halcyon.

'All summer long we sang a song and strolled on golden sand' - Madeleine Peyroux, The Summer Wind

Amsterdam was so beautiful today. Clear from morning to evening. Vapour trails across the rose-tinted blue this morning at sunrise, 11 degrees celsius, people on terraces, coats open. People smiling and flirting in the tram, happy.

I was in the Bakkerswinkel for lunch with another writer. We were talking about how there is just more time in the tropics. Maybe it's the longer, more constant days (his theory) or that there's some kind of compensatory lilt in the earth's motion that unfairly gives the tropics more of the wonderful stuff (my theory).

How else can you explain the languidity of endless afternoons waiting for the 5 o'clock cocktail hour? Lying in bed under a humid-damp sheet, turning the pages of a book and literally watching the seconds pause? Also of course, that having more time gives you more time to dream up mischief. Then we discussed how almost all possible mischief in the tropics involves booze, drugs and sex. Oh, and water.

After I ran my 4 km for today, I walked across the parking lot from the gym to pick up my kids from daycare. Behind me, the sunset reflected in the buildings across the polder creating myriads of red flashes along the horizon.

A hundred setting suns repeating over and over and over.