Improvement with water

 

In this incredibly agreeable city that we have found, which is perhaps not normally so hard to find but took us nearly a year, I have found a common problem in some of the beautiful Gothic and Neo-Gothic churches. Which is to say, so many of the pictures I take of them are unsatisfying, usually because of the pew benches and the floor of the church, whether it be littered with people or objects that take away from the soaring craftsmanship of the ceiling and the walls and the apses and the sense of distance.

My solution to this has been one that I have extended around to other places in the city and have used before, particularly in Villefranche-sur-Mer, which is to put water all over the floor. This involves a lot of hose work and permits from the city and hopefully causes no damage after we leave, so it can slowly dry away and return to normal.

But it’s all worth it for the reflections it engenders.

The return of the geese

 

It’s one of those strange confluences of fate that probably mean nothing, but seem extraordinary and as though they should mean something. So why not just have them mean something?

I opened up my phone while walking around the city, only to encounter a feature that my phone provides, whether I want it or not, which is a look at some aspect of my vast photographic past. The feature for that particular moment was photographs I had taken four years ago, which all turned out to be of geese. And it made me wistful to see those geese, since I have not seen any geese in particular since I left Saint Minneapolis.

And I even highlighted a few of those pictures, thinking I might do something with them. Here are a few of those pictures:  

Less than an hour later from my running across these images, we walked into a magnificent public park here in the city, and I saw geese.

Very different geese, but geese, French geese!

Here then, are the pictures of those. And with them you have the whole story.

The city we looked for

We finally seem to have found the French city we were looking for.

Alas, I can’t mention it here because we are on the run from the mob, or something like that. I guess you can figure it out from your amazing understanding of geography, or by asking me because you’re curious, or you can just enjoy it on its own merits.

I will say that, as a person who lately has been going all over the place, it’s shocking how little one can understand about a place without going there.

Nevertheless, I have pictures for you of this place we are at, and that we maybe, cautiously, quietly… love.

To start, these are the vanilla pictures:

 

The return of Dear Publisher!

 

Dear Publisher,

It has been a long time since I wrote you.

I'm sorry, queried you.

It has been so long that your publishing company has been bought up and merged at least five times!

Thank goodness that's all over with, now that there's just the one.

And you're still there. So well done you!

Unfortunately now that you're just the one mega global epic gigantic publishing company you're probably even less interested in my sort of work.

What's my sort of work? You ask. Wow, it really has been a long time if you've forgotten that! 

It is the work of dazzling genius!

Well hey, it's great to see you still get a little glimmer in your eye. That's nice. But we've been here before: 

It's the work of dazzling genius that vanishingly few people ever really take to.

But thank you for your time and attention to this matter, and great catching up,

Feldenstein Calypso, author

Writing publishers

 

I used to write publishers here. And finding this old post sort of makes me want to again, though I don't know if I still have the same fire of the grievance of undiscovered genius churning with weary acceptance that these letters were often about.

Anyway, as I am off travelling, or searching? yet again, I hope you will accept one more repost so soon after another just a couple days ago. This one is from five and a half years ago, and called:

Dear Publisher: Me and Emily

Dear Publisher:

When Emily Dickinson died they found a bunch of poems stuffed in her desk drawers, or her mattress, or her pockets, or whatever. Then they were like, "Wow, look at these amazing poems. They are some of the greatest poems ever written!" And then hundreds of millions of people read them and were all "These are great, but what's a purple host?" 

Oh Emily, I can hear the purple host right now.

When I die maybe they'll find a sheaf of my unsent letters to the publisher. And they'll say "Wow, look at these amazing letters to the publisher. They are some of the greatest letters to the publisher ever written!" And then people will read them and love them and take them to publishers like you. And they will brandish them before you and say "You should feel ashamed of yourself!"

To which you would respond "How on earth is any of this my fault!"

To which I can only reply now, ahead of time: 

"Good point."

Yours,

Feldenstein Calypso

More haunted world

 

Perhaps it's my way of eagerly anticipating Fall, and its epicenter, Halloween?

Whatever it is, I am, as you read this, probably still wandering through Europe somewhere, and my increasingly complexly layered picture project of our last collection of travels has been interrupted by my travelling again. So today's set of pictures, from trains and of a more northern France, are pulled from my "I'm still working on them, but now don't think I will be anymore" pile.

I don't think I really had anything more to do with these anyway, and so am happy to use them to hopefully create some life in clerkmanifesto for another busy late Summer day.