This blue marble

– and yet it spins

Tag Archives: France


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Freedom in an unfree world

paris-1Fear is a strange thing. Once we are frightened and shocked beyond our bearings we have a choice: to flee, or to fight. Yet most of us take the middle road and just get on with it. Like nothing ever happened – or so it would appear.

On the evening of November 13th this year, Paris was shocked and attacked by terrorists. People died. Others got wounded. And very many got shaken to the core. Yet few people fled as a result. Even fewer chose to openly fight – except of course for France as a country and Paris as a city. Most people just got on with it, because life goes on. Nobody forgot, but nobody allowed terror to reign. Just like London, grown up during 31 years of terror threat.

One Sunday, three weeks later, we sat in a Parisian café on Rue Montorgueil. Croissants were still being served, and steaming hot coffee poured. The marchés were open, and Champs-Élysées was one mile-long christmas market. I thought of how we had to walk through metal detectors when entering a museum. How our bags were scanned before entering a shopping center. And how many heavily armed military men were prowling the streets.

I thought about flight and fight. While most Parisians did not chose flight, perhaps they chose a French way of fight. Perhaps choosing to serve croissants on a Sunday was fight, as well as choosing to open the christmas market? Perhaps going shopping to a bustling Les Halles was fight? Perhaps persisting to the plan of hosting the climate summit was fight?

Perhaps fight is not always a physical fight; to draw one’s weapons and go to battle. Maybe fight can also be the fight of minds: to refuse to fear those cultures we are against our will being conditioned to dread; to refuse to change everyday habits; to refuse to give in to fear. And I thought of Albert Camus: “the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

I lifted my teacup in a toast to the Parisians. When I picked up my croissant I, too, felt like a rebel – if only for a second.

paris-2(Paris, France; December 2015)


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Dusk over the Azure Coast

Cannes-7

Dusk slowly crept in over the Azure Coast as we lifted off and flew into the night. In the last hours of day the clear blue turned deep indigo, with a peach glow from the setting sun. I could not help but wonder how turn-of-the-century art would have been different had Matisse, Picasso, Renoir, Chagall, Cézanne, and the lot seen the Riviera light from up in the air.

(Nice airport, France; May 2015)


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Freedom is forgetting

Cannes-3Among the eucalyptus-lined paths, cypresses, cedars, and birdsong there stands a sun-tinted fortress with turquoise window panels and doors. It cannot have been a bad fate for a soldier to be positioned on the Île Ste-Marguerite, overlooking the port of Cannes.

Cannes-4Oh no, bad fate was reserved for the prisoners of Fort Royal. And one man had the fate of never seeing the sunlight, never even being identified, and always having to wear an iron mask. As I walked among the sun-kissed houses, now inhabited by youths on summer camp, I could not help but wonder what the man in the iron mask would have thought if he knew his story would become a legend. Perhaps he felt worthless in his cell. Or wronged. Or angry, until his last breath. Or simply forgotten. He would never know that books would be written about him, and movies made – however much digressing from his real story.

But perhaps he would not have cared that much. Perhaps all he would have cared for was to stand a moment under the trees overlooking the boat landing, enjoying simply watching the azure waters and the ships going by. Perhaps he would have thought that people who write books about prisoners instead of trying to capture the blue hue of the water in words have lost perspective of what really matters. That those who are entitled to freedom lose sight of the marvelous world right around them. That freedom makes us forget to live today.

Cannes-6(Île Ste-Marguerite, Cannes, France; May 2015


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Vitamin S-un

Cannes-2One Thursday morning in May there was no rain. There was no cold. No miserable birch trees trying to hatch their first tender leaves against the chilling wet wind from the sea. No, this Thursday morning there was a touchdown – and light, radiance, luminosity of the sun!

A stroll down the Croisette, a glass of Provence rosé and dipping my toes in the sand – and life was slowly returning to a wrung-out body and mind. And later, as I sat perched on the wall of the Castre, I thought of the Provence light and how it has inspired painters through times. Van Gogh painted his famous cypress still life works while simply staring out of the window of a mental asylum. How wonderfully strong inspiration the scenery and light must have been to drive him to paint masterworks instead of dwell in dull misery.

Life is about choices, indeed. It is about choosing to melt away in sadness, or painting brilliant wheat fields and cypresses that are adored for generations. It is about choosing to spend a Thursday holed up in one’s office – or soaking in the Riviera sunlight. But life is also about receiving exactly how much one gives. Sometimes we give it all and nothing is enough – and we are left with a huge hole in the side where a chunk was carved away. This is life, too. It hurts.

Yet, some other times, we give it all and in the end there is a reward if we choose to take it. I chose to be worth a long weekend in Cannes in May. Every penny and every ray of sunlight.

Cannes-1

(Cannes, France; May 2015)