There is a bitter-sweetness to Nice. I have been inexorably attracted and drawn to it, or maybe better yet, into it. Nice, je t'aime. But it does not exist in a vacuum all its own. And I can only see it in its beautiful yet dappled light.
The celebration that is Cannes, the opulence and wealth that is Monaco, the beauty of la Promenade des Anglais and Côte D'Azur of Nice, and the hub of artistry that is l'atelier de Cezanne of Aix-en-Provence. Breathtaking, awe-inspiring, gems in our world's crown, all.
But if the eye lingers upon a single spot too long, the image wavers and shimmers like a desert mirage. To bring one's attention to the cracks in the artwork is to see the truth ooze out and cease to remain hidden and conveniently tucked away; the façade of a Potemkin village emerges: There cannot be wealth without poverty. They are intrinsically interwoven. The best they can be are hidden.
And like a grill, a screen, a filter that traps the human refuse, where dark-faced strangers' gauging gaze fall upon you, determining your value by your presumed wealth or level of threat.
The rich monopolize the poor and the destitute prey upon the rich, and the grease trap that is Marseille is a celebration of this debauchery.
Like the halls of my apartment, with its layers of paint in its foyer lingering with the subtle stench of secret ages, hidden and buried. Nothing cleaned nor repaired, only whitewashed over, ad infinitum.
Monaco, Cannes, Nice, Aix-en-Provence; they are the layers upon layers of paint repeatedly stratified overtop its decrepit and calcified truth. Marseille.
It causes one to pause and ponder: where do I fit within the consumers, the consumed, and the consumption? The parasites, the prey, and the predators? And what paintings have we produced to hide these truths from ourselves?
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