Today I wanted to go somewhere to write, and I wished so badly that I could be back in Lyon, sitting in the Roman amphitheater, watching the clouds pass over the city, with Mont Blanc peaking through them in the distance. It's a time I'll never get back, and now I wished I had appreciated it even more while I had it.
Anyway, here is a little something that I wrote about Lyon today. Needless to say, Lyon, tu me manques beaucoup.
I walked through
Lyon, the City of Light, as the sun faded over the peak of Fourvière . Its last
ray lit up the silhouette of the basilica, looming in the distance like the
ominous judgment of God. One by one the lights sprung to life just as they fell
into shadow. One by one the majestic lights, soft and bright, glowing and warm
would keep away the night. It was the Festival of Lights, in the middle of
winter, and the city teemed with visitors who had come all of over France to
see it. Although I had come from farther away, all the way from California,
Lyon was my city. For the past four
months, I had explored its hidden passageways, the traboules, found out its secrets. I had taken its sometimes efficient
metro, listened to the recording of that lady over the loudspeaker announcing
the station names, more times than I count. But I remained a stranger, a
foreigner. It made me smile to realize that here I was, in the city that had
once felt so distant and cold to me, and I realized that I felt like I
belonged. I knew this city better than the throngs of tourists overwhelming it.
Lyon belonged to me, and I to her.
The heart of the
city runs through the Presqu’île, like an artery, pumping with people. At Place
Bellecour, they milled around waiting for statue at the center to count down
and burst with a spark of fireworks. If you walked further south, you would
find the bustling Christmas market at Perrache, where children ran amongst the
stalls while their parents whistled Christmas songs. There my friends and I had
ordered steaming hot cups of vin chaud to celebrate. The spiced wine filled our
veins with a little warmth, warmth that refused to reach our toes, which had
become rocks in our boots. We walked further and farther, across the Saône, the
smaller river, and into the old city. The cobblestones hurt our feet but we
kept walking to the light show at Cathédrale St. Jean. As the bursts of light
transformed this weather-worn ancient cathedral into a living, breathing
entity, I began to weep. It was all too much— the beauty of what people could
create. That was what I realized— how much of a fight we can put up against
time, who tells us nothing can last. We freeze it in monuments, like the ones
still standing in Rome, declaring everlasting power, even as they crumble under
the wind and rain. But what I found in Lyon was entirely different sort of
timelessness. In Lyon, you can walk through a 2,000-year-old theater, lost for
most of its existence, and then rediscovered. How could its builders have known
that so many years in the future, there would still be performances there,
still be humans gathering together to participate in an ancient ritual to
create, each time, a unique present moment? And then, across the other river, the
Rhône, lies the start to another human tradition: the mansion where the Lumière
brothers lived, who invented film, in another attempt to immortalize the
present. Whether it is a fruitless one, we won’t know in our lifetime. Sometimes
I wonder how there can be a coincidence as big as the city of Lyon. The City of
Light, where the brothers of light invented a machine that captures light and
turns it into motion, and where, the story goes, the Virgin Mary saved the city
from the plague. So they honor her, every year, on the 8th of
December by placing lumignons, little candles, in the window. Who makes up
these connections? Is there a bigger plan? Is there a point to it all?
I always seem to
be searching for one in my life. I always think I’ve found it, only for life to
thwart me again. But that night, just for that one night, I didn’t think about
what the next stepping stone was, where the next scene would be played. I watched
the city light up, and with my friends, who had traveled across the world to
live in this unforgettable city, I watched the lights dance across the city,
from the top of the rickety ferris wheel, which has sprung up, just like the
lights, one morning at Place Bellecour. We all crowded in to the circular car,
knowing that none of us would ever be in this place with the same people, at
the Fête Des Lumières again. As we watched the crowd dwindle below us into
little specks of darkness, the roofs of the city spread out before us. We could
see the rivers lit up on both sides of us, and the fantastic colored shadows
cast across the buildings. My heart and stomach dropped out of beneath me. I
had left them somewhere on the ground, and I realized I didn’t need them. I
didn’t need to worry, or the heartbreak, or any of the anxiety that had
threatened to crush me most of the time I had been in France. All I needed was
the winter air, my friends’ laughter, and those lights, reaching deep into my
eyes, burning an impression of a night I won’t forget. In the City of Light,
the City I Love, only and always, Lyon.
