PARIS.
I made up a game of labeling passersby with adjectives. It's hard when people are moving fast, you have to be quick. I always end up with adjectives like "NORMAL" or "HAIRY" but one day I'd like to see someone and think "MARMOREAL".

On Bastille day I walked down to the Seine at 8:30 pm. Earlier, in the Marechaux's kitchen, I'd made a picnic with bread, salami and chocolate, which I ate for dinner. The sun glowed like a peach. I sat and swung my legs over the river. Detected a feeling deep inside but it resisted taxonomy. "You don't need to cogitate all the time to learn things," I reminded myself. Since arriving in Paris I had tried to be happy with a routine of reading, eating and sweatily existing.

I walked to the Ile St. Louis and bought two ice cream cones at Berthillon. One cherry and the other pear. Alternated licks. The cherry tasted like nothing and the pear tasted like an entire orchard. I concentrated on making myself porous.

A teenage boy with his family blew me a kiss from a tourist barge. I appreciated the river, because it soaked up and swallowed the needs of all the people.

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