As I alluded to in my first post this week, my time in Paris wasn't all a whirlwind of patisserie and prancing around famous monuments...
Although I had lots to be keeping me busy and some visits from family and friends scheduled over the two months, my time in Paris provided many solitary moments; some of which made me feel a little blue.
I was asked to contribute a literary vignette about a fleeting moment 'inseparably tied to a specific place' for the launch of Hitotoki Paris ('hitotoki' means 'one moment' in Japanese). Rather than write about a gleeful pastry spree I chose to write about this sombre moment, when a beautiful stained glass window helped me overcome my first overwhelming pang of homesickness.
Originally published at http://hitotoki.org/classic/paris/008 on July 28th 2008 (link now unavailable)
(Edit January 2015 - this link now works!)
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I had been alone in Paris for thirteen days. It took a dreary, uneventful morning for it to finally sink in that my family were hundreds of miles away. Although my first couple of weeks in the City of Light had been a song and a dance, I was craving human contact and conversation.
Like any other day, I left my little apartment on the rue de la Verrerie to spend the day with my sole companion: Paris. Turning onto the busy rue de Rivoli, I crossed over, intending to head to the quai but instead of trying to fight the traffic running around the Hotel de Ville, I turned left onto the place Saint-Gervais.
L’Eglise St. Gervais et St. Protais stood before me; its flaking red doors beckoning me. I think I sought some kind of sanctuary. Despite the solitude, it was getting pretty noisy in my head.
For a moment I stood staring up at the immense church, then I pushed open the doors and stepped into the huge hall. On instinct, I turned left and tiptoed halfway down the stone-flagged pathway. I sat myself down on a bench looking into the nave of the church.
In front of me, on the opposite wall, was the most beautiful stained glass window I had ever seen: a riot of colour and pattern in an otherwise tranquil space.
At once I felt a flood of emotion: of respect for such a building steeped in history, of desire for something to believe in, of helplessness and above all, loneliness.
At 12.59pm I wrote in my journal: “I have been fine until now, I think.”
I felt a heightened awareness of not only the sounds that were around me, but the sounds that weren’t; the cacophony of horns and sirens I was so used to hearing had been drowned out and the voice in my head that kept reciting a perpetual to-do list had finally quietened.
In a way I wanted to hear the sound of my own wail reverberate around the cavities of this huge edifice. Instead I sat in silence and stared at the panes of glass and their pretty kaleidoscopic patterns, as though they might give me answers.
I couldn’t work out what I was looking at, but it reminded me of an Yves Saint Laurent dress, of mermaids and of Christmas.
Although I felt the cold emptiness of isolation, looking at that window I also felt warm inside; as though my body were a glass jar filled with glow worms. I sat for a while, gazing into the myriad of scarlet, gold and cobalt configurations. After a while I felt content; as though the colours had spoken to me and comforted me.
I don’t know what it was about that window, but I found solace there on that lonely day in Paris.