Mourning Paris

(14 November 2015)
There is a candlelit vigil in Place Kleber tonight. The statue of Jean Baptiste Kléber is very stern in the flickering light, and the heavy shadows. A woman is crying as she lights her candle. Her hand is shaking a lot; it's making her entire body tremble. She is being rocked back and forth by a woman I assume is her mother. They are the spitting image of each other.

It's very strange here this evening. There are the mourners and there are the people who are always hanging around the statue. They are being very loud, laughing and swearing. They have made the vigil into an absurdity. How funny it sounds to hear French people (very drunk French people, mind you) sing along to Fetty Wap when even babies do not make a sound.

It is not drizzling, because although few, the drops that fall are fat and heavy. For weeks Strasbourg was unseasonably mild, but today it is cold. It may rain. It will rain as children cry, with tears falling to the tune of Trap Queen, which blares irreverently from a battered boom box.

Some of the candles have gone out. Some people relight the ones that have enough wick left, the ones that were blown out by wind, or upset by stomping feet. I burn my finger because the wind blew the flame onto my thumb. I hand the lighter to Anna and set the little tea candle down carefully, pushing it to an open space. 

Still it does not rain. 

It feels wrong to fall back into life's normal patterns; it feels like we ought to stop everything and be quiet and serious, and light candles. But that is not how the world is. The world would have us listen to American rappers insult women and go home, and forget after a while that 129 people died. 

Some people will never forget. We are lucky to forget.