Postcards from above Paris, 30 years gone
A 'sorta memoir' recollection of being high on the City of Lights, then suffering altar boy flashbacks at Sacre Coeur Christmas Eve Mass. | march12.2023
La Basilique du Sacre Coeur de Montmarte | Colorized rendering of web image.
By DOUGLAS JOHN IMBROGNO | Greetings. The long-ish piece I just posted to this newsletter’s companion website and excerpted below, “Looking Down on Paris, 30 Years Gone,” is a piece from a “sorta memoir” and book-in-progress. It’s tentatively titled “Confessions of a Failed Boulevardier,” but that too-esoteric title is likely to change by the time it is published (says the hopeful author, knocking on the nearest wood.) The excerpt is a fictionalized-non-fiction account of the night in 1986 when I attended Midnight Mass high above Paris at Sacre Coeur Cathedral — or to use the full French rendering: La Basilique du Sacre Coeur de Montmarte — and then was thrust into serious altar boy flashbacks at Christmas Eve Mass.
Meanwhile, my Moroccan workmate and fellow traveler in helping to build a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in a Paris suburb, Abdul-Ghani, was asleep back in a spartan, 7th floor walk-up room a couple blocks away, in a centuries-old building, built back in the day when Napoleon was writing odes to his lover Josephine’s lady bits. (Read to the piece’s conclusion for a sample!) Free subscribe to this newsletter for word of when the book is released into the wild. Below are a smattering of paragraphs from the excerpt. Click over to TheStoryIsTheThing.com site to read the whole, colorfully illustrated piece. This tale is drawn from a time I was abiding and working in and about this legendary City of the World, with which I have an alternately ecstatic and painful history, to be mapped out in my ‘autofiction’ book.
International Herald-Tribune masthead and personal journal still life | Christmas 1986, Paris, France
Excerpt from work-in-progress “Confessions of a Failed Boulevardier” by Douglas John Imbrogno | copyright 2023
Abdul-Ghani snores on the bed. Framed by his thick, black curly hair, his face is a Renaissance portrait of contentment. On the small table near the two chairs rests our dinner baguette, now half its size, one end looking as if gnawed off by a beaver. The round of Camembert has been reduced to a semi-circle, with white, cheesy crumbs surrounding it. I should clean these up lest there be a family of mice descended from Napoleonic times in the place.
The tall green bottle of Castelvin is greatly diminished with more than half the cheap Spanish red wine gone. I reach for my white porcelain cup, one of only two cups found in the room’s single, spare cabinet. Toss back the last inch of raspberry-colored liquid. Abdul-Ghani’s cup is empty, but for what looks like a drop of blood at the bottom. I fold the gold wrapper on the end of what is left of the chocolate bar. I suppose I could leave out a chunk of chocolate on a plate, should Santa and his reindeer deign to land on our building’s rooftop to deliver presents deep into the Parisian night. But how would Santa even know the coordinates of our whereabouts, camped without permission in a Le Service des Jeunes Volontaires apartment not our own?
Besides, my Christmas present is out the window. I flick a wall switch, clicking off the single bare bulb hanging from the room’s high ceiling. The room drops into shadows. The blueish light of nighttime Paris backlights the tall, white gauze curtains. Exactly where I am headed. I gear up for the long trudge down the circular stairwell of the old apartment block, the many floors lit only by the pallid glow of intermittent light bulbs on the long way down.
I hit the old streets of Paris. The air this Christmas Eve is chilly and smells of woodsmoke, charcoal and exhaust. I direct my feet onto steeper, upward-leading sidewalks and cobblestones. After ten minutes of exertion, I take a moment to catch my breath. Bent over, hands on knees. I press on. A reward, a princely Christmas present, awaits.
And so there it is. La Basilique du Sacre Coeur. By any measure and any title, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris is one of the world’s great complexes of buildings. The white building and its domes, illuminated by yellow electric lights, rise so high that I feel like a small bird on a lawn, gazing up at an oak tree. The multiple domes cause the eye to double-take and ricochet, one to the other and back again. They are not quite onion domes of the Russian sort. More like the slender ovoid shape of wild onions. The building complex would fit right into the urban landscape of an alien civilization in a sci-fi movie or comic book.
The Arc at the heart of Paris. | Colorized photograph from the web
Yet there are not one, but two awe-inspiring things to admire while standing on the front porch of Sacre Coeur at night. I turn around to to see the other. Sacre Couer rests upon the highest plot of land in all Paris — the Butte Montmarte. It has always been a popular spot, if not a sacred one, a dip into Paris history reveals. Druids may have worshiped here. And the Romans — ever marking their advances and colonialism with architecture — built temples to Mars and Mercury on the spot.
From this eagle’s nest you gaze down upon the ancient plains of the city, tucked all about the meander of the Seine River. And ‘tucked’ is an apt word since Paris is a cozy, people-sized city which hugs close to the ground. The city is mostly absent of skyscrapers, except for a patch seen to the far left — the suburb of La Defense, which juts up like a small stand of cornstalks in a rolling field of clover.
Looking down from Sacre Coeur, the eye picks out the exceptions to the city’s low profile. There is the Arc d’Triomphe, the mammoth ceremonial arch that appears to need a bridge to go with it. But the arch is indeed a bridge, if an historic one, to the glories — and tragedies, it must be said — of France’s triumphant, and not-so triumphant, conquering past. Over there is the skeletal mass of Le Tour Eiffel, possibly the world’s most recognized landmark. As iconic as the tower is in all corners of the planet, how astonishing to see it from above and know that a host of the city’s residents despised it at first sight as it went up …
The interior of Sacre Coeur Cathedral. | Photo by Pascal/Flickr
At Chrismas Eve Mass, 1986, inside Sacre Coeur
The Holy Eucharist ascends heavenward. The air smells heavenly, too. A troupe of priests sprinkled about the grand altar of Sacre Coeur rock gold censors on chains from their hands. The chains ‘ca-chink-a-chink!’ with each back-and-forth arc. Multiple billows of sweet-smelling incense smoke rise from the censors. It looks as if a storm has whipped up grey cumulus clouds above the altar. The clouds tumble upward to the arch of the distant ceiling, clouding a vast painting of Jesus, arms outstretched in sacrifice and welcome for all us sinners.
Many hundreds of people fill the place. I sit in one of the farthest back of the many ranks of wooden pews in the basilica’s vast interior, sniffing the incense. Next to the bells, incense is another of my favorite bits in all of Catholic ritual, although one that makes only rare appearances on holy days and Christmas Eve midnight mass such as this one.
The incense intoxicates me, scattering my attention in multiple directions in time. It smells of woodsmoke, kitchen spices, and something indistinct, yet exotic. Something like the patchouli oil my college roommate daubed on his neck our freshman year at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, when we escaped campus to drive south and dance for hours in a favorite gay club called Badlands, up a side street in downtown Cincinnati.
The next moment, as if an old movie scene had suddenly popped into my head, I see myself in red cassock and white surplice. I must be 11 or 12 years old. I am wreathed in churchly incense as Father Gerard ‘ca-chink-a-chinks’ the censor for some holy day inside Our Lady of the Rosary in our Cincinnati suburb. I stand behind his right shoulder at the back of the church. We prepare to march to the altar. What is the event? Easter Sunday? Good Friday? A benediction, perhaps? After which we would earn an ornate ribbon adorned with a square image behind ribboned plastic of Joseph, Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, to wear about our neck.
In my hands, I grip a tall, beeswax candle by its solid brass base. The candle and stand are together nearly as long as a baseball bat. The sometimes cryptic runes of Catholic iconography adorn the wax. A shepherd’s crook. A Latin letter. A resting, obedient-appearing lamb.
The candle is heavy in my hands. It requires my full attention to keep it balanced as we begin to stroll toward the altar. I see my younger brother, Robby, in a pew. He stares at me. Then, he puts his finger to the end of his nose and smooshes it upward. For a moment, he looks more like a small pig or flat-nosed monkey. His goof distracts me. I alter my stride slightly, hitching my footfalls so the candle rocks in its base. I slow. Regain the balance required of the heavy candle. I walk past him toward the finish line of the altar, speeding up to resume my place at the priest’s back. We are now halfway there.
The incense enfolds me as I draw near the priest. I inhale deeply. I adore the smell. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel safe, for some reason of which I am not quite sure. Yet the church, especially on high holy days, could feel like a big, cozy, warm cave lit by candlefire. All my family and friends are there, along with people in colorful vestments. And me in colorful clothes, dressed like a girl! Or a tiny boy priest. Storms may rage outside. But it doesn’t matter as we are gathered together. To hear songs. Recite soothing incantations. Ring pleasing, tinkling bells. To stand, then sit. Then stand, then kneel. Then, line up for the group drama of Communion.
Well, I could do without all the annoying up-and-down, kneel and bow-your-head gymnastics. Then, to do it all again ten minutes later. Much less, fretting constantly about the fate of my soul and the dire threats — no, the contractual promise of eternal torment in a boiling lake of fire — if I didn’t get things right in my young, imperfect life.
We are twenty feet shy of the altar when disaster strikes. As if a thunderbolt from heaven had shot down at me for my wayward thoughts, the candle bobs left, then right. I shift my weight. Move my hands. But it is too late …
READ ON: Looking Down on Paris, 30 years gone
Thanks for the heads up, sir. That French word always slips me up. Fixed all, methinks. I owe you a pan et chocolat and a Pastis. Not necessarily at the same time. Merci bien, mon ami!