Venetian-ness

the merry month of spring

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A friend mentioned in a friendly way that it might be nice for me to lighten up (she didn’t put it that way, but that’s what I heard) and share some glances at Venice these days. Nothing easier.

In the search for diversion you can never go wrong with laundry. Here we have black clothes and white, and their children in the middle.
That was the day reserved for all the pink clothes. Or one red item that ran.
I can’t imagine that they have anything to talk about. They might have tried, once.
Inside and outside are such bourgeois concepts. They manage to mingle rather well.
I stopped for the reflection but stayed for everything the heck else. The palm frond is typically an appurtenance of ultra-pious Catholic groups.  The nearby surveillance camera does hint at a belt-and-suspenders approach to security, though.  The clips on the wall once anchored now-removed shutters.  The significance of the flower in the pot eludes me.  I am in love with the drainpipes.
Reflections are always entertaining.
I hesitate to deconstruct this moment’s delicate equipoise. But I think this father is happiest in the service of his daughter, the empress, so at ease with power that she doesn’t need to even look at her faithful servitor. No sarcasm here, I mean it. They’re both exactly where they want to be, and how often can that ever be said.
I loathe my cellphone’s camera, for obvious reasons, but it was my only way to grab this extraordinary conjunction of hair before they all got off the vaporetto. They seemed not even to know each other, but most likely they were all going to the nearby high school.  Perhaps these tresses are required of some adolescent cult.  I’ll never know.
I was there, and yet I still can’t explain why they all had open umbrellas. Yes, it had rained, but the street reveals that the danger was long past. They Just Were.
The city can’t win. It puts out a trash bin AND an ashtray. But these passersby did not believe in using either. Their disdain almost seems to express some message.  Yes, we understand what you want, but we will defend to the death our right to not dispose of them as you require.
This tombstone carver is somebody I’d like to know. Or maybe he’s one of those people whose wit doesn’t come through except on paper. Or marble. Here he has substituted the standard “Mario Rossi” with the name of the “Universal Genius.”  The sentiment is more modern: “We will always love you, your dear ones.”  The dates are funny, though.
And here we’re laying this script and design on the shoulders of the divine Dante.  I doubt that any classical scholar ever wondered what the tombstone would have looked like as the Supreme Poet wandered the underworld.  But here at least the dates are correct.
Okay, if this were music it would be trills, arpeggios, scales, and the occasional mordent.  I have no idea what the two geniuses mentioned on the marble would think about how their names are being treated, but I’m pretty sure a bereaved spouse or parent would fall apart in the face of all these possibilities.  Butterflies for Michelangelo would be an audacious option, don’t rule it out too soon.  (If anyone is interested, “N” stands for “nato/a,” or born; “M” is for morto/a, the opposite of born.)
The view from the belltower of San Giorgio never disappoints, especially if you appreciate this vision of Giorgio himself in his “bring it” pose, waiting for his dragon. If I were a dragon I’d have been far away, reviewing my life choices.

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24 Comments

    1. As you see, I am still here and still sifting through Venetian life to find something blogworthy. I’m so glad I managed to write one that you especially liked. Hope you’re fine out where you are.

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  2. Loved your random photos. Having just ordered our tombstone this week, we realized all the different references that can be added to the headstone, including skulls, fishermen, flowers, mountains, sea shells, Santa Claus and it goes on and on…..
    I am looking forward to our visit to Venezia at the end of May before heading to Cortina, and onward north to Val Gardena and a few of Messners mountain retreats. Spectacular!!
    Ronda

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  4. As I read this tonight from my Apt. on Broadway in New York City I discover Both our weathers right now are almost similar…..cold, windy, damp. And if I was the sentimental sort I could almost feel we were close enough to chat. …..maybe about those reflections.

    How nice it would be to be by the Lagoon right now escaping this mad and maddening world…..And Venice waits there, eternally elegant and saucy. (Need a touch of Vivaldi now.) Must remind myself to go back. Thank you for your episodical commentaries.

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  5. You’re really seeing stuff, EZ! And I love the “what the hell is this?” photographs.

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  6. a bit challenging to be light in these dark times, but you managed! Thanks Erla! For sure Spring in Venice gives cause for lightness to anyone who grew up on the East Coast or Midwest of the USA where Spring = mud snow and sleet on Easter… Here in the lagoon, the daffs and hyacinth are already gone but the fruit trees, daisies, ranunculus(es?) and dandelions are rampant! And even our tamarisk are starting to bloom…

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  7. I followed the link to your splendid post of last October, in which you talked about the “gizmos” used in Veniice to keep the shutters open (the “clips on the wall” as you call them in today’s post. I am sure Lino must have told you how we call them here in Venice, but in case he didn’t let me say it here. They are called the “ometti” (little men), and the name must be widely used in the Veneto, because I’ve heard it also from people from Treviso or Conegliano. In my home, they are in use most of the time, except in days when there is no wind at all one and can be lazy and let them stay down (in order to lift from the inside you have to stretch your body and arms quite much).

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    1. Thanks for this — I didn’t know they had a name. I wish we had them, but our shutters are left to fend for themselves. When the wind blows they don’t even try to fend, they just give up and close as far as the wind pushes them.

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  8. This was a great start of my morning with a mental excursion to Venice. A prelude to the real visit in June. After several tedious meetings with people that are actually paying good money for my time and advice and then choose to point-blank refuse to take in anything I say I just can’t wait to be in Venice. The famous Swedish alpine skier Ingemar Stenmark once said “there is no use in explaining to people who just won’t understand” and that’s about the size of it. Wonderful quote in Swedish though.
    The drainpipe was definitly a curiosity of its own, like “why do something simple when it can be made wonderfully complex”, and last year’s (i suppose) palm leaf to go with it. Oh, well. As easter is soon upon us I suppose they’ll replace it after Palm Sunday.
    Cheers from Solna!

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    1. I have to defend the drainpipes as unusually efficient, well-made, and even somewhat lovely in their way. I especially like the joint that connects them. I hope you will look at them again with an open mind.

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      1. I didn’t say something was wrong with the drainpipes, did I? 🙂
        They seem charmingly quirky and just a bit overcomplicated but then, again, what do I know about drainpipes? I also guessed that the palm leave is a memento from last year’s Palm Sunday so it would be replaced annually?

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        1. I myself don’t know anything about drainpipes except the basics: You’ve got water running down and it needs to be contained in the process. It seemed to my ignorant eye that the two pipes were placed where water was destined to be coming out, and joined in order to make one exit for both of them. Excuse me if I’m insulting your intelligence, but I can’t see where any complication is involved. Still, if you see a simpler way to accomplish the same goal, I’m ready to learn something. As for Palm Sunday, I’ll be on the lookout. It would have to be a group that favors the ultra-traditional, I guess, because parishes here don’t distribute palm fronds but olive twigs and branches instead on Palm Sunday, and olives obviously existed in Biblical Jerusalem. (See: Olives, Mount of.) A Polish friend says they distribute pussywillows on that important day, but I’m guessing they don’t call it Pussywillow Sunday. I should have asked.

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  9. Erla, you’ve done it again! Thank you so much for sharing the pictorial marvels that Venice offers us.

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    1. I’m here any time, just give me ten minutes to get my shoes on and off we’ll go. I wish you’d come back more often!

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  12. From the opening oblique Gregor Mendel reference to the closing Bring it on, this post is a delight! It’s fun to slow down and look at the minutia of everyday life.

    Your photo of the blondes remind me of the most excruciating picture caption I ever encountered, for a picture of a worshiper in San Marco. National Geographic 1970: “Titian tresses laved in light cowl a worshiper in St. Mark’s, crown jewel of a sovereign city.” Even as a teenager, that caption had me gagging. Yet, it had staying power… 55 years later, I still remember it!

    Thanks again for your witty intermittent posts!

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    1. You know, that sentence is so different from the English we read every day it’s verging on Chaucerian. It may be gag-inducing but I blow a kiss to the person who wrote “laved” and to all the editors who were just fine with it. Conclusion: There once was a time (IN MY LIFETIME) when somebody rose above the mundane minimum 500 words (or whatever the number is) for basic communication and attempted telegraphic poetry. When I was writing for National Geographic a mere decade later a word like that would never have made it into print.

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  13. Ah yes, brevity v. poetry. I just finished reading a contemporary novel that is all brevity, stacatto, even successful and intelligible incomplete sentences, yet not an ill-chosen or misplaced word.

    Next I plunge into the elegant extravagance of Edith Wharton. No doubt my subsequent business emails will take on an Edwardian hue. 🙂

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  15. Thank you for a wonderful spring walk and Venetian views with a twist (or a pinch of salt, I should say?)… memories flooding back…

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  16. You make Venice come alive for me! Thank you so much — lightened up or not, you are essential reading/seeing Venice.

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