"All the year round they live on bread and vegetables and bits of sausage," Father explained, "so now they don't want anything but meat." And I supposed he had the right explanation. But before the meal was half over, I got up from the table and staggered out into the air, and leaned against the wall of the barn, and watched the huge, belligerent geese parading up and down the barn-yard, dragging their tremendous overstuffed livers in the dirt, those livers which would soon be turned into the kind of pate de foie gras which even now made me sick.
The feast lasted until late in the afternoon, and even when night fell some were still at it there in the barn. But meanwhile the owner of the farm and Pierrot and Father and I had gone out to see an old abandoned chapel that stood on the property. I wonder what it had been: a shrine, a hermitage perhaps? But now, in any case, it was in ruins. And it had a beautiful thirteenth- or fourteenth-century window, empty of course of its glass. Father bought the whole thing, with some of the money he had saved up from his last exhibition, and we eventually used the stones and the window and the door-arches and so on in building our house at St. Antonin.
By the time the summer of 1926 came around, we were well established in St. Antonin, although work on the house had not yet really begun. By this time I had learned French, or all the French that a boy of eleven was expected to use in the ordinary course of his existence, and I remember how I had spent hours that winter reading books about all the other wonderful places there were in France.
Pop had sent us money, at Christmas, and we used some of it to buy a big expensive three volume set of books, full of pictures, called Le Pays de France. And I shall never forget the fascination with which I studied it, and filled my mind with those cathedrals and ancient abbeys and those castles and towns and monuments of the culture that had so captivated my heart.
I remember how I looked at the ruins of Jumieges and Cluny, and wondered how those immense basilicas had looked in the days of their glory. Then there was Chartres, with its two unequal spires; the long vast nave of Bourges, the soaring choir of Beauvais; the strange fat romanesque cathedral of Angouleme, and the white byzantine domes of Perigueux. And I gazed upon the huddled buildings of the ancient Grande Chartreuse, crowded together in their solitary valley, with the high mountains loaded with firs, soaring up to their rocky summits on either side. What kind of men had lived in those cells? I cannot say that I wondered much about that, as I looked at the pictures. I had no curiosity about monastic vocations or religious rules, but I know my heart was filled with a kind of longing to breathe the air of that lonely valley and to listen to its silence. I wanted to be in all these places, which the pictures of Le Pays de France showed me: indeed, it was kind of a problem to me and an unconscious source of obscure and half- realized woe, that I could not be in all of them at once.
Reading this passage, I'm reminded of the day Notre Dame in Paris burned. It was a place that had been on my bucket list. One day, I told myself, I will walk into that place and be surrounded by almost 857 years of prayers and candles and art. I remember imagining how it would smell--old wood mixed with incense mixed with wax mixed with something else. Holiness? Grace? The ghosts of thousands and thousands of pilgrims?
Sadly, now, in my lifetime, I will never get that experience. Notre Dame took 182 years to build. It will probably take more years than I have left on this planet to restore it to something like its former glory. I accept that. Perhaps, one day, I will be able to stand outside what remains of Notre Dame in the future. Maybe I'll still be able to smell the smoke and char of the fire. See soot still clinging to the surrounding buildings.
I have always been drawn to places of worship--Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Jewish, Quaker, Muslim. I love that attempt by human beings to create something that somehow touches the face of the Divine. The ornateness of cathedrals. The spartan simplicity of meeting houses. I think almost any artistic endeavor--whether its cathedral building or portrait painting or poem writing--is an act akin to praying. Art is the way we grapple with the human condition in all of its beauty and ugliness.
I haven't written a new poem in a while. Coincidentally (or not), my prayer life has dwindled to nonexistent, as well. I feel out of touch with God right now. Like God has stepped away and left me to struggle alone. I know that's not true. God doesn't do that. However, over the past year or so, I've experienced quite a few dark nights of the soul. Sometimes these nights can produce some good poems. Other times, like now, I can barely string words together for a daily blog post.
Tonight, it feels like Notre Dame is burning again. Worry has plagued me, and, when that happens, I don't accomplish a while lot. Instead, I go to bed, pull the blankets over my head, and just . . . sleep. It's the only time when my mind calms down.
No poems tonight. Too tired. The one act of cathedral building I can do--sending out some love and prayers for one of my best friends who lost her puppy of 13 years yesterday.
Saint Marty loves you, Missy. Please know that. See that love, like the candles of Notre Dame, filling your darkness with light.
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