Bay leaves

 

I have read my fair share of memoirs of people moving to France or Italy. I didn't really believe at the time that I and my dear wife would actually be people who did the same mad thing one day, so I could freely laugh at and enjoy all the crazy fish out of water hijinks comfortable in how it had nothing to do with me.

"Tres fous" I would say to myself over some insane bit of nonsense poor Peter Mayle, for example, might have been getting mixed up in.

"Tres fous" means "very crazy", and to be honest I wouldn't have said that at all because I had no idea what it meant at the time. 

Now I do.

Oh boy do I!

Once at one of the markets, a modest but reasonable walk from here, I bought a little bundle of herbs for a euro or two. They were mostly dry already and have been a great addition to my cooking. They included rosemary, thyme, and bay leaves. Almost all the rosemary and thyme is gone, but I can look over right now at my fruit basket and see that quite a few of the bay leaves are still there. And seeing them invariably makes me think of one of the stories from one of those memoirs of someone moving to France.

In this story, the author, possibly a midwesterner if I remember correctly, was making some sort of proper, traditional meal and needed bay leaves. He went to the market and couldn't find any. He went to the stores and he couldn't find any. He asked people and no one seemed to have any idea what on earth he was talking about. Was it his French? Was he asking for the wrong thing? Did no one use bay leaves in their cooking?

Finally, in all his relentless pursuit he said something to the right person in the right way, and they could finally explain: almost all the trees in the area were bay trees. Bay leaves were everywhere! One would as soon sell them as they would bottle the air!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Tres fous.

I mean, obviously I liked the story and remembered it. But I'm afraid my perspective on it has changed a bit.

You know what we have everywhere here, and I mean everywhere?

Oranges! 

Oranges are growing on trees in gardens. They are in the parks. I can see some out my window. And sometimes they line whole streets. Tree after tree full of oranges! They are really pretty, and there are tens of thousands of oranges everywhere right now. Some clearly belong to someone somehow, and some seem as public as anything could be. And yet, I would no sooner pick one of those oranges and try out eating it than I would, well, pick a leaf off a tree and go home and cook with it.

It's not my tree!

Although, I don't know, maybe it should be.

And if no one sold any oranges around here because people just got their oranges from any handy tree, I suppose I might adapt. 

And then maybe I'd write for you a cute little story about it that would make you eat your heart out.

Free bread!

 

Among the many wild and small dietary changes that have come into my life by moving to France, none is so significant as the free bread. That's right, while most food is cheaper here, some the same price, and a rare thing or two more expensive, the French are deeply committed to their free bread.

I think every culture should have one free food to get by on. The Italians are almost there with coffee. In Japan it was onigiri, their little rice ball sandwiches. The United States if it had any sense could do French Fries. And here in France, for good or ill, it is the baguette.

Okay fine, the baguette is not free, exactly, but it is so cheap that anyone who can eat bread, or even just wants to feed seagulls, can hardly afford not to buy them. I often see people walking down the streets here with five or six baguettes in their shopping bag. What on earth can they do with six baguettes?! I don't know, but who cares? The entire lot of them cost that person some loose change! They'll figure it out. Croutons? Bread pudding? Avocado toast? Bread crumbs? Something to stop a person from eating too much cheese? It all works, or it doesn't. But the point is it is a risk free venture.

I rarely wander home without a baguette because I usually have a pocket full of change, so why not grab one somewhere? And thus I often have a freshish baguette around the house, and then a couple of older chunks varying from probably okay to 80 percent stale. But I strangely find I rarely have to throw any baguette out. I heat some back up in a bit of olive oil for my aforementioned avocado toast, or have the fresh stuff with some cheese I fell for so the local cheesemonger wont think I'm wasting his time, but more so I find my baguettes replacing anything like rice or pasta I might usually have used in my cuisine. If I'm cooking some nice eggplant with peppers and fresh herbs, putting fresh or old little bits of baguette into it seems to be just the thing to round it out into a full meal.

Is all this white bread good for me?

I don't know. 

I feel okay, and I'm hoping our casually walking for hours and hours every day can cover a vast assortment of sins.

Yeah, I'll drink to that.

The bookstore

 

In the spirit of unadorned photography from around my Belle Epoque City, I have some pictures to show you today of a bookstore, or "librairie".

But a few things before we go. First is the funny, and initially confusing reversal of the English words "Library" and "Bookstore", something that led me to confusion and misunderstanding the first time I went to Paris. A "Library" in French is a "Bibliotheque" which, at least to me, sounds like it would be a bookstore, whereas, as stated, a "Bookstore" is, in French, a "Librairie" which, of course, sounds like it would be a library. It's all a bit Goose Juice and Moose Goose from Dr. Seuss, where the trouble comes when Mooses dream of goose juice and Gooses dream of moose juice.

As an aside, we walked to what we remembered as the truly amazing main library here in this city, which shares a sort of fabulous complex, bridge, and elevated park, with the modern and contemporary museum. But the whole thing was closed down for some major refurbishment project and had no indications of when it would open again. 

But, on the subject of unaltered photos, here are a couple pictures of the terrific dragon fountain in the park above the library and museum:

Anyway, to return to the subject of bookstores here in France, I haven't been into very many. After all, while they seem terribly appealing, how terrible to be faced with so many intriguing books that I AM INCAPABLE OF READING.

Nevertheless, the one pictured below, elaborately Christmassed up, looked so full of charms and treasures, we did venture in to just its vestibule to moon at its displays and all the promise of its antiquities. We could not bear to enter its front doors though, and instead we wandered off to buy chocolate.

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.