Slowing down

Kurt has some competition.  I went to his softball game tonight and a little boy (about 4 years old) sat down right next to me and leaned on my lap and talked to me for most of the game.  It was the cutest thing I have ever seen.  Afterwards, we were sitting in the parking lot in chairs and he came and sat in the chair with me, pushing me over so he’d have room.  Adorable.

Last night I went to a screening of Julie & Julia with some people from work.  Random House published Julia Child’s My Life in France, on which the movie is partially based, so all of RH was invited to go.  It was such a cute movie.  Meryl Streep really amazes me as an actress.  She really becomes the character, even looks like whoever she’s playing.  In every movie, she actually looks different.  She played Julia Child and was incredible.  Half of the movie takes place in Paris and all I could think of while watching those parts was how much I’d love to live there, anywhere in Europe, surrounded by the art and food and beauty.  I think mostly though, I long for the lifestyle – the slower pace to life.

After the movie I took a subway back to work to pick up my car (I’d driven in because I knew I’d be leaving late).  It was 9:30 at night and still the city was alive and noisy.  9:30 at night and I could hear a jackhammer from a street or two over, I could hear people yelling, car stereos blasting.  While the noise is overwhelming, I think it’s the smell that effects me the most – that rotten city smell.  I realized while I was walking from the subway to the garage, that the city never stops rushing and it causes me to.  I walk faster, drive faster, work faster, talk faster when I’m there.  I thought about home in Allentown, NJ, where at 9:30 the streets are dead silent.  Someone came up behind while I was walking to my car and I tightened my grip on my bag, always at the ready, always anxious.  Two nights ago I walked to the pizza place down the street in Allentown, at 9:00, in the dark, and felt completely safe and relaxed.  No one was on the street, the town was completely silent (which I love).  My shoulders weren’t tensed at my neck and my pace was slow.  Such a difference.

That’s what I thought of while walking to my car in midtown Manhattan.  How the paces of life barely an hour and a half from each other could be so different.  It was something I recognized while living in Italy, how much better a slow pace of life is.  It’s counter intuitive, sure, but it feels like when you slow down, you actually have more time, like the days are longer.  Say what you will about Italians - efficiency they know not of, but love, art, food and life, they are experts.

They have their priorities straight.  Living there taught me to take a breath and slow down, to wake up late and stay up late.  I have always been a morning person - the way of the American life - early to bed, early to rise and all that.   Italy taught me to relax, to breathe in slowly and savour life, to stay up late and drink chianti and talk for hours.  Now of course, back in states, I’m back to my early to bed, early to rise routine.  It’s sad.

This blog is about waking up and taking in more of life.  From age 6 until 18, I took private art lessons with a woman named Juanita.  At first, I was in her class after school. She’d teach us how to draw with pastels and then we’d always take a Koolaid and pretzel break.  Her cousin lived with her and he would always mix together different flavors of Koolaid for us.  We’d have to guess what flavors they were.  Every break, we’d guess the flavors and tell jokes.  It was Juanita’s way of awakening our senses.  To be artists, she’d claim, all of your senses have to be exercised constantly, even your sense of humor.  I loved that. It was like she was saying to stop focusing on one thing, on one sense, and to take it all in.

On my nightstand:

I just finished an incredible manuscript and I have to say that my heart breaks a little every time I finish a book that I loved.  That feeling is so hard to come by – only a few books have had me so enthralled, that I look up confused when we reach Penn Station, because I can’t remember stopping at Princeton Junction, Newark, or Secaucus.  So few books have had me crying, sobbing actually, on the train - while reading Love, Aubrey, I was crying so much on the train, that the man next to me actually got up and moved to another seat.  I think it's amazing how much a book becomes a part of you, more so than a movie or anything else.  It reaches down and touches your soul.  And so when I finish a book like that, I go into a brief depression. I don’t want to pick up another book because the next book could never be as good as the one I just finished.  And sometimes that's true, but other times, the next book is just as good, if not better.

One to read: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.