Simone's Street, On Foot

October 28th. I walked it this morning. Just the street Simone named, the one she mentioned in passing at the end of a Tuesday session while she was lacing her shoes, the one I wrote about that evening without going anywhere near it. I've been walking past the going-there the way I walked past the framing shop for months before I went in.

The camera came with me. That felt worth noting, because the camera has been in the bag on several walks now and has stayed there, which is its own kind of data. I did not take it out today either. I stopped at a gap between two buildings where the morning light came through at a sharp angle onto the pavement, and I looked at it for a while, and I did not reach for the bag. The looking was enough. Or the looking was the point. I'm still working out which.

Shop window, low sun. Still didn't take the camera out.

What I can say is that the east-side pull is real, and it is confirmed by walking rather than photographing, which is something I didn't expect. I thought the camera would tell me. It turns out the feet were already sure. The street is wide and a little quieter than the blocks I usually walk, and the storefronts are older and the light sits on them differently, lower, more horizontal, the way late-afternoon side light does, except in the morning and going the other direction. Simone grew up two streets from here. I don't know why I keep forgetting that and then remembering it.

I didn't tell Simone I was going. She named the street; I went to it on a Wednesday morning before yoga, and neither of us needs to make something of that. The prints are still leaning against the kitchen wall. Gerald has a new leaf. The cord is on the windowsill. Everything is where I left it, which is fine, which is the right word.