Maeghty waves

With S. and O. we went to visit the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence. The trip there was no great shakes: a succession of roundabouts and retail outlets, but once in the woods above Saint-Paul the spell began to work. The Famille Maeght supported Miro', and when they retired, they set up an exhibition space for their artist friends, in the hills above Cagnes.

I'm not an unconditional fan of Miro' (though I like his small scale ceramics), but what really blew me was the museum setting itself. Rarely have I seen (except perhaps in Barcelona and Poitiers) modern museums that gave such a purpose to visiting the artworks. I felt at times, whilst wandering around the artfully defined meanders, changes of level, plays with direct and indirect natural light, that I was in some mysterious monastery for a stern religion I knew nothing about, but could sense from the sheer balance of masses and volumes. Wonderful, just wonderful.

On return, I went for a swim, despite the admonitory orange flags. The swell was impressive, with a vicious undertow, but some people were porpoising through the breakers, so I thought I'd give it a try. I put on my swimming goggles and launched myself through the substantial surf. It was thrilling and a real adrenalin rush. I played around in the metre and a half swells, yelling as I launched myself off the curling lip of the waves just about to crash over (and showing clear blue through to the other side). Then I started swimming shorewards and quickly realised my mistake. Trying to swim to land through surf is really hard. I got spun around like in a washing machine on spin cycle, and only too late realised that the waves were full of fair sized rocks, carried on the force of the undertow. In fact it was pretty dangerous. I staggered out, raw at the knees, and somewhat lacking in dignity. Some of the other swimmers actually had blood coming from their scrapes. Still, no lasting damage done, and an important lesson learnt.