The Truth is in the Road

I never liked switching back from daylight saving time. As sweet as it was, the prospect of getting an extra hour of sleep was invariably marred by the prospect of not seeing any sunshine after 5 pm. The only desire that the endless evenings evoked in me was to succumb to winter hibernation or, at least, melancholy. It wasn't until this fall that I started appreciating the long hours of darkness. This year I wait for the evening with some tremulous excitement. As the deep purple shades are taking over the sky after the sunset, an anticipation of something unusual is crawling into my chest. It seems that some magical fairy is about to flutter out from a nearby nook, or a gray-bearded wizard is to appear any moment, his cloak embroidered with silver stars. If they do, they will hardly catch me by surprise. Chasing the fading sky on my way home from work, I rediscover how much I adore being on the road at night. When the silhouettes of the world dissolve in the darkness, it become...

It all starts with a Pumpkin Spice Latte. I can pretend as much as I want to that the astronomical summer still has almost two weeks to go, remind myself of the upcoming heat brought by Santa Ana winds, or reminisce of the last year’s boiling November. Yet as soon as PSL returns to Starbucks menu, I know I have to bid an official farewell to the summer. This time I was postponing the moment for as long as I could. Spoiled by warm Spanish nights, I was still cherishing a hope that we could somehow squeeze the balmy Andalusian warmth into our suitcase, somewhere in between the bottle of 2010 red discovered in Granada and my new carefree dress bought in Seville, and that we’d manage to smuggle that warmth into California. Metal detectors will fail to find it, we will “forget” to mention it on our customs declaration, no one will ever now. We have a chance. During the layover in Chicago our baggage got lost. We were waiting for it till the very last bag at LAX, then spent 15 minutes ex...