The One in Love
On a gondola floating serenely down the waterways of Venice reality loses it’s faculty. Calm stillness replaces the rumbling of engines and the pinging of Blackberry’s. Red and white candy cane poles perform the duties of traffic lights. Concrete is traded for cobblestones. The noise and bustle of our busy city seems far away. A distant memory, a dream. The specific details of what, where, when and why melt away like the sense of time and concern for consequences. All that remains is the sheer beauty of the moment and the who. You and I on an island captained by a charming man with a striped shirt and throaty heart wrenching singing voice in a place designed just for us.
The Cynic
When on the subject of Romance wet, dirty, and smelly are not the first things that come to mind. It is therefore rather curious that a place where these adjectives have pervaded every nook and cranny is a prime destination for self-proclaimed victims of cupid. A city idiotically built on water, Venice has the unique odor of something that is always damp and slightly moldy. Constantly grey skies and morose silence accompany the faint aroma of decay as the buildings begin to deteriorate, growing more and more dirty and sinking further into water that seeps up through the cobblestones. Most days platform sidewalks a foot of the ground are erected but it is still impossible to make it through the day with dry feet as decrepit front entryways flood and the delusional people that populate the city slowly go down with the sinking ship of that supposed phenomenon know as love.
The Hopeful
The timeless stone buildings garnished with shuddered windows and wrought iron balconies housing cheery red geraniums cozy up to each other like old friends whispering secrets. Angles connect to reveal waterways, roads clogged not with pollution and yelled obscenities but gondolas, seemingly all filled with couples kissing. Their drivers silently stroke the water and glide by with barely a ripple in the distorted beauty of Venice’s reflection. There is a kind of stillness, even St. Mark’s Piazza with it’s tours, it’s tea services, pigeons and string quartet seems to be at a lower volume than everywhere in Florence. Venice is peaceful and the seldom interrupted quiet allows thoughts to slide in and out like silk through fingertips. Easy come, easy go. No impression left. What a lonely place to be by oneself I think as a solitaire figure crosses a arced bridge up a ways and fumbles in his pocket for keys. What an odd place to call ones home. Another gondola of the lucky in love floats by What a beautiful place to bring the one you love. Someday. My mind stills like the water below me on the bridge after the gondola is out of sight.
My assignment for Travel Writing this week was to write about a place I had been from three differnt perspectives. Having spent a day and a night in Venice last weekend when my mother visited I decided to play on it's reputation as one of the most romantic cities in the world.
Can you tell which one is me?
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