The heat was suffocating. The sun, like a spoiled child, beat down on the shiny zinc that served as our ultraviolet shelter, but the infrared slice managed to slip through and heat the air we breathed to the point of transporting us to the engine room of a neo-Orleanean steamship. The horns of bus drivers desperate for their last passenger at the most recent yellow light dominated above the matured urban cacophony; at the peak of rush hour, my soles were melting on a sidewalk in the heart of Valencia, fervently attached to a food stand of sausages nested in bread ... [keep reading...]