Adieu and Bonjour: Company and Solitude
I had thought Notre Dame was impressive from below. The massive arching ribs of the ceiling, the bell towers crusted with a thousand statues and carvings, the sheer height of the thing... But being inside it was something else altogether. Up the seemingly endless, tightly spiraled stone staircases (almost claustrophobic, were it not for the frequent slim windows, which bathed the dusky stone in light and offered momentary glimpses of the city) a brief respite in a chapel room (now a gift shop) halfway up, then higher and higher in dizzying circles until, ducking through the low doorway, we emerged out onto the narrow walkway between the two towers. Below us, the plaza stretched away, crowded with miniature people. The Eiffel Tower was visible in the hazy distance, and I have to admit, Katherine, Amy and I were a bit giddy at the sight. The excited internal chorus of, We are in Paris! We are in Paris!! had temporarily changed to, We are in the bell towers of Notre Dame!!! and we all resisted the urge to burst into Disney songs with some difficulty. I made friends with the gargoyles. They are all different, and each one is so interesting! Faces twisted in fear or pain or anger, stone eyes wide and wild in their sockets, jaws agape in silent screams or snarls or laughter, hunched bodies covered in carved scales or fur, too expressive to be animal, too bestial to be human. Some were honestly quite cute, in the way that pug dogs can be cute - ugly and adorable at once. One dragon-ish creature was shown with his long teeth about to close in his lunch, another gargoyle, tiny, twisting, and serpentine; that gargoyle in turn had its stone jaws clenched determinedly in the corded forearm that held it, looking for all the world like one of the desperately biting creatures out of the book of Kells, curvilinear and hungry. The gap-toothed grins of the round-faced statues gazing down from the top level, the curving beaks and lolling tongues and fangs - still wicked-looking even after centuries - all fascinated me and made me long for the leisure to sketch. Instead, I just stared and stared, trying to memorize the way sunlight makes shadows on stone, the patters of pigeon-droppings and moss and water-stains, and I snapped far more photos than anyone else would care to see. Then, up, up, up, up, up the stairs we went (precious) and then, emerged out onto the top of the bell tower. The view was breathtaking. We stood in the middle of an infinite ring of vanishing points, as the streets of Paris radiated away from where we stood, the center of a star. Sun and white stone, azure blue sky and and river, pink in the trees and in our cheeks as we laughed, breathless, and breathed again and again, oh my god... No wonder the medieval architects, builders and priests believed that the cathedrals brought one closer to God, we thought. Heaven felt pretty darn close to where we stood, and it could only have been more spectacular for the men who made it, hundreds of years ago...
The script above one of Shakespeare and Co.'s doors reads:
Be not inhospitable to strangers
lest they be angels in disguise
It also appears on the front of the tote bags they sell - not the colorful happy one I had bought, but the one that I had wanted, which they had been out of. When we wandered over after our Notre Dame experience, still flushed and euphoric (and slightly dizzy - that was a lot of spiralling, and my knees were doing funny wobbly things) I discovered that not only did they now have the artsy black-and-white totes available, but they were a quarter of the price. I returned the colorful one, and had cash to get sandwiches and pastries to boot. Three cheers.
Lunch in the Luxembourg gardens again, hot sun and warm grass littered with cigarette butts and students, followed by amazing baked goods under a striped awning. I bade Katherine and Amy a reluctant goodbye - they were heading off to Spain that afternoon - and took off for the Louvre for the sencond time in as many days (shaking my head at the fact that my life is utterly amazing and ridiculous). I loved every minute of my time there, and wished desperately that I could have stayed longer.
I gathered my things from the hostel, then hurried off to meet the wonderful miss Kerry Alexander, a compatriot of mine from multiple English classes at Mac, and one of those incredibly talented people whom you just know is going to be massively famous someday soon and I hope to goodness I get to know her well enough now to not feel guilty when I boast that 'I knew her way back when.' Just a quick note about Kerry - in our Romantic Lit class, we were all required to memorize a poem by one of the authors we were studying, and to recite it either to the prof in private, or in front of the class. One day, Kerry walks into class carrying her guitarcase, and in response to the professor's question she smiled just a little, in her unselfconscious, honest way and replied that she was going to sing her poem. Here is what she came up with. When We Two Parted, Lord Byron Yeah, she is pretty much amazing. Also, quite quite funny. I was lucky enough to be invited to crash on her floor my last night in Paris, and I made my way to her accommodation in the evening, and spent a few minutes pushing buttons on the intercom and peering anxiously through the windows. A nice girl opened the door for me at last, and I proceeded to spent the next several minutes trying determinedly to convey to the security man at the reception desk that all I wanted was to sit and wait for my friend. He spoke not a word of English, and as I, alas, speak absolutely no French, this was slightly difficult. He looked increasingly confused, resistant, and mildly suspicious, and I found myself speaking more and more desperately, resorting to the embarrassing type of sign language that you know looks as silly as it seems condescending, but it wasn't quite working - he shook his head at me, frowning slightly. It had been established that there was a friend involved, and sleeping, but that was it, and I was on the point of giving up and calling Kerry when the pleasant gal who had opened the door came to my rescue, asked me, in only slightly broken English, what was the matter, then explained it to the guard whose face immediately relaxed. He gave me a broad smile and a nod, and seemed not to be too concerned when a friend of Kerry's found me, told me she was running late, and invited me to join a group of them in a movie (It was in German, with French subtitles, so I only caught about a third of the dialogue, but it was very good nonetheless). Kerry arrived, and with the help of the much more accommodating guard, we wrestled a mattress out of the spare room and into the elevator. The fellow shot me a look, then said something to Kerry, making her laugh a little in surprise, and respond briefly in French. At my enquiring look, she replied that apparently he 'liked' me and thought I was pretty, which, considering the difficulties he had been giving me before, made me laugh somewhat. "Yeah, dude," Kerry smiled, "Welcome to Paris."
We had a nice visit that evening, and the next day we said adieu, as I took off for the Pere Lachaise cemetery to kiss Oscar Wilde's grave, and she departed for her internship.
The rest of the day was a sleepy blur - after two full weeks of travel, even the excitement of the Arc du triomf, and the graves of Isadora Duncan, Sarah Bernhardt, Moliere, Chopin, Delacroix and so many others was outweighed by the thought coming home to Edinburgh, to my own flat, and bed, and city.
And that was one of the most amazing things about this trip. More wonderful, in many ways, than all the art and the beauty around me, and all the incredible places I went and things I saw was the realization as I walked up the hill to the Royal Mile, and as I gazed out over the Prince's Street Gardens at the castle, and as I trudged down niddry street past the cigarret-puffing crowds outside the Hive and Banshee and Bannerman's bar, that this felt like home.
Edinburgh is not somewhere I am staying anymore. Edinburgh, in all its bustle and beauty, is (one of) my homes. And that, in the end, is why I decided to study abroad - not to visit some place, to but live there, to become at home there, to feel, upon returning, that this is someplace mine. My city. My home. Here.
Lunch in the Luxembourg gardens again, hot sun and warm grass littered with cigarette butts and students, followed by amazing baked goods under a striped awning. I bade Katherine and Amy a reluctant goodbye - they were heading off to Spain that afternoon - and took off for the Louvre for the sencond time in as many days (shaking my head at the fact that my life is utterly amazing and ridiculous). I loved every minute of my time there, and wished desperately that I could have stayed longer.
I gathered my things from the hostel, then hurried off to meet the wonderful miss Kerry Alexander, a compatriot of mine from multiple English classes at Mac, and one of those incredibly talented people whom you just know is going to be massively famous someday soon and I hope to goodness I get to know her well enough now to not feel guilty when I boast that 'I knew her way back when.' Just a quick note about Kerry - in our Romantic Lit class, we were all required to memorize a poem by one of the authors we were studying, and to recite it either to the prof in private, or in front of the class. One day, Kerry walks into class carrying her guitarcase, and in response to the professor's question she smiled just a little, in her unselfconscious, honest way and replied that she was going to sing her poem. Here is what she came up with. When We Two Parted, Lord Byron Yeah, she is pretty much amazing. Also, quite quite funny. I was lucky enough to be invited to crash on her floor my last night in Paris, and I made my way to her accommodation in the evening, and spent a few minutes pushing buttons on the intercom and peering anxiously through the windows. A nice girl opened the door for me at last, and I proceeded to spent the next several minutes trying determinedly to convey to the security man at the reception desk that all I wanted was to sit and wait for my friend. He spoke not a word of English, and as I, alas, speak absolutely no French, this was slightly difficult. He looked increasingly confused, resistant, and mildly suspicious, and I found myself speaking more and more desperately, resorting to the embarrassing type of sign language that you know looks as silly as it seems condescending, but it wasn't quite working - he shook his head at me, frowning slightly. It had been established that there was a friend involved, and sleeping, but that was it, and I was on the point of giving up and calling Kerry when the pleasant gal who had opened the door came to my rescue, asked me, in only slightly broken English, what was the matter, then explained it to the guard whose face immediately relaxed. He gave me a broad smile and a nod, and seemed not to be too concerned when a friend of Kerry's found me, told me she was running late, and invited me to join a group of them in a movie (It was in German, with French subtitles, so I only caught about a third of the dialogue, but it was very good nonetheless). Kerry arrived, and with the help of the much more accommodating guard, we wrestled a mattress out of the spare room and into the elevator. The fellow shot me a look, then said something to Kerry, making her laugh a little in surprise, and respond briefly in French. At my enquiring look, she replied that apparently he 'liked' me and thought I was pretty, which, considering the difficulties he had been giving me before, made me laugh somewhat. "Yeah, dude," Kerry smiled, "Welcome to Paris."
We had a nice visit that evening, and the next day we said adieu, as I took off for the Pere Lachaise cemetery to kiss Oscar Wilde's grave, and she departed for her internship.
The rest of the day was a sleepy blur - after two full weeks of travel, even the excitement of the Arc du triomf, and the graves of Isadora Duncan, Sarah Bernhardt, Moliere, Chopin, Delacroix and so many others was outweighed by the thought coming home to Edinburgh, to my own flat, and bed, and city.
And that was one of the most amazing things about this trip. More wonderful, in many ways, than all the art and the beauty around me, and all the incredible places I went and things I saw was the realization as I walked up the hill to the Royal Mile, and as I gazed out over the Prince's Street Gardens at the castle, and as I trudged down niddry street past the cigarret-puffing crowds outside the Hive and Banshee and Bannerman's bar, that this felt like home.
Edinburgh is not somewhere I am staying anymore. Edinburgh, in all its bustle and beauty, is (one of) my homes. And that, in the end, is why I decided to study abroad - not to visit some place, to but live there, to become at home there, to feel, upon returning, that this is someplace mine. My city. My home. Here.
