"No Pleasure But Meanness" (Postcards from America)

All images taken in the quaint, well-to-do town of Farmville, VA, 18 April 2025

By this time, evidence that the United States has become a country for which it can be hazardous for international tourists merely to visit has become widespread enough to significantly affect the country's tourism revenue. And I'm sorry to personally attest that the reasons one now hears to avoid the US are real.

 

I've found it telling that one of the common ways Americans now conclude a conversation or email is with the phrase "Be safe." Never in my life here have I heard this used as it has been the last couple of years here, and I always find it hard not to ask why anyone would be assuming the kind of danger that would necessitate such a wish. We are not in Gaza or the West Bank, not in Kiev, not even in the neighborhoods in which the Republican regime's ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) now kidnap people off the street, out of workplaces and schools and churches (a lawless policy of what used to be known in Latin America as "disappearing" that the cowardly and complicit US press now obediently euphemises as "deporting"). In reply to these words I always want to ask, especially of those who see no criminality in the current regime's actions, "What threat do you now imagine to be omnipresent?"

 

But Americans are frightened now, and seem to have become addicted to being frightened, as it is the engine that drives politics, economics, and social media. President Franklin D Roosevelt's famous admonition that "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," has been perverted into something like "There's only one thing from which we can constantly profit, and that is fear itself."

 

Of course there are concrete reasons to be fearful of the damage that the current regime and Republican Party are determined to inflict upon this country and its people (and the world)--though indignation and disgust and a commitment to the rule of law would better motivate the proper responses to them, I suspect.  

"Paranoia," Adam Phillips writes, "is a self cure for insignificance. The modern paranoiac invites persecution out of fear of invisibility. Te be hated makes him feel real: he has made his presence felt. To be unforgivable is to be unforgettable. As an object of hatred one is exceptionally vivid to other people." Being hated, believing oneself to be a target of envy, for example, or of vast conspiracies, is proof that one actually exists--even as the society in which you actually live disenfranchises you in countless ways.

 

 I've never been very fond of the writer Flannery O'Connor, but I've been reading her lately for her attention to what she terms "all the violence and grotesquery and religious enthusiasm" that in her day (the '50s and '60s) could still reassuringly (and falsely) be localized in the American South. All the violence and grotesquery and religious lunacy is now blatantly a national matter, and O'Connor--not least of all because of what I consider her own religious excesses (she proudly described her writing as being "watered and fed by [Catholic] dogma" and likely would've detested the recently-deceased Pope Francis)--seems to give voice to some of its roots. 

It is from O'Connor, from the mouth of a mass murderer character in her story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," that the title of this post comes. It's one way of summarizing the feel of American society these days, and of the great challenge of what must be overcome.

 

It must be noted here that, contrary to the assertion of the circular sign in the window above, there is absolutely no evidence that the prevalence of guns in the US does anything other than kill more people than would otherwise die.

Up from the Shallows, Momentarily

A curious (or recklessly hungry) crab holds onto a stick for a few seconds before coming to his senses and dropping back into the water of the Arsenale (27 April 2014)

The Conversation, Campo Santo Stefano

I've posted this image before, but I'm still trying to get its colors right (11 April 2018)

The Impostor (21 April 2015)

It's been ten years since I took this picture outside Santa Maria della Salute and at least 5 years since its subject was repeatedly exposed in Venetian papers as a spry able-bodied fellow who, when not working, showed not the least hint of any physical infirmity or impediment. 

 

My wife and I had seen him in Venice ever since arriving in 2010 and were uneasy when one of the first Venetian friends we made used to say she'd like to give him a good swift kick in the butt, as he was a complete fraud. Because this new friend liked to make bold statements that sometimes lacked foundation, we didn't really believe her. But in this case, at least, she was right.

 

The somewhat surprising thing was that even after numerous articles--complete with photos of him when he was not at work--had been published in the local paper, he continued to ply his trade in Venice (to which he commuted to work from someplace I've now forgotten). I suppose that, like Venetian restaurants whose food is notoriously bad, his income depended upon an unending stream of fresh tourists without the slightest clue about what was common local knowledge.

 

Yet I never felt the urge to give him a good swift kick for pretending to be something he wasn't, nor did I think he was "getting away" with not doing real work. His intentionally splayed feet, his contorted posture, his quivering arms--all of it, we were told, was fraudulent. But it never looked like easy work to me, and certainly no way I'd like to spend my days. He was earning whatever money he made, in his own way--and I wouldn't be surprised if he's still at it in Venice.

Calcio, Campo Santa Margherita: 8 April 2012

These kids are now adults--I wonder how many of them still live in Venice. And I wonder if kids today can still play like this in the campo, as a few years ago non-resident/Mr-conflict-of-interest Mayor Brugnaro began to crack down on play in the public spaces, since so much of the space had been given over to restaurants for seating. In other words, in order to allow tourists the "authentic experience" of dining in a Venetian campo, what little remained of spontaneous, authentic Venetian life had to be eradicated. This is the perverse and destructive logic of mass tourism. 

 

 

 

 

Riding Low at the Start of a Work Day, Grand Canal

10 April 2017

What News on the Rialto?: Ruga dei Oresi (Color)

I posted a not-very-good b/w version of this 7 years ago and wanted to see if I could do better with color now (taken 4 March 2018)

Entrance Stairs, Ca' Fornoni

31 March 2018

Late Afternoon, Early Spring (Campo Santa Margherita)

22 March 2015

Ritratto di un Uomo Libero: Gigi Miracol

21 March 2014

Gigi Miracol, who, like Odysseus, might truly be called a "man of many ways" (in the ancient Greek sense of abilities/skills) and who was an important contributor to many of the events I covered in this blog--as in this winemaking video, for example, in which he provides the live accompaniment, and for the celebration of the spring equinox above--is now the eponymous subject of a documentary whose Italian title I've borrowed for this post itself (Portrait of a Free Man, in English). 

It's been recently screened in Venice and other places in Italy, and you can watch its trailer here. 

Angel in Late Afternoon Light

19 March 2013

Reflections on a Boat Yard, Giudecca

12 March 2014

March Sky

23 March 2017

Life Amidst Death: Pruning Time on San Michele

Those many people who can only conceive of Venice as a symbol of death and decay have obviously never been behind the walls of the historic city, nor of those on the cemetery island of San Michele, where an old vineyard has been lovingly restored and is producing wine. You'll find a list of links to posts about such goings on and about the group responsible for them at the end of this post about the man who was the original driving force behind it: Flavio Franceshet. (6 March 2014)

 

 

 

 

Sky, Water, Bricks: Riva dei Sette Martiri

29 February 2016

Musician Beside the Church of I Frari

20 February 2015

A Telephoto View of Short-Sightedness

Building all the industry right on the edge of lagoon didn't turn out to to be the best idea--either for the air or the water of the city. (19 November 2018)

Balustrade and Sunset

19 February 2013

Pescheria di Rialto, alla Mattina

In the early morning, amidst columns and arches and foggy light, with its blues and reds, the ordinary can sometimes look like an altarpiece: "I will make you fish(sell)ers of men...." (Though it should be noted that many of the young men now working in the remaining fish stalls are Eastern European, as young Venetians, I was told, can no longer abide the very early hours or smells of the job. 13 October 2017)

Dance in the Palazzo Contarini-Polignac

The dance troupe of the Isadora Duncan International Institute performs in the androne of Palazzo Contarini-Polignac, the former home of Duncan's patron Winnaretta Singer (9 February 2018).

View from the Base of a Flag Pole

11 February 2019

Misty Morning, Grand Canal

30 January 2017

I haven't posted here for quite some, and have actually not been inclined to do so since the American election in early November. My disgust over its outcome was such that it took up much of my attention, and left little available to think about Venice and my life there. The past seemed irrelevant given the nightmarish present and the alacrity with which the American media bowed down to even the most fascistic impulses, statements, and acts of the incoming administration. (Of course, this is the obvious danger when 90% of America's media is owned by 6 corporate conglomerates. Freedom of the press quickly becomes a thing of the past, as do broader freedoms.) I also had two manuscripts I was in the process of revising. One of them, my second children's picture book, sold in December to a US publisher who hopes to bring it out in spring of 2026. The other, a novel for adults, I've just finished revising and given to my agent. 

In any case, I'm going to make an effort to return to combing through my much-too-large collection of un-posted and unedited images of Venice, in spite of the concerns that come with living in a country in the midst of becoming a mafia state, in which corruption and extortion and the threat (and use of) violence against the most vulnerable of the country's very own citizens are openly practiced and boasted about by those occupying the highest offices in the land. 

But that's enough about all that for now. The above is an image of what was my family's regular morning view for the last 5 years of our life in Venice. Do I miss it? Very very much.