At the speed of clouds

 

Since retiring I have been spending more time looking at clouds.

I recognize there may be something a bit cliched about that, or too quaint, but not wanting to go into these conditions wherein I look at clouds so much, I can say that said conditions are pretty bland. I am not lying in some magical grass meadow or anything. But there, nevertheless, I am, and there are the clouds, and sometimes I look at them a lot. That's just how it is.

So you may ask: Is this place I live in so particularly good at clouds?

Every place in the world, on the right day, is good at clouds. That's just how clouds are. So no, not in particular

But this place, the Cote d'Azur, seems to do particularly well at very volumetric, very clear, complicated, and grand clouds. More than once I have gotten all photography about them and served you up all sorts of pictures, mangled this way and that, to try to get the point of their sheer wonderfulness across to you. Whether I did or did not get that point across would be up to you and your long search through the clerkmanifesto archives. But this is not my mission today, and I have no new pictures.

I was really just watching the clouds.

And I noticed something about them. 

There is something miraculously pitched about the speed of clouds.

Clouds move at a speed just fast enough for us to notice, but one has to look for it. At first glance they seem to be stilled, a set tableau. And while one can see the movement and change with an applied concentration, each moment seems fixed, the scene casually appears to be a settled one, but the movement of the clouds nevertheless happens at the fastest possible speed for that fixed quality to still be true. As I watched the clouds I could see the movement, but the sky did not seem to be changing. Yet if I turned my attention, or looked away for even just a handful seconds, looking back to the sky I would find a very different scene.

What does this all mean? You might ask.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

But probably a bit more than most of things you might find here on the Internet today, which, come to think of it, might move at just about the same speed.

In the final moments

 

As I write it is Sunday. This morning the worst heat of the city broke back a little, and we went out down to the beach to find a steady breeze blowing in. A bit of cloud cover helped too to keep us cool. It was even cool enough for us to sit in the famous blue chairs of the promenade to look out at the ocean. But it's not the same in the Summer as all the wildness and beauty of it gets covered over by the thousands of people frolicing on the shore, bobbing around in the tiny Summer waves, and boating about the sea in every possible size craft there is. When I'm not driven hostile by the heat I can see their good time and wish them joy in it, but I am always ready to walk on.

We went to the Cours Saleya market for some arugula at one of the sellers we like. I got a garlic, two onions, and some basil as well. At another seller I got an avocado and a surprisingly cheap french olive oil (8.50!), and at a third I bought a very nice looking lemon that was unreasonably expensive, but that's a little bit how they are out of season here.

We had coffee and I a pain au chocolat at the large italian restaurant/cafe on the market that we go to a lot lately enjoying its corner scene, large spaces, and agreeable bathroom. Afterwards we walked through the old town looking for assorted things we needed but didn't find to our satisfactions. With the old city exhausted we headed back through the long Paillon Park that was full of children playing in various spouts and sprays of water.

I took some pictures of flowers along the way in there, and since we've been home I've been playing with those. Though my modification style I developed for these pictures has lead me to employ it with all sorts of other images, I'll stick to my various flower pictures for today's display.

But tonight for me is The World Cup, and the truth is, a World Cup Final is a pretty big deal for me, and so some of what I'm doing today is simply waiting. I am curiously agitated and full of nerves. With the right attitude I could surely see this as winning either way. Although, alas, with the wrong attitude I lose either way.

I'll try to have the right attitude, but for whatever reasons I still have butterflies.

Predictions?

No thank you. If you've been following along in my World Cup coverage I started out with no predictions, developed predicting into a magic trick to alter the future, and now return back to no predictions. It's Schrodinger's World Cup after all. From my side, both teams won, but you, sometime on July 20th or later?

 

That is the winner that was always meant to be.

So let's just look at some flowers, and breathe.

Clouds in the South of France

 

I have been so taken in the past by various clouds here along the Mediterranean in the South of France that I've just started pointing my camera at the sky and shooting:

click click click click. 

Et voila! I'm done. 

Oh no! They moved and they're even better now! 

click click click click click click!

click click click click click click!

And there it is!

Oh, but now look at it!

click click click click click.

I will never ever miss film rolls in film cameras. I was never rich enough for it.

Nevertheless this is not the easiest way to get a good picture. 

Many months ago, in Theoule Sur Mer, I tried converting my images into something akin to Monet paintings, but the loss of reality was too much for the delicate French reality of the skies. Today, from our kitchen window and out over the hills above a hotel built for Queen Victoria to winter in, on a hot, not particularly clear day, there were the kind of astonishing clouds that had me at it again with my camera.

The same thing happened really, the clouds kept changing and getting better or stranger, the pictures seemed grand when I looked at them one way, and then they looked like I took some pictures of clouds when I looked at them another way.

Which, fairly speaking, is what they were.

But I think I've got a better editing routine this time.

And I like this little series, though your mileage may vary.

I do want to say though that I don't think the clouds here on the Cote d'Azur are better. Yes, there are some things that are better here, absolutely. But clouds? 

One of my favorite things about clouds as they seem to be able to pull it off anyhwere.

Fortunately that still includes here...

Super interesting notes on the weather, the world cup, and whatever else I think of

 

Hmmm....

Let's start with the weather. And I am not here to complain that it is hot.

Although, it is hot.

I really just want to tell you what I realized about the weather here on the Cote d'Azur.

It is not dynamic.

In fact, it's a bit boring.

I'm not sure how I feel about this, but I'd better explain:

The weather here will one day, just for example in the Fall, go to about 60 degrees, (or to almost 16 for my vast swath of new european readers. Bonjour, salaam, hei! cheers!), and then every single day for two months, with only the slightest variations, that will be the temperature. Then maybe some other time, like now, said local temperature will go to 90ish (or low thirties! Bonjour, howdy, konnichiwa!), and then the temperature just sits there for two or three months.

I still check the weather forecasts here, but more like an obsessive compulsive going home seven times to make sure the oven is off. Because, yes, for the eleventh time, the oven is off, and yes, it is still 91 degrees.

Now we will turn to the world cup!

I watch the world cup largely in replays. My one month canal plus bien sports subscription for 15 euros shows all the games, and then when they are done allows one to watch them when one wants to, in replay. This is very helpful as many games take place somewhere around midnight, or at three in the morning my time (for my european readers, that's just "three" because if it were the afternoon it would be "fifteen"! Buenos dias, shalom, mbote, ciao).

But these world cup games are not nearly as interesting if one knows the outcome, so until I can watch the games I have to be very careful not to find out what happened.

It is surprisingly easy to find out what happened!

The obvious way might, to use a recent example, be me seeing a text from an old friend saying "Wow, that French team looks unbeatable!" which pretty well assures that France has dismantled another lowly opponent and any feeble hope I might have had when watching the game that something even vaguely unexpected might have happened is now completely gone. But that really just spoiled what was a foregone conclusion. The worst real match spoiling I've experienced was the extremely interesting Netherlands vs. Morocco game. We had to do some morning shopping in the markets before I could see the previous night's game, and walking along in a city with not a completely insignificant Morroccan population, I suddenly started noticing an awful lot of Morocco team jersies being worn by all sorts of people.

A lot of Moroccan jersies.

On a lot of satisfied looking people.

"Uh-oh." I said.

I was right, though I'll admit my slight uncertainty helped as I watched.

And finally, could someone from the future come tell me that by some miracle France didn't win this World Cup? It is looking frighteningly inevitable.

Anyone?

Hot France

 

Because my media is custom made for myself, I am not entirely sure how obsessed the rest of the world is with the European heat wave. I'm pretty sure... a little? I remember hearing about heat waves in other places and they always made me happy they weren't happening to me, but they were ringed with a touch of terror that they could.

And now they are.

Except, it's a pretty normal heat wave here, surely not nearly as bad as the worse ones in Saint Minneapolis. I know that this one is worse too in other places in France, where it's more like a hundred instead of our 93 degrees with a lucky breeze every once in awhile. But it's not like the sun stroked streets are shut down. We were out all day today, for some bizarre reason, and the city was packed as ever. People are on vacation here! That shit doesn't reschedule, so people throw on some scraps of clothes and plunge out into the sun. They sit baking on the rocks of the beach. They bob around in the water like so many corks.

Does anyone look like they're having fun?

I can't tell. You can write in any story you want on these people. It's vacation. They're all true.

What about air conditioning, you want to know.

Sure, we have it, as I mentioned yesterday, we have the only apartment in our building with it, and I frankly wouldn't mind if it went a bit colder, but it blows with ceaseless effort at this point. But that's a bit how it is all over the city. Some small stores in town have no air conditioning and they are insanely stultifying, though my darling wife bought something from one of those horrible stores today while I waited cowering under a tree outside. Many other places have air, but even at the giant supermarket and the glossy department store it doesn't go very cold like it would in the USA. And even more places in this city are so conversant with, and so open to the outdoors that their "We have air conditioning" signs for the tourists are completely meaningless unless you want to grab the ugly table in a dark far back corner where maybe an old vent weakly pours some cool air on you. And that's nowhere to drink a nice pint of cold beer! We had one at a table at the edge of inside outside, across from the opera house, and for about 15 minutes there I was even comfortable when the beach breeze found some life and a way through.

Or maybe I was just drunk.

I hate the heat. With cold weather I tend to harden to it, and adapt as it goes on. Not so with the heat.

We made it home much later with some groceries and it was nearly six already. The cool of our apartment was a blessed relief. 

But now, at 9:30 in the evening, under that same temperature, I slowly sweat.

The town heats up

 

The first really warm weather since we moved to France is headed our way. The sun has often been strong here, but the cool air rolling off the ocean has always made it pleasant underneath. But now I feel it starting to turn as we quickly approach Summer.

And so perhaps with that weighing on my mind as I've wandered the city the past day or two, I seem to catch a sense of something out of the corner of my eye. Hurriedly I would pull out my phone and try and caputre it. Sometimes I'd just get a blur, but sometimes there is something a little clearer...

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.

Cold snap

 

Taking a day of rest in our Theoule Sur Mer seaside digs, during this strange period where we have two apartments to live in, the temperatures have plummeted! When we started this epic traversal of the earth it was madly hot everywhere, and at least the first three weeks in Japan were slightly tortured by every single day being in the nineties. 

But time passes. I live in France with my dear wife. And the famously warm and sunny South of France is dropping dangerously close to freezing temperatures tonight.

These plants cannot handle it!

But don't worry! Everything is still pretty. There is a reason the greatest artists of the last century all moved here, the light is unbelievable. And when it gets cold it gets even better!

So I took a lot of pictures out the window, mostly of the clouds.

I'll try and find some of the good ones.