We all watched Notre Dame burn yesterday and felt the sorrow through
our own perceptions and (for me) memories. My writing partner this
week is Anna who lives in Baltimore and New York State and this
is what she wrote. I'm sure she won't mind if I publish this here. (Anna
is the cousin of my old friend Michael who died in 2010. She is very special.)
I imagine you are even more upset than I am about Paris. I hadn’t gotten
to see it yet which makes me feel sorry for myself a little too. I studied and
wrote papers about the Cathedral of Notre Dame in college. My focus was
on the art, the architectural style, and what those two things said about the
people’s relationships to those in power and to religion. I do wish I could have
seen the rose windows. And then tonight I read that it cannot be rebuilt as it
was. Did you read this too? Thirteen thousand 300-400 year old oak trees
were cut down to build the Cathedral. That is twenty one hectares, approximately
fifty acres of ancient woods and those trees don’t exist in that number, that age,
anywhere on our planet anymore. That stopped me in my tracks. It is almost a
crime against nature to cut down that many old trees and bad karma, if you believe
in that sort of thing. How in the world did the Notre Dame make it through WWI
and II and, the French Revolution! Those oaks at least were cut to make art and
were not the chopped up for firewood and used to heat a porridge or heat the
water to wash clothes, which somehow seems worse though we should all know
by now it is the little details like the sole of a wooden shoe clicking on the cobble
stones as you walk, the carved bowl and the spoon catching the afternoon light,
and the worn door handle that end up being the really important details that carry us.
