Sunday on the beach

 

I love the ocean here. The sparkling mediterranean is full of colors, moods, drama, and wilderness. Rivers run from out of secret tunnels beneath the city and spill out in ever changing ways, green and cool, through the beach into the giant sea. What a treat to be able to walk to the water in ten minutes!

Except in the Summer.

Then, as far as I'm concerned, who cares?

That was supposed to be rhetorical, but it turns out there is an answer to it, and it is "everyone!"

On these endless warm and sunny days the stupid road along that coast runs fat with cars as ever. The famous ocean walk, almost fully exposed to the sun in black asphalt, feels like it's melting my shoes. And down below the seawall the beach is a baking expanse of hot stones. The deadness of Summer has beaten the waves away leaving the Mediterranean with the dull flatness of a lake.

When we walk through the streets, keeping earnestly to the shade, on a Sunday, we wonder how in this mighty tourist town, at the height of the season, it can be relatively quiet, until we emerge on the shadeless shore.

Everyone is there.

Everyone.

In the whole world. 

The beach is piled with people. Umbrellas run as far down the coast as one can see. The water is a playground of people bobbing, boats motoring, and parachutes carrying little figures along over the water. For, I don't know, a hundred euros? a person can get pulled along on a parachute behind a boat so they can look down and see me walking along with my darling wife saying "Are you ready to leave the beach yet?"

And if she isn't that's okay too.

There's a nice ocean breeze.

Expensive coffee

 

Down along the beach near our apartment one can buy expensive coffees, or, as I prefer, cappuccinos. Some of these places are classic "pay for the location" places, and in the famous hotels, or at some of the rooftop bars across the road, there is an element of "pay for the fanciness" as well. An average cappuccino in this town runs about euro 4.50. We have found one of the cheapest, though still perfectly lovely beachside cafe/restaurants called "Blue Beach" that charges a mighty 5.70 for their cappuccino, a minor price gauge we have belatedly decided to embrace, as it is accompanied by the right to sit in cushy lounge furniture directly on the beach down below the Promenade Des Anglais. Some of these seemingly interchangeable beach restaurants can charge over ten euros for their cappuccino, and so too will a ritzy and extremely famous place across the street, like the Negresco, charge as much as that tenner and possibly more.

Going now regularly to "The Blue Beach" for 5.70 cappuccinos has caused me to reflect upon some of the expensive coffees we have encountered in our lifetime of coffee drinking adventures. They do actually come in two distinct versions. The first is, of course, as I have mentioned, the price of ambiance, space, location, and or style. Venice's most famous cafe, or most ritzy, had a cappuccino for 15 euros, albeit served seated on the square of St. Marks. And this is at least a 15 year outdated price, so by any measure of inflation was really more expensive even than that 15 seems. We could not bring ourselves to indulge in this Venetian experience finding it not that interesting for the cost, but, oddly, in desperate need of a bathroom we had cafes in the inside bar for something like a third the price. The coffee itself was unmemorable, but watching the bartender methodically open dozens and dozens of bottles of champagne in preparation for apertivo left a great impression upon me and made me quite well-versed at opening bottles of sparkling wine from that informative moment forward.

The other kind of expensive cappuccino is based off of quality and sometimes the rareness of the beans. These are actually far more rare since the best of the fifth wave, obsessively excellent coffee houses we have been to tend to be at the very top of what I would call the average city price without venturing into the "expensive" category of price. The best general cappuccinos we have had, like in Saint Minneapolis at Kopplins (RIP) or in Copenhagen were fastidious and not cheap, but not in this "other" category. However in a cutting edge restaurant bar in Saint Minneapolis we long, long ago tried a $7.00 cappuccino (adjusted to today's prices probably more like 10 to 12 dollars!). As I recall it used a special kind of aged beans and was... fine.

In Montpellier we found a cappuccino also for seven, though this in euros and not needing inflation adjustment as it was barely more than a month ago. This was the most expensive item coming off of a full menu of bean options, and, and, I don't know what to tell you. I would get it every single day. I would let it change my very concept of coffee.

Except when we want coffee on the beach, where I will accept that it is not all that great, and love it as much.

The color of the sea in fewer words

 

Having so recently waxed eloquent (I mean, I tried) about the beautiful colors of the sea here, in heavy clarifying winds, and in the aftermath of rain, we went down to the Mediterranean again on yet another windy day. My cough was bad enough that I had not gone out at all the day before, something I have done every day since we moved here. Thrown a little by the bright day and impending Summer, I was underdressed, but the sun helped. And seeing the same kind of sea I had tried to describe to you, perfect and wild, I thought it might be nice if I could try to show you the colors if I could.

So we walked down to the shore. I took pictures and dodged the waves. I thought maybe I would end up with something I could madly augment to make my case to you. But looking at the pictures, even though in some ways they are a little plain, I did not think there was any honor or manipulation I could enter them in that would give any better sense of the sea today.

So at the risk of being a bit plain, and only because I am so eager to show you the strange and wonderful colors and texture of the sea here lately, I present these photos as they are. 

They still lie, but earnestly, and only in the sense that they undersell it.

The seagull conundrum

 

Holy crap. These seagulls are amazing.

I don't think there is a better bird for watching flying. I mean, around here, there's not much else. Am I going to watch the pigeons fly?

Yes, I am going to watch the pigeons fly! They're a lot of fun too, darting, quick, and surprisingly graceful. And if I'm lucky enough to run into a flock of starlings? It is absolutely mesmerizing! But I haven't seen starlings around here in more than a month. And pigeons are a little scruffy. Beyond that, there's the occasional crow or songbird, and none of them here are much about aerial acrobatics. 

But seagulls?

They are the size of bald eagles. But seagulls look like something stiff and light that you could pick up if you wanted. And to compare their flying abilities to any other bird would be absurd. It's not quite that they look like they're doing it for fun exactly. It's just that they're so good at it. There are so many of these loud scavenging desperate birds around, and they can be obnoxious and it can be easy to take them for granted... but... they are so fucking good at flying. And the more you watch them the more you understand how good they are, their sheer complete understanding. Their mastery touches on art. They are beyond pride. And though full of all the craven natures and practicalities of living creatures, sometimes even moreso than many other animals, seagulls nevertheless slip beyond everything when they fly. It's not practical, or joyous, or thrilling exactly. Too pure to contain anything other than flying, it's that they are so good they think nothing of it. They are so good it just devolves down to... magic.

I painted one. I enjoyed drawing the stones of our beaches here about as much as I enjoy walking on those stones.

Maybe for the subject of this missive the seagull should have been flying?

But I am a mere mortal. How could I do that justice?

Clerkmanifesto bloodied and whimsical

 

An experiment of dubious value?

Perhaps.

But we like to run the gamut here on clerkmanifesto, and this has pieces of animated versions of my paintings, Bob Dylan singing my promotional lyrics, and a result that slots in somewhere between "Way too much effort" and "Not nearly enough effort", which is one of my common themes here, and might make a nice t-shirt.

Or even a blog motto!

Anyway...

No matter what I tried, Bob insisted on singing it as "Clark Manifesto" insisting it sounded better like that.

Well, he's the pro I guess.

This has a song that goes a couple of minutes but the visual goes to black after about a minute, largely because if it didn't the file would be too big to host here. This very much has sound, so headphones on, or volume up, click on the video, enlarge it, and hit play:

Beachcombing

 

Lately, especially when there are none of the famous blue chairs to sit in, we have taken to walking down to the beach here where we live, and... beachcombing.

We comb the beach looking for... stuff.

There are a lot of interesting rocks.

You should see my rock collection!

It is...

not very interesting.

I had this idea of taking close up pictures of rocks, some right there on the beach! I was thinking that like flowers, the minute attention might reveal wonders.

It didn't, in particular.

It's probably my fault. They are all very nice rocks!

Then, when all else had failed, I spindled and mutilated my pictures of rocks. I am back to my old ai photo manipulations on these, no drawing. And these are sort of the rocks, but more how they feel to me when I find them. 

The real ones look just like these, except a little plainer, less bejeweled, and, er, just a wee bit more like... rocks.

The Wave no. 2

 

Because these pictures are obsessively layered, erased, drawn, colored, layered and drawn on, etc, etc, I don't really come to the end of them. Instead, I come to the point where I may not be fully satisfied, but accept that it's more likely than not that no matter what I do I can't make it better, just different.

This has a nice quality of freeing me from responsiblility for it all.

Which is a relief.

This is my second official "Wave" picture. Thus my title.

The wave

 

I take a lot of pictures of the ocean here, though mostly I just sit there and look at it.

Whether I am going to find painting the ocean waves on my computer to be as rewarding as looking at it is an open question, but here's my start:

View at the mouth of the Paillon River

 

Here is the first fully completed drawing, or painting, I have made with my drawing pad. The Paillon River runs under a long park here through most of the city, but once was the butt of jokes for being such a dry river. Right now in the aftermath of late Winter Rains and maybe some snow run off it is going pretty good into the sea, which is where this view is from, looking up into the mysterious undercity river. The mouth here keeps shifting around both naturally and as a result of the city curiously stirring the famous stone beaches around with bulldozers and suchlike. This evening we were down at the Paillon again, and it is already configured differently than in this view from a week ago.

Drawing tablets and other unfinished business

After a few more hilarious misadventures with my drawing tablet delivery, I finally have it!

First it was mysteriously destroyed in transit. Then today the delivery to the hair salon down the street somehow went awry, but fortunately it was delivered to another nearby hair salon (no city on earth has a shortage of hair salons). As the second hair salon looked frantically on their rack of deliveries I got a great sinking feeling, but they found it! It was delivered with one other item we ordered (a sound machine), and as we walked home we shed cardboard (I mean, not on the street or anything).

And it works great!

I suppose I have tons to learn about controls, that I may or may not learn, but fundamentally I can now draw on this pad with my stylus pen and have it show up one to one on my computer screen! It is even pressure sensitive, making stronger lines as I press harder.

Naturally I raced to work on one of my new picture studies to show you here. This is mainly pure drawing now (all the black) with a faintly layered background. I intend to make it a more finished drawing and to even try working in color, but time is up for tonight's posting, so here it is so far:

We won't mention the political message, as we are too busy with other business here at clerkmanifesto today.

For instance, yesterday I was excited to share a bit of video of how pretty the ocean was out beyond the port. Unfortunately I couldn't see how badly that video footage was compressed until it published, and I think it did a terrible job of representing the original scene and the unspectacular film of it which was still a hundred times better than what appeared here!

Je suis desole.

I am sorry.

So in recompense, and to set the world right, here are some of the regular pictures I took of the area to make sure you don't retain the wrong idea. To me they need a lot of work, and I wouldn't normally share these, but at least they are far closer to the color and look of that water for yesterday's missive:

We went to the beach!

 

Today we went to the beach!

There are a couple of things about that:

1. We go to the beach every day.

and

2. It still works out really well for us.

Today we wanted to get some of the Italian olive oil sold at the Liberation Market. But the people who sell that, and olives, and some other deli things, and who are always there when we go, weren't there!

But we were feeling adaptive. So we decided to abandon all of that and hop on the tram that is right there, and take it to near the port. We usually walk everywhere, so this seemed very cushy, riding in a tram to the Garibaldi Square. We thought we'd cut down on our walking a bit because we were thinking of taking the bus to the next town over, famous and picturesque Villefranche Sur Mer, where we might be in for even more walking. 

But then it turned out that that bus, which we so confidently thought went to Villefranche, doesn't, actually, go there at all. It only goes halfway!

But we were feeling adaptive. So we went to look at the ocean.

I love the ocean there past the port because it is all rocky and wild looking. Last time we went there it was windy and tempestuous out, still in the aftermath of Winter storms, with great waves smashing into the rocks and hurling great foams and dramatic fountains into the air. Today was pretty and calmer, revealing the colors of the sun and clear water, dancing fabulously among the rocks.

I took eight billion pictures that I may or may not find a use for, especially as I am still much occupied with my last suite of pictures. But I was so taken with the movement of the waves and water and light that I took a brief video clip too. And I will show you that here (remember, you have to click, enlarge, and click again):

From there we walked home, which as a mostly straight up walk. But having to round the port and stick to the ocean, it is a notable walk for us, maybe even a little long. 

Which is why we stopped at a cafe, sat for a long time, and had cappucinos.

Rain and after

 

It rained for a day and a half here. On the day where it rained start to finish we finally managed to go outside in the middle of the afternoon. It was coming down steadily and the people of this teeming city were maybe affected by it, but it didn't appear to stop anyone from going out in it. The streets, especially the main street, were teeming with people as ever, only it was more annoying for all the umbrellas and gushing awnings.

We tried to be non plussed too. We did some clothes shopping with no success and then went into the glorious and moody old city to have a coffee at our new find there, The Claque, where we had been recently dazzled by a perfectly made rosemary latte. Unfortunately we couldn't manage to track the place down before we had to give up in a fit of pique. We made our way to the ocean as we headed home, and though we were wet, cold, and under caffeinated we could still take some interest in the Paillon River flooding out into the Mediterranean and staining a section of it an unaccustomed brown, churned over by high and beautiful dark waves.

When the rain stopped the next day we went out before going to an afternoon movie showing of "Projet Dernier Chance", a pastime we used to do a lot in Saint Minneapolis in the 90's and now do again in France. The sun was fighting its way out and all the colors seemed to reemerge twice as strong for all it having been hidden by the rain.

I took four pictures at the beach, that I left as is from the camera, and they do or don't tell the story, depending on what the story is, just like this account.