Why does it hurt so bad to see the Notre-Dame in flames, to see its spire topple over? Why do I feel like I'm watching a baby get hurt, or a dog put down, or a loved one receive a terrible diagnosis? Why do I feel like I'm falling?
It's cliche but Paris is the best. It's the best city, the greatest city, the most complete city I've been to. It's so magical, so pretty. Paris is everything to the French, the financial capital, the cultural capital, the celebrity capital, the literary & arts capital, the industrial capital, the political capital, the journalism capital, the historic and religious capital, the FOOD capital, the fun capital, the dancing capital, the walking capital, the beautiful capital, everything. Consider the feeling of New York AND D.C. AND San Francisco AND Chicago AND oh yeah some religious capital like Boston or Montgomery or Salt Lake City, and some hipster place like Austin to Santa Fe, ALL in ONE big city. But make it a really old city, 2,000 years old, and put a couple of world wars in there, and Napoleon, and Louis XIV, and the Moulin Rouge, and Impressionism, and so much, so much, so much else! It's absolutely charming, vibrant, alive!
When I go there I feel like I've died and gone to heaven. I do. I don't feel that way anywhere else on this earth. In fact, the feeling I have when I go there is one of the things I hold on to in my spiritual faith -- I think, maybe there must be a real heaven, because I feel so good when I go to Paris, that maybe it's a symbol of something greater to come. Paris reminds me that sometimes you just have to be in the right place to be happy, and that helps me realize that by and large, this earth might not always feel like home, ya' know, and maybe heaven is something like Paris, but hopefully even better.
And in the middle, the very center of the world's greatest city, is a little tiny island, surrounded by the Seine on each side, and this little tiny island is where the original Parisians were, surrounded and protected as they were by the waters. And it is here they built up a mighty Cathedrale that was the physical, spiritual, and emotional center of the city. Everything was for the church and of the church, everything leads to the church and everything comes from the church. The whole medieval town was immediately adjacent to the church, the streets still lively today with ghosts and smells of fishmongers wiping their crud into the Seine. I can feel the masses of peasants wandering from the streets of the town into the big square and into the church, some out of compulsion, some out of reverence, some out of great fear, some out of brainwashing, some of intelligence, some to give out punishment, and some to receive it.
There's so much that changes, every day, so much that slips away. Constant change, constant mourning, constant regret. In Salt Lake City in the past months, places like Rust Rare Coin have closed down, Firestone Tire is now Burt Brothers, the art center on 200 South and 200 East has closed or moved, everything is always changing, and these places don't really matter at all but when you walk by and its shuttered, it reminds you that everything is always changing, and what about the people who worked there? were they displaced? and where did they end up? And so in the physical world, we hold on to a few dear, dear comforts, libraries and churches and city squares, and it comforts us that they don't change as much, and that we can walk the same streets as DeGaulle and Curie and Van Gogh, so we hold on to these few places, the Notre-Dame, the Pantheon, and they anchor us to all those who have gone before.
Anyway, it's really really sad to see it burn, so sad.
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