I even love the sound of it. Flâneur. Especially with the added look and spice of the accent circumflex capping the ‘a.’ 

  Flâneur is defined as a stroller, an idler, a lounger, and came into vogue in the capital cities of Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century. He’s a man of abundant leisure, freed from the necessity of ‘earning a living.’ In the wild of an urban environment he was often enough nattily dressed if in a vaguely downtrodden and seedy manner, betokening his withered roots in the middle class or bourgeoisie as they were called back then. Naturally nowadays we are all bourgeois so that no longer applies. 

  Anyway, unbeknownst to myself when I was younger I had always aspired to the noble calling and order of the flâneur. I even wrote under my high school graduation photo that: ‘the ladder to success was easier climbed when laid flat.’ Why that I had no inkling at the time! I was still adhering to my suburban middle class roots, studying the sciences as every good student should and playing sports. 

  Call that blurb a premonition. 

  Well the years passed and through hard and repeated knocks the premonition has become the reality of my life. 

  And I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

  It is filled on a daily basis with a wondrous simplicity and beauty I wouldn’t have had the opportunity and appreciation for…

  Had I not after great labours joined the exalted order of the flâneurs.