Even if we lose everything we will still have the weather

 

Summer lasted forever here. Fall took its sweet time coming. But even here, in a kind of temperate paradise, I could nevertheless see it slowly gathering in the trees and curling the buds of old flowers like they were afflicted with arthritis. 

And then, finally, the rain came.

I, who waited so long for it, was suddenly chilled to the bone and overcome with weariness. How gray it all is! And I asked the question that has been a curse and a joy of my entire life, ever waiting for the merest excuse to be proposed:

Can I just stay home?

Here is me staying home. This is an old post from this same time of year in 2019, in a different country, and in a different climate that still sometimes matches this one. In honor of this post, I have pulled a series of writerly weather centered posts to be linked on the sidebar on your right, just in case this is exactly your sort of thing too...

Unusual Tastes

This is a funny time of year here in Minnesota. It is not embraced by many. Grey nearly all the time, sometimes the temperatures drop into the bottom of the teens and snow falls from the sky. Ice forms on the roads. Bitter winds blow. And the rakish fops say:

"How do you like this? It's still a month before Winter even starts. Ha!"

But you wonder: How can this be Fall?

It can't possibly be Fall.

And then the cold relents. It gets so misty out that one can't even see down into the Mississippi River Gorge. The scattered inch or two of snow and ice vanishes into a great dampness everywhere, and one realizes it really is still Autumn, in it's peculiar, late way. There genuinely is a steady progression from Summer to Winter, secreted between the blizzards, and this is what it looks like. Strange fruits hang from out of bare and dead-leafed trees, rotting. Gouts of ravaged, soaked leaves are piled up in the underbrush turning to slime, the wild places tucked into the city are a tattered tableau as the very world around us breaks down.

And then there's the smell. 

Above all it's the smell.

It's not everywhere, but it's not hard to find. I don't know how to describe it. I suppose it is made of all the ragged matter, all the leaves and branches and cold fruits long past their expiration, rotting, battered by the brutal, altering freezes and thaws, the incessant wetness, all being packed together and forgotten. It is a smell that rises out of the riverway valley, out of the gutters, the collapsed flowerbeds, and the treed borderlands lining the bike and walking paths of my city. It is a rotten smell, of death and decay. It is the smell of things turning, of funk, and of mold. I don't think the smell has any name to know it by. I can't quite conjure this smell to mind, it is strangely unimaginable. But it is full of adjectives and description: putrid, rotted, festering, corrupt, spoiled, decomposing. It is a heady smell, oddly fresh in its rancid way, wine gone too far, dark mushrooms, the secrets of the earth. Death.

I quite like it, and seek its heart, like an appealing pain of which I want to see how much I can take; An exquisite and repulsive morbidity, and yet, the last living breath of a doomed thing before real death, and Winter.





 

One more year in Europe

 

It is a long, early morning where we pay the taxes of being immigrants. 

The taxes are literal (500 euros!) and figurative, the latter of which is more the one that has worn me out today. After a long, occasionally complicated, four month or more process, it was time to pick up our visa cards.

This is good news! 

But I could not describe it as an enjoyable adventure. We were up early in the morning to catch the tiny window of time in which the prefecture opened to us for this final stage of collecting our visa cards (titre de sejours). Jamming into a packed rush hour tram, we trundled slowly along the breadth of the city for half an hour or so. From there it was an ugly walk along vast crowded car infested roads that might as well be in Dallas, until we arrived at the vast and hideous governmental enclave; the Prefecture.

Not that I'm judging.

There we find a nice long line through the security check point. Then, having been deemed not to be dangerous, we are off to seek out our own way. We head into a magnificently windowless and institutional building where we instinctively join the longest possible line down a hallway. And... We have done it! We found the titre de sejour line!

Well done us.

We have plenty of time to enjoy our triumph as we then stand in that long, slow line for two hours.

It's fine.

Have you seen France?

It's lovely!

Well, I mean, many parts of it.

A side trip for the crows

 

Yesterday we had quite a talk about our crows here in France. I mean you and I. It will come to you momentarily. And it was all serious and educational and full of rich birding lore and anecdotes. Clerkmanifesto won many awards for it and received several offers to subscribe to ornithological journals across Europe. 

I was content.

Briefly.

But I kept looking at a couple of the pictures I took when my wife and I were down at the beach with the crows.

Here are those pictures:

I really like boats, and have been down my share of strange rivers and creeks and channels, and even floated into a few caves and mysterious undercity passages. But that's all a long time ago.

Still, this enigmatic entrance to an underworld, hiding in plain sight in my city, was compelling. So I did what I could with the tools I had at hand. I sent my crow friends on a little photographic, imaginary journey into this simple and secret subterranean stream. 

Here is the best I could make of it, a little travel story in pictures:

Crows of France

 

In the interest of harmonic balance I am in this turn obliged to speak positively about some feature of France. And for today I have chosen:

Birds.

This is not all birds of course. Birds don't generally observe nations, and usually to speak positively of birds somewhere is to speak positively of them everywhere. The most ubiquitous birds here are the seagulls and the pigeons, and I would describe them as charming, filthy, hilarious, obnoxious, occasionally terrifying, feisty, and delightful, but most of all... pretty much the same as they are everywhere.

Would you like a picture of a bird?

Okay. Here is a seagull to start with.

Heroic, no?

You're right. Not particularly heroic, but suitable for framing!

But what about the less common birds. There are a couple of mostly white parrots that live on a 4th or 5th floor balcony down the street from us, and they are absolutely fucking insane. Screeching, talking, aye screaming with strange piercing shrills, they are on the one hand always hilarious and on the other hand a reminder that there could be even worse neighbors than some of the ones we have had here (maybe I'll tell you about that one day when I'm allowed a turn complaining again). I thank god we do not live on the particular block whith those parrots. They are surely a menace! But merely walking by them regularly we are free to delight in them at our ease, and we do. There are also occasional sightings here (like by me, this evening!) of rose-ringed parakeets who are a fantastic green color, and not actually native to the area. They are escapees or released captive birds who have established colonies here. And these are great, but again, not my point.

My point, actually, is the crows.

Now crows have culture!

And these French crows are just, I don't know, I can't explain... I think I just like them better!

In Minnesota I did love the squawking murders of crows that regularly visited my neighborhood, but I never had much success breaking through all their ferocious independence. They were all absorbed in their own bustling scene, and a bit pristine about their distance. I've only recently begun seeing these French crows more, and I find them very easy to hang out with. They are smaller, more thoughtful, and kind of quietly interested.

Plus, it turns out they're special!

I looked them up. The common type of crow around here is all black and called a carrion crow. But there is another crow that is not at all common here called the hooded crow, and that crow isn't just black. I've seen pictures of them and they're striking with their gray and black. 

These hooded crows are more common in Italy and Eastern Europe, but we are nearish to the edge of their range.

Now, if you'll notice...

Hey, wait! 

I haven't shown you any of these crow pictures from the beach. So here:

So now, if you'll notice, this isn't the all black of the carrion crow, is it? But also, the hooded crows have way more gray than these guys.

These crows are hybrids!

Corneilles hybrides!

They are from an interbreeding between the two related types as has been documented in a French Ornithological study. There are some here, and in a couple of other beach towns nearby. So these aren't carrion crows or hooded crows, they're both!

And they are just the nicest sorts of crows, you know? We have been seeing them in the local villa garden we walk through more often these days. And I actually recognized one that I had taken a picture of in the garden yesterday as it joined us on the beach! Which makes sense since the beach was extremely nearby.

My darling wife and I hung out by the ocean together with the crows for a lovely little while. I took pictures of them and they didn't mind at all. The waves crashed, strange smells drifted out of the undersewer river, and the crows foraged in its clear waters among the pebbles.

It was a nice time. And then we walked home, they flew off, and the cool Autumn night fell.

Complaining about France

 

Since my arrival in this country I have felt it was best to temper my complaints about it. I am well aware that one, especially if that one is me, can, by giving voice to grievance, get a little carried away with it. While on the one hand I feel that complaining about France could conceivably erode our ability to stay and be happy here, on the other hand it might be quite the French thing to do! Everyone is always complaining here. I mean except for when they're talking about how great it is.

I'm actually saying I can relate!

So maybe I'll just make sure to alternate: Wax eloquent? Then a bitter screed would certainly be acceptable. Bitter screed? Then surely I can say something nice next time. Like, there's always the cheese. Or to be less cliched, there's always the unnerving but kind of fun way everyone is always saying "goodbye" like three times. I'm pretty sure I could work that into a positive post.

And what's my giant beef with France anyway? It really isn't any of that obvious stuff everyone's always going on about; the bureaucracy, the lack of creativity, the judgementalism. Whatever, that's like going for a swim in the sea and complaining about the fishes! My real complaint, aye the great and horrible disaster of France is both tempered and horrible, and it is so strange that my very suggestion of it elicits nothing but resistance back where I come from, pronouncing a great gulf of misunderstanding back where most of the people I know still are. I imagine it would offend the French horribly as well. But here it is:

France is an awful lot like America.

I'll try to say something nice next time.

Bonne journee. 

Au revoir.

A bientot.

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.