thoughts on Paris

I stood in the rain wondering to where I should flee in order to seek refuge from the cold rain. A man stood in front of wrought-iron gates with his shoes off. His feet blotched red, blistered and pale. I passed by his shoes and socks resting on top of a Metro vent, drying, slowly in the rain. I was in the St. Germain des Pres area. Former residence of Ernest and Hadley Hemingway, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, supposedly William Faulkner at one point. My hair was wet and stringy from not having showered that day. My hands cold and unsteady, holding a soggy cigarette. I looked in at a cafe and the cost of a beer was around 7 euros. I thought about how I had imagined Paris. I guess I imagined it on a perfect day with everyone having picnics with baguettes and wine at random sunny, grassy spots all over the city, while mustachioed men painted portraits of young couples as the laughed gaily at the small dog barking at the geese. Here I stood, in the rain as people in cafes looked out and people holding newspapers and plastic bags over their heads looked in.
Hemingway once called Paris a "movable feast." As I stood outside bars, cafes, restaurants, bakeries, pastry shops, art galleries, etc. I began to realize what he meant...maybe. Paris is full to the top of delicious food; yet, I remained hungry most of the time walking through the city. Munching occasionally on a bit of chocolate or brie baguette. The sights, the smells and the general tingly sensation I got on my skin as I walked through the city filled me up. I could taste all I could ever want to eat, swallow in the tastes of the city. The quiches I saw in store windows, the creperies I passed with the smell of a cottage kitchen, chocolate, hot strawberry jam. I could taste it all. I could walk all day and never get hungry, tasting here and there the musty, sewer smell of the Metro, or the smell of roasted chestnuts sold by a man out of a shopping cart with a rigged sterno in it, walking through the city like a Catholic priest and an incense burner, the smell taste of a centuries-old cathedral with haunted halls and ancient air, the smell of coffee and cigars coming from a cafe. I smelled and tasted the city as if it were an all-you-can-eat buffet, limited only by how long and how far my legs could carry me.
My hair was wet, my legs were tired, but I was sated. My palette was awakened to the possibility of tastes that I could only even begin to imagine. My mouth watered with the thoughts of how good everything could taste. But everything seemed out of reach, as if I were walking through a nightmare where everything you ever wanted was right in front of you, but when you reached out to grab it, you realized you had no arms, or you were suddenly pulled away from it. For me, the feast wasn't "movable" but constantly moving. A feast of ever-changing sights and smells and sounds that I could sense for an instant and then move on from it, or it moved away from me. The good thing about it, is that the feast will always be there waiting for me...