The Sudden Walk

by Franz Kafka

In the evening, when you seem to have definitely resolved to stay home, have put on your housecoat, are sitting at a lighted table after dinner and have undertaken some type of worker game, after the completion of which you usually go to sleep; when there is unfriendly weather outside which makes staying home a foregone conclusion; when you have already been sitting at the table so long that to go out would cause general astonishment; when additionally the stairwell is dark and the front door locked; and when despite all this you stand up in a moment of sudden discomfort, change your coat, immediately appear dressed for the street, explain that you must go out, and after a short goodbye, actually do it, believing, depending on the haste with which you slam the apartment door, to have left more or less anger behind you; when you find yourself on the street again, with limbs that respond with special mobility to the unexpected freedom you have obtained for them; when through this one decision you feel all ability to decide gathered in you; when you recognize with greater than accustomed significance that you have more power than you need to bring about the most rapid change easily and to bear it; and when you walk into the long streets this way — then you have completely stepped out of your family for the evening, and they dissolve into non-existence, while you yourself, thoroughly strong, outlined in black, slapping the back of your thigh, raise yourself to your true form.

Everything is amplified even further when you visit a friend at this time of night to see how he is doing.