GO VENEZIA!

A few weeks ago, Venice played its final game of calcio, a.k.a. soccer, and Sara, Elyse, Maria, and I attended. Getting the opportunity to see an Italian soccer game live was actually something I was most looking forward to when I was accepted to this study abroad program, and Venice's D series team did not disappoint me. The Sunday of the game, we took the 20 from San Servolo, then rode over to the normally quiet Sant'Elena where Venice's small soccer stadium is located. Even though Venice's is a low level team, the fans of all ages were excited, wearing the team colors, green, orange, and gray, and some carrying banners, flags, and drums towards the stadium. The four of us headed back along our usual route towards the Dante Alligheri Institute, in front of which sits the soccer stadium. I was so excited at the prospect of getting to see an "authentic!" soccer game in Italy (where, so I have heard, life and soccer are intertwined like ) that when I received the news that I had been accepted to this study abroad program, soccer was the first thing that popped into my head. Sara and I stopped before crossing the canal that leads to the stadium to buy scarves. Firstly, all of us were nervous about the crowd... soccer fans, namely those in a few countries including Italy, can get notoriously rowdy and if we happened to be dressed in the colors of the opponents, we thought we might get into trouble; so, wearing scarves representing Venice's team (orange, green, and black) we figured would keep us protected. Secondly,

LA TRAVIATA AND OTHER OPERAS

I didn't have an opera mask or binoculars last Thursday as I walked across Venice towards La Scuola Grande dei Carmini (photo below, borrowed from www.scuolagrandecarmini.it); I did, however, have a pair of uncomfortable heels on that didn't mix well with the Venetian cobblestones, and therefore I also had a pair of blue flip-flops sticking out of my purse reminding me that the opera would not last forever. It isn't that I was not enthusiastic to go to the opera, but I was a little tired, tending to a sore throat, and apprehensive. I pomodori di San Servolo had managed to control their hunger with large slices of pizza and gelati on Campo Santa Margherita before heading over to the show, yet I had the foreboding of previous experiences with opera music that the pizza would not last and neither would I. Opera can be long and boring, it's a known fact, especially with the bad rap it gets as the snob's musical. I entered the opera house ready to stifle yawns and a grumbling stomach, but, as I said, I was nevertheless enthusiastic, and despite my misgivings I was curious to hear at least a little of La Traviata, an opera written by Giuseppe Verdi and first performed in 1853 in Venice's Teatro La Fenice. I was excited because I had heard excerpts of La Traviata in class, had enjoyed a short concert of various opera pieces a few weeks ago in Il Ateneo di San Basso on Saint Mark's Square, and had become enraptured by a segment of another opera, La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini, that very morning. In class, we had discussed the bombastic emotion of opera, the dynamics of opera attendees, and other aspects of the art (including its identity as kitsch: taking itself seriously despite its ridiculous, unrealistic nature) that made me aware of opera in new ways, especially in its ability to speak to people across both time and place. As we said in class, people don't go to the opera to understand it literally, although they may want the context of the emotions presented to better enjoy it; minus for the glam and class and culture, people go to feast on what is versatile about it. The stories are basic human stories about love, death, family, and feminine and masculine calamity, and the music speaks to everyone in a partly learned, partly inborn play on emotions. Opera has universal characteristics that last through the ages and that can be understood around the world.

As a musician, I find the power of opera music especially interesting; when I began writing music myself, I pondered the power of music, what it was, why people like it, why music makes us feel. By now, of course, I think I have it figured out; music speaks directly to our emotions, it is a form of communication, the communication of emotion, that can almost wield us from the inside out. In our discussions of opera in class, I found this fact validated by the effect of the performers' foreign-tongued voices on myself and others, and thinking about this particular use of music, that flows directly through a human body into the audience, I became fascinated by the notion of voice without meaning. When the words are not understood, opera is pure voice expressing emotion, only hinting at where the emotion comes from through any action on stage. The singers take the audience on a shockingly desperate and earnest journey, belting out life like no real person would be able to off stage. When audience members leave the opera, they thank the show for releasing them from a need to scream themselves. "No risk:" Catherine Clément wrote in her book Opera, Or the Undoing of Women, "one makes a pretense of not being interested in the plot, which is completely unimportant. So one is moved for no apparent reason, what bliss!" The fact that most people cannot understand opera, because it is traditionally in Italian, is compensated for by this effect. But this side of opera is not what intrigued me most in our discussions. Opera as a use of musical power spoke to me further when we discussed La Bohème. At one point in our sample, during the song "Che gelida manina" in which Mimi enters Rudolfo's apartment to ask him whether she can relight a candle that the wind has blown out (which is the scene in the picture to the right, with Inva Mula as Mimi and Aquiles Machado as Rudolfo), Rudolfo sang a loud, long, crescendoing line that, after we had finished listening, turned out to mean "How do I live? I live." You can sample this song from La Bohème here. At that moment, opera became something else for me: a possibility. In a blending of emotional dialogue and literary depth, in the combination of melodramatic song and story, I thought I found a musical tool of exploration that could explore character emotion in connection with specific situations. Aside from simply enjoying bombastic expression of emotion through music, I realized that opera could give extra depth to the words of its stories if only we could understand them. I know this seems exactly like what we do with any other form of music, song, musical, but with opera using the music and narration together is different because opera is a musical form that follows the emotions of the characters rather than the melody of a methodical song. In opera every word is sung with emphasis on what the note can say to the audience, the meanings of the words are emphasized not by normal sentence emphasis but by the emotion of the characters. If the words were understood in this medium, the story might take on a sort of literary purpose, and opera would be not simply a feast of expressed emotion but a mode of speaking true inner emotion along side fact and logic. Really, this may be what opera started out doing, but has since become the opera that Clément loves, the one that enjoys emotional experiences in a minimalistic way. After I began to see opera in a literary way, I was anxious to hear La Traviata performed live, even if I knew I would not be able to understand it, or sit through it easily. I wanted to experience opera the "traditional" way before I ever delve into opera with deeper narrative meaning.

The lights went out, and the violins, the cello, and piano struck up one of the most beautiful pieces I have heard recently. In the dimness of soft spot lights, we waited for the story to start. La Scuola Grande dei Carmini is a small building just off Campo Santa Margherita containing a chapel and a nice collection of artwork and woodwork. On the ground floor, the chapel now acts as an auditorium for various types of performances (photo on left, www.scuolagrandecarmini.it), and the rooms above it, the old scuola, are now shown as a museum because their ceilings are decorated with paintings by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, one of Venice's top 18th century artists. Down in the chapel, a low stage surrounds the front of a small yet lavish alter of the mother and child. For the first act of La Traviata, a row of chairs and a table with flowers waited for the characters to appear. We listened eagerly for the music of the intro to end, then smiled, at least I did, as the first singers came to the stage, already singing. One of the singers, who played the character Alfredo and who had sung the selections at Il Ateneo di San Basso, we were especially excited to see; not only is he excellent, we love the expressions on his face as he sings. We could just see the concentration and skill it took him to sing every note, which made me realize that opera is a challenge even for professional singers. All of the opera singers' voices were so loud I could feel my ears receiving the vibrations of music, and it immediately moved me, like most music does. The human voice sang so loudly, though, that this music connected me with the characters both physically and mentally. In class we talked about how opera is written to bring the audience into the characters positions, to experience emotion through the characters as a substitute or confirmation of the real thing. As I sat there, exposed to the tremendous voices of the singers, I experienced this effect. Although I did not know what they were singing, except for a few words like "grazie" "abbiamo" and "si," I knew the emotions and I probably felt new ones. It was amazing how the music so easily conveyed emotion, especially when I could physically feel the power of the singers and identify with them. At the same time, though, I was glad I knew what was happening in the story because as time past I became restless at points when the "wordless" songs seemed to last longer than was necessary. The story of La Traviata is basically the original and inspiration for Moulin Rouge, the 2001 film directed by Baz Luhrmann. A prostitute, recently recovered from illness, throws a party to celebrate her good health. Her name is Violetta and, when she meets a high class gentleman named Alfredo at her celebration, she falls in love and eventually moves to the country with her new lover. Throughout the first act, Alfredo and Violetta discover and sing of their love, and Violetta, almost in secret, finds her health may still be in decline. In the second act, Violetta and Alfredo are living in the country together where they are very happy. When Alfredo leaves for Paris, however, his father arrives to confront Violetta, the lowlife his son is treating as a wife and who is therefore a danger to the family. Alfredo's father begs Violetta to leave Alfredo in order to save the name of Alfredo's family which would allow Alfredo's sister to find a respectable husband. Violetta finally gives after much singing and she begins to write a farewell note to Alfredo. As she weeps bitterly over her quill and paper, Alfredo returns from Paris and they sing about their love. Once Violetta leaves under the pretense of attending a party, and Alfredo finds the note, Alfredo angrily goes to Paris to find her. In a gambling scene, he sees her with a past lover, calls her a whore, and throws two hand-fulls of gambling coins at her feet. In the final act, Violetta dies just after Alfredo has decided to return to her. The third act was a long act with little action besides the reunion and realization of death. The entire show was overly dramatic, that's opera, but I would have known little of it without a synopsis we were given for class, and knowing the story definitely added to my experience. Without knowing what exactly the characters were doing on stage, I think I would have been lost, and probably bored frequently by constant confusion and the singular activity of feeling the dramatic, and sometimes wearisome, emotions. (photo above: Moulin Rouge.)

Knowing the words to an opera could make opera more interesting, more dimensional. Obviously the stories of some operas have been worthy enough for remakes (La Traviata inspired Moulin Rouge; La Bohème seems to have inspired the musical RENT, although I truthfully have never seen either the opera or the show/film). With words and musical commentary on human emotions, their strengths, depths, logic, and all their other mysterious qualities, I think opera could shine in a way most people never imagine. Whenever I finally learn to speak Italian well enough to follow an opera, or I see one in English (I don't know whether supertitles count, it depends on whether I can read them and be certain I know exactly where the singer is putting emphasis), I will probably enjoy it as much as a "wordless" opera. Like an opera I don't understand, one I do will take me through an extreme emotional experience that I will come away from feeling refreshed by the power of the voices and enlightened through an insight into the thoughts and the emotions connected with the experiences of the characters. But even if I don't enjoy operas I can understand, I will always have the option of seeing operas in unknown languages, so I have no fears about trying to understand, or ruining, opera for myself. Not seeing operas again is probably not an option though, I must say. I enjoyed La Traviata immensely, never feeling tired or hungry as I had predicted, and only feeling slightly bored throughout. The emotional ride of La Traviata was soothing, illuminating, and invigorating; it was the sort of release that Venice has offered the world for years through other ventures, so it is no surprise to me that Venice and opera seem to go hand in hand. Freedom, life, and passion all are words fitting to both ideas: Venice and opera, and in a way I feel each has probably inspired the other to greater and lesser degrees. Because I now have a greater interest in opera as well as an appreciation for it as a Venetian expression, I am super excited for our class's final show, an opera in La Fenice, Venice's one true opera house. This show is going to be amazing, just look at the venue (photo above, source unknown). (And I'm just going to end my blog like this ---> because there is no need to elaborate when Linsay's already read the unfinished version of this blog that ended like this.) Linsay would enjoy, maybe? If she still likes opera?

FORMAL ESSAY: THE WORLD'S COURTESAN

A beautiful woman steeped in mystery and available to the world at the price of mere coinage, Venice is a city of longing akin to her once profuse population of famed and desired courtesans. Having passed through the hands of emperors and kings in years past and today through the hands of thousands of tourists, Venice has both a long history and a modern persona that align the city’s identity with the collective identity of the courtesans that once ruled its calli and canals. Wanted, desired, longed for, paid for, Venice has been and is something of a modern courtesan for whom tourists pine, dreaming of the promises that Venice makes them as a goddess of their deepest desires, and for whom longing is in return her only means of sustenance. Through this resemblance of Venice to a courtesan, we can understand the city as a place that has become dependent on people who long for what it offers and we can make sense of the powers that have driven the world crazy in the city's pursuit. What we find in scrutiny is that longing, just as for a courtesan, is for Venice a way of making a living, and for Venice's clients, longing is an outlet for their emotions of desire that they will never tire of.

The feminized city of Venice has been a heterotopic place representative of people's desires for centuries, representative of ideas that speak to the desires of those who travel to Venice as clients of its persona. Margaret F. Rosenthal writes in her book The Honest Courtesan that “the Venetian courtesan has long captured people's imagination(s) as a female symbol of sexual license, elegance, beauty, and social unruli-ness.” Although it may seem from this extracted quote that Rosenthal is describing Venice itself, what Rosenthal is really writing of are Venice's actual courtesans who, as early as the sixteenth-century, were symbols of freedom, risk, and excitement that helped to make Venice an international space for quenching possibly guilty desires such as "social unruli-ness." Desires like freedom, risk, and excitement, that were also symbolized by Venetian Carnivale, art, music, government, and architecture, sparked a flow of tourism to Venice during a time when Venice still had purpose beyond tourism, yet just as that purpose, as port and merchant town, was declining. Artists in particular flocked to Venice, a dying, feminine city, to be inspired by its unique position as declining empire beautiful in its decay, or as "a thing of yesterday," as John Ruskin once wrote (The Genius of John Ruskin). Desire to visit Venice was also created in its uniqueness. I think Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s quote, “Venice can only be compared with itself,” from his travel journal The Italian Journey gives perfect insight into why people desire Venice. When tourists go to Venice, the main things they imagine themselves doing are most likely riding in a gondola, walking the bridges, wandering the narrow alleyways, and sitting in famous locations such as Saint Marc's Square for a leisurely lunch or coffee. The uniqueness of Venice is exactly what draws people to its shores, to see something so different from the everyday that they can remove themselves from their old rigid worlds and relax in a place where the old rules, or even their old identities, do not matter and life is free. As a result of Venice's appeal, tourists furthermore desire to associate themselves with it simply because of its desirable quality. Romantic allure of freedom and inspiration as well as fame make Venice desirable and special; this is where the longing that Venice relies on finds root.

Longing, the wanting of something that cannot easily be obtained, is by far the most important aspect of Venice’s courtesan persona. People long to see Venice with their own eyes and they long to take Venice home. Unlike the concept of “desire” discussed earlier, “longing” is when tourists must wait a long time to finally behold Venice, the object of their desires. Courtesans thrive on longing because it makes them more cherished or expensive. If a courtesan’s basic purpose, as prostitute, were all she gave for the price she charged, her value would quickly diminish. For Venice, the same goes. Venice does not deliver openly to its “clients,” it does not franchise itself across the world (luckily it could never) or lower its prices, because the very expense of a vacation in Venice is a part of the longing, the saving up, and "once in a lifetime experience." Tourists pay dearly for their vacations to Venice mainly because Venice is unique, “one of a kind,” and its demand is high. Longing, therefore, is a useful tool that Venice can use to make money and to preserve itself the way it is today as a tourists' city. Just as the Venetian courtesan survived by enhancing the masturbatory fantasies surrounding her by making herself scarce and by writing poetry or developing skill in prose, as Veronica Franco, Venice's most famous courtesan, once did, Venice relies on its persona as a place people long to experience and associate themselves with in order to remain a city. Without the longing of tourists that leads to large fiscal influx from the tourism industry, the Venetian economy would have a difficult time supporting itself as a city. Longing helps Venice to continue by bringing in tourists and therefore money to nourish its economy. When people come to Venice with a sense of longing they tend to spend a lot of money, splurging because they know that their trip may be their one chance to remember through expensive memorabilia, through the enjoyment of a gondola ride, or even a fancy dinner. Longing makes Venice important to people, makes it an accomplishment to celebrate at high costs, and Venice lives off this longing by providing easy access to the desires of its clientele.

Venice is the world’s courtesan, a place of desire for which people pay dearly simply to pretend that they are where they wish they were or what they wish they were. It is a place of desires and, most importantly to Venice, a place of longing. Essentially, the creation of lust, or longing, is the job of the city and the trade by which its inhabitants exist. Like a courtesan of the old Venice, Venice can be nothing else than what it is for the world; Venice can only be longed for, desired, because it functionally cannot participate in other economical society. Like a courtesan, Venice must create a sense of longing to survive.

FORMAL ESSAY: MORE THAN A MARKETPLACE

In the stereotyping of cultures, food has been associated with Italian culture as the most distinct part of Italian social life. I cannot say whether or not the cooking and sharing of large, delicious meals truly marks the most important act of social life in Italy, but after spending a month and half in Venice I feel I can avow that the basic notion that food holds a special place in Italian culture is at least accurate. First off, I can see it. In Venice, the relationship between food and social life is everywhere; osterie, trattorie, and bars, where residents of the city gather to chat noisily, can be found along most calli and in most campi. Also, I have been told that people buy a lot of fresh foods to take home for cooking. In the mornings I have walked through and shopped at the open produce markets of Venice, where Venetians come to choose ingredients for the meals they cook at home. Whether cooking food in the home or eating it out, Italians seem to use food as a strong infrastructure in their society. In Venice, though, this tradition is taken a step further. Buying the ingredients for home cooked meals is just as much a part of the social aspect of food as the cooking and eating parts. The purchasing of food at the Venetian vendors brings a social aspect to the meal even before the food is cooked and it is a tradition that has lasted for centuries. History and society have shaped the behaviors of people in the produce marketplaces to become a telling part of Venetian life.

For the sake of having a proper understanding of the subject, I will describe the vendors themselves. The produce vendors in Venice are wide, sloping tables, usually complete with an awning to protect the fresh goods from the sun or rain, stacked with fruits and vegetables that customers can easily browse with their eyes, checking in one glance both quality by color of the produce and origin and price by large white signs stuck into the piles of produce. When a customer approaches the vendor, it is a known rule that they cannot touch the produce, even when they want to buy it. Vendors always take their customers' orders ("three large tomatoes, please"), choose the produce, then present it to the customer for inspection; this is a custom that probably originated from the days of plagues in Venice during which touching of the fruit was even regulated by the state (Francesca Furlanis, personal interview). Today, when buying from vendors, they will often come out around their stalls to pick out produce side by side with their customers, which gives the process of buying a more interactive and verbal spirit. The location of vendors is also particular. Located throughout the city in all of its different sestieri, vendors can choose where to set up shop. Some vendors set up spots in the main marketplaces to which Venetians flock in the mornings and on Saturdays when prices drop, while others set up in the calli where vendors encounter less competition. Location can affect both the price of goods and the type of customers. In the marketplaces, the vendors are setup side to side and back to back and as shoppers wander through the market they check for better prices, making competition tougher. In the calli, vendors may have less customers, but they often attract customers such as the elderly who are willing to pay higher prices for fresh produce closer to home.

Price and convenience, though, are by far not the only considerations of Venetian vendor customers. I spoke with Francesca Furlanis, from the Venice International University, about the customs and cultural purposes of the produce markets in Venice in order to gain better insight into their societal importance. At the time I knew nothing about Venice’s vendors, and I was interested in understanding whether the markets served simply an economical purpose or whether they added to Venice’s social circles. As it turned out, as I have said, the vendors are places of social interaction upon which Venice relies as sort of nodes of social contact. Francesca herself is a regular patron of the produce vendors and she offered some very interesting insight into market life in particular. People who buy from vendors in Venice tend to care more about their personal experience while shopping and their experience after shopping, or while cooking and eating, than about either price or convenience. According to Francesca, one priority is the relationship customers have with their vendors on levels of trust and privacy. Customers usually find a vendor they can rely on for quality produce who will keep a semi-formal or business relationship with them to become “regulars." When I visited the market, I even saw customers hurry to their regular vendor, hand them a list of needed items and wait while the vendor picked out and bagged their produce. During two of those visit, I also bought fresh figs and learned the importance of having a fresh fruit vendor one can trust. The first time I bought four delicious figs for under a euro, but the second time I bought a kilo of figs from another vendor that I soon discovered were nearly all rotten, and simultaneously discovered that I probably should not trust that vendor. Freshness, Francesca said, is also one of the main reasons for buying produce from a vendor. The produce at the vendor is usually fresher, sometimes having been picked on one of the islands next to Venice, and fresher ingredients means better home cooked food. I asked whether the sign of an independent new family might be their presence in the produce markets or at the vendors and Francesca agreed. If a wife, for instance, had a regular vendor she bought from, her extended family would probably show slightly more respect to their independence because of her effort made to cook quality food.

The vendor culture in Venice demonstrates the Venetian appreciation for home life and for their community because they combine the two when they bring their private life into the public space of the market. As Francesca noted more than once, the produce markets heavily serve as meeting places for friends and for people living in different parts of the city that would otherwise never get the chance to interact. Sometimes friends who do not even intend to purchase produce will stop by the market to chat, and especially to gossip, with each other because the market is the only place they can rely on as a meeting spot. Everyone has to eat, everyone values fresh produce, and therefore everyone will be there to chat and gossip. This communal aspect of the marketplaces is what Francesca said she likes most about shopping at the vendors, over shopping at a grocery for instance. The social side of the vendors, with all its various purposes, is another example of how Italians mix food and social life to continue the popular concept that food is the most important part of Italian social culture. From what I can tell, it seems like a pretty sweet tradition, especially when you can buy, from the right vendor, fresh figs for under one euro; and, if you are a Venetian resident, that also means shopping with friends.

HALLOWEEN

This Halloween I learned about vampires. Really it was quite frightening, I saw both Twilight (scary!) and Interview With a Vampire (gross!!) on the same night. I had watched a few episodes of Tru Blood, a well made, trashy-novel, HBO television show about vampires integrating into Louisiana small town society, with my roommate Caylen, but I can probably profess that before this Halloween I knew very little about vampires if I consider the two weeks before Halloween a part of the general holiday. What I knew about vampires before this Halloween's intense exposure consisted of mere commercial images of them. For instance, I remember this plastic Halloween cup that Linsay or I had that had Dracula skulking in front of a brick wall on it (the fake red and white one wearing a cape, not the Romanian dude) and for some reason I always associated it with marshmallows, as if I thought Dracula was the marshmallow missing from my Halloween candy... wow, that sounded almost sentimental and sweet. But the movies and t.v. show were not soft and sugary (minus Twilight which is all sparkles and heroin {you'd get it if you saw it... but it's fine if you haven't}). As it turns out, vampires are actually freaky, and, as I have gotten to know them, they have given me a new notion of Halloween that I had never considered: it can actually be a scary holiday. The idea of cannibalistic predators lurking in dark corners with their mouths watering for blood unnerves me. Watching in realistic detail the stories of undead humans with sharp, skin-piercing teeth that come to view the human species as subject-less prey with soft jugular arteries has brought the classical Halloween terrors of loneliness, bloody gore, suffering, screams of horror, and corpses to a new level for me. I loved Interview With a Vampire even when it was terribly disgusting, I don't recommend Twilight, and I'm still watching Tru Blood which isn't that bad. For this and other reasons, my Halloween in Italy was a fun night. The adventure did not start with vampires, though, and how it did begin was perfect for a holiday based on surprises. The first half of my Halloween was spent exploring three islands north of Venice: Burano, Torcello, and San Michele. (photos in order: Twilight, Interview With a Vampire, Tru Blood.)

Burano is an island of calm. As one of the original islands of the Veneti escape from the Huns over a thousand years ago and with a current population of only 3000 farmers, fishermen, and store owners, Burano probably finds this calm in its settled state of age and small size (http://www.isoladiburano.it). On Halloween, we didn't really know where we were heading, so finding this calm was a pleasant surprise. Our journey to Burano was a 40 minute ride north of Venice past Murano, the island famous for Venetian glass, and San Michele, the cemetery. We stood on the vaporetto the whole way, warming ourselves the best we could in the sunlight just to get a better look at the Venetian scenery we had not yet seen. A few tiny islands along the route looked abandoned and available for purchase, so I spent a little time dreaming about my future house in the middle of the lagoon. As someone pointed out, one of them would be a nice fixer-upper: there was a wall already around the outside of the island and two or three alcoves built into the wall as boat houses, yet the interior was barren save for weeds and maybe an old building or two. In the picture on the left you can see Maria, Natalie, and Caylen gazing upon these desolate wonders as we voyaged past in otherwise open water. Nearing Burano, things came back to life. The vaporetto churned through a wide canal along which buildings were lined and private boats were docked. Despite the signs of life, though, and even a few people moving about on the land, we could literally see the quiet peacefulness of the island, what, from my brief experience, I would call its dominant characteristic. Like a small country town an hour outside a big city, Burano seemed rightly passive and laid back like a true neighborhood of the Veneto islands where the commotion of the busy city luckily does not emanate. Without even stepping onto the land, I got a warm, peaceful feeling just by seeing the island's personality from our large and disruptively transient vaporetto. Once we arrived at the Burano boat stop, we immediately entered the distinctly secluded yet active habitat of Burano. To begin with, the island is sparsely visited in contrast to Venice. Right off the boat we walked through a wide, empty park with big trees and bare benches. Three cats wandered the grasses, keeping clear of the people with their small dogs on leashes and those trying to pet them (a.k.a. me and Caylen), and they added to a sense of calm that the entire island seemed to radiate, even in the "touristic" areas such as the main calle and the one true shopping stretch. If cats can stand to be in a place, any place, then it must be rather uneventful and leisurely. One of the cats even ran ahead of a line of tourists in the main calle like a common leash-less dog; he knew he would be able to escape to sunlight and tranquility a few paces down so that fleeting moment of adversity was hardly a bother. Adding to the Burano calm, another pleasant feature of the island is the color of the buildings. Like a tropical town, for me Bermuda, many of the buildings on the island were painted bright colors: red, white, blue, green, pink, purple, yellow, like rows of candy or fresh fruits. I enjoyed the quiet liveliness of it because it was happy, not to mention different. I was glad to be away from Venice, on a day trip, and what would "getting away" mean if I got away to a place that looked just like the place I had left. In certain areas we saw glass shops and lace shops, Burano is apparently known for its lace. Tablecloths and frilly clothing such as dresses and gloves were everywhere, and even this slight change from the normal Venetian landscape was refreshing. I did not like the shops with lace because the products didn't interest me, but I liked to see something different. Although we did look in various glass shops, giving in to price hunting and actually enjoying a change in scenery behind this common exploit, I did not care to focus on glass and spent time wondering in the lace stores as an alternative. Both in such appearances and atmosphere Burano surprised me. I never would have imagined that a quiet and refreshing island like this existed near Venice. Like any stereotype, the common vision of Venice as purely romantic and decorated in stone extended to the entire region of the area for me.

After enough time spent treading the few paths of Burano, because due to its small size we started to walk in circles, we decided to move on to an even more remote island, Torcello. Torcello was also an original "Venice" in its day, and for hundreds of years it remained an important trading center in the lagoon with more power and population than what then existed on the islands Venice itself (wikipedia.com). At that time, Torcello had a population of nearly 10,000; today about 20 people permanently reside there as farmers and restaurant and shop owners. Every thirty minutes a vaporetto crossed the narrow stretch of water between Burano and Torcello to carry tourists (or maybe some of the 20 Torcello residents) back and forth to the island. We took this trip in search of more surprises. If Burano was calm, Torcello was dead calm. We followed the only obvious paved path back through Torcello's weedy fields along its canal. Hardly any buildings existed in sight, except for a few relatively new ones, and we felt a sense of overwhelming age in the absence of any signs of the island's extensive human history. For a frequenter of Saint Marc's Square and of other crowded and animated areas, this dead calm and quiet gave me a queer feeling of inner peace. I felt almost alone simply knowing that not terribly far off people dominate and crawl about Venice like ants and yet I stood as one in maybe one hundred on a flat expanse of nothing. We passed a few shops and restaurants randomly in wait along the pathway, and we walked over Il Ponte del Diavolo (see photo above) to see a couple farm houses and rural walking paths out into the island's fields. The fact that the bridge has no protective railings adds to the ruined and weathered quality of Torcello as a former place, even though I do not know whether the bridge was ever meant to have railings. Where there are no people, life seems to grow more dangerous or in another sense casual; people are needed to make a community safe and friendly or perhaps without them the fancy extras are unnecessary because the respect of an offered protection is not required. What mattered to me was the feeling it gave me. At the end of our walk, we came to the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, a rather small and simple cathedral from the outside, that was built in 639 A.D. Before we walked around the premises, Natalie snapped this picture of Maria, me, Caylen, and Dane on "Attila’s Throne" (it was just a stone chair for the late bishop really, but it was worn and aged and seemingly void of its former meaning). Torcello felt as far away from Venice and its craziness as we could get, for free that is. Everything from the weather to the people was quite. No boats were rumbling by and the weeds sticking up from the wet marshes around the cathedral tilted in a light breeze. Wikipedia says that Ernest Hemingway lived on Torcello for a while in 1949. I'm not surprised that a writer would find it a perfect getaway from the crowds and the present. On Torcello, what mattered to the island happened in the past, so any length of time spent there almost seems irrelevant to one's temporal or chronological senses.

Finally, we started back to Venice. In the spirit of Halloween, we made an effort to catch the vaporetto that would take us by San Michele, the cemetery island, hoping to find something truly unique in Venice's unique cemetery. We walked back down Torcello's path, passing two souvenir vendors selling glass on the way (not kidding, Venice tries to get tourists wherever they go), then caught boats to the cemetery to check it out. The ride took forever... Although I knew that the cemetery was only two hundred or so years old, and that it is still in use, I expected it to have some interesting, "European" looking sections that would speak to our idea of frightening old cemeteries once we got there. No, the cemetery looked modern, even more so than some American cemeteries, and brightly colored silk flowers were everywhere. This was a surprise for me. Other than the dramatically tall, straight lines of cypress trees along the four main paths, the only evident interest the cemetery offered to tourists like us was its novel island location, and perhaps for Venetians this is exactly the way it should be. Can you image having to fight crowds of tourists all day in your city, then having to do it when heading to the very private space of a family burial sight? The island is very small and square, as you can tell from the picture, and would not serve well as a tourist attraction even without issues of private space and time, so just imagine the frustrations tourism would cause regular visitors. Such private areas, which may also include parks, campi, and courtyards must be preserved for Venetian residents, otherwise the people would have no outlets to become a community and maintain the truth of the city. I once saw a group of children playing soccer in a tiny courtyard right off a busy, touristic calle and they were able to play undisturbed because tourists rarely intruded on that space. Such a convenience would not have been available to those kids if there had been a significant work of art or architecture in that area. But I can see that happening. As people strive for meaning in life, they often find prideful satisfaction in associating their everyday existences with a name or event that others will envy, and in this way areas like the cemetery on San Michele could become areas of public spectacle rather than function. If, say, the cemetery were to acquire the body of a famous person, tourists would suddenly gain more control over the island and the Venetians would loose a very important aspect of their personal lives. So, I hope that San Michele remains uninteresting for the the purpose of preserving the space for a Venetian real.

After returning to Venice, or home, we stopped on Garibaldi on our way back to San Servolo to pick up pastries for our vampire themed Halloween party. So far, the day had been almost unnaturally calm and quiet. Our day trip had given us a significant break from the busy, noisy, crowded lifestyle we have adopted in Venice, and as it grew dark we were excited to really break away from the strangeness of being abroad by celebrating an American holiday in an American way. We walked into the pastry shop surprised to see trick-or-treaters, some costumed inadequately by American standards. The shop owner was doling out huge handfuls of wrapped chocolates, and we waited impatiently to buy "bombe" (unsure how to spell it), donut-like pastries, and ghost and pumpkin shaped cookies. Halloween isn't huge in Venice, and it was odd to see the Venetian interpretation of this American holiday. People along Via Garibali were dressed up in rather unimaginative costumes, witches, grim reapers, ect, that mimicked the black caped outfits worn during Venetian Carnivale, and the osterie, or small cheap restaurants, around the city did have decorations and even Halloween parties. As we found out in our pastry shop, kids trick-or-treat at shops rather than at private homes and I'm sure not everyone in the city realized that October 31st was special at all, especially all the European and Asian tourists. In Venice Halloween probably makes sense because of its similarities to Carnivale, a period in the Spring when people, mostly adults, wear masks and dress up, and to Saint Martin's day (11/11), a holiday in which children collect money in pots that they bang with wooden spoons. Their celebration of Halloween was different, and less probably "needed" due to the existence of their holidays, yet it was surprisingly here and very fitting. Seeing Venice like this was interesting, but we were ready to retire to San Servolo for a night away from Venice and Europe in general. We first created a miniature trick-or-treating course for Lorenzo, Professors Allen and Felluga's five year old son, who brought us special Venetian cookies as a surprise, then we settled in for our movies. It was a great holiday full of adventure and I am glad that I now know Burano, Torcello, San Michele, Venice on Halloween, and vampires.