Alex Waterhouse-Hayward: A Slash of Blue on a Hot Day

Bronwen

On a hot day like today I cannot be happier. The heat reminds me of humid Buenos Aires summers when water oozed out of the painted walls, of the dry desert heat of Nueva Rosita, Coahuila, of the humid and hot classrooms in my Austin boarding school in the late 50s, of the humid, hot and noisy mornings when Rosemary and I would wake up in my mother's Veracruz home after a cool drive in our VW from Mexico City the night before.

This Vancouver heat reminds me of the cines con aire acondicionado on Lavalle in Buenos Aires and how after a couple of Westerns my father would take me to the nearby bar lácteo, the Roxy for an ice cream soda.

This Vancouver heat reminds me of my obsession with sunning myself on Wreck Beach in the late 70s and my Rosemary's disapproval saying that I was wasting time and not earning money.

But the best about this Vancouver heat is knowing I can sleep tonight on my bed, on freshly laundered sheets with nothing on and imagining that in the morning Rosemary and I would be called for breakfast at mother's in Veracruz.

The colour blue refreshes me on a hot Vancouver afternoon. But thankfully the heat will persist in my body and in my imagination where a couple of iguanas are sunning themselves on a rock on our way to Uxmal in Mérida.

A Slash Of Blue – Emily Dickinson

204

A slash of Blue—

A sweep of Gray—

Some scarlet patches on the way,

Compose an Evening Sky—

A little purple—slipped between—

Some Ruby Trousers hurried on—

A Wave of Gold—

A Bank of Day—

This just makes out the Morning Sky.

I cannot dance upon my toes -Emily Dickinson

More Emily Dickinson

Ah little rose

For hold them, blue to blue
The colour of the grave is green
Its temple stands, alway,

The Woman in white

Her Grace is not all she has

To know if any human eyes were near
Linda Melsted - the music of the violin does not emerge alone
The Charm invests her face
A sepal, a petal and a thorn
The Savior must have been a docile Gentleman
T were blessed to have seen
There is no frigate like a book
I pay in satin cash

Emily Dickinson's White Dress & a Hunter of Lost Souls