Cote d'Azur

 

It is not usually my nature to write prefaces for my postings here, after all, these missives are carefully short most of the time, a little experimental, conversational, and, hopefully, self contained. But today's piece was written on the train coming home from Montpellier and takes a bit of a darker view of where we live now. Written directly into clerkmanifesto it would be happily standing on its own, but typing it up for you a week later my feelings have moved around a lot, and I find it necessary to explain that this essay, while I still stand behind it, expresses one far end of my more extreme and occasionally rather volatile moods about this Belle Epoque city.

Where we stand in relation to moving or not from here is an open question at the moment, especially in the wake of the charms of Montpellier. And sometimes I think it is not the more negative feelings that are challenging in particular about living here, but the manic nature of it, as it can so terribly delight me as much as it can quickly and bitterly disappoint me too.

Champagne problems maybe.

Anyway, take a look at this:

Cote d'Azur

The ocean is magic in my pretty city on a beach of a million perfect rocks, which everyone hobbles on and pretends are charming.

There is an old city here from a few hundred years ago, the streets colorful and winding and almost Italian. It's packed with souvenir shops and restaurants, vintage stores and butchers and bakeries, and a few nearly but not quite spectacular churches, and a lovely climbing way to an old Jewish cemetery we have not been to once since we moved here.

And there are people. People people people, all pouring through the city even into the wee hours, filling the vast promenade above the stony beach, and driving their cars to nowhere on the mad four lane road between the city and its paradise. And there are all the tourists lost in a dazzled wonder and release from less glamorous and obliging cities, and the residents carefully turned out (or sometimes just down and out), strangely hard and impatient, posing a dream life under made up faces and well assembled clothes.

What joy this pretty city brings; its happy colors, its well studied aging, the elegant flourishes of its curling architecture and its curling nearly unintelligible language.

You should see its darling little waves turn white in the moonlight!

You should walk its famous markets smelling flowers and nibbling socca. Sit on a lit terrace sipping a hugo spritz and feel the breeze.

Ah.

Visit this city.

Visit this pretty city once, even twice!

But don't stay too long.

Eventually, all you will see under the makeup, is money.