My car went in for repairs yesterday and hopefully I get it back by tomorrow afternoon. In the meantime I feel slightly vulnerable because I cannot really go anywhere. My mountain bike needs a good dusting and I’ll probably have to do that tomorrow to fetch the car. But I’ve always been a poor cyclist — I’m not sure why.

So this evening I walked over to the “small mall” across the road. It is only 15 minutes away, and I’ll try hard to walk there in the future. It is not so much laziness that prevents me from doing this. Rather, I usually suddenly realize that I’m hungry and that my stocks are depleted. Then it is much more convenient to jump in the car. No time wasted!

But the walk tonight was delicious. The temperature was perfect. On the way there the sun had just set and it was night but still light. On the way back it was darker and as usual the broad vista on this side of the peninsula sparkled like a box of jewels. (This has been my fixed analogy, at least privately, since I was little.)

The pedestrian perspective is entirely different. The topology of the whole world is different, in some sense more textured and tactile. The road is not only a river of cars: there are features (plants, rocks, architecture) and people on the side of the road. Some distances contract, others dilate. The traffic lights are not just an inconvenient place to wait, but a concurrent little solar system. Even the shopping mall had a different layout on foot; it looked a little more welcoming.

I’m sure that it is true for everyone, but walking seems to stimulate my thoughts. I have often written many paragraphs while walking somewhere.  Sometimes the right phrasing just comes to me while I’m on my way somewhere. Let your feet do the talking! I really should do it more often. I enjoy it. But sitting in front of the computer, it is difficult to force myself to interrrupt my work to relax. Most of the time I make quick coffee runs downstairs while the CPU is crunching experiments or when I get stuck on a tricky part of the code.

Tonight’s excursion reminded me that walking also makes me “feel” a certain way. And I like it. We’ll have to see if I allow myself to enjoy the experience more often (apart from my training which I’m still keeping up).