Notes from Paris

It is cloudy today in Paris. Little flecks of rain hit my face, but I completely ignore it. I have been taking notes, and I want to draw some sketches and scribble more notes. I've been trying to finish a poem. Some of what I have so far:

The train into Paris followed a track that cuts along an overgrown, littered passage that looks neglected. We cut across highways, mysterious, large buildings with colourful smokestacks, then we pass into darkened tunnels to the underground, into the metro stops made up from oddly matched tiles: yellows, pinks, and grays.

The problem of writing about Paris, or using Paris as a backdrop to a story, is the mechanical problem of capturing the enormity of the city and the multitudes that intersect with one another. The city is a massive lattice, like the metro, but with more stations and tracks and far too many intersections. Paris is not a horizontal city, like most Canadian cities that spread over a stretch of land. Paris is vertical, or, the lattice is built upward, making it dense and concentrated. Paris thrives on the layers left behind by history.