Conte d'éte, Eric Rohmer
These days we have all become philosophers. We look like Woody Allen characters, but less well lit . We release without shame not phrases, but sentences like "Let's go back to before" either “I miss the sea, the breeze on my face, the salt on my skin” . We also sound like Augusto Alguero songs that, in his own way, he was also a philosopher.
We miss the sea because you don't have to be an expert in metaphors to know that is freedom, summer and free time . Warning, paradox: now that we have so much we have confirmed that life is free time . Also that, even in the depths of winter, an invincible summer can be carried inside . What a good day these to read again Summer of Camus and think about the days to come.
Conte d'éte
We miss the sea . Even those who would prefer carpeted beaches, even those who complain that Cádiz is full, even those who do not know how to manage their power do so. These months there has been no sea, but yes beach movies . A homemade cycle Rohmer almost allows you to feel the sand on your feet. When will we be able to watch two movies a day without guilt again? A double session Pauline on the Beach and of summer tale validate a real beach day.
In these films, which take place between Brittany and Normandy, the beaches are familiar: of towel in the sand and neighbors who meet . In the story, one of his Tales of the Four Seasons , the protagonists walk along the beaches of Dinard and Saint Malo while they talk about the two or three important topics of life. What a desire to be able to walk with someone along the shore; and even to argue with that someone. In Pauline on the Beach , shot in Granville , the beach is always there, even if it doesn't always appear. You can see the garden of the house full of hydrangeas, on the tanned skin of the protagonists , in his white clothes and his Breton t-shirts. The beach and the sea do not need to be seen to be.
Pauline on the beach
There is a beach in Crete that is difficult to get to. You have to go up and down a mountain with inhuman curves , you have to wait for a boat, after passing through a bakery to buy water and a cheese empanada called Kalisounia . After a 20-minute journey (the breeze on your face, disheveled hair and all the poetic pack on top) you arrive at Sfakia . There is the beach Sweetwater ; the name is too descriptive and does not do justice to the epicness of the trip. We are in the Libyan Sea and in front of it is Africa . Behind us we have a mountain that filters fresh water into the sea. We bathe feeling the salty water and, at times, the cold currents. The color is an intense sky blue. It is not turquoise, which sounds almost vulgar here. In Greece nothing is . That beach cannot be enjoyed now, but if you have seen it, you already have it inside you.
There is a beach bar in Huelva that is easy to get to . It is in Matalascañas, so popular and unknown. Is named The boat and don't waste a second looking for his Instagram: does not have . There, at 1 in the afternoon, an exercise in civilization begins: the aperitif facing the sea . The umbrella is left next to the table, a chair is found in the shade and, without saying anything, even if you haven't appeared for a year, its owner knows that he has to offer you the last thing you asked for last year: cold white wine and sardines roasted with a little bread that, wonder, we have not made. Everyone moves following a choreography perfected after decades of beach days. That moment, so simple and so sophisticated, it is a vital horizon for those who know it.
Sweetwater Beach, Crete
Some say that one of the divisions in the world is the one facing to rocky beaches with sandy beaches . What poverty of spirit to have to choose. This year the sandy and Atlantic beaches will live their great moment because facilitate the famous physical distance . They already fulfilled it when it was something that we did not consider. If we could, this would be the year of the beaches of Las Landes and Alentejo, so wide and, sometimes, so furious. There is sand and room for everyone . A coffee in Lou Cabana with a lot of wind (in Hossegor it is always very windy) and a silly afternoon in Melides , almost without daring to bathe because of how cold it is, they are all we want now.
Yes we can bathe in Galicia, in Corrubedo , with the invigorating sea and the dunes in the background. Then we can go for some scallops near Chipperfield's house. Or we can spend an afternoon in Lanzarote, in Famara , not daring to swim but looking at the sea with a fixed gaze. Also we want coves, crabs and the Mediterranean . We urge ourselves to get into the water without our bathing suit and let ourselves be rocked, put on our goggles and look for minnows, sit on the rock with a book watching the day go by, take a peach out of the bag and take a bite. If we close our eyes a lot and concentrate until we mess up our hair.
While the sea arrives we will continue looking for it at home . One of the films that best expresses the sense of community to which the beach invites is Shark . That the protagonist is a murderer is very timely at this time. In Martha's Vineyard , where the fictional town of Amity Spielberg taught us that on a beach everything happens , from a barbecue to being attacked by a shark.
The Durrell’s
In these days when fantasy runs wild, we make plans to stay at the Harbor View Hotel . Here booked the film crew in 1974 fifty rooms . Do we have anything better to do these days than read about the inside story of Jaws? For some, hotel mythology is their yoga. Or we can travel to Corfu, with the Durrell family . We will explore its beaches from a house with peeling walls and we will hunt lizards with the little Gerald . For some, literary mythology is their pastry.
Cortazar in a certain luke he wrote that “a walk in the woods, a dip in a waterfall, a path among the rocks, can only fulfill us aesthetically if we are assured of returning home or to the hotel and the lustral shower”. From the respect to the players, to those who endure eight hours on the sand , the best thing about the beach is the mid-afternoon shower. At that moment is when the beach ends, when the experience closes . The slow shower, the unctuous after sun that smells of life, wet hair, fresh clothes and that sand that remains between the sand of the feet are the beach. As in Rohmer's films, you don't have to see it to understand that, in those grains of sand, there is the whole beach and all of life. . Let's see if it will be true that we have become philosophers.