The Ants Go Marching One by One

 The ants go marching one by one, ta-rah, ta-rah,

 The ants go marching one by one, ta-rah, ta-rah, 

The ants go marching one by one, 

The little one stopped to wipe his bum, 

And they all went marching, down under the ground to get out of the rain

Tiddly om pom pom, Tiddly om pom pom. 

Being a tourist in Paris means queueing. Lots of queueing. Unless you pay a lot of money, which I don't have a tendency to do.

Today's trip sent me to Notre Dame, right in the middle of Paris. I tried to go yesterday, but the queue was close to half a kilometre long and I couldn't stomach it. Today, around four, the queue was much shorter and moving quickly - about a ten-minute wait with a cursory walk through a metal detector. That's a fine queue, yet I was still singing the ant song in my head as all of these lemming tourists trudged their way towards the great door.

I entered the hallowed ground that is Notre Dame. 

And yeah. 

I'm so conflicted about visiting this sight in particular. 

I'm reminded of when I went through the Gandhi Memorial Museum in Delhi, where locals frog-marched through the building, not stopping to look, consider or dispute what was on show. It was a strange performance. Why were people there if they weren't going to enjoy it? 

Today's visit to Notre Dame had a similar feeling, 

Firstly, there were far too many people in the building, more shopping centre than sacred site. Lots of pushing and shoving, trying to get your hands on votive candles, groups gawping at all sorts of things. It wasn't pleasant. I felt like I was one of those ants in the song, blindly marching forward. 

And yes, Notre Dame hasn't been open to the public for years after the big fire. There's still a lot of scaffolding up around the building, masking some of its beauty, but the towers are there. Quasimodo has his bells to ring. And inside - it's soooooo clean. I remember going into Notre Dame when I was there 30 odd years ago. I remember it being dark, filled with the stains of hundreds of years of thurible smoke and Parisian smog. The insides have now been cleaned thanks to the rebuilding. 

Don't get me wrong, it's a gorgeous church - but how can you enjoy a sacred space when 2000 of your best mates are gawping around, taking selfies and not considering anything other than what might look good in Instagram?

Not to forget that when the fire came many, many people donated money to save this building - enough to feed a famine-ridden country for years. Such a Christian thing to do. 

For me, I've had a much better time in some smaller, lesser-known churches. St Eustache in the First Arrondissement is glorious - even better when the Keith Haring choir screen is on display. I popped into St Nicholas's church, which is nearby where I'm staying. Nobody was in there, which was great. St Sulpice, which hides away in the shadow of Notre Dame reminds me of how the latter used to be. Smoky, dark and contemplative. 

I just don't get why people feel the need to march through these cathedrals, paying no heed to all the great things these buildings provide - solace, peace and beauty. They're not there as something to mark off a list. They require more reverence than that. Cathedrals should be poured over, contemplated and loved.

Some of my retreat mates were there when Vespers started, staying for the choral edition. They're lucky. That's how you enjoy a Cathedral properly. 

By the time of Vespers, I was over the river at Shakespeare and Sons, the English language bookshop, upstairs in the reading area, sitting at a table that T.S.Eliot and Ernest Hemingway might have sat at, doing some writing. This made me very happy. 

I walked out of the bookshop reasonably unscathed. A copy of Samantha Harvey's Orbital. Another small volume from a new author that looks interesting. And a copy of St Exupery's Le Petit Prince, in the original French. (Which we studied for Year 12 French). 

Pilgrimages come in many different forms. This was mine. 

Today's song: