January 2nd, 2019. Patty and I had just landed in Paris the day before, on New Year's day. This was taken on our first walk, at about midday. We strolled drowsily from our rented apartment in Montparnasse up the Blvd. St Michel, cutting slightly northeast at Cluny so we could approach the Shakespeare and Co. bookshop via the network of narrow, stone-paved streets that follow the medieval street plan even if many of the buildings now date from the 1800s. This was my first sight of Notre Dame -- on this trip. I'm posting it now for the same reason as everyone else around the globe: millions of Parisians walk past it or see it every day, 30,000 tourists visit(ed) it every day, yet it's one of those buildings that everyone who has seen it comes away with a deeply personal attachment to.
In this photo, at the moment I took it, I just wanted to capture the fact that you can walk around central Paris, on the way to somewhere quite different from Notre Dame, just noticing it for a second maybe, and yet there it is, anchoring your sightline in the same way that all roads in France legendarily converge on the square in front of the cathedral.
After seeing the images of the roof on fire, and seeing the spire collapse through the roof of the nave, I got a little choked up, thinking of all the times I've been around or near this building. I'm not a Christian. I've only entered this church once, when I was on a teenage trip. I'm not French, so I can't possibly have that deep cultural attachment to it. But I've lived in Paris, and visited enough times since then to perhaps feel that I'm more than just a casual tourist. And this photo I took reminded me that you don't have to have stood in the nave and gazed up at the rose window in awe to feel a sense of loss. It's the at times very ordinary (but permanent) presence of Notre Dame that made it special. As if it had always been there. As if it always would be there.
Yes, buildings are always burned down. Yes, buildings can be knocked down, sometimes by planes. They can be rebuilt. But you have to be stone-hearted not to feel a sense of something being lost at the sight of those orange flames dissolving the thousand year old beams in a sea of merciless fire.