Halloween in France

 

Yes, Halloween is a thing here in France too. In the morning costumed little kids (Harry Potter! The Little Matchstick Girl! A Karate Kid) were actually going into shops for candy. The candy didn't look too impressive though. Little commercial packages of something colorful? Certainly none of that fancy stuff from the local chocalatiers. This evening, in the wine bar we were drinking wine in, the bar's little dog barked at some trick or treaters, but eventually some wee revelers came in only to find the man there had no candy and did not feel comfortable giving them alcohol or meat. They seemed to take it in course. There are many places here that are decorated for the day as well, but all of the ones that are have a sort of French restraint to it, just one large web full of spiders, not two, which would suggest an overzealousness the neighbors might sniff at. It's all nice to see, but nothing to sweep me away. A local museum with gardens we now regularly visit is all lit up at night in a very spooky glowing green color, but I am honestly not sure whether that is a Halloween special lighting, or just how they roll.

So with all that, I have been helping myself to some extra Halloween feeling by pumping up some of my photographs with "Halloweeniness", but I'd say it has brought back mixed results and I have shifting feelings about these images. I'd say it's maybe a bit too grand a town for a proper Halloweeen feel. I don't know what you'd say, since you don't say much.

"What do you mean" you say. "I talk all the time in clerkmanifesto!"

Oh, right. Sorry. My bad.

You'd say "I don't know. I kind of like them, especially when you start adding in the rabbit witch (sorciere lapin!), one of your more complicated and enigmatic characters."

Oh, good, then I'm glad I'm including them.

Some of these pictures are of a church where not that long ago a religiously crazed man famously went and stabbed a bunch of people. I guess that's the kind of thing that's almost Halloween, but isn't? I think it would have to have been a hundred years ago, and include ghostly reappearances for it to go properly Halloween. Now it's just tragic fundamentalism. This fresh in the history it's a horrifying anecdote and is missing the required spooky cozy chill. 

It needs that fictional quality.

But it's worth noting it, don't you think?

You consider this, but quietly and thoughtfully.

"No, no." I say. That counts as talking too.

The other roll of film

I am not accustomed to voluable, passionate responses to clerkmanifesto posts, but yesterday's introductory comments to my photos of the Villa Ephrussi lit the Internet on fire!

This may or may not be why the Internet is now a burnt, smoking husk of itself.

But hey, I'm still here on my own Internet! And I am sorting through the thousands of comments on my piece "The roll of film from a fancy french garden estate". 

I am trying to respond to them all, but there are so many! 

Like, take a look at this:

"Hey Clerkmanifesto, new reader here. I just read your introductory comments to "The roll of film from a fancy french garden estate" and not only was I deeply moved by them, I also realized I had been on the wrong Internet for decades. Yours is the Internet I want to be on! I guess I got out just in time! I loved these introductory comments to your photos so much! God how I loved them. I loved them a lot. They inspired me to look at your photographs which I hope to do one day if I remember to. I am even making a note to myself: "don't forget to checkout that clerkmanifesto thing sometime next week and look at those pictures!" Unfortunately I lost the note though. Who are you again? Thanks for your time and attention to this matter."

So, that's cool. But how do I respond? They did not leave an address, and they actually only thought their comments quietly to themselves.

So maybe I should let that one go? I don't want to look like I want anyone to read clerkmanifesto. It just seems so... unseemly.

Anyway, here is the other roll of pictures of the fancy garden estate. I understand that all this fun we're having here in the introduction doesn't really apply to your looking at these pictures, and I'm only including them now because it was what I had originally planned for today's post.

I don't expect you to look at them. After all, you've got bigger fish to fry, what with the Internet being burnt to a crisp and your also having to worry about my ability to read your mind.

The roll of film from a fancy french garden estate

 

Yesterday we had all kinds of cutting commentary on the super rich and their fancy garden estates. We really zinged them!

Today we'll just go for the pretty pictures of one of those garden estates.

I hope no one will take it as a mixed message. In the anarchist utopia I advocate for the garden estates would be way, way better than this!

But these will have to do for now.

Today I have prepared for you a classic, old school film roll of twelve pictures. You know, because there was twelve pictures in a roll of film back in the olden days, unless it was 24, or 36. But I find when we get past twelve pictures in a single clerkmanifesto post everyone's eyes start glazing over. So twelve it is.

I wish I could just take twelve perfect pictures like this and that's it, but these are weeded and chiselled out of more like 300 pictures. 

And these aren't even just the twelve best. I have something more like 24 best and these are half of them. So we'll probably have to go through all of this tomorrow.

I wonder what I'll do for introductory comments.

I sure hope they're as good as these have been!