Rolling around in the doldrums of summer here, a lazy unwinding late July day. The heat is so very different here than on the prairies; it carries water and salt from the sea. My thirsty skin craves moisture, so I find this type of heat a balm. I don’t need to slather on so much hand cream here, as I did in the prairies, where a dry cracked wind always seemed to find me in any morsel of shade.

Of course, riding my bike a thin layer of sweat coats my skin, and I get to work sticky and red and hot, and I long to plunge into the icy sea in the inner harbour, rather than work. I can hear the American ferries boom when they trawl into the docks, and it makes me shiver with travel lust.

That sound always makes me remember taking the ferries from the mainland to the island, when I was a child, and usually I’d have a new book to read, or a comic, or sticky hard candy to glut my sweet tooth on. The outer deck used to be too cold for me, but I’d sit by the window and watch the sea and the sky and the thickly clotted islands pass. The decks where the cars were kept were always so quiet, and I never realized until recently that they are not closed in. The windows have no glass, and the railings are crusted and sticky with salt, and cold from the sea spray. Eventually, I would try to brave the icy windy outer decks, because one parent or the other would be leaning over the railings, hair blowing madly, watching some minuscule speck on the horizon with a pair of huge black binoculars. They’d go “Look! There, do you see?” and hand me the binos, and I’d look dutifully, but I was never sure what I was meant to be seeing, so I’d just make some appropriate murmur and hand them back.

The part that I hated and loved the most was when they would announce we were close to our destination and would we make our way back to the vehicles, and we’d all sit in the still warm air and wait until the ferry nudged into port. The anticipation of driving off into a new place, full of summer and sun and swimming and sand was so desired I could never really sit still. I remember a huge grin splitting my face and I was bouncing on the seat one time, as we rumbled from the belly of the ferry into a welcoming sunshine.

I
Melt
onto the parched
patio
I fan fan fan
Me
Wishing to waft away
away
These unbearable
Lazy sighing
Lagging-tongue
Dog Days

Finally have the car up and running. Took her out on the highway, for no real reason. Obviously we needed to have lunch in Nanaimo instead of Victoria.

I love being able to take a drive through the mountains along the coast, windows rolled down, music blaring, great company. after coming back to the capital, we drove along the Victoria peninsula. Lovely turquoise vistas, and green leaved tunnels lead us back home.

There is something in the dusk hours, that makes me long to go riding. The colours become so vibrant in the setting of the sun. Fire reds and deep velvet blues fill the sky. The electric colours of the flowers, and forest greens of the leaves start to gain this heavy saturation, bringing the colours out to play. As the world lies down to sleep, the flora, and heavens start to scream out with vigor and life. The peonies and holly, The roses and poppies start to glow, little splashes of colour rising from the growing darkness.

As the sun goes lower and lower into the horizon,  gets lined in the glow of the fire, causing the brilliant reds and oranges to mesh into the velvet blue sky as it becomes speckled with glowing jewels, some brilliant, some letting you see just enough so that you know they exist. This foreshadows the over saturation that begins to occur, as slowly the purples, pinks, yellows and reds of the flowers snap to near black.

This is in near direct contrast to dawn, Where everything seems to be covered in a haze of grey and dusty pink. Colour is leached from the world and slowly added back again. There is no where near the intensity that happens in the night before. The world is greeted to a world with promise, but still seems a little ashen. It is as if Mother Nature herself is not quite ready for the new day.

Every day, one of my coworkers comes in with a black coffee maker, two containers of sugar and a bottle of milk, and another container of fragrant coffee. And he makes java twice while we’re working-one for when we first get there, and a fresh pot for 2nd break. It’s good coffee, somehow better than I could ever do, even though it’s just ordinary. Sometimes another coworker offers a flavoured coffee to use instead of the normal grounds. Then the scent of vanilla or hazelnut wafts over us as we work.

It’s become a little treat-one small thing to look forward to on shift, and we really miss it when my coworker doesn’t show up. We complain and grumble at the lack of the fresh hot coffee, when he’s not there, more so than the fact that we now also have to do his workload. It’s the java we miss, the caffeine fix, the ritual of finding a mug that fits our hand, or our mood, or using the only blue glass mug, which looks like a photograph all the time and is really such an art piece even though it’s only unadorned, coloured glass.

It makes the shift a little more manageable, a little more fragrant, after all.

We went out for coffee tonight, as we did not have time to get downtown for the fireworks. As we were walking I noticed that you could clearly see the lit up dome of the legislature grounds. Once again, we were shocked to relearn how condensed the Victoria area really is. Because of this, we actually got to see the fireworks, vibrantly on the horizon.

This brought up the concept of perception; more specifically the concept of how we see differently. For example, when I look at the fireworks going off, I see the shapes of the fireworks before seeing the colour. I could see these faint smoke-trails that started eating at the negative spaces of the sky. Because of this, I knew how the burst would look well before the colours were there.

This was in direct contrast to how Kate saw the same burst. She could not see those trails without conscious effort. The colours were the first thing she noticed, and that was from the center out. I saw from the edge of the burst into the centre.

Perception is an interesting concept that we have been exploring as of late, odds are there will be more on perception as the days go by.