I am speeding toward Venice in an air-conditioned, first-class compartment with doilies on the head rests and wood panels (shades of old movies!) full of Italian business men in handsome suits on their cellular phones.
2:45 p.m.
The Longest Day. Now some cryptic announcement (of course, most announcements in Italian are cryptic to me) that something is happening 15 kilometers and for our convenience present something at the station. I hope this message is not something important that I need to know. Taking my cue from the businessmen, who merely opened one eye to listen, nodded, and closed their eyes again, I think it is just an announcement of a slight delay due to something on the tracks. We stopped completely for a few minutes, but now we have resumed moving. But not rapido. I will return to my Italian fashion magazine.
5:30 p.m.
VENICE!
But what a huge hassle. There are one million rude, stupid, ugly American tourists pushing onto the vaporettos, breaking in line. They wouldn't try that at Six Flags Over Texas -- why in hell do they do it here? Once I got off the vaporetto at San Marco I followed the map in my hotel's brochure and got here easily. I cannot even tell you anything about Venice yet, except it sits on murky, dank water and you get everywhere by boat. I was so hot and sweaty when I finally got to my room that I took off my shirt and bra and unpacked in jeans, topless. Now I am lying naked on clean white sheets, writing in my journal, enjoying being totally alone and naked in Venice. I took my large white American wash cloth and gave myself a whore's bath. Sounds of an accordion playing one of the same melancholy melodies I play on my own accordion at home waft up to me. I have a blood orange I will eat when I finish writing this. I am a naked Odalisque, red-haired, eating a blood orange in Venezia this afternoon. I smell shit and decay down below in the grey water.
10:45 p.m.
Maybe I'm just exhausted now. Venice is very beautiful in the same way as Galveston -- lovely and sad like a beautiful woman who knows she's past her prime. Venice is the Vivien Leigh of Italy, Vivien Leigh as Blanche Dubois. It's a city that exists for tourism even more visibly than Florence. It's rather disgusting in a way, like the French Quarter is in New Orleans.
I will admit I am actually quite ignorant of exactly what it is I am supposed to see here except for the facades of the palazzos on the Grand Canal. I just want to wander for the first time in my life in a great city, totally alone.
I had only one great adventure tonight. Taking my cue from Katharine Hepburn in David Lean's film Summertime, I got all cleaned up and went down to the Piazza San Marco at sunset, to see the glittering mosaics flash gold in the setting sun. I set out to find the exact outdoor café where Katharine Hepburn's character had her drink, but there were three to choose from. It looked likely Caffé Florian was the right one, plus a quartet of musicians (bass, piano, violin and accordion) had begun to play there. So I got myself a table and ordered a Campari. The music was very beautiful, and well-played. I saw the very soulful accordion player, with a lazy eye wandering off in the opposite direction of its mate, had noticed me. He hammed it up, playing directly to me. At the first break he sign-language gestured to me to come up to the quartet's platform. They spoke a little English and were very sweet to me. The accordion player told me the pianist was in love with me and asked what I wanted to hear them play after their break, so I said the Moonlight Sonata. The pianist asked if I had a husband. I said, lying, "Yes. He is back at the hotel." The pianist asked, "Does he have a knife?" And I said, "No." Then he said, laughingly, "Well, I do!"
When they resumed, the musicians played a heart-breaking rendition of Moonlight, with the accordion dripping in on top. Then I left lira on the table to pay for my drink and headed back to my hotel in the dark, and, as I did, I heard the melancholy first bars of "Memory" from Cats following me. I love the outrageous theatricality of Italian men. These silly, flirtatious tributes become more important when one is a woman of a certain age.
+ + + + + + +
1:16 a.m.
My darling Mark, tonight, just now, I tried to get an outside line to telephone you but the hotel switchboard closed at midnight. I miss you most of all tonight, most of any time since my departure. Venice is the city of honeymooners and of lovers. I see them make their deep, probing soul kisses against the pillars of the Piazza, lovers of ever possible nationality. I rode the vaporetto tonight all the way around the Grand Canal as the lights came on in the upper stories of the palazzos all over Venice. This is the best, probably, that life has to offer us on this planet: sunset on Venice, as the dying rays of the sun glitter on the gold mosaics of the grand mansions and the cathedral. I cannot imagine anything more sublime. I see now why the writer (who?) said, "See Venice and die."
Venice is like me. It suits my personality: theatrical, does not suffer fools gladly, vain, hiding a black soul under a decorated exterior. Here the smell of raw sewage competes with the perfumes of designer boutiques.
You know how much I love to drive in a car at dusk back home and see inside people's houses as they turn on their lights. That's what I did tonight in Venice on the vaporetto on the Grand Canal. Cinematically, I saw families sit down to dinner three stories up under their Murano glass chandeliers colored like hard candies. I saw old women in aprons smoking cigarettes on balconies. I saw matrons come out, wiping their foreheads, from hot kitchens to get some fresh air.
I stopped tonight on the way home to the hotel for a final coffee at a tiny bar near the piazza run by a guy named Piero who lived in New York for a year and speaks great English. We had a great, rambling conversation, and then a young guy who works there offered me some of a birthday torte they were sharing, insisting that I drink spumante with them, since, evidently, in Italy it's de rigeur after cake. I stayed there a good long time talking with those two guys and an older man who is a vendor of verdura at the outdoor market. When I tried to say goodnight, they begged me to stay a while longer. A drunk English woman who lives on Lido warned me that even the guy who washes dishes at my hotel could unlock my room and be waiting inside for me. She made me paranoid and afraid that someone might follow me when I left the bar alone, even though my impression, my gut instinct was that everyone there was molto simpatico. When I did leave the bar I decided to start running to put some distance between me and anyone in the bar who might have bad ideas. The worst idea of all is running away in the black night in that labyrinth known as Venice. I soon found myself utterly and completely lost.
Venice, 1:00 a.m. "This is the end, beautiful friend..." The Doors played from somewhere above me as I ran further into the night, clutching my purse and passport, Don't Look Now, Death in Venice and every Dario Argento slasher movie ever made flashing before my eyes. Finally, breathless, I came upon an opening between buildings and two American girls from San Something, California, who bummed a cigarette from me and we chatted. I said goodbye to them and then, miraculously, turned a corner and immediately arrived at my hotel's front door. And here I am now, safe in my room. That's why I wanted to call home and hear your sweet voice.
I am losing my Eeeeeeengleesh after all these weeks not speaking it and I am starting to think and speak in a weird patois of French, Spanish and bad Italian that seems to work for me nearly everywhere I go. I am translating for people and it is working. It is really crazy. Ici en parle franglaisitaliano. I capisco. Tu me comprends? Si, si, claro, okay, bene.
This afternoon I toured the Doge's Palace and got strangely choked up at the grisaille illusionistic panels in the ceilings. Also double portraits with ribbons, strangely abstract and modern, like Mexican art. The white ribbons have writing on them, like wisps of smoke, like the jet-trail of sky-writing. I wanted to visit the cathedral but arrived fifteen minutes too late; I'll try again tomorrow. I am strangely uninterested in trying to beg or charm my way into the Biennale, or even to go to the Guggenheim. I am just too visually over-loaded. My optic nerves are throbbing. I have a visual headache. I couldn't care less about modern art here.
I saw the dark, dank prison cells under the Doge's Palace and the little hairs stood up on my arms. I smelled something I remember. I had past-life memories there. It gave me the willies.
I am very, very tired and will close, so sad that I cannot talk to you, but afraid to leave the hotel alone in the middle of the night to try to find a pay phone. I miss you so much, long to have you run your palms down my long back, and I am even too tired to touch myself tonight and think of you. In my dreams, domani, and my memories, ieri, I taste your mouth. Do you remember me? In Italy, they say my eyes are my best feature. Do you remember them? Can you still hear my voice inside your head? I will be with you again in two weeks, my darling husband, but tonight I say buona notte. Yesterday pigeons fighting in my window ledge woke me. Tonight I close the shutters. I am yours, my love, in Venice.
Before I leave here I will set fire to my photograph and drop it into the Grand Canal as a magic charm to insure I can return here one day. Or, if not, to insure that I will forever be a part of Venice from now on.
Venice is like me. It suits my personality: theatrical, does not suffer fools gladly, vain, hiding a black soul under a decorated exterior. Here the smell of raw sewage competes with the perfumes of designer boutiques.
You know how much I love to drive in a car at dusk back home and see inside people's houses as they turn on their lights. That's what I did tonight in Venice on the vaporetto on the Grand Canal. Cinematically, I saw families sit down to dinner three stories up under their Murano glass chandeliers colored like hard candies. I saw old women in aprons smoking cigarettes on balconies. I saw matrons come out, wiping their foreheads, from hot kitchens to get some fresh air.
I stopped tonight on the way home to the hotel for a final coffee at a tiny bar near the piazza run by a guy named Piero who lived in New York for a year and speaks great English. We had a great, rambling conversation, and then a young guy who works there offered me some of a birthday torte they were sharing, insisting that I drink spumante with them, since, evidently, in Italy it's de rigeur after cake. I stayed there a good long time talking with those two guys and an older man who is a vendor of verdura at the outdoor market. When I tried to say goodnight, they begged me to stay a while longer. A drunk English woman who lives on Lido warned me that even the guy who washes dishes at my hotel could unlock my room and be waiting inside for me. She made me paranoid and afraid that someone might follow me when I left the bar alone, even though my impression, my gut instinct was that everyone there was molto simpatico. When I did leave the bar I decided to start running to put some distance between me and anyone in the bar who might have bad ideas. The worst idea of all is running away in the black night in that labyrinth known as Venice. I soon found myself utterly and completely lost.
Venice, 1:00 a.m. "This is the end, beautiful friend..." The Doors played from somewhere above me as I ran further into the night, clutching my purse and passport, Don't Look Now, Death in Venice and every Dario Argento slasher movie ever made flashing before my eyes. Finally, breathless, I came upon an opening between buildings and two American girls from San Something, California, who bummed a cigarette from me and we chatted. I said goodbye to them and then, miraculously, turned a corner and immediately arrived at my hotel's front door. And here I am now, safe in my room. That's why I wanted to call home and hear your sweet voice.
I am losing my Eeeeeeengleesh after all these weeks not speaking it and I am starting to think and speak in a weird patois of French, Spanish and bad Italian that seems to work for me nearly everywhere I go. I am translating for people and it is working. It is really crazy. Ici en parle franglaisitaliano. I capisco. Tu me comprends? Si, si, claro, okay, bene.
This afternoon I toured the Doge's Palace and got strangely choked up at the grisaille illusionistic panels in the ceilings. Also double portraits with ribbons, strangely abstract and modern, like Mexican art. The white ribbons have writing on them, like wisps of smoke, like the jet-trail of sky-writing. I wanted to visit the cathedral but arrived fifteen minutes too late; I'll try again tomorrow. I am strangely uninterested in trying to beg or charm my way into the Biennale, or even to go to the Guggenheim. I am just too visually over-loaded. My optic nerves are throbbing. I have a visual headache. I couldn't care less about modern art here.
I saw the dark, dank prison cells under the Doge's Palace and the little hairs stood up on my arms. I smelled something I remember. I had past-life memories there. It gave me the willies.
I am very, very tired and will close, so sad that I cannot talk to you, but afraid to leave the hotel alone in the middle of the night to try to find a pay phone. I miss you so much, long to have you run your palms down my long back, and I am even too tired to touch myself tonight and think of you. In my dreams, domani, and my memories, ieri, I taste your mouth. Do you remember me? In Italy, they say my eyes are my best feature. Do you remember them? Can you still hear my voice inside your head? I will be with you again in two weeks, my darling husband, but tonight I say buona notte. Yesterday pigeons fighting in my window ledge woke me. Tonight I close the shutters. I am yours, my love, in Venice.
Before I leave here I will set fire to my photograph and drop it into the Grand Canal as a magic charm to insure I can return here one day. Or, if not, to insure that I will forever be a part of Venice from now on.
