via Garibaldi | Venice: I am not making this up

The neighborhood sound and light show

October 21, 2014 6 Comments

8:30 AM: Same old romantic haze. The sun does come out eventually, making for romantic-haze-with-sun. It would make a great Turner painting, but the clothes are still damp. — 8:30 AM: Another day of romantic haze. It would make a great Turner painting, but the unromantic clothes are still damp.

Beautiful indeed, unless you're a wet pair of jeans or a varsity hoodie or a waffle-weave cotton blanket, etc. etc. — 5:30 PM: There might have been some intervals of sun during the day, but the haze is too happy here to think of going somewhere else, like the Grand Banks.

South Asia has the monsoon season; Lapland gets the white nights; Egypt endures the periodic simoom.

Here we have two separate months of heartless humidity, almost inevitably in October and April, two otherwise lovely months which in Venice reveal their dark, unregenerate side by smothering the city in a combination of cool temperatures and sodden, sticky air. Even when the sun shines, the dampness in the atmosphere is implacable. A gauzy mist softens the city’s silhouette, which is sheer photo-fodder, but its meaning in real life is quite otherwise. I haven’t given this phenomenon a title yet because I generally call it by short, rustic, Anglo-Saxon names.

The sheets on the bed remain repugnantly damp, the towels refuse to dry, potato chips no longer crunch. I am forced to wash the clothes even though I know they will not give up their moisture without a long, long fight. Five days after hanging them on the line, I’m still touching them and trying to convince myself that they’re dry. Of course they’re not.

Gone is that heavenly summer period in which you could hang out a huge soggy beach towel at 10:00 AM and by noon it would be crackling like desiccated firewood. Not yet arrived is the long winter season in which the radiators toast the underwear and bake the bedsheets. We have to accept this interval because, frankly, the longer we can put off turning on the heat, the better for everyone; the gas bill is an instrument of torture unknown to the Inquisition (deepest respect to the victims thereof), and after the recent unpleasantness between Ukraine and Russia, we know the gas bills will be higher yet this winter.

So much for the sense of touch around here these days. Clammy.

As for sounds, some are new, and many are old but more noticeable, or maybe I’m just becoming more sensitive.

Here are some highlights from the daily soundtrack:

From around midnight to 6:00 AM, a voluptuous silence wraps the city as far as I can hear. It is plush, it is profound. It’s so beautiful that I’m almost glad to wake up just to savor it.

At about 6:00, I hear a few random swipes of the ecological worker’s broom rasp across the paving stones. It must be exhausting work, because it lasts such a short time.

At 7:30 I begin to hear small children walking along the street just outside our bedroom window — you remember that only the depth of the wall itself separates my skin from theirs — on the way to school. Little mini-voices mingle with the bigger voices of whoever is accompanying the tykes up to via Garibaldi. If the day has started right, it’s a charming sound, though sometimes the voices make it clear that everybody needs to hit “reset” on their personal control panels.

Between 7:00 and 8:00 comes the thumping, clanking sound of the empty garbage cart bouncing down the 11 steps of the bridge just outside, guided by the ecological worker who sees no reason to fight gravity because he knows he’s going to face a serious battle with it on the return trip, his cart loaded beyond the brim.

This is the visual equivalent of the music of the carillon.

At 8:00 sharp we get the morning hymn played five times from the carillon in the campanile of San Pietro, just over the way. The piece is performed in several keys — mainly the key of flat — and the melody has worn itself into my mind so deeply that if the bells were ever tuned I think it would actually disturb me, like those people who lived along Third Avenue in New York who were so used to hearing the elevated train roaring past their windows that the day the train was removed, the transit company switchboard was overwhelmed with calls from panicky people crying, “What’s that noise?” It was the silence.

Around 9:00 there is a brief but savage skirmish between what sounds like three dogs. This struggle to establish supremacy will be repeated, again briefly, toward 8:00 this evening.

At 2:00 the middle school in via Garibaldi lets out, releasing flocks of young adolescents in a homeward swarm. These children do not go silently, meditating on the poetry of Giosue’ Carducci or the whims of the isosceles triangle. Engage feet, open lungs. You can hear their chaotic shouts all the way down the street. Lino says, “They’ve opened the aviary.”

At 7:30 PM the carillon rings a another out-of-tune hymn, only two times. It’s longer than the morning music, so somebody decided twice was enough.

For a while, the evening noises separate and recombine in various ways (children, dogs, etc.). But peace is not yet at hand. It’s almost 11:00.

11:00 PM is the Hour of the Rolling Suitcase. Actually, by now almost every hour, and half-hour, belongs to the rolling suitcase, whose grumbling across the battered masegni has become a sound more common than shutters scraping open or banging shut.

What is it about 11:00? Where is this person (or persons) coming from? The flight arrivals list for Marco Polo airport gives options such as London, Vienna, or Barcelona, and Treviso Airport might be sending us passengers from Brindisi or Brussels, but whatever the starting point might have been, I marvel every night to hear that some intrepid soul’s day has been spent coming to Venice, and now he or she is finally here. Every. Night. Maybe I should set up a little refreshment stand by the bridge and offer some kind of energy drink, like at a marathon.

And speaking of 11:00, some time around then I hear a vivacious small group come down the street, walking from the direction of Campo Ruga toward however many homes they belong to. You could imagine a bunch of friends meeting every once in a while, and even going home later than 11:00 (which often happens in the summer). But what kind of a group always breaks up at 11:00? In high spirits? Coming from the direction of Campo Ruga? A mah-jongg club? Tango lessons? Choir practice? A renegade chapter of the Loyal Order of Moose? I cannot conceive of what could be going on that would require a group to attend every night, especially in this neighborhood. And yet, they pass, and happily. This, too, perplexes me. Happy every night? Where do I sign up?

There might be a Loyal Order of Shoes, but they appear to meet at the San Clemente Palace Hotel, not in our little backwater. I have nothing that would qualify me for membership, not even the feet. — There might be a Loyal Order of Shoes, but the members here are meeting at the St. Regis Venice San Clemente Palace, not in our little backwater. I have nothing that would qualify me for membership, not even the feet.

But wait. The day isn’t over yet. Now we come to midnight — or almost.

For the past week or so, just as the day has drifted toward midnight, and every normal noise has faded away, and every normal person has shut the front door behind him or her, we’ve heard a sudden heavy metallic CLONNNNNGGGG from the other side of the canal. No, we don’t ask for whom the bell is tolling, because it’s not a bell. It’s the red metal stele which indicates the direction of the Biennale ticket booths; a local consumer of controlled substances evidently cannot physically tolerate, philosophically accept, or rationally justify its verticality. It must be horizontalized, immediately. Maybe it’s some prehistoric variation of hydrophobia.

And in the morning, another person or persons stands it upright again, our own lonely little menhir unknown to archaeology.

Lino discovered the culprit one evening, and pointed him out to me the next day. But what I still don’t know is who puts the signpost upright again the next morning.

Maybe it’s Sisyphus.

This is the signpost. I realize that puddles of water must be jumped into, but I wouldn't have thought something like this required toppling. Wrong again. — This is the signpost. I realize that puddles of water must be jumped into, but I wouldn’t have thought something like this required toppling. Wrong again.

There. Somebody now feels SO much better.

Venetian Problems

Venice beach

February 24, 2014 No Comments

Standing and watching water running free was a surprising diversion, not especially distressing because it obviously wasn't threatening anybody's home or shop. But I admit I felt sorry for whoever's plumbing was supplied by the rogue pipe. No brushing teeth or flushing till this gets straightened out. — Standing and watching water running free was something out of the ordinary, mainly because it wasn’t acqua alta. Also, this water wasn’t coming up through the drainpipe, therefore it could easily flow away. But I admit I felt sorry for whoever’s plumbing was supplied by the rogue pipe. No brushing teeth or flushing till this gets straightened out. And eventually all these gallons will probably appear on lots of people’s water bills. If one such resident was away during this event, I can imagine him/her opening the bill and asking, “Honey, did we float a battleship last month? Did we buy a rice plantation?”

No, we don’t have bikini-clad babes rocking in-line skates zooming up and down via Garibaldi — yet — but one evening a while back we definitely had the beach.

Strolling up the street, we noticed an animated group forming. It was composed of people of various sizes and they were looking at something, and talking to each other about it, and looking some more.

A pool of water was forming at the juncture between two stretches of pavement, stretches which were not on the same plane, hence the pool. And we could see water flowing toward the pool from an undiscernible source.

That’s a fancy way of saying: What? Where?

The “what” is a trick question — it was obviously a burst water pipe. But the “where” was beginning to concern everybody.

And there was also the “who,” as in: Who’s going to come find the lair of this rampaging beast and vanquish it?

There wasn’t any “why?,” though. Considering that most of Venice is held together with flour paste and baling wire, bits of the city breaking, separating, subsiding, or otherwise deteriorating does not, in itself, inspire surprise. So the fact that a pipe had burst appeared to arouse reactions no more urgent than “Gosh, wouldja look at that,” or “It could have been worse.” Why does that thought never comfort me?

So: A city falling to bits and water passing through pipes. So far, so not-worthy-of-wonder. Water would be the easiest thing to imagine issuing from a water pipe.

The man in the fluorescent chartreuse jacket has brought his equipment and is heading upstream to find the source of this little rill. And beach.

What surprised me was the sand. Unlike the Lido, most of Venice isn’t built on sand dunes. It’s built on mud, clay, or other forms of soil not containing a high percentage of silica.

But the silica is here now, because — as a fireman friend explained it to me — as pipes were laid over time, snaking around under those tough trachyte paving stones, the workers noted that the softer the soil, the easier it was to open up the street and work on the pipes, as needed. So over time the soil they replaced when the work was finished was more friable, more granular, just generally softer.

This is the main reason why the paving stones are now so apt to subside, especially near the fondamentas where the pounding of the waves caused by thousands of motorboats a day (not made up) pulls this now more fragile material out from under the stones and out to sea.

Help came in a relatively short time, the break was located, the water ceased to flow, the sand no longer swam out from the underworld into the light — artificial,true, but light just the same. Next day, the traces were hardly noticeable.

But now I know there’s all that sand just under the stones, more than I had suspected. This doesn’t bode well for anybody, except for babes in bikinis. And the maintenance men, naturally, for whose sakes Venice is now even more fragile than before.

I thought the sand was strangely beautiful, once I got over my surprise. They look like rare fossils from an unidentified lost epoch in the world’s history.

Venetian Curiosities

Could you make change for me?

August 31, 2013 2 Comments

Despite the fact that he represents a doge (see ducal "corno"), this lion looks just like lots of Venetians when told they're going to have to change something. Even if it's something dangerous and futile, it's change. We don't want that! — Despite the fact that he represents a doge (notice the ducal “corno”), this lion looks surprisingly like lots of Venetians when told they’re going to have to change something. Baffled. Apprehensive. Disbelieving. If it’s change, make somebody else do it!

My recent silence would typically have been due to the winding down of the summer, the winding down of me, an annual process which usually is distinguished by….nothing. Sloth, heat, tedium, what the doctors might call general malaise. (The tedium, unhappily, is also caused by the endless, predictable procession of homicides, femicides, drownings, drug overdoses, fatal mountain accidents, political did-so-did-not, and miles of traffic backups on the major days of departing and returning from vacation.) It’s practically a tradition.

There are usually some slight variations. Today we read “After he slit his friend’s throat, he went out to drink a beer.” That’s a little different. Or the young man who was accosted by a prostitute on the street in a town out on the mainland who got fined 450 euros for the verbal exchange even though he turned her down. The law says clients are criminals too, and it appears that even telling her no counts as much as hiring her for the weekend. But on the whole, a typical 30 summer days, not so unlike what people experience in many other parts of the world.

By now, though, we all know that August, which is supposed to be the Nothing Month, was very much a Something Month, for the gondoliers, ACTV, and city as a whole. Which also explains my recent silence because (A) I was trying to keep up with the constantly evolving situation and (B) doing so made my brain seize up, therefore (C) we went to the mountains for a few days where my brain wasn’t needed for anything but maintaining basic life functions.

Returning to Venice, we immediately fell into the groove, right where we had left it. There is a traditional sequence of events in this sliver of time, which involves lots of people moving ceaselessly around the city, especially in our neighborhood, not to mention the Lido.

Plenty of visitors are still going to see exhibitions of the Biennale; every evening, when the doors close at 6:00, we sit at our favorite cafe and watch the migration moving sluggishly from the distant Arsenal outposts toward and along via Garibaldi, in search of food, drink, and a place to sit. I’ve seen a lot of really nice dresses this year, if anybody wants to know.

The Venice Film Festival opened three days ago, so although actors and fans aren’t to be seen in our little cranny of the city, there are plenty of badge-and-totebag-and-camera-bearing journalists around (a reported 3,000 have come to cover the festival. How could there be that many outlets in the world that want hourly bulletins about movies and their makers?).

Here's a Film Festival tradition I really like: the megayachts. They're not for going anywhere, they're merely for parties. — Here’s a Film Festival tradition I really like: the megayachts. They’re not for going anywhere, they’re merely for parties. But if you’re looking for a film contract, these boats will take you somewhere, if you’re lucky.

In fact, a number of traditions here are pleasant, even reassuring. I enjoy the eternal cycle of seasonal food; right now the grapes and the warty, gnarly pumpkins (suca baruca, “the veal of Chioggia”) are appearing in the market. And I feel the onset of the Regata Storica, to be fought out tomorrow, and there are the signs in the shop windows selling new backpacks and school supplies. That’s the happy side of tradition.

Then there is the also-traditional way in which events have been unfurling since the death in the Grand Canal. Everything that has happened since two weeks ago today has been as predictable as dusty bookshelves, but they are not positive developments. In fact, they’re not really developments at all.

In the days following the accident, there was a mighty outcry from all sides demanding change. That was predictable.

What is also predictable is that change is now being resisted with every weapon that comes to hand. Life here obeys Newton’s Third Law, the one about equal-and-opposite-reactions. Newton’s Laws are among the few edicts nobody objects to, mainly because Newton isn’t around to argue with.

When I say “laws,” I am referring specifically to the recent regulations that have been proposed to establish order on the traffic in the Grand Canal. Because even if you say you need them and want them, when you get them, you have to fight back.

The mayor and assorted sub-mayors and people who wear uniforms worked mightily and also rapidly to devise a new way of organizing the assorted boatly categories. In record time, a 26-point plan was presented, and published in the Gazzettino.

This plan contained a number of dramatic innovations, such as collecting garbage at night, and requiring the barges to have finished their chores by 10:00 AM.

But this is the point at which the true, fundamental, guiding-more-surely-than-a-compass tradition took over.

The tradition is: I’m not changing anything. Somebody else can change if they’re that dumb, but not me.

I knew the minute I read it that night work wasn’t going to fly. If people hate working by day, which it seems many do, they would hate even more doing it by night. Then the barge drivers said that working those hours would make everything more expensive. And so on.

So the very people who clamored for change in the heat of the moment have shown that they don’t want it. They want somebody else to want it. This is tradition!

People hardly had time to finish reading the list of 26 proposed changes to the traffic on the Grand Canal before the protests began. The Nuova Venezia says: “Limits in the Grand Canal, it’s a revolt,” and the Gazzettino says: “Revolution in the Grand Canal: Immediately there’s a storm about stopping the #2 line and garbage collection at night.” I could have read these with my eyes shut.

I can tell you how things are going to go in the next few months, or perhaps merely weeks: Some tiny tweaks will be made, and everything will return to the way it was. The #2 vaporetto is scheduled to go out of service on November 3, because it’s a high-season traffic-overflow adjunct. The proposal to cut it earlier makes moderate sense, but it’s really window-dressing, because then there would have to be more #1 vaporettos to handle the traffic.

The “Vaporetto dell’Arte,” an enormous, lumbering, amazingly underused and overpriced vehicle, will also stop on November 3. They could stop it now and nobody would notice, but it must be somebody’s pet project because it keeps on going. Empty and big and expensive and pointless. (The “pointless” part is a special ACTV sub-tradition.)

As for what everybody else thinks about revising the way things are done, Grug from “The Croods” put it best: “Change is always bad.” As his son replied: “I get it, Dad! I will never do anything new or different!” Just a cartoon? Maybe not.

By the staircase in the Palazzo Grassi, the original owner, Angelo Grassi, had the following phrase incised in 1749: CONCORDIA RES PARVAE CRESCUNT, DISCORDIA ETIAM MAXIMAE DILABUNTUR.” With harmony the small things grow, but with discord even the greatest things are brought to ruin.

One thing you can really count on is the instigation of new rules (otherwise known as "change") on the vaporettos. The ACTV must have a team of people dedicated only to devising new and preposterous regulations which are almost impossible to enforce. But they take them so seriously, I don't want to hurt their feelings by laughing. I might scoff, but I would never laugh. — Here’s a tradition that never fails: the invention of new rules (otherwise known as “change”) on the vaporettos. The ACTV must have a team of people dedicated only to devising new and preposterous regulations which are almost impossible to enforce. But they take them so seriously! Here’s the latest, in the so-called effort to eliminate freeloaders who don’t pay for their ticket. This says “People found without a validated ticket on the floating pontoons will receive a fine.” How will these deadbeats be found? By whom? The ACTV doesn’t have enough ticket-checkers on the boats themselves — they can spare them to roam around the city looking for unticketed people just standing on the dock? Most of the world is satisfied to have people buy a ticket to take the bus. Here, they have to buy a ticket just to wait for it. You’re stuck in the rain waiting for your friend? You have to buy a ticket. You want to help your grandmother get her shopping trolley onto the boat? You have to buy a ticket. Hard as I try to grasp this concept, it just slips away.

Events

Talking Biennale

May 31, 2013 11 Comments

I had intended my recent discourse on art and life as represented by the Biennale to be my only comment. There are so many other outlandish things which deserve to be brought forward for class discussion.

But a wander down via Garibaldi showed that there is an innocent, unoffending part of the neighborhood which has been artified by means of the incantatory power of the by-now impenetrable language of art. A newcomer identified as “Scatiggio” has chosen to chance his arm by decorating some store windows with brief descriptions of their merchants as artists and/or the merchandise as art.

This doesn’t mean that the thing described is art, but that it is intended to be regarded as art due to its (hopefully) convincing description. There is a case to be made that naming something gives it reality, but this isn’t the time or place to make it.

As a lover of language, and a huge fan of intelligent and original thought, all this seriously slowed me down on my way home from the post office.

I present for your consideration a few examples of this, um, art. And by the way, do not suppose that my disparagement of these shenanigans is due to ignorance. It seems to be a human tendency to ascribe power to inanimate objects — a case could be made for comparing tree-worship to calling pet-store wares “art.” Smart people for centuries believed that the drug-induced ravings of probably vitamin-deficient women, or the incoherent monologues of the mentally ill, were the utterances of gods. Otherwise well-balanced people have always been easy to seduce by the extraordinary assertions of snake-oil or diet-pill salesmen, and to believe all sorts of hoaxes ranging from the Fiji mermaid to dihydrogen monoxide.

People are susceptible in part because they believe that words mean something. Peasants! In the case of Scatiggio we have someone for whom English is not his first language using language to convince us that everyday commodities are art. This is by now a given in the world of art — nothing new here. But if, as the window of the tobacco-shop states, there might not be any boundaries dividing art and reality, it’s even clearer that the boundaries that keep language and thought in their proper relationship have become unreliable. Wow. Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse.

The window of the pet-food-and-accessories store. Its contents are the "media" -- and while I can believe that guts and blood are somewhere to be found inside, probably in cans of can or dog food, it's a little startling to see them on the list. It sounds like a description of a neolithic kitchen midden. — The window of the pet-food-and-accessories store. Its contents are the “media” — and while I can believe that guts and blood are somewhere to be found inside, probably in cans of can or dog food, it’s a little startling to see them on the list. It sounds like a description of a neolithic kitchen midden. Your mind will have to be in at least state-championship form to grasp that the products on sale (squeak toys, poop bags) symbolize love. I haven’t been able to find “Scatiggio”” on the official list of participating artists, though there is a family doctor in Venice named Marco Scatiggio. Maybe this is his big break.

This man sells pasta and cheese and other comestibles. If he starts believing he's selling art, none of us will be able to afford a handful of olives or a bag of sugar. — Mr. Bianchi sells pasta and cheese and other comestibles. If he starts believing he’s selling art, none of us will be able to afford a handful of olives or a bag of sugar or any other emotive symbol he feels like sculpting.

Emanuela, who recently expanded her shop, sells gewgaws of a better-than-average quality. Seashells rimmed with silver, ceramic geese, and so on. These may or may not be deep water, Watson, but the artist is sure that her wares takes us into unchartered (sic) territory. — Emanuela, who recently expanded her shop, sells gewgaws of a better-than-average quality. Seashells rimmed with silver, ceramic geese, and so on. These may or may not be deep waters, Watson, but the artist is sure that her wares take us into unchartered (sic) territory. I know her in a casual way, and am not convinced that she has ever detected deeper profundity either in herself or her monthly gross income. But what do I know.

Interesting question. This shop sells toys, cigarettes, candy, and lottery tickets. Which leads me to conclude that there is no border between art and this shop, just like there's no border between Italy and Slovenia now that they're all part of the EU. — Interesting question. This shop sells toys, cigarettes, candy, and lottery tickets. Which leads me to conclude that there is no border between art and this shop, just like there’s no border between Italy and Slovenia now that they’re all part of the EU.

This is the shoe store. I don't know if Agnese (presumably a woman) minds being called "him," but connecting human thought to a selection of flipflops was so hard it blew a letter out of the word. — This is the shoe store. I don’t know if Agnese (presumably a woman) minds being called “his,” but linking understanding of the human psyche to a selection of flipflops is the first statement that makes sense.

I wrote for an excellent editor who was implacable in his determination that "this" should be clearly tied to something specific. Here, I'd have to ignore "concept" (which is easy enough to understand) but can't see what "this" is. The window? The candy? The discounts? The writing itself? It's true that a good question raises other questions, but they're supposed to be good ones too. — I wrote for an excellent editor who was implacable in his determination that “this” should clearly refer to something specific. Here, I’d have to ignore “concept” (which is easy enough to understand) but can’t see what “this” is. The window? The candy? The discounts? The writing itself? It’s true that a good question raises other questions, but they’re supposed to be good ones.

This isn’t such a hard game to play. Here are some of my own efforts, and I donate them to the stores that Scatiggio missed, or ignored. There are loads more, but while art may be long, life is short.

ALBERTO BATTISTEL, butcher. Mixed media: mammal muscle, blood, gristle, grease, waxed paper, steel

At the nexus of life and death, the implacability of knives and money slaughters the fate of generations.

MANUELA PITTERI, cafe owner. Mixed media: coffee, wheat, sugar, chocolate, milk

Essence of mountain soil, murdered beans of darkling aroma are resurrected in the elemental violence of water and fire, transformed from silent plant to music in humanity’s venous meanders.

E FIE, wine store. Mixed media: Grapes, water, plastic, glass

The vine submits to the fervor of fermentation, sacrificing sugar, soaking in its own lymph. How can joy and tears spring from the same tumultuous root, secret subjugation of sense and cogitation, and time relent only to destroy memory?

THE NEWSSTAND. Mixed media: cellulose, ink, vinyl, pigments, surfactants

Screaming paper, the multiple dimensions of life reduced to thin sheets of tree fiber, smeared with cruel dyes, and eager, jaws agape, for miniscule curiosity to enter its monstrous maw, consumed in the ephemeral tragedies of unceasing night and day.

Hey, this is fun. It’s even better than haiku — I don’t have to worry about grammar or meaning. It’s like playing Scrabble inventing words with whatever tiles you’ve got left. Maybe I’ll try it in Turkish next.

I’m going to stop now. I realize that I have left untilled great greenswards of fertile fields of potential: The post office, the barber, the dry cleaner, the jewelry store, the pharmacy, the cell-phone-and-computer shop, the doctor’s office….

But art has to go home now, because I’ve got to clean the bathroom and finish the ironing.