boutique/buːˈtiːk/Learn to pronouncenounnoun: boutique; plural noun: boutiques

1. a small shop selling fashionable clothes or accessories.
2. a business or establishment that is small and sophisticated or fashionable.”California’s boutique wineries”

Origin

mid 18th century: from French, ‘small shop’, via Latin from Greek apothēkē ‘storehouse’. Compare with bodega.

There is that in me … I do not know what it is … but I know it is in me.*
(Walt Whitman)

What if there were such a thing as a shop of slowness where time behaves differently? Where the slowness means we hear and see and feel more because there isn’t some distraction or other rushing up to carry us away?

I think this is the kind of shop I am, the boutique I provide: some dreamwhispering, some doodling, and some dawdling.

For more than thirty years I was responsible for “shops” I had not established and that dealt in so many “goods.” I was employed to run something I had no idea how to make.

More lately, I have begun my own little shop, stocking a few crafted items – mostly rarities not found anywhere else.

I believe this is how it can be for all of us, each capable of uncovering and developing and offering something that is quite unique.

What kind of shop are you? – even if you’re employed by a bigger “shop” that wants what you do on their “shelves.”

(*From Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.)