Osservazioni (in Venezia)

My feet are inches from the water of a murky green Venetian canal. If I were taller the sole of my boots would touch the surface and I would seemingly be walking on water. I hear children talking, people walking, and the deep voice of a gondolier calling to his colleague as the pointed bow of his boat creeps around the corner. His colleague replied with a similar deep-throated response and soon the two gondolas are side by side on the narrow canal a foot from my dangling legs. Their passengers are laughing, they are navigating, and I am writing. They pass.
Another gondola turns the corner. And another. Another child laughs, another family walks through the piazza behind me.

A child is intrigued by me sitting by myself in the corner of a piazza with my feet inches from the green murky water of a Venetian canal. She walks up to me and tries to read what I am writing over my shoulder, taking it upon herself to keep a young stranger company. I say ‘Ciao’ she says ‘I only speak French’ (in French) so I say ‘Bonjour’ and she scurries off to her father.

Traffic, in Venice, means three or more gondolas on the same canal. It means navigating past each other as two of the slender boats pass under a bridge at once. It is the serene steering around others, the graceful compromise and negotiation of vessels. Traffic in Venice is like life.

I am cold and slightly hungry but I would rather stay here than walk the short distance back to my house. How can I sit inside on a sunny day in Venice? How can I waste my already limited time here? I am trying to be happy and think positively and appreciate how fortunate I am to be here.

Three young boys, my age or slightly younger, steer a small red motorboat passed me. There is a gondola in front of them and a gondola behind them. They are trying to decide if they should turn right or turn left. “A destra o sinistra?” They go straight ahead.

As I sit here I think. I think about friends I have and friends I have lost, about people I know and people I knew. I think about people I miss, about relationships that I have had and relationships that I could have had. I think about how my right hand is much colder than my left.

Another gondola sails past me.

Mostly I am thinking about how curious it is that people can make you both blissfully happy and heart wrenchingly sad, often times the same person causing both. I think about how relationships- with friends, with family, with the opposite sex- have such an impact on one’s mood, one’s outlook and one’s life. I think about how sadness is a familiar feeling.

Four gondolas go past in succession.

And finally, I think about how people, good or bad nice or otherwise cannot rival the beauty of Venice.