LAST RAYS OF SUMMER

Summer in Venice is a place of gold and magic. 

Light bounces off stones, slips through chinks of shutters, warms toes and melts gelatis.  The summer hasn't wanted to finish ... lingering and teasing and tantalising: even though the shopkeepers redid all their windows for suffocatingly thick winter clothes more than two weeks ago - decorated them with leaves and rocks and stones, furs and wool, brown leathers and scarves and stylish hats.  It doesn't seem possible we'll ever need to wear them.

I went with Pamela from school to a Renaissance concert, performed in masks, in a church in Campo Santa Margerhita.  Hundreds of students hung around bars, sat on the bridges, perched on the edges of wells, swung around glowing pink lampposts, smootched in corners.  By day this campo has a vibrant fish market, an itinerant clothes seller, a daily fruit vendor, demountable newspaper stands, flowers sold from buckets and hundreds of tables - facing into the square,  to have cornettos and coffee in the morning and watch the passing parade.  Going to school is an ever changing tableau.

Arriviamo a Murano per vaporetto

Two days ago, Sylvia and Giorgio called and said, quick, quick, the tide is low, come now, meet us at Rialto, we'll take a boat to Murano and look for old glass in the water at the beach near the glass furnace. I gobbled my salad, dumped my books and collected my camera, caught the vaporetto and met Sylvia who led me through lanes I haven't yet seen, onto a vaporetto, and to Murano.  

The weather was sublime:  like being immersed in a warm bath.  I've never seen such consistently blue skies - clouds don't like to clutter the summery heavens. We walked down lanes and along fondamente and underneath a rope barrier, to the back of a bead-making furnace that has been in existence for hundreds of years.  The beach was made of glass - a billion pieces of discarded, softly eroded glass, amongst which were, if we looked closely, old chevrons from the 17thc -19thc that had been discarded because they were imperfect.  I immediately wanted to take a batch home to make a mosaic ... but instead scratched through the 'sand' looking for the bright blue chevrons.  The tide was fairly high, and there was a lot of seaweed, but we took off our shoes and walked gingerly over the slippery rocks and amongst the glass.

Very old chevrons found on beach at Murano

Mi ha fatto molto piacere perché ho trovato abbastanza vecchio, chevron dolcemente eroso di farmi una bella collana come ricordo di questa giornata.


I didn't believe that these beads could really be found .. but here you are. I'm not going to polish them, either - I love their soft worn-ness.  Some are exquisitely tiny ... they would look fantastic with just a minute knot between each one.

Sylvia searching for Chevons in Murano

Sylvia and I scratched around until a gang of Indian tourists came along wanting to know what we were doing, and wanting to scratch in the sand too .. but couldn't understand the interest we'd have in "broken" beads.  We're going to return when the tide is lower, with less seaweed, to get more. 

Gondolier on Grand Canal, last day of Summer 2011

I have a notification on my phone that alerts me to weather changes here.  Late yesterday afternoon I saw that summer will end today. It wasn't a prediction.  It was a proclamation.  I was in the middle of my homework, but I looked at the fabulous blue sky and my watch which proclaimed that today would be cold, windy and raining.  I took my camera and the first vaporetto from San Tomo which luckily went to the Lido - the longest ride possible.  I sat at the back of the hard working, noisy vessel and stayed till the end - to the Lido and back.  

I passed Accademia and it's bridges, the Santa Maria Della Salute built as thanks by those who survived the rat plague, busy San Marco and the tourists who seldom venture further than it's edges.  At the Lido I saw that if I go there next week, I can hire a bicycle and cycle around.  I watched happily as the last day of summer blessed Venice from top to toe. My camera and I gave an homage to everything we've shared together here.  I've had a few lonely days, but every time I vaguely consider that this journey, here, is hard, I look around and give thanks.  How lucky I am.   Grazie, grazie. 

Indeed, this morning, the temperature has dropped 15 degrees and everyone is shivering and the skies are grey and the steps are wet.   It was my final day of school and I'm not terrified of the language - just intimidated;  I've learned a lot and got past the stage of believing it is all too hard -now I want to continue until I can parlo Italiano!  

Leaving school this last day, I walked through the enormous salons of Ca' Zenobia, the palace I pass on my way to the Institute. I followed the strains of someone playing Mozart that echoed and danced from a stone room along the cobbles and into my grateful ears. I followed the music up worn marble steps into a grand room with a domed frescoed ceiling.  Soft light played on the mosaic decorated marble floors, and outside, as an accompaniment to Mozart, the first rains of winter trickled down the old peeling walls, dripping into urns and down metal statues, pocked and plinked on the canal waters and softened the light to a pale grey.  A beautifully choreographed ending to my first month of Italian school.