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| 12 July 2021 |
I suspect that getting to Toronto will at least give me a chance to think a bit more clearly about Venice than I've been able to for at least 2 years. Though I could be wrong about that. In any case, a recent image from this summer...
I have no time to write about this now, no time even to reply to the very kind comments people have left, though I will do both in a few days, I think, but we made out last outing in our boat this evening, and this evening, like most evenings in Venice--whether it's your last, first, or somewhere in-between--did not disappoint.
Then our ride was over and we peeled our targhe (basically an adhesive license plate number, starting with the letters LV, if you do not use your boat for business purposes) from our boat, buttoned up its cover, and left it in its mooring place where its new owner will officially take possession of it tomorrow.
We fly out of Venice on Friday--the first time we've left the lagoon at all, really, in nearly two years. An uninterrupted stay in Venice that, I will tell you right now, neither I nor anyone else I've spoken to would recommend. Even the most Venetian of Venetians reply to that idea with one word: pesante. Meaning, literally, heavy, but with a strong suggestion of unhealthiness about it in this context, for the body, mind, and spirit. But that's a topic for another time.
For now (and maybe not just for now) the image is enough. I need to get back to preparing to live somewhere other than Venice for the first time since 1 November 2010.
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| A photographer stands upon a ladder to focus and trigger the shutter of his camera--itself positioned upon a very tall tripod, two of whose legs are just visible to either side of the central column--in the church of San Pietro Martire in Murano. |
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| Duck lips have returned to Venice |
As the swallows famously return to San Capistrano in California, so duck lips (rather then ducks themselves) have returned to Venice with the return of tourists to Venice.
This particular and now nearly universal set of the face, a particular aesthetic of beauty created by the technology of our digital and disembodied age (an effect and even a type of technology predicted nearly 100 years ago by Paul Valéry in his remarkable essay "The Conquest of Ubiquity"), and held only so long as required to snap a selfie, is one of the things whose absence during the long touristic lull of the pandemic can only fully be appreciated with its reappearance afterwards.
But while tourists return to Venice we, after living here full-time for more than a decade, are planning to move to Toronto, with a departure from Venice in mid-July.
This is a move that's been long in the works, but one that I haven't wanted to mention in the blog as, not least of all, it's not something I've wanted (or want) to write much about. Writing, no matter how one tries (with varying degrees of success) to disguise it, inevitably brings with it certain demands of form and, at least, if only to a limited degree, of coherence (achieved or attempted).
"To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up," a character remarks in Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, and when it comes to this move I've had no interest in writing about it in either a "natural" (ie, casual) way, nor a more formal one. Both of which would, like all forms of writing, begin to shape my thoughts in ways having more to do with the demands of the medium than I'd prefer.
For now I can only say that having watched our son grow from a not-quite-yet-three-old American child upon our arrival on November 1, 2010, to a bi-lingual, bi-cultural, but very Venetian 13 year old, it seemed time return to North America for at least a few years. To be closer to family again, and to the culture in which both my wife and I are at home, as we will never be in Venice.
Despite the international festivals it hosts (the Biennales of Art, Architecture, Film, Dance, etc) the subject when one is in Venice can only inevitably be Venice itself.
It is a city long defined by its own self-regard, in which visitors willingly (even rapturously) join, as they almost can't help but do in such a beautiful, storied place--and in which the city's economy has long relied upon them doing.
But I find it increasingly difficult to form any clear opinions on Venice. For myself at least, any worthwhile attempts at reflection seem possible only outside the hall of mirrors that the city is, and has long been.
The only way to think about a subject, I suspect, is at least for a time not to think about it at all. Not to think, that is, in the conscious sense of the city as an unceasing object of interest or focus or investigation.
As I've written this blog over the last decade I've found myself putting more space between the subject matter of the blog and my actual lived experience. More and more of what I post has been images I've snapped in the course of going about my daily life, the incidental and brief rather than the extended subject of thought (such as, for example, an earlier post about Ruskin inspired by something seen on the way to bringing my son to kindergarten).
In any case, I'm presently so swamped by the complicated logistics of our move that I have no idea at all about what I am doing or will do with this blog. I have a lot of recent photos I've been remiss in not posting. I have ideas about re-posting certain older posts, or posting for the first time photos taken a few years back but never posted.
I think I'll keep the blog going until I get to a place--namely Toronto--where I can perhaps have the time to properly bring it to some kind of close. I can't see that being anytime before the fall.
In the meantime, I'll post current photos and identify them as such, or older photos with the date they were taken. I don't think I'll have much or any time to add any or much text. But beyond this at the moment I find it impossible to say....
