I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris

by Glynnis MacNicol

avec plaisir.

Certainly, one of the benefits of being in your forties must be the knowledge that depending on anything external to fundamentally transform you is a fool’s errand.

The tree in the dip beyond the 79th Street entrance to Riverside Park, where the path forks, has become my clock.

Years of bumper stickers and Instagram accounts encouraging us to live in the now have not, it seems, prepared anyone to actually exist in a present where the future is so glaringly shifting like cursed quicksand in a fairy tale.

Tie myself in recognizable ways to potential instead of being pinned down the way I have been.

I once went to a museum exhibit about Einstein, and the only idea I took away from it was that movement stretches time. I don’t recall the science behind this, something to do with curvature I think. What I was left with was the understanding that the more you moved, the longer your life felt.

Leaving feels less like a risk than a necessity.