20111021 Friday Venice. Alone during the day I can blend in, at night not so much. I mean I guess i could creep out and stand around in a dark corner and startle. Not drinking and sitting in a bar making "friends" has a little less appeal. Knitting in a tea room, sure. Knitting in night culture, blech. So i write you instead, parked on my bed in front of BBC.
LA FENICE is not THE MAJESTIC. It's an "artist" hotel, and certainly cast and crew from FIGARO have been trilling the lounge. My room is on the top floor, a double with a huge terrace, overlooking a small canal. I hear the singing gondoliers as they pass through, and I'm woken by the church bells ringing first mass. The room is decorated in a Venetian style, upholstered walls of patterned gold jacquard fabric, a pitched white stucco ceiling with the dark beams exposed, and a large hanging Venetian glass lamp fixture. Not a marbled bathroom, it does have a window out onto what looks like an abandoned square/alley of matted grasses that none of the surrounding billings have access to. The facilities are clean and totally serviceable. In keeping with the "art" theme, there is an eclectic arrangement of art on every hallway wall and in this room too; mostly dusty fading mixed media jarring pieces that clearly were done between 1970 and 1985. There is the occasional period print, but overall the impression is of eclectic throw up. The hallways are narrow, and because the hotel is a warren of buildings, like Venice, it's massively confusing to maneuver. Every door is covered in a full length print of Klimt's THE KISS, the blinking neon sign pointing to dirty business being done here. Some false start doorways are mirrored. Its a right left step up step down Escheresque print to get to the elevator. The main floor rooms are tired, and I knew not to hold any hopes about breakfast after THEMAJESTIC. And I was right. But it is behind the opera house, a quiet square, 10 minutes (if you know the way) to san Marco. I would rather stay here than the Venetian equivalent of Best Western, but I'd really have loved to stay at the Danieli (?) hotel where they shot THE TOURSIST with Depp/Jolie!
Today I had a long and satisfying drink that slated visual and intellectual thirsts. I got into St marks basilica shortly after it opened. I could go there every day for a month, for a year, and just marvel over one of it's many treasures for hours, one at a time. I stayed a long time, going to the treasure room, and behind the altar. I wished Marilyn had been there with me to observe the vastness and quality of the mosaics. I can't even describe it big enough. Gold, glowing, blue, floral, animals, saints, holy, carved, lustrous, softened in age, weight, expanse, universality, flickering, hushed, light, domed, pillared, galleried, mystic, humming. I spent at least an hour just looking at one corner of the floor, where the tile mosaics were more complex and beautiful than anything I had ever seen or imagined could exist before. Its good and so unexpected to fall in love in middle age, making it all the more precious. I've just never seen anything more beautiful. It must be my inner unrequited RC longings. I've been in many churches in France, but generally speaking they must have been stripped during the revolution. My impression was always cold stone and stillness, and sometimes beautiful stained glass in the larger centres. I have a lot to think about.
Then I hung out the back of the water bus for entire return grand canal route, slow way down and fast back. Another "wow!this place really exists" experience. I saw all the galleries I would want to go into if I had a month including the Peggy Guggenheim collection. Because I had read some of that heavy guide book, I was able to recognize some of the notable buildings including the Turkish warehouse. How this city has existed on an edge of a sea, for over seven hundred years, and not crumble or dissolve back into the swamp, sustain a higher order of living, culture, thought, is amazing to me. And in spite of the mantle of tourism, one can still feel the city it was struggles to remain. I'm reminded of the american shaker woman "I'm not a chair". It must be painful for any remaining Venetians "I'm not a museum".
Then a very late and leisurely lunch. I treated myself to a good meal; warm seafood salad, mixed greens, a Venetian preparation of calves liver with polenta, and a ricotta cake. Cappucino. Watch the tourists. Shuffle back to the hotel on aching legs (because favoring a sprain now everything hurts). Nap.
No comments:
Post a Comment