For eleven years my favorite daydream has been just one place. My favorite “anywhere but here” destination has always been the same. For 5 years I sat in a darkened classroom at 8:30 in the morning and stared at slides of St Mark’s square in all states of weather. I could imagine myself there, I could put myself there, and I’d never been there.
Until today.
Venice is unlike anything I had ever seen, and I’ve been fortunate enough to see many, many amazing things. A city that really shouldn’t exist, a city that is sinking every day of the year and yet still manages to be one of the most beautiful places you’ll ever lay eyes on.
Crowded, and heaving with tourists every moment of the day, it doesn’t ever feel crowded or panicky it feels…comfortable. The narrow streets provide just that little bit of necessary shelter from the blaze of the Italian sun (which at the moment is taking the daily temperature to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit) and present new things to gasp over at every turn. One turn and you find yourself in a nearly empty courtyard being serenaded by an Italian trio, another turn and you’re facing a costume shop with hand-stitched carnival masquerade ball gowns in the window that would set you back a year’s salary and where would you ever wear it, but you want to press your nose against the glass like a child just to get closer to them, another turn and you’re watching the gondolas pass shining and shimmering under the vast expanse of the Rialto bridge, and you want to be crying, but you can’t seem to find the tears.
Then another turn casts you into the massive shadow of St Mark’s, and it takes every ounce of your resistance not to simply sit down cross-legged on the burning hot stones of the piazza and stare and stare and stare.
And you try to remember, you try to remember all the information you had about this place, about the Medici’s and the Doge’s palace and the origin of the massive horses above the doors to the Basicalla, about how long it took to paint the frescoes and who painted them. You try to find that door in your mind that holds all that information that you used to thrive on, that you passed so many exams with – but you can’t find any of it, it’s driven out of your mind by the sheer reality of the city around you, but the sheer presence of what you’re looking at.
And you can’t go inside, because the line is so long that it would be several hours wait, and you only have another half hour or so of the ship. The back of your mind knows that this is the last day of the cruise, that you’ll be coming back to the reality of hours worth of work; and some part of your mind is aware of the fact that the Italian sun is winning its battle with you, and that the ground is starting to shift under you feet in a way that isn’t good, that if you don’t get to shade and water soon that pulse behind your eyes is going to erupt into white-hot pain…
You know all that, you just don’t care.
You just stare…
And almost in a daze, you pull out the cell phone that you knew there was a reason you forced yourself to buy, despite being so against smart phones, and you snap the perfect picture of those four horses, and you send it to the people you wish were standing on those hot paving stones with you. The people that are supposed to be there, but aren’t. But just like when you’re watching the fireworks at Hong Kong Disneyland, and you reach to hold someone’s hand that isn’t there, they are there, they’re miles and miles away, but they’re there, next to you, breathing in your ear;
I’m sorry we broke your city! How much do we owe you? Oooh that sounds expensive, will you take a cheque? My visa’s totally maxed!
DEATH TO REMERBRANT ….and his silly hats…
And there is the tiniest ghost of a laugh, that you’re not sure if you really hear, and you don’t have time to think about it before a pigeon distracts you, or you realize you have to at least take your own pictures, so you had your camera to the coworker you’ve been wandering the streets with and you try to capture something…anything…that’s close to what’s going through your mind, but you know you fail even as the shutter clicks.
Because nothing can ever really capture that moment. Except your imagination.
Venice…is its own miracle.
And I am such a lucky woman.