Da Nang Pink Cathedral

I sat on a folding stool across the road from the Pink Cathedral for most of an afternoon. A woman from a fruit stall brought me water without saying anything.

The pink isn’t really pink. Up close it’s salmon, and rose, and a kind of orange-cream the colour of a melted popsicle, all sitting next to each other and pretending to be one colour. Watercolor lets you cheat the way the eye already cheats — lay them all down wet, let them mix on the paper, walk away while it dries.

This is the smaller of the Da Nang pieces. There’s a Da Nang Beach in the Love Story series too — that one stays as postcards.