Venezia, Italy

Venetian Pictureshow

It stands to be observed that there are no venetian blinds in Venice. I just wanted to get that out of the way.



Venice is ridiculous. I am utterly convinced that this is a randomly-generated town, dizzyingly dynamic in its design. It's as though someone took all possible path types, from grassy walkways to paved thoroughfares to cobblestone roads to dirt lanes, jumbled them up in a bag, and tossed them out into the lagoon. They landed arbitrarily, rolled around, settled into place, and were then connected by disjointed intersections, winding narrow passageways, and bridges ranging from ancient stone architecture to rickety metal sheets. That's Venice. That's the only way it could have come to be.



It all connects. It all seems to function. But it makes not the first steps of logical sense. You'll see something shiny a mere ten meters away, straight across a canal, and then spend the next twenty minutes attempting to reach it. You'll do your best to maintain a sense of direction. You'll even plot a little route on your "map" of Venice. You'll circumnavigate half the city just to cross the street - but you still won't reach the shiny thing. Fortunately, you'll soon be distracted by something else just as sparkly.

It's as though nothing really exists here unless it's right in front of you, and you keep watching it without blinking. Everything in the peripheral may as well be illusion.



Getting lost and finding one's way are the same thing in this place. Losing track of where you are is entirely inconsequential - you are effectively "lost" in the first steps you take off the Grand Canal. Sense of direction flies out the window, and landmarks don't even seem consistent when you double back. If you find something you like in Venice, you'd better enjoy it in that moment, because it won't be there when you turn around. It's like that final showdown scene in Labyrinth, and you're Jennifer Connelly. (I'm going to try to incorporate her into all my similes from now on.)



It's a city that caters perfectly to my wandering. Moreso, it's very easy to escape Tourist Hell in Venice (which is surprising, because the entire city seems to exist solely for tourists, to a painful degree) - just start walking and take two turns. You'll suddenly find yourself in solitude and silence.

It really doesn't seem real, most of the time. It's like walking through a pictureshow representing a city that once existed, rather than the city itself. Perhaps Venice is conjured by the visitors, existing for each of them in its own way, hanging onto ephemeral existence only because our footsteps still resound in its walkways. If everyone were to depart all at once, I suspect there would be nothing left to which they might return. The ghost of a dreaming city.



It's just an ever-shifting playground of sights and peculiarities, strange plays of light and architectural absurdities. It hardly feels like a city at all - just a swirling slideshow of somewhere that might have been. A memory whispered through a keyhole.

I leave before I wander forever through these shadowy corridors.