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| Sacre Coeur |
Montemartre, Paris
by Armando Ortiz
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| Mars |
I’d gone to
visit my friend, Scott, and sat on the couch, talking about personal matters –former
lover contacting me, my current emotional state, and my overall state in light
of many other concerns. Then I asked what he had been doing. He’d been watching
some YouTube videos on the breakdown of Greek gods. I saw listed there before
me, Mars meaning Ares, God of War. Then it hit me like a flash. I am an Aries,
and was born in March. I’d just returned from a trip to Paris, and there
visited Sacre Couer in Montemartre, where the church is located. Montemartre
means the mountain of Mars. I had returned to that spot a second time before
leaving the city the next day, to see the sunset. I’d read about its history in
passing but never really made the connection. That last day though, I saw the
clouds gently move and separate, like cotton candy being stretched with one’s
fingers. The sky slowly turned champagne, rose and as the sun slowly sunk
became a dark zinfandel.
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| Aries |
I told Scott that I was born in
March, under the Aries sign. To make things more provocative I also mentioned
to him that the constellation next to Aries was Persus, which was an eerie
coincidence that my first name was Percy. I was a bit surprised to realize that
Montmartre was my mountain. I was mostly taken by Sacre Coeur’s white washed
dome and pillars. It was one of the newer basilicas, one a hundred years old,
but being that it was on top of a mount, it gives great views of Paris. You can
also see the imposing church from the Eifel Tower and other parts of Paris, so
if it wasn’t the tower it was the church on mount mars that oriented me and in
many ways reminded me that I was in Paris.
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| Eiffel Tower at a distance |
On my first
visit to the church I’d wandered its streets and taken a multiplicity of
photographs on my phone. I saw foreigners with “selfie sticks” trying haphazardly
to take pictures of themselves. What has happened with asking a stranger for a
photo? Not that I went out of my way to offer help. Many faces from different
places around the world sat on the steps and just gazed out looking at the
city, talking, laughing, and contemplating amongst friend, with an occasional
sip of their beer or wine. Some people even had picnics happening in the grassy
area of the stairs that lead down to Place Saint-Pierre. All was well on top of
mount Mars, and for a person born in March under the Aries sign, things couldn’t
have been better.
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| Sacre Coeur at a distance. |
