I regret the lapse in communication. The fundamental problem has been a dysfunctional computer which is still awaiting treatment. That’s supposed to happen tomorrow. So there will be no pictures on this post. I’m sorry.
But the morning is too beautiful to pass without recognition. I don’t mean “beautiful” as in meteorologically, though there is that, too. Light clouds, cooler air, gentler sunshine.
What’s beautiful right now is the entire atmosphere. If it were possible for a hapless seagull to pass through an airplane’s turbine and come out in one piece, that would be me. Apart from having guests coming and going, we have also been deeply involved in the Regata Storica and, yesterday, the Riveria Fiorita. (We still have to put the boat away.)
But there has been more, even if we weren’t directly involved: The Biennale of Architecture (August 29-November 25), and the Venice Film Festival (August 28-September 8) — two world-class events opening on essentially the same day — have created their own special wildness. Our neighborhood — that is, the world — is a major center of activity at least for the former event, what with exhibitions strewn all over the lot. The film festival is on the Lido, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get the collateral damage of troop-transport vaporettos and other issues resulting from attempting to fit 1X of people into 1Y of space.
To change metaphors, the sensation I had this morning, walking outside, was of having spent a month in a large pot of water which had been brought to a rolling boil, and which now had been put on the windowsill to cool down.
People have just gone away. Even the kids are nowhere to be seen, because they’re all getting ready for school to start on Wednesday (if children can ever be said to be ready). There is a pale, hushed, tranquil air enlivened only by soft voices saying indistinguishable, agreeable things. This is quite a change from the shouting and crying and assorted other high-volume communications that have been shredding the air at all hours and far into the night.
The procession of French tourists who rent the apartment up one floor across the street has ended. No more listening to their open-window 3:00 PM multi-course lunches, or dodging the dripping from their laundry stretched on the line from their wall to ours. No more (or hardly any more) heavy grumbling from the wheels of overloaded suitcases being dragged to, or from, hidden lodgings somewhere beyond us in the middle of the night (one group arrived at 1:00 AM, another headed to the airport at 3:30 AM. I know because I checked the clock). It’s not just the suitcases, it’s the discussions, though you might think they’d have settled the details before locking the door.
Now it’s just us here.
I don’t want to give the impression that I desire the silence of a Carthusian monastery to reign in Castello. I’m only saying that one savors this particular silence with particular appreciation inspired by having experienced its opposite for a just a little too long.
I’m sorry you can’t all be here to savor this delicate loveliness, disregarding the fact that having you all here would mean it wouldn’t be so delicate anymore, no offense. But in any case, nothing, as you know, lasts forever. And school, as I mentioned, will be starting in 48 hours. Tourists make noise? I challenge them to overcome the clamor of squadrons of children meeting their friends on the street at 7:30 in the morning. The winners will be decided by the Olympic taekwondo judges.
I went out this morning on a series of errands and came home more perplexed than when I left. Perplexity is likely to increase wherever humans are to be found, and outside the door there is quite a supply of them.
Example: The little boy and his father who were walking toward me not far from via Garibaldi. As they passed, I heard the boy ask, “E’ bella Parigi?” Is Paris beautiful?
Considering that Paris is the #1 tourist city destination on earth (not made up), it’s not unlikely that his father had been there. What bemused me was that a seven- or eight-year-old boy — from Castello, no less, meaning no disrespect — was at all curious about Paris — that he even knew it existed. If school were in session, I’d have supposed he needed to know for some enigmatic project. But all by himself, he wants to know if Paris is beautiful? Zounds! Where will it end? Next thing you know, he’ll be wanting to construct the Gobi Desert in a bottle, or learn to compose haiku.
Now, though, I wonder if he was talking about Paris Hilton. But no, impossible. Nobody would call her Parigi Hilton.
Still, this is nothing. Consider what happened somewhat earlier on the #5.1 vaporetto going from San Zaccaria to the Lido.
I get on. It’s crowded. So far, so normal.
Down in the hold every seat is taken, and there are plenty of people in the aisle. I edge into a small sliver of space. I turn toward the bow and idly watch the rest of the people getting on.
You should know that the four first seats on the starboard and port sides (two pairs facing each other) are officially reserved for people in the following four categories: Pregnant women, women with children, an injured person, an old person. An adhesive label on each seat demonstrates symbols for these, with the clarification in Italian and English that “old” means 70 and up.
You should also know that these seats are routinely taken by whoever wants them, of whatever nationality or condition, and that people — usually Venetian — of the four appropriate categories almost always have to ask (tell, actually) someone not old or otherwise incapacitated to get up and give them their seat. Sometimes these requests are not polite.
This morning all four seats are taken. Normal. One of them is occupied by a young man, somewhere between 20 and 25.
An old battle-axe comes down the steps and sees that all the seats are occupied. Normal. The young man does not get up. Also normal, unfortunately. It’s a rare person who gets up for the old and infirm or pregnant, unless their mother or wife commands them to do so.
The elderly man sitting on the aisle gets up and gives her his seat. Not very normal, but very nice.
Seated, the old lady fixes the young man with a stadium-floodlight glare, and a gesture of explication intended to clarify that he doesn’t belong where he’s sitting. Also normal, but usually ineffectual.
But wait! He gets up! He doesn’t debate, he doesn’t rebut, he just gets up and goes to the aisle, where he stands with his beach stuff for the rest of the trip.
This is incredible. First, because he responds, and second, because he has not vacated the seat for anyone in particular. He has merely vacated the seat because he’s supposed to. The usual response would have been along the lines of “Well you’re sitting down now, so you obviously don’t need a seat, so get off my back.”
Meanwhile, there’s an empty seat! Manna from heaven! Water from the rock! But does somebody else nab it? No! This is where the strangeness really begins. The vaporetto is full, yet not one single person makes the tiniest move toward that seat. True, it’s by the window, which means climbing over the two people facing each other on the aisle, but this is a tiny inconvenience compared to the dazzling value of finding a place to sit.
I am here to tell you that that seat remained empty for the rest of the trip. Nobody took it. When we pulled up to the Lido, it was still empty. Empty seats on vaporettos are the vacuum which nature is said to abhor — they actually cannot exist. It was as if some extraordinary force-field had surrounded it, repelling humans. There the seat was, and there it remained, a tiny island of space in the midst of a sea of people.
Back to the young man. Why did he do this? There could be only one explanation: He was some well-brought-up, easily cowed visitor from some Anglo-Saxon land, where floodlight-glares convey real meaning and inspire real reactions. I had to find out.
So I tapped him on the shoulder and asked if he spoke English. A few pleasant but broken words revealed that he didn’t, very much. Italian? Much better!
It turns out that not only was he Italian (I presume he still is), but he comes from Mestre, just over the bridge. Which makes the entire event utterly incomprehensible.
There’s more!
I was standing in the shade of the dead ticket booth by the vaporetto dock at the Giardini, waiting for Lino to get home from rowing. Two men were talking just behind me. They were electricians, or something, doing some little task for the transport company which involved rolling up bits of cable and suchlike.
One was talking to the other. He said (translation by me, obviously):
“I was in Jesolo (a nearby beach town) and I was standing in line at the checkout at the supermarket.
“There was an old lady behind me with a cart full of stuff.
“She asked me, ‘Young man, could you let me go before you? I left a pot cooking on the stove.’
“And I said, ‘Sorry, but I left my two-month-old son out in the car alone.’
“She said, ‘ARE YOU CRAZY??’
“So ‘I’m crazy leaving my kid in the car?’ I said. “You left the pot cooking on the stove.'”
I just started laughing. Because it was obvious to him (and to me) that the untended pot was a fable, something she made up so she could jump ahead. Little old people can be brilliant at inventing these fake dramas.
“If she’d said, ‘My feet are killing me,’ I’d have let her go ahead,” he told me. “But a pot on the stove? Naaah.”
Now that I come to think of it, I don’t know whether his kid in the car was a fable, too. It wouldn’t surprise me. He was pretty sharp.
All of this happened before noon today. I need to take my brain in for a 5,000-mile checkup; I think some parts are wearing out.
It’s true, I have been AWOL. AWOL is an acronym for “moving slowly and holding still in the shade while trying to breathe.”
We are now experiencing the seventh hideous heatwave of the summer. I realize we are not unique in this, but I can only speak about what I know. Today it’s hotter in Torino than it is in Palermo.
Each wave has swept over us from the Sarahan wastes of northern Africa, and the only thing interesting about them has been the series of nicknames they’ve been given. I can’t remember them all, but there was “Ulysses” (not sure why), then “Charon” (that’s cheerful), and we even saw the “Colossus of the Deserts” come and go, leaving space for some appropriately catastrophic Roman emperors: Nero and Caligula. I’m sorry the naming committee changed course before giving a moment of glory to Pertinax or Hostilian, but probably they weren’t gory enough.
This is the beach on Sant’ Erasmo. Come early, stay late, walk right in, watch out for all the underwater anchor ropes. And anchors. You can tell that the people aren’t Venetian because every boat is positioned with its motor toward the beach. Motors generally need to be in the deeper water, especially where tides rise and fall, for reasons which seem clear enough to me. But the trippers from the mainland don’t worry about little things like that.
Moving on, at the moment we’re undergoing the torments of “Lucifer” — another week of temperatures over 100 degrees F. in wide swathes of the old Belpaese. In Venice we have occasionally gotten a bonus of 100 percent humidity. Everything is soggy. This is far beyond poor but honest little afa. Life was good back when a dog-day remained modestly canine, without changing into the Beast of Gevaudan.
On the subject of names, I’m not sure how to surpass the Great Deceiver, but I think we should branch out in finding a big name for the next heatwave — something more international-like. Perhaps “Vlad the Impaler” could work. “Leopold II of Belgium.” “Genghis Khan.”
Crops are devastated by the drought (did I mention the drought?). Not only is 80 per cent of cultivation destroyed in some areas of Italy, even the mussel crop has died off in the overheated waters of their little habitat. And there is the daily disaster of fires scorching endless acres of woodland. One hundred and ten fires just today, most of them ignited intentionally. Forget trips to the Alps: they’re melting too.
All this is not an attempt to seek sympathy, though of course I wouldn’t reject it. It’s just to say I have not forgotten the daily chronicle, but the contents of my cranial cavity have been kept functioning at the most elementary level only by emergency applications of espresso and gelato.
The best thing about this picture? I was in the water when I took it. Heaven.When you get tired of splashing and yelling, you can supervise the monstrous men who are sorting the mussels they’ve flensed off some nearby pilings.These women just felt like dancing. I heard no music, but obviously they did.
Out in the lagoon, there's plenty of room to go around. On land, the situation changes.
Some time ago I embarked on a series of what were going to be five posts, each dedicated to one of the classic senses, and how I indulge them here.
I haven’t yet shared my thoughts on the remaining two (sight and touch) and I’ll be putting that off for a little while longer.
What has pushed ahead of them in line are few non-traditional senses which have inordinate importance here. If you awaken these senses, the benefits ought to be many, such as helping to increase your enjoyment of Venice and, at the same time, minimize your impressive ability to spoil it for others.
By “you” I originally meant “tourists,” and much of what I’m going to say is, in fact, aimed at people who are just passing through. But I have to say that Venetians themselves can be astonishingly oblivious to the world around them. I just want you to know that I recognize that, in case anyone is tempted to retort “Well what about them?” Fine: They’re guilty too. But this is their city, and their country, too.
So today I present the sense of space. There isn’t much of it here. The city covers only about two square miles, and I estimate that 97 percent of that area is occupied by buildings or water. So you can see how tricky it’s going to be to fit everybody, particularly 20 million tourists or so, into a town not much bigger than New York’s 41st Precinct.
And it’s not useful to imagine there’s any difference between “public” and “personal” space. All the space here is personal. I mean public.
This street, Ruga Giuffa, is actually something like a major artery. The value of not taking more than your share of space is easy to see here.
Venice has always been crowded — in fact, it was once almost three times more populous than it is now. But that didn’t particularly bother anyone, if the songs are to be believed.
There are many which praise some aspect of the city’s beauty or the beauty of life here. I’m not aware of a modern song praising Venice. (I do not regard “Ciao Venezia” as a song, even if it is transmitted by human vocal cords.) Maybe I should try to write one.
Anyway, one particular Venetian song (which naturally sounds better in Venetian) contains this refrain: “Long live this great immensity/only Venice is beautiful/only our city.”
“Great immensity”? Besides being redundant, it seems crazy. This is a city that’s all twisted up in lots of skinny little streets and random knotty open spaces swarming with people pushing children in strollers, dragging overloaded shopping trolleys, brandishing large open umbrellas, or merely groups standing stock still at the exact point where there is no room to get around them.
The “immensity” praised in the song about Venice refers, I believe, to its environment: the lagoon. Anyone who has ever gone out in a boat even a quarter mile from the city realizes that this extraordinary city is floating in the center of a vast amount of water and sky.
My experience, and — I deduce — that of countless Venetians who have come before, shows that the lagoon is not only the matrix of the city but the only known antidote to its compression.
A not unusual sight on the biggest vaporetto there is, the #1 local going down the Grand Canal. Theoretically, the correct thing would have been to have made a pile of his baggage in the outside area and stayed with it. What the picture doesn't show is that he or his things are occupying all three seats, and the aisle.
But even if your only chance to feel this spaciousness is from a vaporetto (which will be crowded….), I hope you will somehow feel the enchantment and, yes, immensity of the city’s surroundings.
In any case, you’ll have to go ashore eventually, which is where your sense of space is going to have to get to work. Because your awareness of where you are, and what you do there, is going to have a really important effect not only on how you feel about Venice, but how everybody around you — especially any Venetians, if you care — feels about it too.
I respectfully recall to your attention the fact that Venice, small as it may be, at its apex was both the home and the workplace of almost 200,000 residents, not to mention an uncounted number of visitors, here on either business or pleasure or even displeasure. Among other things, Venice was a major port for pilgrims headed from Europe to the Holy Land. They could have been here as long as a month, waiting to find a berth on a ship (no reservations, obviously). This was much longer than the average modern tourist’s visit, and there were periods in which there were 50 ships leaving in a single month, or roughly two a day. (Not made up.) Which adds up to a fairly crushing quantity of people.
Furthermore, if you think the city is crowded now, spare a thought for the old days, when everyone who had a choice lived as much of their lives outdoors as they could. Except for sleeping and eating, families (which were numerous) spent most of their day out in the courtyard or the street, or somewhere other than home, where there also was no space.
This lady decided that her carryon bag would be more comfortable on the floor in front of the central seat rather than in the aisle. You want to sit there? Good luck with that.
And then there was the cargo: Vast amounts of often really space-intensive items being offloaded and transported from A to B. Bricks. Blocks of marble. Lumber. Bales of wool. Imagine yourself walking down a street behind three people who are carrying enormous wicker backpacks loaded with coal. So it’s always been pretty cramped here.
Nevertheless, today we have all sorts of modern ideas about comfort and manners which make Venice demanding in an equally intense way.
Having said all that, I’d like to offer a few fundamental suggestions as to how to minimize the crampage. If you accept them, you have a chance at making life more pleasant for you and certainly for everyone around you. If you don’t really care — and there seems to be an abundance of visitors in this category — then you may fire when you are ready, Gridley.
Equal time here for Venetian transgressions: The woman on the right has claimed the space (single seat and open area) intended for people in wheelchairs with a friend. Since her trolley needs all that space, the tourist in the wheelchair has to sit half-out in the aisle.
There are three situations in which you have no choice but to share space outdoors: Walking, standing, and sitting.
Walking: To keep everybody, including you, moving in even some semblance of progress, try to imagine that you’re driving your car. The same general rules apply here when you’re walking.
If you’re moving slowly, keep to the side. Do not make sudden stops. Do not make sudden turns. Do not stop in the middle of the street and just stand there. Check your rear-view mirror often, because it’s very likely somebody is coming up behind you intending to pass you. In which case, move aside and let them. You’d be astonished at how many people do not do any of those things.
Forget the car metaphor and keep in mind that you are living in three dimensions. Fingers: Tempting as it may be, try to avoid suddenly pointing at something, no matter how surprising or beautiful it is; for some reason, a person pointing is often indicating something dangerously close to eye level. Elbows: If you stand somewhere with your hands on your hips, you’ve just taken space away from the persons on your elbow side for no clearly necessary reason.
If somebody wants to get past you, they will most likely start with a polite “Permesso.” (Or “con permesso.”) Venetians may say this as many as three times; if there’s no reaction, they push. The international language. If it happens to you, there was a reason.
Standing: If there appear to be too many people, you can be sure there will be far too much of their stuff. If you need to stop to check your map or hold an unscheduled meeting of the family committee, make an effort to put your boxcar-load of baggage somewhere out of the way. Slalom races are fun if you’re aiming for a medal in the World Cup, but not for somebody trying to get somewhere that’s important to him, like his accountant or home to his kid who’s running a fever.
This curious construction behind the wheelhouse is, in fact, an excellent place to stash your baggage. Just so you know.
On the vaporetto, try to organize your bags in as little space as possible. A person (for example, me) shouldn’t have to explain that you could put your smaller bag on top of your larger bag, instead of next to it. I mean, when you think about it.
If you’re carrying anything larger than an empty messenger bag, handle it with the awareness that wherever you put it, it’s taking precious square inches away from somebody else. I know it’s really hard to haul all that baggage down cramped streets and over bridges and so on. I know that there is little or no space on the vaporettos for anything larger than you, and often not even that. But the fact that many people devote more attention and concern to their steamer trunks or Himalayan-expedition backpacks than they do to their fellow passengers is something that baffles, and can often irritate, any nearby Venetians, especially if they’re trying to get past you (see: “slalom,” above).
What to do?
First: Minimize the space you occupy. For example: Do not put your suitcases/duffel bags/backpacks on the seat next to you. Seem obvious? Apparently it isn’t. “Hey! Empty space! It’s mine!” Actually, it’s not!
For a while, these signs were up on many of the vaporettos. As Einstein said, Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Judging by the public response (which was nil), this design is so simple that almost nobody understood, it.
Second: Take off your backpack. They’ve even made it a rule on the vaporettos, but the simple sense of this little act continues to elude nine and a half out of every ten people. If it’s on your back, take it off. Even a daypack is a huge nuisance to everyone around you. You may think it’s part of you, but the only person who wouldn’t annoy their fellow passengers with something protruding from his or her spine would be the hunchback of Notre Dame. If you can take it off, do so immediately and put it at your feet. Or in a corner. Or maybe don’t even bring it. How far could it be to the next oasis?
Third: Get out of the way. Every day, oblivious people stand right where everybody else needs to pass. On the street, on the vaporetto, wherever. On the vaporetto dock — particularly, for some reason, at the Accademia stop — masses of eager people who want to get on fill the entire area needed for the arriving passengers to get off. If there is an explanation for this, it will have to come from the realm of astronomy, where matter retains all sorts of contradictory characteristics. Here, though, matter occupies space.
Then there are people who find a spot that works for them and just……you know…..stand there….as if nobody else existed. They block doorways, they block aisles. It’s not as if their kid is having an asthma attack and nothing else matters. They just stand there. Even the fact that you have to contort yourself to get past them doesn’t make any impression whatever. That’s where they are, just deal with it, Maude. I have never understood what attracts people to standing in the vaporetto doorway. Go out, or stay in. Why are you trying to do both? Are you not able to decide where you want to be?
Then there are all those time when you must force your way onto a vaporetto because it’s crammed with people in the open middle space where boarding and exiting takes place, while the interior of the boat is almost empty. I realize that visitors want to be outside where they can look around and take pictures. If you’re determined to stay outside, please do everything in your power not to block the only area available for getting on and off.
I cannot grasp the idea here: We'll just sit here blocking the street right near a corner. No one else exists.
Sitting: People between the ages of 12 and 18 seem to have decided that the floor is their tribal territory. Sitting or sprawling in groups on the ground anywhere that appeals to them is not merely the best thing ever, it has become something like a right. I’ve seen teenagers literally lying on the ground where lots of people need to walk. One memorable pair of girls (American) was stretched out across the wooden dock in front of the ramp leading to the vaporetto dock. Hundreds of people needed to walk there. (See: “slalom,” above).
It all seems so obvious.
But wait! — I hear you cry — what about all those rude Venetians who do all those rude things (except for sitting on the ground), as if WE didn’t exist?
I know. I know they’re there, and I know they do those things, and they don’t have any more of a good excuse than anyone else.
I know theyalso position themselves in the exit area of the vaporetto dock so that they can get on the vaporetto first.
I know they somehow manage to slither past you to claim that minuscule empty spot in front of you. You might feel that they’re jumping a queue, but they don’t see a queue. I have finally concluded that a person who does this has decided that since you’re not occupying that space, that means you’ve relinquished it and it’s available to anybody who wants it. Now I actually do it myself because it makes sense to me — seeing how little space there is around.
So what solution is there to the problem of trying to put 100X of people and things into just 1Y of space?
Be aware. Be courteous. Create as few problems for other people and you will simultaneously be creating fewer problems for yourself.
That’s the only possible solution.
Just like on the highway.
There's not an abundance of space in the canals, either, and parking your boats like this is guaranteed to cause problems. No tourists are guilty of creating this situation, I just wanted to show another way in which ignoring other people can make life challenging. It annoys me, not because I need to pass through the eye of the needle here, but because I simply can't grasp the concept at work. .
To drive a barge here you need a Ph.D in geometry, and a tote bag full of tranquilizers. And the tide chart, too.
Or you can just go back out into the lagoon, where you can breathe.
