on venice
There was a song Fed used to sing, it went something like “because in Venice/ everyday life’s a work of art/ that must be seen firsthand…” It was pretty, the way the room filled with the quick pulse of a tenor voice, the way he slid up to the note on art, drew out the ahhhh and drawled the consonants into the closing. The ripples of the piano line, of the held vowels, bounced around in my ears for three full days; I only remembered the parts that sounded like gondolas cutting through tame water. The song was about a dying lover’s last wish. I do not know that my last wish would be to visit Venice, which, for a labyrinth of a city, feels much the same three days in as ten hours. But the rose of the streetlamps was a nice change, extending the faint flush of a watery sunset well past twilight. The first night, we went for a romantic ride through the much-sung-about waterways – my parents and I. I had arranged myself faux-gracefully at the nose of the gondola, wearing a dress only because I imagined it was required of me; they sat feet in front of Bruno, who was striped and scarved, stereotypical as he directed their pointing fingers into the shadows. I recalled that scene from that movie with the couple on the canal, those fables of new loves, all the mythical eyes caught across the banks. I suddenly felt very close to sea-level, almost like I had missed out on some secret height or perspective, perched there in the blue dress with my mother and father on the Venetian canals. I didn’t think not to use my camera, even as the light fell to a trickle.
