How deeply the quiet sets in here…you can stand on a street corner at noon and hear nothing but the trees. One has the sudden desire to sleep all day and get up for beer and oysters just before sundown.Time takes on the woozy contours of a sloe gin fizz.

When I first met my husband, who is from San Francisco, he said I walked more slowly than anyone he’d ever known. He said that in the time it took me to traverse a city block, he could read the New York Times cover to cover. Now I understand why. Down here, a kind of syrupy languor permeates the bones. You can feel yorself losing muscle mass the moment you step out the door. You can hardly be bothered to swing your hip in its socket. You stand there waiting for the breeze to move the body along.

I knew I’d adjusted to Mobile time today when I found myself muttering good morning at half past noon to a man rinsing the sidewalk on Royal Street. It is now two o’clock and I’ve yet to have a bite to eat. Even a fork seems weighty and perilous when your body has slowed to such a tidal pace. Food seems beside the point. The only thing you can imagine doing in the physical sense is taking your lover to bed. But my dear husband is home in San Fran, so that is out of the question.