"Heat is also memory"

Perhaps that's why so many memories are made of warmth. Because when everything slows down, what we feel stays with us longer.

Sebastián y el calor

The thermometer read 38 degrees in the shade, but there was no real need to look at any numbers: the heat was everywhere. In the slowness with which people walked. In the way the light dissolved on the pavement. In the thick silence of midday.

I left home more out of stubbornness than necessity. I wanted to feel the full warmth, unfiltered, as if something inside me needed to melt a little. There are times when the body craves exposure, not to punish itself, but to remember itself alive.

On the seawall, an older couple was sharing a tamarind raspado. Everyone took turns with the spoon. They didn't speak. There was no need to. Heat also unites, I thought. It makes us equal, brings us back to the basics: the shade, the water, the skin.

A little girl asked her mother why the sun “was so angry today.” I thought that was a very accurate way of describing it.

Though more than anger, it was insistence. The sun wanted us to notice it, to remember its strength, its absolute presence.

In Baja California Sur , heat isn't just the weather. It's a state of mind. It changes the way we relate to each other. It forces us to stop, to seek shelter, to speak more slowly. And in that pause, things emerge that we normally ignore: a prolonged greeting, a glance, a calmly told story.

Perhaps that's why so many memories are made of warmth. Because when everything slows down, what we feel stays with us longer.

Today, as the city seemed to melt, I thought: this heat isn't punishment. It's a reminder. That we're here. That we still feel.

— Sebastián del Mar