A Moveable Feast

"A girl came in the cafe and sat by herself at a table near the window.  She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in a smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair was black as a crow´s wing.

I looked at her and she disturbed me and made me very excited.  I wished I could put her in the story, or anywhere, but she placed herself so she could watch the street and the entry and I knew that she was waiting for someone.  So I went on writing. The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it.  I ordered another Scotch and I watched the girl whenever I looked up, or when I sharpened the pencil with a pencil sharpner with the shavings curling into the saucer under my drink.

I have seen you beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You will now live with me among my words and thoughts and hopes and dreams. You belong to me and all Barcelona belongs to me as I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Barcelona as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Barcelona is a moveable feast."

-Ernest Hemingway

A Moveable Feast

(with some very tiny little liberties)