MORE WINDOWS FLYING OPEN

I am in heaven.  

In case you're wondering.

 

Mario e Elisa, the couple in whose apartment I'm staying, took me to the Rialto this morning. I'd woken early, 5am - and wanted to walk the stony calle and watch the sun rise over my new home.  

But I was too nervous to leave until they appeared, as I was concerned the huge green ancient door with its multiple locks wouldn't let me in once I returned.  I was also very apprehensive that I would never-ever- ever find this tiny street, the width of a vein, again. Instead I bonded with my space: I extended the large wooden table, and I put post it notes of Italian nouns on many items in the rooms, and I moved some antique Murano glass bowls around, knowing they would soon be filled with flowers.  I called customs, fruitlessly, to find my luggage, still lost between Rome and Venice, and now, apparently, coming via Alitalia, not Thai airways - on "maybe Monday". 

And melting in the heat, the dripping, tutto umido caldo, padding around barefoot. Very often I leaned out the windows to watch the passing parades of people, shopping, hurrying, talking on their phones, or lugging trolleys of vegetables.

Sylvia/Giorgio's shop windows for my jewellery

The Rialto is the most famous bridge of Venice. It's always clogged with tourists, buying souvenirs in the shops that were built on the bridge to stabilise the foundations.  Stand either side and the view is always Venice's carnival, with boats  and ferries and water taxis and gondolas churning the water.   

The Rialto is where all the locals shop for their produce: the freshest of fish from the Adriatic, Oceanic, and Mediterranean.  Scallops, mussels, swordfish, oysters, squid, so fresh it's jumping.  Covered in ice and parsley.  Vegetables grown in market gardens outside Venice, fruit from the countryside.  The vendors are Croatian, Sri Lankan, Russian, Umbrian. I bought apples, plump, split figs and a hand of bananas from my man from Bangladesh.   A bag of leaves from the French woman.  Though I carried the basket Sylvia had given me,  everything went into Mario and Elisa's wheelie trolley, which they said I could borrow whenever I needed to.  I bought a huge bunch of liliums for Giorgio and Sylvia, and some yellow roses and white liscianthus for Mario and Elisa.  Figs, plump, split and sexy.  Pears to go with my blue cheese.    

Mario e Elisa

Don't worry, you'll be fine, my new friends assure, when I ask for directions. Paralysed like a goat trying to cross five lanes of traffic, Elisa led me to Sylvia's and Giorgio's shop, not even two minutes from my apartment.  Big hugs and kisses all around. "I was so worried about you", laughed Sylvia as I gave her the flowers and Giorgio his Acubras which he immediately plonked onto his head to to make him look even more debonair.  He gave me a damp bunch of fresh basil, smiled and said Lunch! One o clock. There - pointing to a dead end.

Dripping sweat in my wintery clothes, I bought a white voile shirt and white leather sandals from the shop I see from my window - run by two young Moldovian and Korean women.  Lunch in a local taverna with my new hosts didn't disappoint: a languid two hours spent sipping Lambrusco, ruminating on the heady aromas of clam pasta, small fried fish with pickled onions, skinny pizza with  just a breath of tomato and garlic, acqua frizzante and chocolate cake and tira misu that melted in our mouths. As a sublime backdrop, gondolas paddled indolently past our table, as two wrinkled, tandoori coloured old women with glittering turquoise eyelids and fuschia lips winked drunkenly at Fabio, the 5 foot nothing restauranteur, who deflected their advances by kissing my hand.      

I am so happy I think my heart is going to jump out of my chest.  

Rialto fish market

Venice is quite - remarkable.  You'll never be the same, in the same way.  The city sets your heart on fire. Everything sets your senses on high alert.  Every pore in your body is filled with awe.  It's so sexy you want to make love to everyone, all the time.  Coffee is served as if it is the blood of doges, collected especially for you.   Siesta - in this lazy soft heat - was invented so that the locals can rid themselves of their excesses of the morning, and renew for evening.

I have a bidet.  Not that there's a logical correlation between this and the above. Somewhere to wash my delicates, for now, the lace kind.

So, suitably imbibed and appetite sated, we get down to talking. "What do you want to do while you're here?" ask Giorgio and Sylvie.  Learn Italian, I assert. "No, no, no, that will happen anyway.  What about the beads?"  I'd shown them a piece I'd made in Sydney;  they nodded complicitly then told me they want me to exhibit in the space of a friend of theirs in the Guggenheim villa.  A wonderful space for you, such exposure, they smile. You should be there for in time for Biennale.  But that's two years away, I laugh. Si, so?  You will come and live here, we will help you with the documentare. We will phone friends.  Giorgio says I should also work on Murano. He's going to take me there next week, to lie on our stomachs on the jetty and look for antique beads in the water.   

I know I'm in love with Venice.  I don't think I have ever been this happy in my entire life:  it's all encompassing.    Who cares about time for sleeping? Nobody else does.

It's melting hot, the sky is white,  and everyone is now having siesta.  The roller doors of the shops clang closed.  The green shutters of my la camera da letto are closed.  I slink guiltily onto my bed, and am lost in peace and quiet for two hours.  I wake at sunset. The silence from no traffic is blissful.  I heard party revellers returning last night, almost until sunrise, heels tapping on the cobbles.

I'm going to read about Casanova, and paint my toes aubergine, and hope to sleep later than 4am as I'm still jetlagged.  The only time this city stops is between 5am and 7am.  I hear people laughing all night.  And still my luggage hides, somewhere.  Beads, beads, I need my beads!