Tout Doucement – Living the unhurried life
Moving to New York is an education- learning how to navigate the streets and avenues, hailing a cab at 4am, finding the best place for a guilt-free cupcake (Chikalicious, e10th st btw 1st/2nd). No one though, seems inclined to teach you how to take it easy, to unwind, to relax. Everybody is a go getter, and nobody, bar the squirrel lady in Central Park, seems to have time to stop and admire the beauty and quirkiness of all the people and objects, smells and sounds that bombard us.
Paris has a knack of taking it easy, even if it is merely by her deceptive looks of it. Even as her people are going about their biz-nez, espresso in hand, they are at ease, unhurried, together yet in that slightly affable, imperfect way. It is inimitable.
During the summer while in the queue at Central Park for ‘Twelfth Night’ I finally had the chance to stop and appreciate everything that was around me- and was strangely enough immediately transported back to Les Tuileries, where I had sat one afternoon enjoying the gentle sun and a latte after I’d snuck in a retrospective at Musée de la Mode et du Textile during the morning, and nursing a slight hangover I’d attained from La Bastille the night before. A little girl seemed to have just acquired her beagle and was endlessly entranced by it, and I in turn was fascinated by her. She reminds me of the girl here who was playing with a rather hostile pet in front of me- I think her name was Cynthia. The dog was growling, but she kept patiently reaching out again to pet her, with all the patience and time in the world. Perhaps even canines are less friendly in this city?
The damp smell of roses, grass and rain, the innocent, boundless curiosity of Cynthia and the friendly (albeit rare) patience of the Manhattanites in the queue all brought me back to that lazy afternoon dissolved in Paris, what it really should feel like to let it go, and the true meaning of laissez-faire.
