SERENISSIMA (The Serene One)

“Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.”

                                 Truman Capote

                                                                         

    Hands down, and don’t waste your breath with a baseless challenge (you may need it for the glass blowing) because you know it’s true.  There’s no place in the world quite like Venice – and statistics tell us you probably haven’t been there yet.  So go before she sinks, like a renaissance version of Atlantis, below the surface of the Adriatic.  She'll take any reality with her and leave us with surreal or imagined memories.

    What was she like at the beginning? Every palazzo a rich man’s dream of success realized in jewel toned colors.  Stylized architectural swirls, elegant arches holding light and shadow, mosaics and frescoes mixed with gold.  All on seemingly floating islands held together with pretty barrettes for bridges.

  Magical at every turn.

    So even though winter was upon us (hitting hard like a snowball with a rock inside!) we knew we had to return to this incredible city.   This time we took a vaporetto  out to Murano where the glass blowers, uh,...blow(?)

(about 500 years ago the powers-that-were “imprisoned” all the glass blowers out there because the secrets of these Venetian artisans were so valuable they were afraid to lose them to other countries.  Sharing -  sometimes not a good thing for the local economy.)  Anyway, we saw the artisans at work and before we knew he'd created a little gilded horse standing on his hind legs

(but how did he DO that???)

    Of course we hit the show rooms with our mouths open and are eyes opened wider.

  Not a Made In China moment to be had, thank you very much.

    Later in the day we walked through St. Mark's square (Piazza San Marco for you purists out there) without the aid of the catwalks.  Lucky for us, acqua alta (high water) was not on that day's menu.  The winds from the south combined with a high tide cause places in Venice to flood (St. Mark's Square among others) and tourists and locals alike keep their feet, ankles and calves dry by using temporary elevated walkways, demonstrated here by Jim.

  What a person will do to experience the Pearl of the Adriatic!  We avoided the famous pigeons, still  fluttering everywhere, marveled at all the street lamps, encased in pink glass,

discovered an oddity or two we hadn't seen before

and told ourselves again and again how lucky we were to be back in Venice.  

* * *  more, so please read on * * *

“White swan of cities slumbering in thy nest...white phantom city, whose untrodden streets are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting shadows of the palaces and strips of sky.”
                     
                             Henry W. Longfellow

THE COURTESAN IS LAUGHING

By Susan Connell

Venice.

Incandescent.

Mysterious.

 Beguiling in the pearly light of a soft winter sky.

    Dreamlike, I glide,
    on a swan of ebony,
    past the pink palazzo.

    There.  A glint of frescoed gold.
    The historied patina remains
    Just so against the pomegranates’ glow.

    She beckons with a silent whisper where
    once she welcomed kings.

    Yes.  Tell your stories before time curves away.

    I wait.

    Water laps on mossy steps;
    near striped poles
            sinking deep, deep
            beneath the dark serpentine boulevard
    where secrets keep.

    I listen.

    The bells begin to ring.
    Ribbons on a Carneval masque,
    stir...
    lift...

      dance in echoed music,

      like lovers entwined.

    The courtesan is laughing.

    She lifts a gold rimmed goblet.

    The courtesan is laughing;

    Drama like a drum beat now.
    She lifts her velvet skirts and
    Her lover takes his due.

    The courtesan is laughing.

    Red ribbons, red wine, red blood.
    The Serene One sighs as I glide by.

Piacere,
Susan, who loves a good mystery