Friday afternoon

There are long, lazy slow days, punctuated by the ting-a-ling of spoons swirling in tulip-shaped tea glasses, the sun hot on the back of your neck. Tantalizing aromas of meat on grill, seagulls calling one another, headscarved women moving, talking slowly. People sitting, everywhere. A couple cuddles on a bench by the waterfront. He nuzzles her neck and she giggles in little bursts. Dignified mustachioed men lounge in the shade of a tree, smoking. Placid street dogs slumber wherever sleep overtook them. Sellers of cotton candy, stuffed mussels, simit, packets of tissues, flowers, and fortunes told by white rabbits slowly but doggedly ply their trades along the waterfront. Still harnessed to their colorful surreys, sleepy horses snooze, one rear leg crooked nonchalantly in a posture of repose. The world is in slow motion today, and even the great pelicans, jumbo-jet-like in their enormity and girth, seem to cut through the improbably blue sky at half their normal speed. The grass is cool and soft beneath me...eyes flicker and close; sleep arrives on tiptoes.