There is a version of my commute that takes twenty minutes and a version that takes an hour, and for most of the year I have chosen the first without thinking. This week I chose the second, on purpose, and I am still turning it over.
The long way goes past a bakery that closes at six, along a canal that has a different mood every evening, and up a street of narrow houses where somebody always seems to be cooking. None of it is remarkable. That is rather the point: a city is mostly made of the unremarkable, arranged with care by people who never thought about being looked at.
I got home late, a little footsore, and unusually calm. I think the walk did the thing I keep hoping a holiday will do — it gave the day an edge, a place where it stopped and something else began.