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Greetings!
You know, when dreams come true it can feel, well, a bit of a letdown?
Maybe we imagined emotions zinging and zapping the corners of our cranium that have never been lit up before. When they don’t land we feel crestfallen, flat and a little bit lost. Where is Neverland then?
But last week I had my own cerebral firework display as I fulfilled an old and precious dream of visiting Venice and staying in a palazzo. My friend Valerie and I arrived in the “golden hour” at dusk and sped to the floating city via a chic speeding water taxi – James Bond style.
A feast for the senses it’s hard to absorb except via countless visual and physical sips, gasps and gulps. The beauty of the architecture, the dank aromas of water and rot mixed with wisps of delicious seafood and garlic cooking in bustling osterias.
The menacing medieval side alleys; dark, portentous and chill with ancient ghosts with shiny black Murano glass eyes, shimmering in doorways; history hovering in cloaks, masks and powdered wigs.
Getting up early before the shops were open and the tourists shuffle by, it was like I was walking on my own film set complete with the sobering church bells ringing in ancient campaniles. A call to prayer, to take note, to notice.
They say you should never meet your heroes (I’m so glad I passed on my one chance to meet Leonard Cohen in the Green Room, post-show, at one of his last UK concerts) I am, however, glad I met my dream in Venice.
In reality I would say Venice met me. Venice didn’t lift my melancholia so much as it held it with care as it allowed me to breathe into it with empathetic safety. I realised how important these liminal spaces are – when you don’t feel solid when life feels fluid, unchartered, and everything is rearranging itself quietly within.
The gondoliers and merchant barges, the emergency services scudding by and the Amazon delivery punts (yes really) bobbed and ploughed through the swells of the canals leaving waves and ripples and then a gentle soft equilibrium.
Even stillness is temporary. Things end up quietly rearranging above and below.
Venice taught me you have to wait to cross canals and search for bridges. We can’t rush through everything. What if the next step wasn’t to push and rush faster for results but soften into presence?
Wishing you a great Bank Holiday weekend and may the break meet you where you are too.
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