Bastille Day

 

As I write it is Bastille Day!

Fuck the Bastille!!

I don't think they call it Bastille Day here in France though. It is more July 14th around here, quatorze Juillet, or even La fete nationale. And more's the pity. I'm beginning to think the rest of the world is more admiring of the vision of the French as feisty rebels, tearing down the ruling class's evil and unjust prisons (The Bastille) and then tearing down the ruling classes themselves, than the French are. 

It is not hard to find monuments and tributes to the French Resistance of WWII even in my rightwing city. And what a vision that is, of a country bravely fighting tyranny from within and dying for the cause. There is the only value I can see to all this worldwide Nationalism. But I suspect these resistance monuments are all an indication of a charming and different era now in France. They have lost the thread of the ultimate evil of Nazism as much as they have lost it in Germany and America and Israel and across the world. When I see the far right wing mayor of this city on some glib newspaper here I think just one word, and I think it every time:

Vichy.

Carnaval, the lead up

 

I associate Carnaval with Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and so I associate it there with a very dear friend Matthew who... died. 

And is dead.

Dead dead dead dead dead. 

Kinda for awhile now, which doesn't make it any better.

Matthew was lovely, and quirky, and immensely talented, and very New Orleans. I still remember the first moment I saw him, on the campus of The California College of Arts and Crafts in the 1980's. He was dressed like he had walked out of the Continental Congress, his hair tied back in a bow like Thomas Jefferson.

I visited him twice in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. And though I am not by nature inclined towards massive drunken street parties, I have mainly fond memories of these events.

So it was a bit of a surprise to find that my new city has the third largest Carnaval in the world!

What does that mean?

I really don't know. It might be the kind of statistic bandied about here, but not as strongly supported everywhere else? Rio and Venice don't seem to be in any dispute for first and second largest carnavals. Third place gets a little murky. New Orleans? My own city? Cologne? Trinidad?

Whatever.

It is kind of big.

At least I think so. It just started.

The build up was something else though. The city has been preparing for it for at least a month. We transitioned directly from Christmas decorations and Christmas villages into massive bleachers and infrastructure for an event taking up the whole of the Massena Square. But even though there was a ton of structural preparation, as we got closer to the opening it didn't really feel like so much was happening. Out and about on the official first day of Carnaval there were a few more things to see, more music, more things closing off, but it still felt mostly like preparation.

Today, however, it went off. There was a parade and Carnaval Village finally opened, and while I can't describe it all as terribly wild (maybe because it was daytime), it was crowded and large, and the part of the parade we saw was suitably over the top and amazing, with actual carnivalesque opera.

As people slightly advanced in years we weren't exactly heartbroken that when the parade ended so we could cross the street and get some pastry, cheese, and syrah wine. But there are two weeks more of this and we do have some really nice bleacher tickets for one of the flower parades next week, so you'll likely be hearing more about it.

A quick picture of two giant floats dwarfing our usually impressive central fountain:

Me in the city just before Christmas

 

I have, as you have recently seen, been working on a new iteration of myself to put into pictures to reflect the recent, slightly more personal accounts of me in France. I made a fair struggle of aging myself properly and thinning my hair to the appropriate level, but the tool we call AI is very much a creature of the Internet, and as such, pulls from a flattering view of the world. That is, it does up until the sudden point that it becomes rather brutal and ugly. AI, like the Internet itself, doesn't exactly do "realism". It does worse than real, and prettier than real, and hopes you'll do the mixing to real in your own brain.

Good luck with that, world.

Ooops, drifted into a lecture there.

Anyway, here I am around town, looking just a bit better than I probably do, but hopefully close enough to be recognizable. The town is as I photographed for the most part, so the realism of it is wholly on me. 

Monaco

We woke up yesterday morning and decided to go to Monaco. So we walked through the city for a few minutes and took the train and in about 20 minutes we were in Monaco.

What?

Yes, an 800 year old city-state is about 15 miles from here.

Which is handy if you quickly need a city-state.

Which we did, largely because their Christmas Market has a teddy bear theme. We are very pro teddy bear!  And let me tell you (which I guess is what you're doing by reading clerkmanifesto), Monaco did not let down the teddy bear lovers of the world. 

 

I don't much do the more documentary style of photography because I rarely know what I'll be writing about and have limited photo taking windows, but I do a little regret I didn't get more pictures like this, because I could have had hundreds! In between the food stands and shops and amusement park rides of the Monaco Christmas Market, they had little buildings one could look in and see full sized animated teddy bear scenes! Teddy bears baking in the patisserie, teddy bears lolling about in the library (with real books. I saw a nice old Gerald Durrell in there!), teddy bears getting ready to open all their presents. Not to mention teddy bear rides, teddy bears sitting in giant Christmas wreaths, and teddy bears up on all the buildings. It was darling.

Also, and there is always the risk of alienating my audience here with too many too glorious to be true tales (I think is why the Peter Mayles of the world complain so much, to level things out), but I must mention the vin chaud.

The vin chaud. Oh the vin chaud.

I like a vin chaud. And in the days of yore, when I celebrated the christmas markets of Minnesota, as I passed by everything else, I often managed to get a cup of vin chaud. It was good, expensive, but good. And having a nice souvenir mug of spiced hot wine in a warming tent is a good time if one can manage it. But in Monaco, among the teddy bears, the billion dollar yachts, and the old city up above on the clifftop, the vin chaud was unbelievable.

First, I'd like to point out that it came in flavors because, why not, there's more than one way to cook a wine. We had a glass of the traditional and one of the daily special. One was more ginger based, one more lemony. The vin chaud also came in sizes and was not very expensive. Our cups of normal sized vin chaud made us drunk! The large size would have left us drooling on the cobblestones. Is this a good thing?

I believe in choice.

It was the best Christmas Market ever! And I could tell you more about Monaco, The slightly odd quality of the street life, the sheer amount of Winter construction work going on, and our climb up to the beautiful old city, but, why bother. 

I think we've covered the important things here.

Christmas on the Cote D Azur

 

We love a good Christmas market in my family. 

Although I'm not sure we've been to any. Yes, we have been to dozens upon dozens of Christmas Markets, but how good are they? Nevertheless, though they have a tendency to come up just a bit short, the promise of glittering lights, magical little shopping villages, seasonal treats, and highly personal crafts cannot be denied. So over the years we have increasingly planned the holiday season around these market visits. 

Did the markets live up to our hopes? 

No.  

But the dream and spectacle of the markets was enough to carry us through.

And yet, in the back of our minds was...

Europe!

So we moved here.

And it's Christmas now!

We have been to the Cannes market. Very big. Very pretty. Not the most interesting shopping.

We have been to the Nice market. Quite lovely, even grand. And yet while a bit sprawling it's not as big as it seems, and, here is the rather obvious kicker with most of these because we are in France, they are very very food oriented. This can be mixed for us, although I would like to take a closer look at the Nice Market Champagne Pavilion! But more curious crafts, homey stuff, and Winter shops would be a real treat for us as we set up a new apartment. And then, to add another curious unexpected disappointment, the Nice market is insanely security obsessed. 

My first thought was they must have a reason for sealed entry to the market area through well staffed metal detector gates.

My second thought is: If you can't manage an open Christmas Market with faith in the goodness of humankind, you should just figure the whole Christian experiment has failed so you might as well cash it in. 

Theoule Sur Mer, like tons of the small towns and villages and suburbs (yes suburbs!) along the Cote D Azur, is full of Christmas events, but there doesn't exactly seem to be a market here. The lights are great though, the santons creche show and sale (these are the little xmas figurines) and the music on main street is fantastic. 

And there is still plenty of time for more! We hope to hit up Eze, Monaco, maybe Villefranche Sur Mer and Antibes. Who knows? We are only limited by our ambition as even the minor villages have something going on for Christmas. 

And whether the markets come through with everything we desire or not, these already beautiful places, decked out in some wonderful and thorough Christmas regalia, is a treat on its own. 

In that spirit, I have pulled from my vast catalog of local photos and Christmassed them up a little.

Well, maybe a lot.

But I like Christmas.

The last July 4th

 

You may not pay much attention to politics, which is sensible to a point, but if you don't pay attention you may not realize that in my country things are getting very, er, wicked.

Weirdly, though, I am leaving this country soon and will not be back for awhile, or even forever. It ever so slightly numbs the sting.

I'm not gloating.

Everywhere's got problems.

But metaphorically some countries whack themselves in the head with their hand, some with a brick.

Anyway, it's Independence Day in my country today.

Though the meaning has apparently been lost to time.

Here are some pictures.

My valentine advice to young people

 

Hello young people. Thank you for coming to clerkmanifesto. You will find it an endless wellspring of wisdom.

Alas for you that like all wisdom, it still leaves nearly all of the heavy lifting.

Still, here is a head start for today, Valentine's Day, based on my personal journey!

In life, do the love thing.

Everything else ends up having been a waste of time.

New year same as the old year

 

Happy New Year!

Surely you awoke this morning that marks the first quarter of a century that I think none of us will see the end of, and raced to your computer to see what clerkmanifesto has resolved for 2025.

Exciting times, and I have been hard at work.

But I have been too busy to resolve anything for myself.

But as for everyone else in the world, I have detailed plans.

What to my wondering eyes should appear?

 

Waiting to glimpse Santa and his reindeer streaking across the night sky out my windows, and feeling more of a wistful sadness about all the years of the obscurity of clerkmanifesto, as opposed to a more ferocious energy and confidence in its righteousness, I thought maybe now was the time to go back, as I have been occasionally doing, and bring out one of my brief essays from the years' past. 

So I thumbed back through the vast volumes of my blog to a handful of Christmas Day posts from some time ago.

But you will note that you do not see them here.

And you wonder: "Were they bad?"

No, dear friend, not so much.

All those years ago they were lovely, and funny in their quiet strange way. To me at least, and who knows, maybe to you too. But I understood that they were they were just the sort of thing I would write if I wrote a new one now.

So why not just write a new one now?

And I lifted my weary head, and winked at the stars.