Holding Pattern

This past week I was working registration for a conference downtown. This entailed sitting in a basement for hours on end with little to do except hand out name tags and tote bags filled with so-called swag. For the most part I divided my lunch hour into two parts: I would eat my packed lunch in the hotel lobby and then head out into the wet and windy streets for a restorative cup of tea and a well-needed walk to keep myself from silting up like the long vanished former paths of the Nile. 

Somewhere in the middle of one of these walks my mind turned to Albert Camus's The Stranger. Specifically, I thought of an exchange between Meursault and Masson in which the latter is unequivocal about the value of taking a walk after lunch: his wife likes to nap, while Masson prefers to take a walk, which he praises as an aid to digestion and as a marker of generally desirable character traits. Meursault is, understandably, non-plussed by the vigor with which his companion makes his case. I, however, have always been intrigued by this scene. I can't really say why, I just think of it every time I take a walk after a meal. In fact, I have done so for the last 16 years. This time I wondered if it might be because it's an incarnation of the "there are two types of people..." trope, which I've never really cared for, or if it's because I am fascinated by how much time people devote to this sort of mundane question. Unfortunately, the end of my lunch break interrupted this train of thought, but I figured that this much would still serve to keep the blog going while I prepare the backlog of other things I have waiting in the wings.