A note from Venice

I keep hearing the words: a note from Venice. Venice has sent no note. Though I was there last month, hardly anything was written. So what is this phrase? I don’t know, but here are some of the images that float back. And a few words.

I walked in Venice like I was beautiful, not because I was beautiful, but because I was part of the larger beauty. I walked in my red shoes over cobblestones and swished my long black coat.

My friend Tracy who met me there, recently wrote the book The Glassmaker set over 500 years on Murano. She took me to Murano to show me some of the places where things happen in the novel. The book introduces us to a character, a glass artist named Maria Barovier. She is based on the real live Marietta Barovier who inherited her family’s business in the 1490’s. The Barovier shop is still there. And there’s a street named after her. Tracy took me to the place where the love story comes apart (but never comes apart) on the water. I felt like I was with someone who had lived on Murano for 500 years but never aged.

I myself stayed in Palazzo Tiepoletto, a 15th century palazzo. My rooms were on the ground floor. I was practically in the Grand Canal. Every morning I watched the gondoliers sponge out their boats from the water that had sloshed in during the night. Then they’d clip the gold ornaments back on the sides, dressing the gondolas for the day.

Think of it. This city has one main drag! And the boats don’t seem to drive on one side of the water. I don’t know how they avoid crashes. At night it is dark and shimmering.

I stare out the window all day until the city yells, come out!

View from Palazzo Tiepoletto. The little house across is the traghetto stop, the gondola that ferries you from there to here.

I visited with my friend Gualti whose shop in Dosoduro is a small white sanctuary. The brilliantly coloured wraps and jewels he creates make you elegant, no matter how you feel. It is he who said to me years ago, “the beauty is free.” We walked over to say hello to Gigi Bon in her Mirabilia where she sculpts, paints and collects extraordinary objects as art and for art. She is of the old Venetian Bon family who were said to have stolen the body of Saint Mark. Friends if you go to Venice, these are among the special places and people…

I said yes to everything I could. Yes please to the hot chocolate at the back of Caffè Florian. Yes please to the sgrioppino with my gracious host Alex. The sgrioppino is a Venetian dessert that tastes like a lemon vodka smoothie. Yes I had two. Yes to Santa Maria della Salute with it’s freshly cleaned exterior, so white. And its cupola. Yes to prescribing poetry also in Caffe Florian with the support of a friendly dog. Yes to the Rialto steps in the dark rain, to the piazza San Polo, the view of the canal from the top of Palazzo Tiepoletto, and from my window at night. Yes to dropping my phone on the floor of the vaparetto and breaking it’s protective screen. Yes I did that. At least I didn’t drop it in the canal. YYes to the water. Yes. And in this sense yes means thank you.

Amid the beauty I cannot not see the wan faces of some shopkeepers, the determination of the old Venetians who stare out at the crowds in unending shock. The theme park its becoming. The grief of the city is built into it. In 1960, Jan Morris wrote the book Venice and titled a chapter “Melancholy.” If you are allergic to mold it is not a place to go. If you have a hard time walking it will be hard. The bridges and the stairs will knock you out. If your plumbing breaks down, you will suffer a long wait until someone comes from the mainland.

Weird as it sounds I feel like we’re in relation, Venice and I. Is it arrogant to think the city is talking to me? Or somehow receiving some kindred presence, winking me in?

I walk around Toronto missing the beauty of the buildings people took such care to build where beauty mattered.

It is easier to see beauty anywhere when you’re on holiday for sure. But I am still wearing the same red shoes that walked on the cobblestones and looking out at the Toronto sky with the same eyes. I shifted my couch 6 inches north just to change my perspective and my place is new again. Sometimes the sun comes in over my kitchen sink. The beauty is free.

Kitchen sink and sun