Venice, February 14, 2006
Dear all,
That was 16 days I had not seen any car, even stationary. This must be rare in the life of a man spend more than two weeks without seeing a car. I do not realize it was almost, and got used to the silence, quiet streets of Venice. Today I went back to the Piazzale Roma, the only place in Venice motorized north-east of the town, seat of the bus and train station. I had to buy my subscription vaporetto. Just arrived, I was on the verge of making me shrink by a bus, which departed in a concert of horns. Buy my subscription was a real war, I had to shout my bad Italian, behind the glass window, to make myself understood by an old witch unpleasant, in a small hall overheated crowded. I fled after 20 minutes, I ran full speed toward the quiet campo nearest, near a small quiet canal with no car, no tourist group without staff embittered.
I reconnected with reality, with life everyday, in its most ugly and trivial. So do I, despite what I saw, I say I'm not the world, but in a small island out of time and reality? What is Venice, that means this city that seems at once so majestic and so too have leached lived, saw it again? Is it still possible to love Venice?
I reconnected with reality, with life everyday, in its most ugly and trivial. So do I, despite what I saw, I say I'm not the world, but in a small island out of time and reality? What is Venice, that means this city that seems at once so majestic and so too have leached lived, saw it again? Is it still possible to love Venice?
If Venice is a myth, it is probably the most tired myth of the imagination of the traveler. Cliché. Venice stereotype ad nauseam, lagoon syrupy adored and hated. It is absolute common-place finish, sum of squares, paintings, buildings exhausted, become entirely a reflection of an expectation agreed. People come to Venice to see, touch, naming places that are part of the public imagination, and give the impression that we discover the secrets. There is never more than two days because he is to visit Rome and Florence and only five days before returning home. We read and seen death in Venice, known the escapades of Casanova in the Doge's Palace was the Four Seasons by Vivaldi in the ears. It comes in a couple because Venice is romantic, people come here to contemplate the centuries, it is, life has arrêtée.Venise is it is a real city or a museum? Is this a real city become false over time, where is the authenticity? We then seek the neglected calli, bars without luster, the cul-de-sac dark. One begins to Corto Maltese is observed when the pier seagulls dance in the sky and disappear in the alleys.
I am not a tourist in Venice, I saw, I'm working, I impregnated. I can not say a thing until now: Venice is frozen, Venice is not in the century, it is all the centuries it has been through history consumed. Venice lived, grew up, shined, declined. But I do not know if it is still question of decline now, it seems to belong more to history. Completed in every sense of the term, Venice is pointless. Nothing else makes sense. The bells ring out every hour to do more for us, the palaces have lost their function, gold and treasure have become futile.
this sounds very pretentious to label and such a city, multiple, elusive, melee, unfathomable, I just discovered, but it's the only way I found to appropriate it for réussire to live there. Venice is old, useless, Venice is charming.
Because Venice is beautiful, incredibly beautiful. We can only bow, when one sees so much beauty and majesty. A beauty that is beyond human understanding, which can not be human, a blinding light, disarmingly. Despite its age, its isolation from the rest of the world, his caricature, Venice radiates, shines, reverses the Venice cœur.Je do not admire the spirit, but with the heart, meaning the whole person. I feel ready to be happy, I tell myself that life is beautiful and good. I have only to open eyes in the morning, no need to think, I move, I'm like the bourgeois-bohemian of the 19th century, lying in his gondola, I let myself go a whole, mind and body. I get up I go, I see waving on the broad ground of the channel forms a pink or white palaces asleep in the cool and silence of dawn, I forget everything, my studies, my projects, myself; I look, I enjoy, like I am floating on top of things, freed from life, in the light and the blue. All this can not be described, there are too many forms, I can only unravel a general thought well dried, as a tourist souvenir photograph. Venice is fancy, rich and diverse, diversity and contrast, harmony.
There are places that I particularly like the Zattere, two minutes from my house. I had resulted in my first day in the city, wandering lost my house on his back, and I stayed an hour, cradled by the waves of the channel and the gentle breeze, warmed by the rays an unthinkable sun, red as embers. The Giudecca Canal, is already the sea, I wear my eyes on the sea, I do not want to see anything else the sea, I think of Canaletto, Carpaccio with, but the light is real, tones of green, blue, crystal water is moving. Behind me lie the rich palace Zattere. They leave the water, we see the flow entering through the channels, wobbling along the banks, runoff from homes, churches border. On the other hand, we see the workers and colorful facades of the Giudecca, the Mill Stucky girded with scaffolding, ready to be transformed into a Hilton.
I am not a tourist in Venice, I saw, I'm working, I impregnated. I can not say a thing until now: Venice is frozen, Venice is not in the century, it is all the centuries it has been through history consumed. Venice lived, grew up, shined, declined. But I do not know if it is still question of decline now, it seems to belong more to history. Completed in every sense of the term, Venice is pointless. Nothing else makes sense. The bells ring out every hour to do more for us, the palaces have lost their function, gold and treasure have become futile.
this sounds very pretentious to label and such a city, multiple, elusive, melee, unfathomable, I just discovered, but it's the only way I found to appropriate it for réussire to live there. Venice is old, useless, Venice is charming.
Because Venice is beautiful, incredibly beautiful. We can only bow, when one sees so much beauty and majesty. A beauty that is beyond human understanding, which can not be human, a blinding light, disarmingly. Despite its age, its isolation from the rest of the world, his caricature, Venice radiates, shines, reverses the Venice cœur.Je do not admire the spirit, but with the heart, meaning the whole person. I feel ready to be happy, I tell myself that life is beautiful and good. I have only to open eyes in the morning, no need to think, I move, I'm like the bourgeois-bohemian of the 19th century, lying in his gondola, I let myself go a whole, mind and body. I get up I go, I see waving on the broad ground of the channel forms a pink or white palaces asleep in the cool and silence of dawn, I forget everything, my studies, my projects, myself; I look, I enjoy, like I am floating on top of things, freed from life, in the light and the blue. All this can not be described, there are too many forms, I can only unravel a general thought well dried, as a tourist souvenir photograph. Venice is fancy, rich and diverse, diversity and contrast, harmony.
There are places that I particularly like the Zattere, two minutes from my house. I had resulted in my first day in the city, wandering lost my house on his back, and I stayed an hour, cradled by the waves of the channel and the gentle breeze, warmed by the rays an unthinkable sun, red as embers. The Giudecca Canal, is already the sea, I wear my eyes on the sea, I do not want to see anything else the sea, I think of Canaletto, Carpaccio with, but the light is real, tones of green, blue, crystal water is moving. Behind me lie the rich palace Zattere. They leave the water, we see the flow entering through the channels, wobbling along the banks, runoff from homes, churches border. On the other hand, we see the workers and colorful facades of the Giudecca, the Mill Stucky girded with scaffolding, ready to be transformed into a Hilton.
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J 'm going all day, I walk on the pier, I sit on a bench, no need to read the sea is an open book, is different every day, always right, always at the right time, the water passes , cries, sings, commuters boarded the vaporetto, the wind rises, the night comes. The sun sets in a dazzling show changes every day. Today the sun was indescribable, as drawn in marker fluorescent green in the sky, circle the perfect contours, unreal, it is lowered into the water behind the Giudecca, drowned in water wan, a yellowish gray-green and purple. Everything becomes worryingly, the seagulls, the sea laps infinite, indistinct, the wind cries and twists in the air that goes out. The moon appears, intermittently it runs off the flow disturbance. I get home, I hear the sea without seeing, without identifying in this vast Desert floating forms, public lights are lit, the light comes, I return to my palace of marble, my marble churches, who would the darkness of their needles and their laces, I walk in streets suspicious mist rose, not a figure, not a sound, windows creaking and the wind cries, I pass a bridge, a boat passes, boatmen shout, expands the horizon, I see the palaces asleep in the mist, I turn to a spot, I stop and listen to the silence, person, ensure the statues, I sink back among the unknown forms.
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On Sunday morning, it is impossible not to wake up before 9am. Ninety towers of the city began to peal to every wind. It is that which will make more noise and attract the most adherents. I was see the side of the Carmelites, on the campo. The church welcomes vast majority of old bourgeois couples in furs and hats. Some are young, a small choir accompanied on the guitar and the sacristan of service. The priest, a tall, bearded man with severe eyes, is accompanied by a lame deacon and a choir boy with long hair tiny. The decor
dementia of the church in total contrast with the smallness of the liturgy. In the midst of golden statues and frescoes Baroque inordinate amounts of inane melody accompanied the choir on guitar, while the bearded priest, the Holy Book stretched toward the sky, advancing majestically toward the altar. The gossips of the first ranks continue to speak, the bourgeois crumbling coughed, the choir hoarse in vain, a child cries, an exalted frantically reciting his Ave Maria. In short, a Sunday like any other for the Catholic Church in the twenty-first century. I do not know why I wanted the organ instead of guitar, Latin instead of Italian, Monteverdi Vespers instead of this pseudo-Catholic Bocelli.
After Mass, I went around the church, beautiful but hardly maintained, dark and very full of trinkets senseless. There are still some things that remind you that you are in Venice and not elsewhere, as this painting by Tintoretto depicting Jesus at the temple or the Veronese located above the baptistery, among other wonders scattered around the church. I say because scattered among these masterpieces there are portraits of John Paul II, John XXIII and Padre Pio hopeless, surrounded by candles, coins and notes of thanks.
So goes the life of Venice. We are constantly surrounded by wonders, we enter the most beautiful places to buy the newspaper, we contemplate the beautiful scenery while eating his sandwich, you cross the bridge wonders for work. Each crossed porch is an adventure, each weighs front of his years and its history, and yet life is definitely there. The workers sing, traders shout, housewives vie from balcony to balcony. The shoemaker, the blacksmith, crafts endangered in our countries, each have their little dusty and cluttered studio overlooking the street. Youth gather on street corners to smoke a cigarette, leaning against the walls of thousands of old stories.
Near Campo San Margherita, the life goes on despite the decor, despite the tourists. It here is no souvenir stalls filled with plaster masks and Murano glass beads. There is no guide disguised as baroque wig or grain merchant for pigeons. There is no African full of postcards or water taxi at 45 euros per race. And if a couple in shorts and fanny-pack is in the neighborhood is that it has lost, and they let their noses buried in their Backpacker in search of the Accademia Bridge.
dementia of the church in total contrast with the smallness of the liturgy. In the midst of golden statues and frescoes Baroque inordinate amounts of inane melody accompanied the choir on guitar, while the bearded priest, the Holy Book stretched toward the sky, advancing majestically toward the altar. The gossips of the first ranks continue to speak, the bourgeois crumbling coughed, the choir hoarse in vain, a child cries, an exalted frantically reciting his Ave Maria. In short, a Sunday like any other for the Catholic Church in the twenty-first century. I do not know why I wanted the organ instead of guitar, Latin instead of Italian, Monteverdi Vespers instead of this pseudo-Catholic Bocelli.
After Mass, I went around the church, beautiful but hardly maintained, dark and very full of trinkets senseless. There are still some things that remind you that you are in Venice and not elsewhere, as this painting by Tintoretto depicting Jesus at the temple or the Veronese located above the baptistery, among other wonders scattered around the church. I say because scattered among these masterpieces there are portraits of John Paul II, John XXIII and Padre Pio hopeless, surrounded by candles, coins and notes of thanks.
So goes the life of Venice. We are constantly surrounded by wonders, we enter the most beautiful places to buy the newspaper, we contemplate the beautiful scenery while eating his sandwich, you cross the bridge wonders for work. Each crossed porch is an adventure, each weighs front of his years and its history, and yet life is definitely there. The workers sing, traders shout, housewives vie from balcony to balcony. The shoemaker, the blacksmith, crafts endangered in our countries, each have their little dusty and cluttered studio overlooking the street. Youth gather on street corners to smoke a cigarette, leaning against the walls of thousands of old stories.
Near Campo San Margherita, the life goes on despite the decor, despite the tourists. It here is no souvenir stalls filled with plaster masks and Murano glass beads. There is no guide disguised as baroque wig or grain merchant for pigeons. There is no African full of postcards or water taxi at 45 euros per race. And if a couple in shorts and fanny-pack is in the neighborhood is that it has lost, and they let their noses buried in their Backpacker in search of the Accademia Bridge.
There are many old in Dorsoduro. It seems that the average age of the city is around 55 years, and yet my district has many students. The bourgeois Venetian are dressed in furs, hats were eccentric, and not speak Italian but Venetian - marks of distinction. They often sit on the benches of the Campo San Margherita, and watch the world go by. This is probably the last generation to have experienced a non-tourist Venice (mass), they live in their palace in ruins. I have a neighbor, an elderly widow of more than eighty years that never goes out of her home. She lives on the floor of a palace, and down his trash out the window with a corde.Il are also a lot of workers, mariners in Dorsoduro. They talk, they speak for themselves. They never stop walking, talking. Sometimes they stop anyway, on a bench and begin to shout, to sing.
Venice for me is also the discovery of the Erasmus experience. While I am not in Barcelona or even Louvain-la-Neuve, I am not in a dorm, but I can not miss it strange that bath international tourists and foreign students represent Venice. And since my arrival I became acquainted with Finnish smiling, affable a Czech, a Greek nervous, three Catalan noisy, three Portuguese and a Portuguese Silent transpires that her hormones, two very French French, a Bavarian hysterical. It is striking and interesting to see how we are alike and different. Physically, we can guess where we come in at a glance - except me passing alternately for an English, Dutch or French, nobody knows the Belgium. We share a common Western culture but are very influenced by our local differences. We speak French, English, English and Italian, more and more. All these languages are mixed, are reversed, we move from one to another in the same sentence, because we do not ever mastered simultaneously.
I discovered how the English - as an international language, it is the language of any of us can be empty, wallpaper. I spent whole nights in exchange banalities disconcerting mad with enthusiasm. Nothing is said in English has importance, and everything seems to be that it does not permit further discussion. All words are created equal, that the number of superlatives used it marks the importance of a thing. Speak English is a loophole when it was nothing to say, and a wonderful way to get along with everybody. Can not disagree when we talk in English, everything is simplified to the extreme.
Venice for me is also the discovery of the Erasmus experience. While I am not in Barcelona or even Louvain-la-Neuve, I am not in a dorm, but I can not miss it strange that bath international tourists and foreign students represent Venice. And since my arrival I became acquainted with Finnish smiling, affable a Czech, a Greek nervous, three Catalan noisy, three Portuguese and a Portuguese Silent transpires that her hormones, two very French French, a Bavarian hysterical. It is striking and interesting to see how we are alike and different. Physically, we can guess where we come in at a glance - except me passing alternately for an English, Dutch or French, nobody knows the Belgium. We share a common Western culture but are very influenced by our local differences. We speak French, English, English and Italian, more and more. All these languages are mixed, are reversed, we move from one to another in the same sentence, because we do not ever mastered simultaneously.
I discovered how the English - as an international language, it is the language of any of us can be empty, wallpaper. I spent whole nights in exchange banalities disconcerting mad with enthusiasm. Nothing is said in English has importance, and everything seems to be that it does not permit further discussion. All words are created equal, that the number of superlatives used it marks the importance of a thing. Speak English is a loophole when it was nothing to say, and a wonderful way to get along with everybody. Can not disagree when we talk in English, everything is simplified to the extreme.
Erasmus
Some are very happy to be there, others would be elsewhere - but where are the young, holidays and evenings Latin?, others could not care less - he must think 's register for courses and write / call / smsser to her lover. I attend especially those who are happy to be there (but wonderful), who walk, who change their habits, which revived a little - or rejuvenate? - At the touch of Venice. I spent very good "evenings-kot" watered spritz - the local drink, wine cut with water and Campari - and bad beer. I discovered the owls Baccari, nice taverns, warm nights saw the university. Student life is certainly present in Venice, calmer, more offbeat. As everywhere, there are things, people, places to discover, and others to flee.
So much to say again, to show, to feel. For fear of sounding repetitive, annoying, being too long, I'll stop there for now. As for comment yet, so many discoveries to share, so many doubts confide. Thank you all for your letters for you, I unfortunately do not have time now to respond to you individually, and I apologize. It will come.
William.
So much to say again, to show, to feel. For fear of sounding repetitive, annoying, being too long, I'll stop there for now. As for comment yet, so many discoveries to share, so many doubts confide. Thank you all for your letters for you, I unfortunately do not have time now to respond to you individually, and I apologize. It will come.
William.
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