The City

The city... I need to take a deep breath simply after saying those words. 

Let me try again.

The city… all at once a mad, crazy, merry-go-round, sucking me into its heart where I spin in a daze, under its spell, for several days before being released from its grip in the least compassionate of ways. It is exhilarating, exciting, beautiful, but when it finally spits me back out I feel grimy, I ache, my mind feels messy and my soul has been wrung dry.

On my first evening there I step out for supplies. The breeze is unusually warm for early March and I find myself stopping in the middle of a busy street to soak it all up. I pull out my notebook and pen, lean on a green bin and begin to scribble…

The clunking of the rubbish truck, the buzz of a siren. It is dark but the endless lights and noise keep everything alive. I watch life whiz by. Parisians cycle home from work with baguettes sticking out of their jackets, their baskets, their hands. A Parisian does not walk a bounding Labrador across fields, no! They guide the tiny pitter-patters of Chihuahuas along endless concrete streets. I wonder what it would be like to have never seen green grass.

As I write I realise that it is as if I have stopped and everything else is going at ten times the speed around me.

Does anyone else notice, I wonder?

I look around for likeminded souls, but I see no-one. No, it is definitely only me stood still, leaning on a bin. Others, they are cycling, walking, driving: everything is so fast.

​So fast that no-one has the time to notice anyone else; anything else.