blue hour
a meditation
It’s dark, before sunrise, and I walk cautiously down the stairs, and head towards the kitchen. It feels too early for tea, but I’m thirsty. I grab a cup, the one with a pattern of blue flowers, and fill it with water. It is a pretty cup, but I like it more because its curving shape nestles into the palm of my hand like the small, trusting body of a barely-a-month old baby. The back door squeaks as I pull it shut behind me. I’ve gotten up early because I want to see the blue hour.
The blue hour is the time just before sunrise and after sunset, typically a period of a half hour or so, when the sun is below the horizon, and the sky (the world) is bathed in a blue hue that photographers love.
What comes up when you hear the words ‘blue hour’? At first glimpse, it sounds like a promise. It reminds me of the time I saw a moody blue sky reflected in a lily pond. The blue in the water and the green of the plants created this feeling of being enclosed in the world, by the world. I thought to myself this is how it must feel to be inside a bud, waiting in stillness. Perhaps I might enter the water quietly and assume a dancer’s pose, in the middle of the lilies, and wait for the dance to begin.
Blue hour sounds like the promise of a new day. It also sounds like the collapse of the old. The setting moon departing like an old watchman. The lonely moon rising to keep watch as we close the door on the evening and go to bed. The blue hour is probably a time when one might realize, my life is just an echo, not its own song. So, there is a pendulation of feeling within the blue hour, from expectation to melancholy, and back again.
What do you think of when you read the words blue hour? Does it conjure up an image, remind you of a painting, or evoke a memory?
I love your description of the blue hour. It hovers between death and renewal.
Your post brought to mind a distinct memory of being consumed by a painting in its various shades of blue.
Years back I was at the L’ Orangerie to see the Monets. I had just come back from a visit to Giverney a few days back and the gardens in their explosive purples, pinks, and blues had taken my breath away. I was kind of anticipating this on seeing his water lilies at the museum.
When I entered the first gallery, there were only two paintings on opposite, pristine white walls. There was a bench in the middle. If I close my eyes, I am sitting on the bench. I am held close in a soothing blanket of blues and purples. The scale of the paintings in their iridescent glow felt like entering a sacred space. I allowed myself the time to let the colors settle over my body, wrap its fingers around me, and to be inside this garden.
The only word that can capture this feeling for me is Sukoon.
I have this little book (you perhaps have read it) by Maggie Nelson - Bluets which explores the color blue through poetry and essays, as a lens to interweave the personal and the philosophical, grief, beauty, desire. Thank you for triggering an unforgettable memory.