Three Hundred Twenty-Four Steps to Sacre Coeur

Climbing the steps to Sacre Coeur . . .

You start at street level outside the No Problemo bar and go up from the curb one step; then up two flights of seventeen steps followed by three of sixteen more. You walk about twenty yards up a gentle slope to five flights of twenty-five steps, then two more flights of twenty-two. One more gentle slope and a penultimate flight of thirty steps are followed by a final flight of twenty five, and the grounds of the Cathedral slope -upward- to the podium of the basilica itself.

For those of you who enjoyed the adventure of Sesame Street's Count, that is three hundred twenty-four lifts of eight inches, which works out to two thousand five hundred ninety-two inches, or, more simply put, is two hundred sixteen feet . . . lifting one leg at a time . . . for what seems ever.

I counted them on the way down because I wasn't having to do the same survival breathing I did on the way up.

At the top, yes; there is "Sacred Heart," and the view is heavenly indeed, looking toward the church and over the city. I don't know how many miles you can see from up there, but it's all the way to the end of the world. I understand and appreciate and, yea, even celebrate the majesty of monumental buildings. I'm just rhapsodized out. I'll stick with the human scale.

There were an Asian couple taking wedding photographs; he was warmer in the wind with his suit and tie than she was in her glorious white shoulder-baring dress. There were a thousand heart-shaped brass locks attached to the chain-link fence by lovers attesting their forever-togetherness. There was also a man hawking heart-shaped brass locks. I was by myself, and he did not approach me. Families were there in their generations. Then past the fencing there were another thousand on the landing fifty feet below and streaming upward like steam from a kettle.

The view sweeps from past Gare du Nord to eastward across the valley of the Seine and past the phallic Gallic Tour Montparnasse to the west till your eye is arrested by the structures at the base of the church. The vista is so broad, so arresting, that it is really difficult to pick out structures that, closer to, blot out the sky. At Sacre Coeur, you are -in- the sky, and your scan is omniscient, almost uncaring, wishing you could define which small medieval pixel is which historically significant monument. It's humbling.

I'm reminded of Shelley's "Ozymandias:' "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair . . . " Were I not one of the formacidic masses, swarming the hill, the valley might simply be but lone and level sands. So this is a city of over two million sensate beings, and I relish being uncountable in it.

Life is good.