Green incandescence

There is something about the way the tropical sun hits the leaves on the trees outside my parents' apartment that seems almost magical, like it sets the green on fire from the inside of the leaf.

I've been loving the warmth here so much that I've simply refused to turn on the air conditioner in my father's car, which is the vehicle I use to run the few errands I have here (mostly to the nearby Starbucks, the supermarket, the drugstore, the panadería, or the video store).

After the seemingly interminable cold of Ohio (it was 53 degrees there this morning!), I've relished the feeling of the sun on my skin, and even the actual sweating, especially because the sea breezes distinguish this type of hot weather from the sometimes oppressive humidity of the northern summer.

The days feel long (even though the sun sets a lot earlier here than back home) and the hours stretch themselves lazily, like a cat, inviting me to slow down and reevaluate the need to be always in a rush. There is no rushing here, nothing to rush for or to. It's most definitely a change in pace after such a crazy busy year.

Taking advantage of the fact that I can choose what I want to work on during the hours of my day, I've finished the report I'm supposed to submit about my "professional activities" during my first year in the tenure-track. Since I don't have anything to compare it to I can't know whether it's different or the same as most of my junior colleagues. But I have a feeling I did a lot more than might be expected because the report is rather long. A good friend and fellow first-year-tenure-tracker at another small college describes this year as "insane," and I think she's definitely onto something. We were undoubtedly well prepared by our big university but, in the end, we didn't expect it to be like it was. We are definitely both much the wiser now, and everyone assures us the second year is better. I have to believe it has to be.

But the second year is still a ways away, and its inevitable approach is more reason for me to take time not so much to smell the roses, since I don't have immediate access to any here, but to ponder the magic of the tropical sun on the green of leaves of the trees outside my parents' apartment. Verde que te quiero verde, said the poet García Lorca, and how right he was.