guidebook moments: exhibit A

Among the things I will remember about living in Paris: stepping into the vestibule at St. Sulpice last Saturday afternoon as the organist was playing a Bach fantasia (which one, I have no idea – I also didn’t know that St. Sulpice’s organ is world-famous until a friend pointed it out, because a) I am an amateur admirer of organs and b) I assume on face that all organs in Paris churches are probably world-famous…). You could almost hear the organist cracking his/her knuckles as he paused for dramatic effect between one big, booming set of chords and the final extravagant, athletic flourish, filling the whole building with sound. All those stops, they were definitely being pulled. And yet it was ridiculously perfect, and brought tears to my eyes, because I’m that kind of person.

In Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon (I’m that kind of person, too), one of the main characters uses pipe organ-building technology during World War II to create an early-days computer that can be used to decode German messages. It’s this giant hulking assembly of glass tubes so fragile that it also has to constantly run a cooling system so that the tubes don’t explode. St. Sulpice’s own hulking assembly is made of metal and wood and decorated with carved angels, and not likely to explode, but in this lovely building where the late Renaissance and the Enlightenment step up and shake hands (what on earth did they say to one another?), there must be a similar wedding of science and mystery, endlessly cloaking and uncloaking.

The thing about living in Paris, depressing as it is to admit, is that you forget you could do these things, any minute of any day, and instead you get caught up in the same worn trough of laundry and post office and what’s-for-dinner (and, okay, we have A LOT of laundry). It takes a moment of surprise to bring you back up to face with your absurd good fortune. Anyway, I felt really lucky, coming out of the church, and all the way home on the bus.


In other news, G. had his first haircut this weekend. It had gotten so long in front that he was unable to see, and in constant danger of crashing into things (not on purpose, anyhow). I made S. grab him in a wrestler’s hold while he was still wrapped up in a towel after his bath, and kind of cleared away at the brush with the scissors to create something that approximated a fringe over the eyebrows and above the ears. I hesitated to go much shorter without risk to life and limb. The result is that he can see, and we think he looks dramatically different, but every old lady we pass on the street still says, “Oh la la, qu’elle est mignonne!” (“Oh, isn’t she cute.”) But that’s a battle for another day.