Vacant Houses(Donkeyland—1959))& Notre Dame—de Paris]))

Vacant Houses
(Donkeyland—1959))
& Notre Dame—de Paris]))



There was a two year period in my life, between eleven and twelve years of age when I’d go with my friend, Mike Reassert, searching into vacant houses that were about to be torn down by the state, in Downtown, St. Paul, Minnesota, for building bridges, and new fancy government buildings. These were all residential homes, and apartments complexes at one time. The year was 1959; it was summer, and a weekend, Saturday, if I recall right. The particular building we went into this forenoon was behind the police station, which was on 10th Street by Cedar; a bakery was nearby, and Jackson Street parallel. Often times the doors were left open in these soon to be smashed and shattered residences, and tramps, bums would sleep in the hallways, they never bothered us boys much, and if one moved too quick we’d hightail it out of there like two wasps. Today we didn’t see any, and so we moved from the first floor to the second floor of this four-plex apartment building.
It was near noon, as we rummaged through the hallways into the littered apartment, litter everywhere in it, its windows gazed upon the street outside, its curtains half torn off their reels. An old elm tree was ripped out of the ground, its thick old roots naked in the sunlight, the light of the sun entered through the window so as to shoot a ray through the dirty glass, all the way to the ceiling, showing the gray old spider webs in the corners of the rooms; it was a one bedroom apartment, the bathroom dingy as gray lace. The once white walls were drab except for the ones where the pictures hung (I didn’t know then, what I know now, we live out our childhood in dreams, somewhere down the adult road of life, in stages).

(The closet.) Light barely passed through the window into the closet as I opened it, the light seemed to have had a tail, as it moved past the chairs of the kitchen, and a reflection of the light in the living room, shinned on the sofa chair as I looked through the archway in back of me now—both lights somewhat helpful; the closet had sawdust in it, perhaps rats or mice were chewing holes in the walls, every so often I’d hear one in a room, they gnawed on everything that had a shape. Then I saw a frame, a picture in it, I pulled it foreword, shook it a bit, to take the dust and particles off it, wiped the glass somewhat clean with my shirt and elbow, it was of an old church in Europe. I looked closer; it was of Notre Dame de Paris. “Hummm…” I wondered.
“Leave it be,” said Mike, “its too hard to carry back and lug all-round all day.”
“No,” I said, not sure why, it simply caught my eye.
As time would tell, I’d go to Europe, and from the first time in Europe, in 1970, to my last time in Europe, 2002 (perhaps a dozen times in Europe all together, and some five years total time spent there), I’d see many Cathedrals from Spain, to Germany, to Istanbul, to London and Paris, and Notre Dame, I’d see four times, and perhaps each of those times in Paris, I’d go to Notre Dame, every day, thus, going into the Cathedral thirty times or more—complete. Going right up to its bell tower once, and climbing along its top ridge, looking and examining its gargoyles —and the rest of Paris.


Written 7/25/2006; El Parquetito, Café, Lima Peru