Speedy Woman

When I'm in Milan, I go real fast. Everybody does. Everybody walks fast, talks fast. Always looking in a hurry, and most of the time it's true.

You swarm the streets and brush against people up and downstairs, on and off the subway. You wait for your table at restaurants standing by a crowd of people in and out the door. Milan is fast paced, just like New York. There are blissful moments of stillness, though.

Little rituals that makes Milan still very human and pleasant for a big city. Breakfast at Cucchi, where there are no diamonds for sale but the best pastry ever, and a pie made of chocolate and custard creme with fresh raspberries on top, almost too beautiful to be eaten.
Aperitif, or " happy hour", as they started to call it here too, sitting at tables overlooking the Navigli, the water channels engraving the city center. Chatting with my friends and catching up on the past seven months of our lives.

I don't think I could come back here for good. But that might be the secret why I am now appreciating more things that used to irritate me. Like the constant closeness with other human bodies.

I recall to be disturbed by what I considered too much of an interference. Now, I find it fascinating. It makes me wonder about the lives of these human beings, no matter how many (many!) I meet in a day.

Who are all these people always in a hurry?

Who are the ones sipping cappuccino at Cucchi?

What do they dream of?

My curiosity and interest is so pungent I might start asking these questions to total strangers.

I wonder how they'd take it.