Swanning around

 

 Perhaps this should be entitled, In Praise of Walking! As I am not yet back swimming every day, I walk almost every day for an early hour, usually towards, then alongside, one or other of the canals. The glorious weather has simply gilded the lily. Hippocrates declared that walking is the “best medicine” and though so far not in need of medicine, I do find that walking gives me joy. Sights, sounds, smells; all combine to give a delicious freedom to think things through, to remember recent events and anticipate the day or the morrow. I can have a quiet dialogue with myself though, truly with lock-down, that is possible at most times of the day! It’s just that the walking early provides a glorious private theatre to enact the process. Somehow, this mundane activity in a far-from-mundane setting elevates the ordinary and adds hugely to my sense of contentment and well-being.

I also have the opportunity to notice more details I have otherwise missed and to relish anew the normal sights of Bruges. This last week seems to have been dominated by swans; they have possibly been following me! Again and again, I seem to have walked past congregations of swans near bridges and below parapets, always busy dipping, stretching, swimming silently and with unseen effort, flapping occasionally, making majestic consort in smoothly-moving convoys. I got very excited two or three months ago when I saw a swan, sitting on what looked like a little pile of sticks, with another swan solicitously hovering. I decided that it must be a couple with one preparing to give birth. I observed, as I passed, over two days but on day three, they had gone, removed I suspected by an employee of the commune to a more distant place. Though behind a wire fence, they were probably too near to passing traffic.

I hadn’t thought until now of the word, Flaneur, but that is what I might be posturing as!! Flaneur is a French noun literally meaning stroller, lounger, saunterer, loafer. Wikipedia suggests that a flaneur is “an ambivalent figure of urban affluence and modernity, representing the ability to wander, detached from society with no other purpose than to be an acute observer of contemporary life.” This almost nails my daily activity but does not begin to suggest the joy I feel during the experience nor the main original reason for my activity which is to help me keep healthy.

Le Flaneur 1842
Paul Gavami.

I aassociate the word, ‘flaneur’ with Paris and now know that it was a description of a literary type from 19^th century France and carried a set of rich associations: the man of leisure; the idler; the urban explorer, the connoisseur of the street. Walter Benjamin, drawing on the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, first made this figure the object of scholarly interest in the 20^th century as an archetype of urban, modern experience. A certain detachment was suggested as if the person was slightly set back from what they saw around them. Thus the flaneur has become a symbol for artists and writers. I rather fancy being a female flaneur but think I lack a certain artistic gravitas. Flaneurs just were or are; not in search of health and well-being at all. There to observe an often familiar urban scene and notice unfamiliar aspects, at a distance, and with exquisite judgement or, equally importantly, to be observed by others as a man of taste.

Swans resident in Carmersstraat

And more along the Langerei.