It was New Year's morning when I slipped out of bed in the tiniest room down the tiniest alley in Ho Chi Minh City. I dressed in a quiet fog, the haze of last night's festivities hanging near - clinking glasses, wild dancing and laughter for days. I stepped into filtered morning light and made my way to a café, on a mission for Vietnamese coffee and French pastries. Sitting and solitarily sipping, the fog cuts, last night slips further away, and the brightness of the new day -the new year- makes its way in.
Pause.
I want to hit pause. I am forever moving head-first and forward, but right here I want to hit pause.
I want this coffee to last longer, I want the sun to drop a little lower, I want the clock to tick a little slower, and I want to sit wistfully, precariously, in this balance in between. I decided then and there that finding moments like this one would be my New Year's resolution. Turns out, hitting pause is a lot easier to do while on vacation in cafés on the other end of the world. Turns out, hitting pause is really quite impossible when your everyday's don't start out sipping Vietnamese coffee and eating French pastries. When you're unrolling curlers with one hand and zipping up booties with the other and kicking un-hung clothes to a corner on your way out the door, there is no pause.
Well, shit.
So I've been sitting on this one for a while, this failing resolution. Turns out, this year of pause is less about quiet coffee sipping and more about seeing balance between contrasts. Find the extremes, and sink into the little space between: The Vietnamese coffee and the French pastries. The story of a long war from the other side. The foreign language you don't understand and the body language that you do. The chatter filling a café while last night's bright lights fill your head. It's a precarious balance between, one that feels heavy to hold at times, and at other times it can be quite light. Like balancing a look between really girly embroidered booties with black-on-black masculine suiting for Valentine's Day date night. Turns out, this resolution could be just about clothes if I wanted it to be.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, for every nuanced extreme, whether it be cultural, political, or fashionable, there exists not only its contrast, but also a delicate difficult space between where you can hang on to both sides.
Jeez, 2017, you're shaping up to be real REAL.
In other news, statement booties are having a REAL moment and they come in crush-worthy patterns and colors and textures that are perfect for a mid-winter pick up. For Valentine's Day, skip the predictable red dress and throw a masculine jacket with these girliest booties for a balanced look that won't have you freezing your bare little shoulders off.