Salt Touched

Hey is this an audience or a mosaic ? ~ Hades, Disney’s Hercules

Every group of guests is a little bit different. Last cruise was fantastic, they were fun-loving, enthusiastic, and responsive. That…seems to have changed this time around.

I mean, the people are certainly friendly enough but…they are so quiet. They don’t seem to ask a single question, they don’t tell me when they’re lost and when I ask them a question? Silence and blank-eyed stares. I mean, half my teaching style depends on the fact that if I can make them laugh they are way more likely to remember what I say. But these guys? It feels like talking to stone!

So it’s a bit of a challenge, especially since it seems that they also don’t particularly want to listen to instructions? I mean, I will tell them specifically not to do something, and then of course they do it, and then they get stuck and blame it on me? In how many different ways can I tell someone “please do not attempt to follow this step by step on the machines in front of them, I know from experience it will cause the machine to freeze, just watch and listen for now” before they actually listen.

As I said, like talking to a brick wall this bunch.

But, I can will win them over…slowly but surely, I always win them over!

Before I begin, a few facts that are already fairly well known: I am a relatively private person. I – for the most part – keep myself to myself. If offered the choice I much prefer a face to face conversation than an online discussion, and I would rather have a single heart-felt face to face debate than a million online firefights. Despite having to rely on it for communicative purposes I neither like nor particularly trust the internet.

I know, I’m one of those strange people.

While these pages are kept ‘private’ in the sense that I plead with people not to give out the link to strangers (for the reasons why, you can take a look at the disclaimer section), the information to reach it is available to any who ask for the most part.

That does not mean that it is not a perfectly valid means of self-expression. It does not mean that it does not have the potential to make a difference, even if it’s a tiny one. I try – again for the most part – to stay away from social media. I do not get political, I do not normally post opinions, I try to only share light-hearted and positive thoughts, because I think the world has enough negativity. I leave the deep thoughts to here, where I can express them and work through them a bit more fully. I go out of my way not to get into those subjects online, because text has little tone, feelings get hurt, opinions get trodden on and nothing really – in the end- gets solved.

Now, setting all of that aside for a moment:

Do not, not for one moment, think that just by looking at what I post online, or what I do or do not post on social media – that that means you know me.

Because you probably don’t.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a few people that I have never met in person that know me sometimes better than I know myself; but that is a small handful, and those relationships are hard-won and hard-cultivated.

If you really want to know what I care about, what I am outraged about, what I worry about and fear until it eats me up inside, pull up a chair (virtual or otherwise), have a conversation, and I will gladly tell you. Just because I do not post about something on social media does not remotely mean I am unaware of it, or that I don’t care about it, it means that I don’t care for Facebook to have all my opinions in it’s server storage, and that I don’t care to bring more negativity to an already negative world. Also, in this day and age, it seems that sadly one cannot even express a positive opinion or angle on something without sparking outrage, everything gets terribly twisted no matter what the original intent. That’s not a social sphere I take great joy in being a part of. It’s one I’m actively trying to step away from.

We have somehow evolved into a society where if you happen to state that you care about “thing A” it somehow automatically means that you don’t care about “Thing B”…we have somehow conditioned ourselves into this voluntarily poisonous environment, where we only judge ourselves and others by what we don’t do, what we don’t achieve, where even trying to shine a tiny light somehow gets twisted into more dark. Our growing dependency on that toxic environment honestly frightens me more than a little.

So no, just because I do not often choose to rant and rave does not mean I don’t care. Just because I don’t feel the need to make my words go viral doesn’t mean that I don’t want to make a difference. There are other ways to make a difference. Please don’t assume that you know what I do off-page, don’t assume you know the whole story. Because you don’t. No one does. Maybe that’s the whole point.

Maybe we need to remember that?

Artist unknown

Morning in Paris the city awakes
To the Bells of Notre Dame
The fisherman fishes
The baker man bakes
To the bells the of Notre Dame
To the big bells as loud as the thunder
To the little bells soft as a psalm
And some say the soul of the city’s the toll
Of the bells…
The bells of Notre Dame
~ Hunchback of Notre Dame

5,000 hand hewed oak trees made up her centuries old roof, hand leaded glass glowed in her rose windows. She stood through as a light in the darkness through some of the darkest times. She stood through first World War, and her bells rang. She stood through occupied France, and her bells brought hope. She stood through depression and starvation and loss and rebuilding and for eight hundred years her bells rang. For sorrow, for joy, for revolution…the bells of Our Lady of Notre Dame stood true to Paris, the beating heart of her very center.

And today…today we have nearly lost her.

Though it is Paris that stands in the streets, choking back tears and filling the smoke-thick air with hymns; it is not only Paris that grieves.

In situations like this it’s hard to find the words. It’s too big, and it’s too devastating. How can you grieve for a building? Let alone a building that you’ve never seen, never even had the chance to study.

Simple, because you grieve for history; you grieve for loss, and in situations like this…you grieve for humanity.

I am an art historian. If I could, I would make my living studying buildings like this. As one of my favourite tv characters says “architecture is just art we live in, why does no one get that?”. Notre Dame is not just a building, Notre Dame is art, and she is the soul of an entire city for a huge amount of people. When I think of the tremendous loss of history, the loss of culture, the gaping hole this leaves in people’s hearts…it breaks mine to pieces.

Over 500 firefighters have battled to save Our Lady; the roof was sacrificed, the spire toppled, but through the efforts of those who refused to give up they have saved the towers, they have saved the walls, they have saved her bones. But the upper rose windows are melted, the roof is gone, the spire is gone, there is nothing left of her famous interior ribbing. I will never stand under it, nor will anyone else, ever again. They will rebuild, it will heal, and this will become another incident in her long long story…but she will also never be the same.

Its true that there are bigger things at play on the world stage right now, there are still wars ongoing, innocents dying, and a million other things that could be deemed “more important” than the flames that erupted through that centuries old wood. But it says something that almost all news coverage cut immediately to the fire, that there has been little else covered on any network this whole day…

There is little left in the world that has stood witness to so much, that has watched over so many, meant so much to so many cultures…

Tragedy brings us together, it always has. Mourning reminds us that we are human.

For the first time in 800 years, her bells are silent…and it will be a long time before they ring out again…and that…that is important to stop and acknowledge.

Because that silence is loud.