For the birds

 

There aren't a lot of animals in this city, so thank god for the birds. I have yet to see a mere squirrel and even the wee bugs are rare. Maybe the ocean, its own teeming wilderness, is full of creatures, but they keep their own counsel, not be heard from above the waves.

I live above the waves.

But there are birds. Not many varieties, and they run a bit squidgy around the edges sometimes, but there are plenty of them. The pigeons are near everywhere, and though I am familiar with the phrase "Rats with wings" I do not find rats without charm in the right context anyway, and I have yet to find any pigeon who is not a perfectly delightful neighbor. Less common are the starlings, but in their formations they are so thrilling one is inclined to drop everything and get hypnotized by their flight for awhile. There's some kind of finch, the black and white songbird, I'll get their names down eventually, and a couple others I've seen show up rarely. But for the greatest presence of all, up in the air, and as unmissable as the pigeons, are the seagulls. 

They're like crows, but with a far less sophisticated sense of humor.

I'm not even sure it is a sense of humor!

But, boy, can they fly!

A bit after dawn this morning they were out tossing about the sky for fun among the nearby buildings. I tried to take some pictures of them, moved by their grace and fecundity. The pictures really didn't come out, but in a telling sort of way. And it is too rare that I show you my completely raw photographs. I don't want you to think my world is perfect! 

So here are some seagulls:

The year in quotes, 2025

 

It has become traditional in clerkmanifesto at the end of the year to pull out our random, bookmarked quotes from the year past, and bring them here as our own little retrospective, in extreme shorthand, for the clerkmanifesto year gone by.

Or, perhaps this post, perhaps too long to be a quote from this past year, says it best:

"One could say that clerkmanifesto presents each day a meticulously crafted work of small art. And though it be tiny in a World that is far too big for its own good, there is no scale when one looks at something. For when we regard, that is all of the conversation, and a pebble mused on in our hand is no different than a star.

Or

One could say that clerkmanifesto is simply the detritus of a tide. And the tide washes up the shore, and leaves behind whatever has fallen out of the ocean. And here you are walking along the beach, and, voila. It is all random and wild.

And now it is yours."

Keeping faith with this I thus present to you:

2025: The Year in Quotes

"We all have the power to do everything, once."

"Our destiny is written in the stars, but the stars cannot spell."

"Ninety percent of the Internet is comments people only make in their own heads."

"Don't worry. In the end the stars and the rocks will be okay."

"I just want to write a thousand words when a single picture will do."

"If someone takes you into the strictest confidence, and makes you swear to tell absolutely no one, the least they can do is actually tell you something that would, theoretically, be of interest to anyone."

"A blessing, or, I suppose, in some cases, a curse:

May you be loved exactly as much as you love."

"The reality is different than the dream. But it's harder to make interesting pictures of that."

Events in France!

 

I meant to tell you all about this cheese I got this morning, a little round, self contained thing that was rich and tasted intensely of the grass the cows had clearly been feeding on. It was an amazing cheese, but alas, events in France overtook us!

French legend Brigitte Bardot is dead at the age of 91! 

She died near here, in the one famous town on the Cote D' Azur we may never get to because the train doesn't go there, Saint Tropez. She was a legendary actress you well know from seeing in the movies, er, um

In Case of Adversity

and

The Legend of Frenchie King

and

Viva Maria

All very fine movies, possibly. I don't know. I've never seen one. Maybe you have to be French?

But France took it hard. Hardly a French person I ran into here wasn't abuzz with this sad passing.

I mean, they might be. I wouldn't know. They don't really talk to me except to ask "What cheese would you like?"

To which I answer "That round pretty one made by cow."

Which, it turns out, was a brilliant choice!

It tasted of the very grass that the cows grew strong and healthy on!

We had it with a syrah wine. Oooh la la.

This all may sound a bit glib, but, alas, Brigitte Bardot was, well, a bit of a fascist.

I guess I can run, but I can't hide.

Waterfall in the sky

 

I can still remember when I first saw it. I was here in this grand, Belle Epoque City as a visitor, a tourist, hardly imagining I would one day live here!

Aw, who am I kidding? My darling wife and I were both fiercely imagining that we would one day live here, almost from the start. But we have vivid imaginations, we have dreamed thousands of things, and the important thing is: I didn't seriously believe that we would one day live here, let alone in just three years.

Anyway, in this singular past moment, I was sitting at an outdoor cafe, and I looked up into the sky and saw a waterfall. I was pretty sure I was imagining it. First of all, through the broken clouds of the day, it looked like an apparition. And my experience with this city was too new at that point to understand how many things there are here that seem too good to be true, but nevertheless... are. Secondly, waterfalls don't normally work like this: They don't start at the top of mountains, with water falling out of thin air, and this one kind of did. It didn't make a lot of sense at first.

So I puzzled over the waterfall in the sky for a long time.

This is the Cascade Du Chateau, built in the 1800's on Colline Du Chateau. It is part of the network of parks, ruins, cemetaries, trails, and viewpoints overlooking the city there, and I don't and probably never will understand why this feature isn't the symbol of the city and a world famous landmark besides, more like The Eiffel Tower, La Sagrada Familia, or The Trevi Fountain. If this city could be said to have a single famous symbol, it is probably the iconic view of its coastline and the Promenade Des Anglais from a vantage point somewhere in the vicinity of the waterfall. And that is all terribly lovely, but this? This is...

A waterfall in the sky!

It is of course a lovely place to visit, and looks best when it's turned on full blast, which I don't think is always the case. I mean it's not a real waterfall, but it's all the better for that. If one consults the tourist literature, and the babble of the Internet, one can take in the world's mild delight in the scene before it drifts off into rhapsodies over all the nearby views. But that's not really my point. And it's not exactly the key thing about it, as charming as it is.

No, the key thing is how it perches in the sky like a little vision of heaven.

You walk the beach, or sit in a cafe, or wander the city, and then something calls you. You look improbably up, and in the clouds you can see just an odd little glimpse, into paradise, straight into the abode of the gods.

Postcards from France

 

Sometimes I spend too much time on my endless variations of my photos to write you a proper account of all the interesting things I find living here in France, like my staircase, the price of baguettes, or the behavior of the seagulls. And so it is today. After an unusually long walk to the Matisse Museum and the ancient ruins nearby, I came home with today's pictures and a few new ideas about things to do with them. And so having spent awhile on these, and with them perhaps not entirely ready to go, I send them to you today anyway, as postcards: