, especially after spending too much time staring at a screen (like now) and my brain begins to unravel her relationship to gravity, I kneel down and hover my face an inch away from Otis or Nova’s body. Have you tried this with your pet? An aura of buff warmth wraps around their physical presence. Close your eyes and rest inside this border for a minute or two. Time will stretch into more as overworked nerves melt into less. Breathing slowly, I suspend in an invisible embrace. And while some may say this emanation is purely heat, I don’t feel the same honeyed magic with my face pressed against the floor vent. (I’ve tried it.)

A French word, beige means “the color of natural wool.” Not washed, bleached, or dyed, but natural wool. This makes me think of a sheep in a field; their wool isn’t white or one color, but full of heady, yet humble, hues. To create beige, one mixes equal parts: red, blue, yellow. I love that these primary, dominant notes sing loudly in any landscape, but together marry into understatements. Alone we shout Be Bold. Be unique. Be Loud. Together we whisper Be gentle. Be silent. Be.

Maitri Space Awareness practice, conceived by Tibetan meditation master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, works with the colors blue, red, yellow, green, and white—each color represents one of the Five Wisdom Energies in Buddhism. Maitri translates as “loving kindness” or “unlimited friendliness toward self and others” and by sitting within these colors or energies, one encounters the opportunity to be with whatever arises from a ground of non-aggression. In my 120 count box of crayons this ground of non-aggression is beige—a loamy blend of all life on a continuum of emergence and decay—where calm, kindness and compassion are born not from rising above but by experiencing, digesting and marrying ourselves to what is. I’ll call it Buddha Beige.

Last week, as a practice, I carried around my imaginary Buddha Beige crayon, and whenever I experienced contraction or resistance, I colored in, or around, my experience with warm ecru. When the neighbor’s dog went missing and heaviness overwhelmed, I held my sadness in a downy nest of beige. When a grown woman embraced her dad in a coffee shop, I offered my longing beige. When the sky turned cold and shy seedlings refused life, I joined the earth’s consolation in beige.

According to design trends for 2024, beige is back. But after a quick google search, there is plenty of noise about this claim. We’ve all heard someone say beige is boring. Beige is bland. Beige is background. In our look-at-me, individualistic culture, it’s no wonder this gentle creature has been historically shooed to the corner, though I sense she’s quite happy to be there in hushed simplicity. One architect wrote, “Hogwash. Near-white is the color of non-commitment” and later described it as “death’s waiting room.” Another opinion compared beige to quiet despair and a grim communist aesthetic, claiming “Our dreams are not beige and yet! this color haunts the suburban landscape.”

I don’t know if I believe in ghosts, but I do believe in beige, and I think I’ve been delightfully haunted by it since my earliest days. We imagine spirit as a foggy apparition, or draped in cloth, clanging around the kitchen looking for spoons. But what if the presence of spirit is a color just like the universe herself? When a brain senses the unfamiliar, it makes associations, giving it shape, texture, scent; it cozies up to what it already knows. In a childhood recurring nightmare, Cookie Monster wrestled my sleeping body into his detergent-blue arms and carried me off into the night. While his lumbering shape moved us through space, I’d sleepwalk into mom and dad’s room, his dream paws releasing their grip as I cocooned on a shag rug at the foot of their bed. The wool fibers tickled my nose, their musky warmth spooned me like a big, gentle dog. When eyelids finally surrendered, a Saharan-scape of plush, beige pile hugged my darkness.

So if the universe is beige. And beige feels like a hug. Then I’d like to reason the universe is one giant hug, a shag hug built from every galaxy, gas cloud, star and star seed that is you, you and you. In beige, I trust.

Left to right: 1. Dotty's egg atop "Will you marry me?" 2. leaf bones, 3. belly fur, 4. kiwi fur, 5. backlit beige is the best, 6. Granddaddy Fir long forgotten by Weyerhaeuser, 7. Charlie and Ranger—my sepia DNA, 8. beige learning how to climb, 9. beige learning how to land

Beige is grandma’s soft arm

and the bones of last year’s leaf

beige is Charlie’s sepia-gaze

on a horizon never reached.


Beige is furry

beige is free

beige is Dave’s hen-egg proposal, 

Marry me?


Beige is kindness

and Arvö Part’s Spiegel im Spiegel

beige is a pause on thinking

to enter our feel. 


So when senses retreat

and this life turns her last page,

I will follow darkness out

into unblinding beige.

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