Living in Venice

I’d been coming to Venice for years, and it was always a place of respite for me, an oasis where I could escape the noise and confusion of New York, my home town. I’d rent an apartment and stay two, three, or four weeks at a time. Here I could shake off the jitters of a high-speed pace of life and curb the feeling that time was slipping away all too quickly.

Venice felt safe and stable, especially compared with New York, where everything is always changing, and buildings are continuously being torn down and put up. Of course things are changing in Venice too, but slowly, and not so visibly. With the lack of cars and the virtual impossibility of building any modern structures, except for the Calatrava bridge at Piazzale Roma. Venice truly is a world apart, seeming to exist in its own unique time and space.

Very little ‘business’ except the tourist trade exists here anymore. The Venetian population is steadily diminishing, and Venetian craft shops and traditional bars are being bought by foreigners. Still, except for the motor boats, television antennae, and the way tourists talk and dress these days, many things have remained more or less the same. Venice is still hanging on to some remnant of an old way of life.

Now I’ve decided to stay for an extended period of time. When I arrived last November, it was bone-cold, damp, and foggy. But the presence of waters all around me and the gray skies had a calming, protective effect. It was so very quiet, like a cocoon — quite the opposive of New York, “the city that never sleeps.”

But New York is big, you can travel vast distances and still be in ‘The City.’ Buildings are tall, but from a certain height, you can see for miles and have a sense of space. Here I can also walk and walk, but there is a sense of restriction: walls are everywhere and most apartments face one. Now the feeling of being in a protective space, the feeling I used to love when I came here for short periods of time, is often accompanied by one of being too enclosed. Even looking out to sea, I feel I’m cut off from the rest of the world.

Perhaps this constraint confers another kind of freedom though. Over the centuries, writers and artists have found inspiration in Venice; there are few distractions and the city impels a kind of interiority, making it a good environment in which to concentrate and to create. Creative people often feel that they don’t ‘fit in’ to normal society, but find a sense of belonging here. The longer I stay in Venice, the more the city seems to become a part of me, and I of it. The streets feel like they are ‘mine.’ People who love Venice become very possessive of it.

Venice can be alternately melancholy or cheerful in an otherworldly way. On its melancholy days, the peeling walls and dark waters impart a sense of foreboding and gloom. It’s on days like these that I notice the pictures of the newly departed that are pasted up on walls. And the evidence that time has worn this city down becomes more striking. So many palazzi are abandoned and decrepit, their windows dark. They seem to be in mourning for their former glory. I wish I could go back to the Renaissance for a day or two, back to when the buildings were frescoed and decorated with gold, when travelers poured in from all over Europe to hear concerts in convents and conservatories; or to the 19th century, when it was still possible to swim in the canals and go to the ‘Bagni,’ to bathe in fresh or salt water and take mud baths.

Still, the art and architecture live on. I go to Rome for a weekend, and the eternal city is wonderful. It’s open, filled with parks and big spaces. It also has glorious art and architecture. But these exist side by side with modern buildings and speeding motorists. Rome is happening, it’s young, it’s ‘now.’ When I return to Venice, it feels a bit old and shabby, small and close. Yet soon the walls and water entice me into their domain, and I again give in to their magnetism. I often think of the many public events and rituals that were once held in many parts of the city: Musical processions, marriage festivities, theatrical performances, political parades. Somehow, the walls must have absorbed these vibrations and retain them still.

From Hobby Natura.