rushthatspeaks | bad fucking day

When I went to Paris, the first thing I remember is exhaustion, as we had taken the sleeper train over the Alps from Italy, an experience which is a strange combination of fascination (what does this little built-in lever next to the window do?) and deep physical discomfort (despite sincere efforts on the part of the railway to alleviate it). I got the kind of sleep where you do sleep, but you don't feel as though you did and might feel better if you hadn't. It was cold as soon as we stepped out of the train station, too, the kind of biting, bitter cold where you stifle in a scarf but wonder sincerely about a third pair of socks. Cold that sinks into the bones, bypassing the skin and going directly for prognostications of doom. And the light was cloudy, grey-pink-yellow, early light: and it was Christmas morning.

Not much is open in Paris on Christmas but the churches.

There was Mass going on in Notre-Dame-de-Paris, of course, but cathedrals don't mind people drifting in and out and looking at things during Mass, as long as they are quiet about it. And the Middle Ages came to life for me in a very specific way, which they never had before, not as a result of sight, or sound, or even smell, but because Notre Dame has never had any sort of heating put into it, no pipes, no space heaters, no under-floor anything.

Which is because it didn't need it. When the church was filled with a sufficient number of people, it attained the perfect air temperature all by itself, from body heat.

And I mean perfect. It was the only time, in Paris, that entire trip, that my feet were ever actually okay. It gives you a visceral sense of fellowship, that atmosphere, the knowledge that you are literally being warmed by strangers, whom you in turn keep warm. Think of that, in the bitter winters of the Little Ice Age, and every year, until this year.

Oh, I know they will rebuild it. Fire happens to cathedrals, and they have this one mapped to the quarter-inch. The world's experts will put it back together, and there will be signs and exhibits about the fire, and everyone will marvel at how good the restoration was; in ten years, or twenty-five, that will be the story.

And yet--

My memories of Gene Wolfe are not personal ones, though I walked by him in the hallways at Readercon, and saw him on a panel or two. I mean, I think of him every time I bite into a Pringle. But the memory I have that I think says the most about what Gene Wolfe means, to others and to me, is a public one which didn't involve him, as such, at all.

I walked through Harvard Square one time, and one of the panhandlers had propped his sign on his cap and taken a break from actually panhandling. He appeared to be about a third of the way through The Claw of the Conciliator and he was oblivious to the outer universe. I left all the cash in my wallet in his hat, quietly, as I did not want to interrupt him.

While I was walking away, I realized that I had reacted to him with exactly the same sort of thrill that I have for a really good busker. Here was someone doing something virtuoso, in collaboration with both a specific artist and a deep body of general knowledge, and doing that thing in public, and doing it well, and with evident pleasure in it. And I was glad to see it done, because that should exist in the world.

I realize that could certainly happen again this year, or anytime, or never, and doesn't depend on Gene Wolfe as a living human being.

And yet--