muted

In muted tones, I walked through windy streets where the past still exist ,making the impermanence of the self even more acute.After seeing a retrospective of the works of Alberto Giacometti (brilliant), and reading an autobiography of Vladimir Nabokov, I became even more keenly aware of our short time on this beautiful earth.As I told my friend G. over a deliciously lemony grogg at the Bar des Editeurs: " life is but a succession of pleasures", at least that is how I want my life to be, and by pleasures, it could be a bird song, a smile, a strong lemony grogg one winter day in Paris, a walk through the Tuileries gardens bordering the Louvre, or stumbling upon the surprising shop of a famous ceramicist on a very fashionable street. I had just left the trendy"Colette"concept shop that I deemed over with ( It had been open 10 years,capturing trends in Japan, the U.S and other hip centers): I thought it looked tired, and gold plated motorola cell phones didn't look very exciting. The shop I loved is very old and uses that inspiration for their displays of incredibly delicate white tableware,glasses and notebooks.It is old and new, delicate and crude,with a nod to a time when everything was handmade. Even the Balzacian staircase dividing the front of the shop to the back rooms, was left pure and intact in its muted past.http://www.astierdevillatte.com/