Murano, Venice
At 5 pm, the streetlights birthed themselves into existence, each one a testimony to a certain survival, one that had gone on for a time seemingly immemorial. At the same time, the town bell’s song faded like stories untold on a grandmother’s knee. The drizzle held its ground, relentless and unyielding. Silence reclaimed the air when the bells alarm ceased. As I walked, I felt the earth—not just beneath my feet, but the real earth. The earth beneath the cloth covering my toes, beneath the rubber soles, beneath the layers of dirt and stone. The earth of which we are said to come and to which we shall return.
I felt the tap, tap, tap of rain, its weight heavy with the push of the wind. Each drop reinstating life—vibrating in sync with the glow of TVs in lit rooms, the flush of toilets, the scraping of the stubbornness left on frying pans. I could feel the tap, tap, tap tap tap as a large-gloved boy dashed across the cobblestones, in front of what one would think was a ghost, so quick that all my eyes registered was light—life distilled into pure motion. For the first time, I felt life outside myself. Not a body, but life itself.
The ocean, like blue silk and infinite, gliding against itself in perpetual motion, turning white as angels before retreating back to blue. It received and gave, received and gave, much like a mother calling her sweaty children inside after the first flash of lightning. It took more than the rain; it took from me. My soul, my ears, my foes, my joys, my sorrows, my love, my tame and my wild, my prized possession—my ego. And in return, it delivered peace. A peace so intimate and familiar, I could have mistaken myself for fluidity itself.
As the colors of the setting sun fractured through thick clouds—white spilling into yellows, merging with pinks and blues in violent pastels—I found direction. I followed its call to the canal I had crossed not long before. I arrived on the other side just after 5 pm, as windows were being latched and men stood at gates, ready to present their finds of the day.
The woman beneath the black umbrella strode with purpose, her feet blessing the bridge with each deliberate step, writing history into stone. The canal waters below moved dark and knowing, singing hymns for lonely hearts in this foreign corner of Venice. From a distance, across the street, I regretted that I could only watch her through a viewfinder, a connection fleeting and incomplete. But contentment found me as I captured a slow disappearance. She left without a glance sideways, without a goodbye. And once again, I found myself, alone , accompanied only by the sound left behind of my soles tapping puddles, and the reflections of my solitude in the canals of such a quiet town.
