Oy.
It’s my last day in Venice (have been here a week). Tomorrow I fly back to Dublin, spend a couple of nights, visit the Botanical Garden (which has become a Favorite Place), and then, God willing, fly back to Tucson Monday.
Three-and-a-half INTENSE weeks. The memoir-writing workshop at Kylemore Abbey; a silent retreat which though wonderful in its way was not “relaxing” or “calming” (for a variety of reasons; one of which was the uncovering during spiritual direction of a possible major area of discernment); and then Venice: a medieval city that exists entirely on water, whose streets and alleys, nooks and crannies have hardly changed in centuries, and that is navigated either on foot or by little boats that zip along the canals called vaporettos.
I bought a week-long pass and kind of got the hang of the latter, and other than that, I have spent my days walking, peering, visiting museums, churches, and the Venice Biennale (upon which more later).
The weather has been perfect for my taste, very much like Southern California. Life is lived, this time of year anyway, and this is especially or maybe only true for the tourist, outdoors. Around every corner is a cafe, trattoria, pizzeria, or counter selling bread, pastries, dried meats, cheese, and cold limonatas. Additionally, you can just park yourself and sit virtually anywhere: on the edge of the smaller canals, on the base of a statue, on steps and ledges. This was ideal for a grazing picnic-girl type such as myself.
Also–people watching!
Everything is stylish to within an inch of its life: haircuts, the gaily striped poles marking your private gondola stop, the streamlined heavy brass locks on bathroom doors, museum tickets. The collection receptacles at the Mass at San Marco Cathedral were of deep red velvet, a kind of rectangular purse with a slit on top, like something a letter to the Pope might be delivered in. Clothes, including for children, are of softly draped linen, gabardine, twill, cashmere. The guy in front of me at Mass had on bespoke oxfords of a rich supple chestnut leather, very slightly flared linen trousers in a tobacco shade, ending perhaps 4 3/8 inches above the instep (you could just see the tailor, tape in hand, measuring), no socks and ankles perfectly tanned the color of cappucino. Topped with a long deep-blue duster in a kind of matte silk, lortoise-shell eyeglasses, and a Salvador Dali moustache.
My Italian is confined to three words: Grazie, scusi, and prego. To my horror, I found myself lapsing into a kind of pidgin Spanish—another language I can’t speak. A vaudevillian exchange took place, for example, in a corner market where I stopped in search of dish detergent with which to rinse out my socks in the sink of the ex-convent hotel room where I was staying.
I spotted some plastic bottles of greenish-yellow liquid that vaguely resembled detergent but the labels were perplexing. One featured a picture of a large green plant; another of a plant with an insect on it: was the product Italian-style Miracle Gro, or maybe Raid?
Finally I waylaid the clerk. “Do you speak English?” I cowered. “No,” he snapped. I didn’t believe him for a minute as the campo was thronged with Americans, but—
“Okay,” I said placatingly. “Unh…sopa?” Sopa de…cucina?” Too late I remembered sopa means soup, not soap, and was it cucina or cochino? One means kitchen, or maybe food (I was pretty sure), but the other means pig. Pig food…kitchen soup…what could the guy (assuming he spoke Spanish, which why would he?) be thinking?
In desperation, I switched to charades mode and pantomimed shoving food into my mouth, then moving my hand in a circular motion as if swiping an imaginary dishcloth across a plate. “Sopa…sopa”…maybe he’d make the connection from soup to “bowl” and then telepathically to my desire to wash it.
On it went. “Dos, por favor!” I cried helpfully to the fruit stand guy, who yelled at me for touching his figs. “I’m. Going. To. Buy. Them,” I enunciated clearly and slowly, adopting a beseeching Mary Magdalene expression.
“Two?” he rolled his eyes, and placed them, along with three perfect small yellow pears, in a bag.
Venetians clearly despise tourists, as you wouldn’t? One myself, obviously, I despised them, clogging up the alleys as they slurped gelato and ogled knockoff Murano.
But not really. For the most part, I avoided the super congested squares and streets (though if you’re visiting the justifiably famous top Venetian museuems, or the Biennale, crowds are inevitable). And over the course of the week I developed a great sympathy for my fellow citizens of the world who, after all, had suited up and showed up and were doing the best we could.
One place I asolutely loved the was the Museo Fortuny, Mariano Fortuny (1871-1949) being an eccentric artist type given to wearing rich silks and turbans, who as you may know designed a ton of truly fabulous textiles.
I am spent, and must set out for San Sebastiano. Pray for me. And I’ll light a candle for you.
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