There are towns you arrive in and immediately begin to speak more quietly. No one asks you to. The streets are simply built in such a way that hurrying through them feels awkward.
I collect such places. Not on a map, but in memory.
A town by the water
One of them is a small town on the shore, where the only promenade ends after ten minutes of walking. It was there I first understood that you can sit on a bench for an hour without feeling that you are wasting time. The boats came back towards evening. The old men greeted everyone, including me, though they were seeing me for the first time.
I wrote nothing in that town. But I think it was there that I conceived the book I then spent three years writing.
Time did not stop there. It simply stopped pushing. I did not notice it at once, only when I realised I had not looked at a clock for several days.
Why we look for slow places
I think we look for such places not for their beauty. There are many beautiful places, and in most of them you still want to run. We look for those where you can hear your own thoughts through to the end. Where a sentence begun in the morning has time to finish by evening.
A slow place is not geography. It is permission not to hurry, which someone has granted on your behalf.
Then you return home, and for a while you carry it with you. You walk more slowly. You look at people longer. Then the city takes back its own, and you speed up again.
But somewhere inside, that bench by the water remains. And when things get too loud, I close my eyes and sit down on it. The boats come back. The old men say hello. The world grows quieter.
