What does a Roman day actually feel like?

I once bound a book for a woman whose father died before she could tell him about her first novel. The leather was warm from the sun that afternoon, and I swear the spine creaked like an old man clearing his throat. That’s what time feels like—something you hold between your palms, not something you measure.

I once found a container in Rotterdam that had been ‘lost’ for seven days. No one knew where it’d gone, just that it reappeared at dawn, damp and smelling of salt and old paper. I stood there, staring at the seal, wondering what quiet moments had happened inside—someone’s lunch forgotten, a nap on a pallet, a letter written in pencil. That’s the hum I remember: not the noise, but the weight of time passing unseen.