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.