Through the looking glass, frostily.

Return to La Serenissima.  Or Rolling the Dice.  Or Houses of Cards.

Sometime during this journey, I ruminated about how when someone else makes a choice that is even one degree left of plans,  one’s carefully constructed house of cards comes tumbling down. And so it came to pass.  One unexpected toss of the dice and every ensuring plan has altered which left me in an anxious flurry of Now What? on my pilgrimage of Yes.

The S&G not-happening thing, for reasons stated earlier,  was a major disappointment, as I was anticipating some income here, albeit, given I’m not a Nigerian Prada bag seller,  highly illegal.  When my “benefactors”  pulled out, I lost the opportunity to stay in the subsidised accommodation around the corner from their shop.  Dawn found me a magnificent apartment in Cannareggio, that I'd stay in on my return,  but it cost much more. Then I got a fit of the blues because much as I love this city with something bordering on divine devotion, Venetians are not friendly.  My Italian can get me around, but it won’t make me friends. And there is only so much shoe and bag shopping I can do before I’ll start having psychological problems related to the merits of retail therapy and my bank manager’s patience.

I liked the Cannareggio accommodation, and decided to re-enrol at the Institute.  I reasoned I’d master a modicum of the language, write my book, and continue to make jewellery from the beads I’d sent from Australia during the long winter. Friends would come and go.  I stored some bags with Mario and others in Cannareggio.  I'd returned to Sydney for the cruise,  with full intentions of returning to Venice for my final three months.

Except I hadn’t computed how much I wanted - no - needed to be with people I love, with warm friends and sunshine and a language that doesn’t cripple my tongue.  I had serious recurrent wobblies about the long winter haul.  Sure, friends may visit, but I couldn’t depend on them to allay my winter blues or make the sun set later than 3.30pm. And that old initial problem that would have alleviated all the above:  I didn’t have the work I’d been promised. Then the friend with whom I was staying in Sydney had her family move in - and I had store my beads in a hurry and move out.  This falling card collapsed upon the one on which was written my scheduled pre Christmas bead show that I was to hold in her house- compounding the no-income card. Should I go?  Should I stay?

Sydney beckoned, but Venice called, loudly for a dame of her age;  we have unfinished business, young lady, she admonished.  

So I rearranged my return flights to coincide with Carnevale, and be back for Liza and Ben’s wedding. That would mean Christmas in the cold and fog, but another season to unravel Venice. I'd have some more of my "fix", I'd return with more words.  Time was still on my side.  Opportunity still had a habit of knocking.

But fate has her own way. And Italians don't like to be kept waiting.  A handshake deal is finite.  Paperwork doesn't matter. Hand over heart and I have your blood, and if you cross me, you die.  Or your lose your apartment. You lose your place in school.  You lose your new best friends, your job, your income, your status, your favourite table in your favourite restaurant, and suddenly even the woman on the vaporetto must have heard you'd betrayed the system, because she too won't keep those ropes open as you run for your life to leap on board.

This much is true. I told the owner of the Canareggio apartment that I'd like to push my accommodation forward a few weeks because my daughter was getting married. Mama Mia.  I would have had a better reception if I'd told her I was going to entertain a hundred and one poodles over the silly season.  She sternly told me she couldn’t keep it that long: I would need to and fetch my bags immediately. She kept my deposit.  Mario also told me that I couldn't leave my bags with him, because they'd be damaged during Aqua Alta.  Mama Mia!  Mama Mia! The logistics of trying to get the baggage back to Sydney from Venice when I'm not there -  is prohibitive: besides, it was nobody’s responsibility except mine.  I cancelled one ticket.  I booked another. The dollars mounted.  The points dismounted. Suddenly, urgently, my Venetian plans drowned with the tides and there was no longer a 3 month plan. Now I had to return to Sydney, even though I was far from ready to end this adventure, far from ready to give up on becoming Italian.  Far too soon to relinquish the aroma of leather and the tap tap of the cobble.

This also meant financial wranglings. I now needed to buy a car and find a place to live in Sydney.  Pre Christmas, I had less chance  of doing both than making friends in Venice.  I was, for the first time in my life, homeless.  Friends offered a room, but I need a home to unpack and restart Travelling Bead.  Inspecting hideous units in a crowd of 20 anxious nail biting couples was excruciating. I want a house.

Once again, my life had become a shambles.  I stood on the fondamente like the bedraggled French Lieuenant's Woman, tears dribbling down my cold cheeks, wondering what would become of me, just as I thought my trajectory would continue.

For several nights I did the 3am stare at the ceiling what the Fook is to become of me thing, I’m just a bag lady, I’m homeless, I’m dependent, I’ll never have sex again, one day I’m going to be 70,  how many Valium will I need to eradicate myself, what happens if I fall into a canal and there is nobody there to see the splash, this is all that scumbag D’s fault, I love Venice .... blah blah blah blah blah blah blah until five minutes before sunrise and the clop clop clop in the calli woke me.  I thought I was going to unravel. 

On my app, I watched Venice’s temperatures plummet. Sydney’s improve.  I was upset with myself that my year is not yet over and I feel as if I’ve let myself down.  But nowhere did I say that I should force myself to do something that troubled me deeply - coping through the bleak, damp winter.  And nowhere did I promise that my year had to exclude Australia.  Perhaps my “happy ending” is in Australia ... and to quote TS Elliott loosely again - the aim of all our travelling is to return to the place and know it for the first time.  I stopped berating myself and sniffling about lost opportunities.  I licked my wounds, I booked a third ticket with a 12 day turnaround and I returned to Venice  to pick up my luggage, visit the museums I’d missed,  and buy some orange leather boots. And red ones. And a bag or two or three. And more underwear from Intimissimi. And walk till I know the calli like the back of my gloved hand.   Because Mr M had vanished, with his plans and his ideas and his promises.  Teste di Cazzo.  Dickhead.

There are a few cities in the world that each time I return, I feel as if I am coming home.  Venice is my city.  I know its cobbles, and its tides, and its shadows. I understand the boats, and how to buy fruit (with a disposable glove) and I know its smell.   Sydney fills me with light.  Cape Town fills me with the music and mountains of my childhood.  But Venice?  Venice fills me with love.

I have not yet been on a gondola;  I would like to honeymoon here, walk the streets hand in hand, be imbued with the majesty of the city and see it through other eyes.  

A man wrote to me a few days ago:  “I would like to make love in Venice to someone who is in love with Venice.”  Beautiful sentiments that sound even better in Italian.

When I left Venice five weeks ago, it was in the death throes of summer where the light had a burning orange intensity with definite outlines.  Now, galloping into winter, the city has turned silver. Boundaries are blurred. Skylines appear like mirages. Gulls fly lower. Pigeons peck brazenly and sparrows hijack the sugar on tables, storing crumbs for winter.  The leaves have fallen, brittle and brown, soaked by the high, slurping tides.  The sun is weak and pink and noon shadows are as long as my arm.  Long, dark Giacometti shapes appear around corners before their owners; and rugged to their earlobes, the Venetians - able to get around now without being accosted by tourists - may have opened their shutters and displayed their cyclamens - but hunkered down beneath their hats and scarves, they are are even less friendly.

The air is as thin as a blade:  mist taps at my morning windows in the dusty, dark hotel in which I’m staying - midway between Zattere and Accademia water stations.  All day I hear different music played by optimistic buskers: an accordion, a violin, a cello, even a medieval lute: and sometimes the plink of a euro as it hits an offering cup. The bent-double woman, still in her spot with plastic cup and picture of Christ at her knees, is the bleak subject of photographers who steal her misery from a safe distance. The Nigerian dudes selling knock off handbags are now left alone by the carabinieri who gave chase in summer just for the thrill of it.  Voices are sharp and high, the gelati dripping, pizza dribbling, upside down map holding tourists have gone, bar a few dazed myopic Japanese in odd socks and pompoms.

The domes, turrets and parapets, the lives behind the doge windows, the long midday shadows, the bounteous buckets of white cyclamen, the shimmering expanses of water that resemble mercury and reflect Venetian lives upside down are all softly veiled with a gossamer web that softens the colours and silvers what's left.  It is possible that hearts can break in this fragile city. A dowager to her mossy slippers,  Venice is so gently feminine, so precious, so haughty,   riddled as she is with an invisible tuberculosis of the stones; creeping with vivid slime and grey moss like an incurable skin disease; aristocratic to her foundations and arthritic to her heart, pared to its gaunt bones from centuries of high living.

Vulnerable to her core, you wonder what would happened if she coughed.  The tides would swell.  Gondoliers would nudge the fondamente.  Certainly skeletons would tumble from behind rotting doors.   Spiders and rats would scatter to higher ground.  Pampered pooches would whimper and leap back into their Prada handbags.  The ladies who take cafe and biscotti at 17th century Florian, would allow the cello pause,  tut and dab their lips with lace napkins: Venice will survive whatever she is given. Casanova's sexual exploits. Thieving marauders.  Masked revellers.  Plunderers, geniuses, philosophers and Royalty.  Vivaldi's music. Tintoretto's masterpieces.  Doges with grand designs.  Marco Polo's booty.  The titled, the poor, the place of the first jewish ghetto; decadence and high living.  Leather. Lace, Glass, wool. Improbable skylines.  The purest of skies. The first beads in trading history.

What a city.  What a city.   I walk around with my heart pounding, my face stretched from smiling.  My hair shines more here.  My eyes glisten; dilated with the grande amore this testament to all that is gracious and magnificent deserves.

I cried when I collected my luggage because I closed the door on a longer stay and what might eventuate,  and the guts to stick with Yes even though I was trembling in my boots.  I am delighted and enthralled to be here: I am sorry I didn’t have the courage to endure the winter;  but I also want to return to Sydney in ten days. 

I may have lost the chance to design and become famous here; the counts have left for the Alps; and all the restaurants and shops are closing for the long bleak winter.  

I am not finished with Venice.  I still haven’t ridden that gondola. 

What goes on tour, stays on tour

I’m sitting in the Marquee room of the cruise ship that’s hauling Dawn and I to the Pacific, waiting for ... a bingo game. Yep, folks, you read that right.  Last week I staggered, stunned by beauty, around the 17th C Venetian villas, my ears overloaded with Vivaldi, my eyes with Tintoretto, my feet massaged by ancient cobbles and lovingly cradled by soft red leather shoes.  Today, my hair is salt whipped, my face wind burned, I’m wearing croc thongs, a tee and cargo pants, and I've just done fifteen walking laps around a swimming pool on a ship's deck.  Like the vast majority of those on board, my stomach is distended, (but I have a long way to go to catch up with them), I’m counting minutes to the next meal and my afternoon nap, and plotting fancy dress - island harlot or coconut skirt - for this evening's shindig.  

Isle of Pines, Vanuatu

$4 lunch - Port Vila

After two days trying to hold onto my Venetian sophistication, I’ve given up. My sticky hair and slip slop slap of feet on the carpets of the casino, and my cheery greetings of the line dancers from Adelaide, tell me loud and clear that I am finally fitting in. We've had too many blank stares when we’re asked where we live and the number of cruises we’ve done - and told the chilling truth - that now we’re saying, yeah, mate, it’s a beaut cruise - this is my fifth - check out my singlet suntan! - and I live in Sydney and she lives in Perth. The real story is far too alienating to make friends on this cruise.

Towel creature 2

Day 1, leaving Sydney Harbour

As the only passengers who refused to pay $9 for a logo lanyard for our tags, we’ve been renegades from Day One. We’ve cringed at Abba rockin’ the boat, and been jostled by gargantuans gorging at the food troughs.  We don’t have red back spider tattoos on our heels or pierced belly buttons. We are 74% lighter than the lowest common denomenator aboard. Alcohol hasn’t touched our lips, nor playing cards our hands.  It’s going to be a long ten days.   Three days of churning seas and feelings as if we are on a bicycle over sanddunes, I've just told Dawn that we'll have to jump ship rather than survive the rest of the trip, or we'll fly home from Vanuatu.  Whatever the cost.

In this room, where everyone is anticipating winning big on bingo, when we don’t even know the rules, I’m deep in culture shock.  Everyone else has coloured magic markers, and I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do. Next to me, the woman who wore the red cowboy hat, the fish scale tee shirt and the tight pants in various breeds of animal print at last night’s karaoke sing off, scoffs her third diet coke with a packet of crisps.  Her travelling companion,  a cross dresser who emerges at night in a black wig, fishnet stockings, lycra leopard skin mini skirt and killer stilettos, is - we think - nowhere to be seen as we don't know what He looks like without his wig and falsies.  We’ve just watched a “fashion” show: the crew wearing singlets and board shorts.  We’ve avoided the Great Handbag Sale, the Watch Sale, the Diamond Sale;  and run the gamut of the photographers keen on making their quota.  Rather than buy, I spray myself with duty free perfume.

At breakfast on the back deck,  the All You Can Eat Hippo hoards swarmed from their horizontal positions in the cabins, to the food troughs.  Wheezing with anticipation,  they hoovered pyramids of bacon, hash browns, sausages, fries, scrambled, poached, fried and omeletted eggs, loaves of toast, bowls of sugary cereals, pots of jams, honey, pancakes, muffins, mushrooms, and beans,  until even their enormous legs were trembling under the weight of their trays.  Passing the coffee machines, they loaded up with extra sugar; at the dessert counter, they piled on the buns, cakes, cookies, croissants, jam tarts, custard cakes, jellies floating with preserved fruits and ice creams.  Briefly the automatic doors jammed half open:  Dawn and I and a few skinny others had the deck to ourselves:  but those trapped inside by their girths were happy they didn't have to go too far for a refill. 

Cruising was, I think, devised to transport people in need of hospitalisation for obesity from one meal to another.  Sitting as far from this frightening sight as possible, I sipped on my green tea, ate my prunes, nuts and yoghurt.  Then I waddled into the lounge for the first of the many health talks, as the eaters rolled into morning tea. 

Pre cruise

These focused on obesity, detox, stress relief, heart care, fat busters, the eternal quest for flat stomachs, natural solutions to arthritis and immunity rebuilding.  Dawn and I and about twenty others out of 1800 guests were the only people present at these fascinating physiological insights. 

Watching it, intrigued by the analogies to crusty carburettors, I had the sense that the meaning of the cruise had already become clear.  Every month I dump about $150 of pharmaceutical drugs in my body to build my immune system and steady my pancreas.   Post talk, imagining our bodies riddled with the toxins ingested, inhaled, absorbed and imbibed that have caused everything from seasickness to thinning eyelashes, Dawn and I ran up the five flights of stairs to the Aqua centre, where we submitted ourselves to water retention and digestive analysis, Ph and Acid balance measurement, calorific consumption and fat processing statistics.  I'm down to 62 kilos, the slimmest I've been for a very long time; I'm the strongest I've been for about four years, but I don't want to take any more pills.   So I signed up for a four month detox program;  just in time for my year to finish as I leave Venice.  Raw vegetables, no red meat, heaps of fish and oils, cut out cheese, wheat, sugars, salts, junk food, carbonated drinks, alcohol, coffee, cakes, and processed food.  I'll have a blood test next week, and then one when I return. I am very intrigued to see the results.

Papaya - 50c- Port Vila

Port Vila

All is quiet in the bingo hall, apart from nervous rustlings of paper. We’re warned if we shout out too soon, or too late, we’ll have to do a chicken dance, sans accompaniment. Lucky Legs! (Huh?)  Trombones! (What?) 69!  (snigger, snigger) Soon we’re right into crossing off numbers as fast as we can identify them. Our blood pressure is up.  Our hearts are racing. Will we win the $400 for getting a horizontal line?  A horizontal line? Asks a passenger - which way is horozontal?   Before we’ve even found the numbers on our papers - people are leaping from their seats, shouting BINGO and claiming hundreds of dollars. Dawn and I are in a sweat. We win nothing, but immediately understand why this game is so popular with Altzheimer's patients - you to have your wits about you.  We had to restrain ourselves from going out to buy another batch of tickets. 

Port Vila market

And realised we'd just had an hour of great fun. Trivial Pursuit, anyone? It's on after high tea! At dinner in the more formal restaurant, the ship ploughing its way to the Pacific, interesting company on either side, where we were served a limited portion of food, we opened ourselves to the tales of some very intriguing passengers.  And began to enjoy ourselves enormously.


Like the forties couple travelling together, but explaining they were brother and sister.  The ex husband and the ex wife, doing their 100th trip together, as their own new spouses didn't like cruising. The woman who didn't know what her husband really did, or where he went, when he disappeared for several days - working in the Force. The woman who had recently met up with the love of her life thirty years after their affair, on the cruise, only to find he was "feeble".  A giant of a man, using a walking frame, who ate nothing but was battling diabetes.  Honeymooners.  Couples breaking up.  Anniversaries.  Sisters wearing identical mu mu's. Single dads with kids.  Mums on the prowl. Cross dressers.

From that moment, we decided to enjoy whatever the cruise threw at us.

And there was plenty.  Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble (only four people attended), nightly concerts of fantastically high standards that included cabaret dancers, trapeze artists, a pirate review, a circus, comedians, musicians, game shows, two fantastic cooking demonstrations - one by Luke Mangan the celebrity Master Chef - book signings, a kitchen galley tour and of course the non stop food.  A living, breathing, steaming buffet. In the galley tour, I had the distinct feeling that we were in a giant alimentary canal - in the belly of a whale.  In the health centre, it was more like being a member of The Island, surrounded by little clones dressed in immaculate aqua and white.

Lobster on Isle of Pines

We sailed for four nights and three days before reaching Port Vila, Vanuatu by which time we were ecstatic to touch land.   My camera is being repaired, so I continued the series of self portraits on my Iphone Dawn and I have made during our meet ups this year.  

Port Vila and land --- and a kayaking and snorkelling trip, under grey skies and over the windy waves in a double glass bottomed kayak, across to a coral reef where the local fish matched the colours of the local school and school uniforms.  We got off the bus in town, and Dawn negotiated in her French for tropical fish cooked for us at the local market, followed by an enormous papaya. Women sat on the floor, making their enormous baskets out of banana leaves to carry root vegetables.    We weren't able t take bananas back on board, but there were plenty of passengers who brought an armoury of lethal island-made spears and arrows with them.

We were invited to the Captain's VIP party --dressed to the nines; and to the Captain's cocktail party.  We made friends from all walks of life.  We laughed.  We danced.  We ate and ate.  We rocked when the boat rolled.  When I restrained myself from buying a grass skirt and floral garland, I was sorry later on board, during the Tropical night when everyone else was dressed in floral shirts and sarongs.

Our huge, comfortable cabin, with a huge window, was cleaned several times a day.  Every night our cabin staff made a different creature out of the towels.

At Lifou, we lay on the white beach and swam in the shallow turquoise water;  for a few dollars we ate fresh lobster grilled on the beach. We toured the island in a local taxi.  

And then we sailed home.  Coming into Sydney was magical:  and again, I was really pleased to be home. 

Mr M had promised to collect us from the ship. He said I could stay with him for a few days, as I had nowhere else to go, absolutely in Limbo, till I left again for Venice.  He was two hours late. He said I couldn't stay with him, where could he drop me?  Dawn was flying back to Perth that night.  I called Luda. Of course, she said, sleep on my sofa.  I spent the next few days waiting for Mr M to call, but he never did.

And everyone asked.  What was it like.  I started off saying it was like a floating RSL, and I played Bingo.  Then I told them that in spite of all the stereotypical hype of a cruise ship, both Dawn and I had a bloody good time.    In spite of ourselves.  

Besides, what goes on tour, stays on tour!

PS:  I've started my detox.  I have no appetite.   I have lost a half a kilo in 48 hours.

Next post - back to Venice.

Port Vila

Fabulous fruit at Port Vila

Towel creature 3

PV Market

Lifou

Towel creature day 2

Isle of Pines

After kayaking and snorkelling, PV.

FEAR OF FLYING

I’m leaving Venice in two days to do the cruise.  

Because I don’t feel that I have yet found the meaning of my Venice experience, I’m happy - very happy - to be returning to Sydney, but I’m also very pleased that I’ll be returning to Venice late November.  I haven’t even begun to unravel the layers, because Venice is dense, impenetrable, and yes, unfriendly.  I have unfinished business, and I’m not sure what it is.  I knew I was ready to leave Nepal, England, Turkey, Morocco and Italy the first time. But Venice hasn’t yet shown me her hand.

San Marco and surrounds

My plans with S&G have unravelled. Remember I wore about them taking me their lawyer, and the conversations I couldn't understand, and the forms I refused to fill in?  And that I'd called Dawn and read her some of the Italian, and her replies could be heard from France. NO!    

I came here initially because I was ecstatic to be invited, under any guise, for an extended stay.   The reasons are quite convoluted, but basically it involves my not having a work permit and S&G not wanting to put my jewellery in their windows because they’d get into heap big Italian trouble because I don't have that work permit. (Lesson #1 in Italian logic.) Then they hit on the very intriguing idea of having me take over their shop, once the Guggenheim idea had floated down the canal, along with the flotsam and jetsam of Italian bureaucracy.  I have no intention of taking over any shop, even in Venice. I thought I was going to work here, with them, designing.  But I’ve realised they thought that if I took over their business, they’d be able to retire.

Briefly, over a seductive lunch of stuffed zucchini flowers, grilled fish and seafood soup, on the last days of summer, we sat in a courtyard under vines and in they suggested I take over their smaller shop, on which they still had many years of a long lease. Again, I stressed that I didn’t want to take over a shop, but I would consider it for a few months during winter, providing that I’d have enough free time to spend with MrM and my other friends when they come. I have re-enrolled in morning school for the first weeks of my return; they suggested I go in the evenings.  (When it gets dark at 4pm and the temperature averages zero, with a possibility of snow.) And when restaurants are closed, and the seasonal food isn't available and I can't negotiate Mestre.

So could I have the shop for a few hours a day for a few months, no contracts? Certo! Of course.  We clinked chilled glasses of wine from the Veneto.  Later G took me back to the shop.  The rent is very low, he said.  It is, I agreed.  After two years, you will earn enough money to buy a villa here.  I’m sure, I agreed, watching the thousands of people who pass there every day.  But, I said, I don’t want to be here for years, I have a life I want to return to in Sydney.   Oh, why, he said, you’re becoming Italian.  You’re learning the language quickly. You look Italian already. Forget Australia. 

Er .. what happened to the problems with the work permit, I allowed myself to think. 

Giardini, Venice

Of course, G smiled, when you take over the shop, you will need to pay me 30,000 Euro. For the shopfittings we put in ten years ago.  The lights, the floors, the shelves. 

But if I did want to take it over, I allowed myself to think, I would tear the place apart and make it contemporary.  I might leave the Murano chandelier, but right now it’s Brick-a-brack heaven. Although the thought of buying a villa here in two years is enticing.

In Australia, my mouth moved behind my poker face, the new owner doesn’t pay for past renovations.  But you will get that back when you sell it to the new owner in ten years, G replied unconvincingly. 

Also, G added, more unconvincingly, all their existing customers will come into the shop, especially to buy the rare collection of paperweights they bought from Murano a few years ago.  So I would also have to pay him 50,000 Euro for the 1000 paperweights.  Good news is that I wouldn’t have to pay him all at once.

I need a thousand antique paperweights like I need measles.

80,000Euro.  For goods I don’t want, a shop I don’t want, and a business I’m not sure I would have the courage to do again as long as it involves a contract and hours on a door.

Helicopter ride on Lido

Poker face firmly in place, I excused myself, and chuckled all the way back to mi casa. I called Dawn in Paris to debrief. She was agog.  F and P - who were introduced to me via a J, my beautiful Sydney friend, came from Geneva and Verona respectively to visit.  We had a fabulous weekend exploring the city on foot and boat.  Sitting at Al Buca under the Rialto bridge, while we settled into our seafood platter, they too were agog at the turn of events, as bright lunch turned pink evening over the Grand Canal, and the muscular gondolieri paddled their lovestruck tourists plonked on pink velvet down dark watery lanes.  To cheer me up they invited MrM and I to spend Christmas with them in Geneva.  P and MrM would stuff turkeys, and we’d shop for handbags.  Bellissimo!  Christmas is looking bright indeed.

So I walked away from the “deal” with S&G which was beyond ridiculous.  Never mind the cash investment I was supposed to make, but I don’t have a work permit and won’t be able to get one.  And though I love Venice, I don’t want to marry her!

(So ... postscript filled in years later:  Apparently it happens in Italy, that little old ladies are tricked into buying businesses as tax dodges for the owners.  If everything goes pear shaped, the little old lady who now owns the business she knows nothing about, takes the blame and the crunch and the legal ramifications, while the original owners get away with - everything.) 

Which left me in a bit of a quandary about what to do with all the beads I’d couriered from Sydney.  So I packed up the pieces I’ve made here, ready to return with me to Sydney.  The rest I put into Mario’s (let’s hope waterproof) basement as I saw my first hint of high water today, lapping the fondamente at Rialto Mercato, as I moved my winter luggage on the vaporetto to my new home in Cannareggio.  I’ll think about that when March comes ... in the meantime I’ll enjoy creating during winter.

My mood lifted immediately in the new apartment: it’s filled with afternoon light. My current apartment in San Toma has morning light, which is quite beautiful, but mornings I’m at the Institute. Cannareggio is less touristy, although there are plenty of restaurants, bakeries, patisseries, pizzeria, and a local fruit and vegetable shop. I know I’m going to have long happy days curled up on the sofa learning Italian, or reading, or when friends arrive, cooking with the local produce. Heaven.  Priceless heaven.

Luggage stored, and with 6 hours left on my last Venice day, I met P and M from school for a helicopter flight over Venice and the lagoon, under the Cavalier in San Marco, lured in by touts who didn’t have to do much convincing. Riding in the wooden paneled speedboat that reared up in the grand canal like a wild windblown horse, our hair tore around our heads, salt stung our eyes and I clung to the ridge of the roof as we bounced along at high speed screaming at the top of my lungs - I LOVE VENICE!!!!!

Sitting white faced and shrunken in her seat inside, ignoring the villas and palazzos and promenades that she’d never see walking,  was a woman in her fifties;  I don’t want to go on a helicopter, she complained. He wants to.  (Pointing to her husband).  I don’t like heights.  I don’t like water. I’m scared we’ll crash, we’ll drown, I’ll vomit, I’ll feel sick.

Here’s a woman whose husband has brought her to Venice. Has paid for her speedboat and her helicopter, because he wants some adrenalin, some excitement, some butterflies.

And I got to thinking about fear, and how nothing has scared me for a long time.  I got to thinking about how if we were limited by fear, we would never do anything.  Explorers would never have left home, discoveries wouldn’t be made, music and art wouldn’t break boundaries, and I wouldn’t be in Venice. Marco Polo would be fat with pasta, and he would have had time to argue with Mama.

Burano at dusk

Fear is limiting, inhibiting and debilitating. I’ve learned, through many fearful experiences that the only way through it is a physical letting go. You don’t have any control over the fear inducing situation - you have control over how you handle it.  I was in a light plane crash in a field south of Perth, and I remember that cold, sickening knot of visceral fear, that dried my mouth and weakened my legs, made me sick to my stomach, and fast tracked the blue light of impending death.  I watched as my life flashed behind me. Then I felt the fear pop inside me like a bubble. Flooded with adrenalin, I became calm, relaxed and detached. Once in a helicopter flying sideways through a canyon, I was so petrified I couldn’t take any photographs.  If I’m truly terrified now, I try to reach that spot.  It’s how I handled hurtling to the ground from three kilometres up, with no visual reference of ground or sky. I just let go.

Burano from the air

I looked again at the frightened, cowed woman in the speedboat, dreading her aerial discovery of this magical city.  Just let go, I suggested.  It is your choice to get on that lovely yellow helicopter - let yourself enjoy it.  You won’t have time to be scared.

Burano at dusk

What a treat that ride was; skimming over Torchello and its gardens, Venice’s cemetery, the ruins of the monastery,  Murano and its glass furnaces, colourful Burano and its lace, the Lido and its beaches and then Venice and San Marco’s footsore tourists, green Giardini, Biennale and the boatyards of Arsenale, all of which gave us the best insight into the sort of land that was settled by people fleeing persecution more than a thousand years ago, to become the biggest and richest seaport in the world.

The frightened wife took the flight and made no comment on her 12 minutes over Venice. I wonder how she’d feel, back home soon, this experience gone forever. I, though, was on my last day, determined to get the most out of it.  We landed at San Marco and immediately caught the vaporetto to Burano, but landed up on a distant mainland by mistake - our boat hugging the weeds and passing fishermen. In fearful mode, we’d have fretted over to get where we needed to be, but instead enjoyed the unfamiliar scenery until a change of boat eventually took us to Burano, where we spent a few very chilly hours walking and refuelling with linguini and coffee, before we returned late to Venice floodlit with a full moon.

Murano and glass foundaries 

Did I take a boat along the canal back home? Not on your Tintoretto! P and I shared a seafood platter at the Rialto, watching the gold and pink water, and the ghostly gondolieri. I walked those dark, shuttered, echoing, cold lanes at midnight, remembering the three enormous Americans in their bullet proof vests who asked me if it was safe to walk Venice at night, and my reply.  And remembering that I’d survived a cold night long ago in Patagonia, when I’d walked to my cabin alone, and turned to find a pack of wild dogs following me so close I could feel their breath on my heels.  I’d picked up stones and flung them at the dogs, and then ran as fast as I could - two very stupid things to do. There were no stones unturned in Venice, no wild dogs - they’d have been well fed and perched on velvet cushions, their pink tutus and diamante collars tucked away,  this time of night.  Of course I wasn’t afraid.  This was my last night in Venice for a while and I wanted to breathe in every experience.

I packed away my party frocks, brought for the many evenings I’d be introduced to Venetians by S and G.  I put my summer clothes in my coming home case, and my winter clothes in my staying behind case.  For my last breakfast, I made a mushroom, olive and carciofi omelette, finished the last of my pomegranate juice and took some crackers for the boat ride to the airport. I went to the shop to say goodbye to G, who said, Oh! You’re leaving already? How long have you been here? When you return, you will come for dinner at our villa.  Magiare!

M, my landlord upstairs,  apologised for being so busy while I’ve been here and for not having me over. He offered to make me his speciality onion soup when I return.  He helped me with my luggage to the vaporetto, and I caught the Alilaguna to the airport. Everyone was bundled up to their earlobes. The glove sellers were out.  There wasn’t a sandal in sight.  Hats were pulled low.  The wind was wild, the water choppy, the vaporetto lurched and struggled through the waves. I turned green.

I was blown into the airport.  I wasn’t upgraded.  Two young Australian men sat next to me. We don’t like Venice, they said, we saw everything we needed to in three days.  I didn’t bother correcting them.  Venice will only show you what you’re ready for, I tried to tell them.  They were ready only for three days. We don’t like Italy, they said, the Italians are unfriendly. They’re all talk.  Here, I reluctantly concur. I’ve made friends from Geneva, Verona, Holland, Switzerland and Sweden, with the girls in my favourite bag shop who are from Moldovia and Korea,  but not my landlords or the people who asked me to come. Maybe when I return. 

My time in Venice has yet to reveal its purpose.

Flying into Sydney very early, I was delighted to be coming "home" where all is familiar, and dear, and easy.

The city of mirrors

To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself, but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius. - Alexander Herzen.

Rialto

I've attached myself to Venice like a jealous lover.  I stalk its calli during the day, hating the tourists, wishing they would go home and leave it to me so I can fawn all over it undisturbed. Then alone at night with my beautiful treasure, I gaze at it in raptures; all the dark nuances of shadows, the chinks of light that tantalise me, the mysteries that just might reveal themselves if I am patient enough.  I love that the season has changed, and with it the light.  I've never seen light like in Venice, and although I'm aware that it has been rhapsodised over, eulogised over, poetry and art and music poured over it, I still feel, like all jealous lovers, that this light belongs to me. No day or night is the same;  the moon changes the shapes and stature of the buildings, waxing and waning with the tides that I'm now conscious of on a cyclic level. The colder air changes the shape and form of the light; sometimes Venice looks as if it is being seen through a grimy glass window, at others it's reflected in ancient, peeling mirrors;  in between it shimmers and trembles as if it has just been washed with mountain water.

It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone. ~ Erica Jong

Famous Horses at San Marco

Yesterday I went with Pamela from school to the Museo di Storia Naturale, at Ca' Rezzonico, after twists and turns and dead ends in the back lanes, washing flapping above us, cane caca beneath our feet. I don't normally like being cooped up in museums, but I bought a Museo Card for E18 which entitles me to dieci museo per ses mese - a euro and a bit for entry into fabulous palaces with fabulous collections - priceless.  What a museum. Outside, the grace and splendour of a truly grand villa, while inside it's a statement of everything that is wonderful in Italian contemporary design, a brilliant counterpoint to creepy things and crawly things, and bottled things and fossilised things.  There are no English translations of any of the exhibits, but to our delight, both P and I understood EVERYTHING.  

A jaunt around another corner led us to the exhibition of Alexxandre Vassiliev - a Russian designer - of clothes and textiles from 1900 - 1920, from Paris, Bulgaria, Venice, and Russia.    They were made of exquisite silks and beadwork, and looking around at the plethora of ugly clothing we now wear, you'd have to lament that elegant time lost. 

Several times, but always on the way to somewhere else, I'd chugged past the astonishing artwork of Oksana Mas, who created gigantic panels of wooden eggs into " Wooden Egg Mosiacs called ‘Post-vs-Proto-Renaissance’, (that) features 12 separate pieces, measures a total of 92 by 134 meters and numbers an astonishing 3,640,000 wooden eggs hand-painted by people in 42 different countries.

This city is a living, breathing art gallery, and the longer I'm here the more I find there is to see. I haven't yet seen a Tintoretto!

I've been wanting to see "Venice behind the Mask" ever since I saw it advertised on a billboard way back in July. I'm leaving for Sydney in a few days, there to meet Dawn and do the Pacific cruise that I won while I was in Nepal, before I return here. Yet I'm voracious for more and more, as everything is much more fun, and accessible, now that I have a leetle beet of Italian; enough to get around, get fed, get out of trouble and eavesdrop. We bought tickets for the show at Teatro Gallo  - ate at a little trattoria in a piazza - where Pamela asked for Sambucco instead of Oso Buco - note to selves, why bother with meat here - it's always terrible.  Front row seats and the show was a riot, a wonderful multi media production covering five hundred years of ribaldry, rivalry, plague, fame, fortune, decadence, death and divine intervention.

Venice from Lido, with fishing nets

Today - a trip to the Lido to ride a bike. Or rather, three of us riding one bike - three seats next to each other, with one dud steering wheel, a mismatched set of pedals, seats that couldn't by any stretch of the imagination comfortably seat three bums.  We mounted pavements, we created traffic jams of buses and cars (eeuw, yes, those macchina are noxious, stinky belching pests) we pushed and heaved up hills and let loose down hills, we squeezed between barriers over ponti, all the while looking across the gorgeous Venice shrouded in a delicate, delicious autumn haze, the water flat as a mirror.  

Not Sydney! Phew!  Lido, Venice. Hideous.

Most definitely the most fun I have had for 4Euro for a long time. I wasn't allowed to ride in the main streets because I'd turn the wrong way, but the residents of the Lido were very accommodating, apart from a grumpy woman sitting on a park bench watching the traffic, who cursed to her husband about the lunatic foreign infidels who dared to have a good time. We stopped pedalling to ask a man directions to the light house - which we called Casa la luce, which resulted in him giving us a history lesson on the lighthouse, a linguistic lesson on the correct use of the word, and the various types of lighthouses, so that by the time he was finished it was too late to go to the lighthouse, but, very well informed, we stopped briefly at the Lido, a beach ruined by the platoons of change booths that resemble a detention centre.  

Map reading, Lido.

Worse, you have to pay to visit it, but we chained the three seater bike to the gate and went in over the sticky brown sand to watch a coiffed poodle retrieve a ball. I suppose when you're enclosed by buildings, this beach seems remarkable. It reminded me of Brighton, England, except the light, of course, was infinitely better here.

I've tried never to make this blog a "I woke up, I did this, I went and ate there", but every moment and every meal in Venice has cause to be celebrated. We ate at a very ordinary restaurant at the Lido, but staring over us was the Excelsior hotel, it's facade completely covered with exquisite Belle Epoque tiles. 

Facade of Excelsior made of tiles

Down through the back streets were large, elegant, well maintained villas, looking across the lagoon to Venice.  The Lido is a very sedate place - at least it seemed so on this chilly day, but it was the haunt of decadents and partygoers in affluent times past. 

Venice across the water looks like all the paintings you see in gauzy, hazy, ethereal colours. Fishing nets seem to hold Venice at bay, or stop it from ascending to heaven. The paintings from the past show a city of centuries long decadence, but now it seems like a little frail old lady, trying to remember her courtesan days. 

We ferried back to San Marco where the handbag touts were out in full force - and so were the carabinieri.  These poor African souls tout their knock off uber brand Chinese fakes and the more desperate they are to sell, the less you'll need to pay for them -  if you can catch them when the carabinieri are running after them. I always thought it was a cat and mouse game - not very serious, but today the carabinieri meant business and didn't care who got in the way. Tourists were knocked off their feet, pigeons took to the air, gelatis fell to the ground, upside down maps took off like pelicans,  and the Africans ran like the wind, chased by panting, tubby men in uniform.  The carabinieri called for reinforcements, bags went flying, and a tall Cameroon man was pinned to the ancient stones by two fat uniforms under a mini mound of fake bags. It was easy to follow the drops of blood spilled in the chase ... but for the first time my heart went out to them, as I heard later that they were indentured to the traffickers who had brought them into Venice, paying a portion of the takings in fees or bribes every day.

Grand canal, just under Rialto

Ditto

Sunset, and a meal at Al Buco, under the Rialto. A heavenly place.  You can't beat the view. I've been there three times and come away sated and satisfied each time.  If you don't like the food, look at the view. It never fails. The waiters are out of Fawlty Towers and worth every cent. This is Italy after all. You want swank, pomp, and perfection? Go to Paris!

These photos are not modified .. this is the 6pm light under the Rialto at the beginning of Winter.  Priceless.

A boat ride home to San Toma .. and the strains of Vivaldi in the piazza .. a violinist and a cellist playing in the dark to the passers by. Heaven. If they play the adagio, I said to myself, as I leaned over the ancient stone well, and settled in for a big listen on the 4 centuries old step,  I'll give them five euros. They did. I did. I practically skipped home.

Tomorrow, my last day in my adopted city until I return, I move some of my stuff to my new apartment in Cannareggio.  What a big deal that's going to be - dragging cases up steps over bridges, into a traghetto, then a vaporetto, then more hauling. No transport? Here is easy! Yes. Well.  Whatever.  Then P, M and I are  taking a speedboat to the Lido for a helicopter ride around the islands of Torchello, Cimiteria, Burano, Murano and Venice. Then Vivaldi's Quattro Staglione in the church in which it was first performed, on the edge of the Grand Canal.   Then Sydney, and friends and the cruise and a birthday party and then pre-nuptial planning with figlia numero uno, and then return to La Serenissima for winter, for carnevale. And Christmas in Geneva, and friends from Holland and Verona in January.  And Drella Bella my bff, coming for Carnevale too, she who kept me going through long time travelled nights with tales of her own goings on. Oh, heaven. Oh, priceless.

There really is light at the end of the tunnel .. always. I had a new passport done in January and I look as if ghosts are inhabiting what was left of my heart and body then. It's a truly frightening photograph. It's said that when you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.  But my face now is unrecognisable from that haunted creature.  I have no intention of "going home", rather a temporary respite from this soulful journeying.   I was crawling over metaphorical glass, a shambles of a person, traumatised, compromised, betrayed, broken and humiliated beyond anything I have ever experienced.  The photo for my Venetian pass - the IMOB card, was copied from my passport, and I'm now unrecognisable from that person.  I'm unwillingly carrying my own ghost. But it helps to remind me that no matter how bad your life seems at the time, how utterly out of control and hideous and hopeless, it does get better. It gets best. 

And because you've been through the sewers of your life, everything after that can't be anything but wonderful. It's important to reflect at junctures ... and give thanks for how far we have come from the pits.


Indeed.