Communing With James Baldwin in France

Over the past two posts, I’ve been sharing my journal entries from the study travel trip I led to France a couple of weeks ago. Today, I want to finish up this series by sharing a short post from the beach overlooking the Mediterranean in Nice and a post about my journey to St. Paul de Vence to walk through the village that James Baldwin called home during the latter part of his life.

17 May 2023

Sitting on the rocky beach in Nice, I watch the Mediterranean lap up onto the shore, spraying me with sea foam as I pick up multi-colored rocks and twirl them between my fingers. The smell of salt hangs in the air, and as the waves crash upon the rocks and retreat, the water rolls back into the sea, causing a cascading sound of rocks clattering together. If energy never dissipates and merely changes with what is affected upon it, then the water I see and the sound I hear have been here for centuries, carrying sailors across these waters to Marseille and beyond. What voices exist within the clear blue waters that lap up against me? Whose voices? Whose stories?

19 May 2023