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!

GRAZIE. GRAZIE. GRAZIE MILLE.

I HAVE A NEW MANTRA.  IT IS GRAZIE. GRAZIE. GRAZIE.

I had a wonderful, happy time in Perth with family and friends.  My daughter and I had warm emotional reunions, and we chose her wedding gown together.  I baked, cooked and pottered, then all too soon, the final dinner was done, the bags were packed, my new party frocks folded and I was on my way to Venice.  

Gone were the backpack and baggy travelling pants of previous journeys.  Landing in Italy need a different dress code than Nepal. I dressed in my lime cashmere and pearls.  I wore black ballet slippers and spritzed with my Coco Chanel parfum.  Naturally, I was upgraded to Business Class on Emirates. Grazie!   I sat up there in the perfumed air, on an airborne throne, as I winged my way to Mad Adventure Part two.  I sipped my icy Verve Cliquot, and toasted my good fortune.  I couldn't wipe the grin off my face. Grazie.   I dined on lightly grilled salmon with mustard mashed potatoes, Arabian Mezze, Belgian chocolates and ground coffee.  I slept like a baby.  Grazie. Grazie. Grazie tutto.

My luggage on trolley

And then, Venice, and Piazza S. Marco and its steeple below. And the green dome of Santa Maria della Salute. And so much shimmering water and ancient buildings.  I was trembling with joy and excitement when I arrived in this excrucuiatingly beautiful city that was going to be my new home for a while.  A small, typically Italian, glitch is that the excess baggage, containing my beads, which should have arrived ieri (yesterday) will arrive domani - tomorrow - which means I have to return to Marco Polo aeroporto to collect them.

Speechless in Venice

But when returning to the airport means a 40 minute speedboat ride across the sea and into the canals, where 17th century Doge palaces dip their dowager toes in the water, past the old 18th Century glass furnaces, between tanned Italians out for the day on the water, who gives a toss?  I didn't even care when the woman at the information counter for lost luggage started yelling at me, because hey, look where I am, and I am giving thanks left, right, up down and all the in betweens.  I helped some Americans use the money machines.  I gave an Arab couple a euro for their luggage trolley.  I passed my trolley onto some passengers struggling with their luggage. I was a tour guide to a group of Canadians on the boat.  Pay it forward, man - how could one not, in this blessed city.

Giorgio, telling Sylvia I've arrived

Giorgio met me at San Angelo porte. Grazie - how happy I was to see his smiling face.  It's a steamy time of year: the air is languid, and smells like fish.  It's the first time in months that I have sweated. I thought I'd forgotten how.  Between us we dragged my protesting cases (pesante - heavy) with beads, a few Akubras for Giorgio at his request, and some Australiana for Sylvia - and all my WINTER clothes)  along the cobbles, to "my" apartment, where I met Elisa, the landlady, for the first time.  She was so delighted to see me, she was radiating.  She speaks less English than I speak Italian, so I know we're going to be best friends.  Apparently she works at the market on the Rialto - I am going to ask her if I can go with her, one day.   

The apartment is more lovely than I remembered.  Light fills the rooms.  The fig tree is as green, but larger. The bookshelves are lined with fragile, beautiful works of Murano glass.  The furniture is made of old walnut and carved mahogany, with huge squishy cushions to curl up on. The window ledge is wider than I remember, and looks onto a wild patch of greenery which is a luxury here. I'll be able to sit on it, catching the morning sun, blogging or having breakfast. Or just pinching myself again, that I'm here. 

I had imagined that I'd be nervous.  Intimidated by lack of language. A bit scared of being all those things that many people said I would be.  But as we swooshed down those canals, making a creamy cappucino wake behind us, and I looked up to the window boxes  cascading with petunias, and noticed the remains of peeling murals, and washing flapping between windows, and indolent gondoliers giving the five times over assessment of every woman, and blissed tourists, I felt as if I was coming home.  Elisa pointed to fridge, key, window, towels, shower.  I'm going to put my language notes up to speed along vocabulary.  I start school on Monday, by which time I hope to have my summer clothes from cargo. 

Speedboat to San Angelo porte from airport

As I unpacked, someone upstairs was practising Mozart on their violin.  There's a bag and shoe shop right across the lane, and the happy voices of tourists passing underneath my window float up to me like a different kind of music.  My hair hangs in damp tendrils.  I'm walking around barefoot, in a red silk cami, because all my summer clothes are somewhere between Rome and Venice.  

Savanna, Savanna, Savanna, I hear from my window.  Like all good Italians, I lean out to see who could possibly have the same name as me.  Sylvia is standing downstairs, her arms and shopping trolley laden with gifts. Lambrusco. Extra Virgin Olive oil. A Whole Box of l'uova. (grapes)   Three different types of pasta. Tins of piselli.  (peas).  Bread. Bottles of pomodoro sauce. A bag of zucchini.  A bag of plump, aromatic, firm tomatoes.  Apple juice. For you she says, because you must be hungry.  Sleep, she says, and we'll see you domani.  You look younger, she says.  And I say, because I am very very happy to be here.  She leaves, but from the street she shouts up - Savanna -( I look down )- You must put the Vino in the frigoriferio.   Cuerto, I shout down, si, cuerto.  Grazie mille. Grazie. Grazie, grazie, grazie.

I made myself a tuna salad with bits and pieces.  There's another knock at the door.  It's Elisa, bearing gifts.  Of a hand woven, leather handled straw basket of plums and tomatoes that she has grown herself.  A tub of mozzarella.  Pane de casa.  And a tub of basilico for my window sill, the ultimate welcome gift. The basket is beautiful; I will use it everywhere.

The internet works.  I have a tv, except it speaks only Italian, but I'll made friends with that too, shortly.

Church bells peal.  The city darkens.  The streets quieten.  I have a fridge of food, baskets of fruit, enough space to dance, create, cook.   And two more friends in my Italian world.  Five more Italian words. And I've only been here three hours.

I am completely overwhelmed by the limitless generosity of my new family.  I have a lightness of being. How lucky am I, how lucky am I. Grazie, from the bottom and breadth of my heart.  I feel truly blessed.

This is going to be a life changing experience.  I know it already.  Oh, grazie.