It was crazy seeing flames ravage Notre Dame. I was a lot more affected by it than I would have ever expected. It felt as if I was watching an old friend getting the beatdown of her life, and there was nothing I could do about it.
My first visit to Paris over twenty years ago was unplanned. I have family in London. I’m Jamaican. All Jamaicans have family in London. A few days into my three week visit, it dawned on me how close I was to France. I had missed an opportunity to go with my high school class and had opted not to do a year studying abroad my sophomore year at Syracuse, so this was my chance. I hopped a train at Charing Cross, and was off. I was also filled with as much nerves as I was with excitement. I had tried to convince various cousins to accompany me, but they had already been there/done that. So, there I was, on my first trip outside the US–if you didn’t include Jamaica, where I was born and raised–and I was headed for a bustling city, all by myself, and not all that confident in how far Monsieur Blankiet’s high school French would take me.
As luck would have it, Notre Dame would be the first of the city’s many iconic monuments that I would visit. I didn’t necessarily plan it that way. Like every other visitor to the city, I had a list of must-sees that included the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Arc de Triomphe, and of course the cathedral. I had found an inexpensive little hotel on the right bank, and still overwhelmed with nerves, I took to wandering the streets. Walking had always been a means of meditation for me. I made my way up and down neighborhood streets, eventually finding myself on the banks of the Seine. And right there in the middle of the river was the Ile de la Cite. And toward the end of the small island stood “Our Lady,” so beautiful and so majestic, but with that gothic thing going on, kind of ominous too. She was like that girl you wanted to be like in high school—really pretty, really smart, really popular—but with a hint of danger. Most people first glimpse Notre Dame from the front, which gives that iconic view of the two square towers. But I came up on it from the back, where there’s a whole other type of vibe going on. You got the main spire, you got all these other little spires, you got religious statues, you got gargoyles sticking out. You got those flying buttresses that look like giant arched stone arms forcing all their strength against the cathedral’s outer walls. My education on flying buttresses actually came from my visit to Notre Dame. I had no idea what they were beforehand. All I knew was that as a kid, the word “flying” next to the word “butt” would send me into a fit of giggles.
It’s easy to forget that Notre Dame is first and foremost a place of worship. So many people go in and out of it daily, not to attend mass or to offer up prayer, but to gawk, snap pics and finally make a physical connection with a structure they’ve had a familiarity with from afar their whole lives. That was my M.O. for visiting. They commenced building the cathedral in 1160, which is kind of mind-blowing. I feel like half the stuff we build today can barely survive a harsh rainstorm. To put things in perspective, St. Peter’s Basilica wasn’t started on until 1506.
So I stumbled in staring up at the vaulted ceiling and the rose colored stained glass above the front entrance. I noticed there were a lot of folks seated quietly in the pews, but I looked past them to the stained glass above the altar, and at the organ. That’s when I heard a priest’s voice and saw everyone standing in unison. I had walked in during a mass–during the activity the cathedral was actually constructed for. And I immediately felt like an intruder. So I froze, then began walking kind of on the balls of my feet, suddenly aware of every single step, and not wanting to draw any of the worshippers’ attention away from the ceremony taking place.
As beautiful as it is in the main area of worship, my favorite part was the bell tower and the roof. It tapped into all my childhood imaginings. You go up a stone spiral staircase…and you keep going up…and up (for a total of nearly 400 stairs). And then you’re suddenly surrounded by wood—wooden stairs, wooden walls, wooden everything. It starts kind of looking like your grandma’s attic, if your grandma also happened to have a penchant for giant bells. I went through the shortest, tiniest door ever (must remember how long ago the cathedral was built and how much smaller people were then), and I ended up on the gargoyle level of the roof. I could see over all the rooftops of Paris to the Eiffel tower through the protective metal barrier there. But it was the statues that got really commanded my and fired my imagination. The twelve apostles on the spire faced away from each other, as if they had gotten into some kind of tiff. And then there were those gargoyles, loads and loads of them. Gargoyles actually have a function. They have spouts that carry potentially damaging water away from roofs. But then there were also loads and loads of these other figures called grotesques—basically distorted statues that can be scary or comedic, and don’t seem to have a function outside of creeping people out. They seem at odds with a place that was created for reverence and thanksgiving and the celebration of all that is good and not evil. I heard a story that they’re actually there to fend off any evil spirits that try to get into the church. Don’t know whether or not that’s true. And each statue was so different and so incredibly expressive. It was as if, when the cathedral was being constructed, they were actually alive and in the midst of expressing themselves, when they were suddenly turned into stone. There was the pensive statue, the one sticking his tongue out at the city, one who looked like he was eating a baguette. Some looked bored, some looked mischievous. I might have even seen a zombie. And it made me think that perhaps each day, as night fell, they’d all come back to life, and for those eleven or so hours of darkness, get into the most delicious sort of mischief, only to return to their stilled positions with the rise of the sun.
Back in the south tower, once I climbed the last set of stairs, I ended up discovering Emmanuel, the main bell, that existed amongst all that wood. I was able to get a faint ding out of him by tapping a metal tool against his inner lip. And I couldn’t help but to think of Quasimodo.
Before I left Notre Dame, I lit a candle and said a prayer for my friends and family. I said a prayer for the world. And I gave thanks for my good fortune. The times I’ve visited it since, I’ve also done the same. I don’t know how long it will take to rebuild our beautiful lady, but she is obviously one strong broad. So I look forward to one day again being able to see up close those mischievous stone figures that line her perimeter, and maybe being able to get their take on how they were able to band together, with all the apostles and angels, to help protect those brave firefighters, enabling them to stop what could have been an even worse catastrophe.
