Fine by me

That same Venetian storm

It didn’t take me all that long to realize I was creating a problem. The tour members were not listening to Elizabetta, and she’s my favorite local guide in all of Europe. Apparently, the sight of their guide standing in the downpour, soaked through to the subdermal tissue, was distracting.

“No, thank you for the offer, really, but I don’t need to crowd under your wee umbrella with you, I’m fine out here.” What’s wrong with that answer? I didn’t get the reason, they didn’t get the rationale.

Venice wears water well

I don’t know if it’s my nature or my nurture, my aquatic affiliation or growing up in a drought, but I have no problem with being wet. At least, not when it’s warmer than frigid and I have the prospect of changing clothes within the next couple hours. This was Venice, African wind acquiring Mediterranean moisture to rain romantic drops of tangible Venetianity on my dry self. Warm water down the spine and across the mosaic. Drips off the ears of man and lion. The tickling timpani of tiny impacts on shoulder and canal. I loved it.

That monsoon on the edge of the Nepali jungle

So when it rains when I’m traveling, knock on dry wood, it’s not the biggest problem for me. In general. I do remember the Nepali monsoon that was so incessant, my bag began to mold and stink. And yes, I remember the Sri Lankan monsoon that was so profound that it left the skin of my thigh beginning to mold too. That was just gross. Let’s skip that story. Because there’s another advantage to rain. For photographers and romantics, anyway.

It’s clear as celluloid to me that Hollywood is off its rocker in a couple dimensions. Their assertion that women are not allowed to age, must look like Barbie and have just the right touch of insouciance to be sexy, but not enough intelligence to be scary, is friggin ridiculous. And we’re, what, a decade or two into the assumption that a man’s stomach should look like a topographic map of Colorado. But one thing they do get right: wet streets just look better.

Panama Dock

“Gee, fellow adapted-for-film character, I don’t remember it raining during any of the previous hours, but it sure is moist out here as we finish our conversation, and damn it looks good.”

So waking up this morning, after a surprisingly terrible night’s sleep, hoisting the blinds to find wet pavement outside my window, droplets clinging to the austerity of a Japanese maple in winter, I feel immediately relaxed. This cup of tea is suddenly pure ambrosia, and yes, yes I will take the fuzzy slippers today.

Happy rinsings to all of you, and may that next good book be close at hand.

I thought it was just a photo

I wasn’t expecting a lesson in male privilege. I thought I was just decorating. But one of the candidate photos was from a late night wander through September streets of Venice, complete with its ancient arches, golden light, and salt-faded nostalgia for an age that might have been greater, must have been horrific, but undeniably had flair. It’s not the most interesting photo, but I like the reminder of that unique city after dark, the quiet shifting of its sirocco air, and the sense that you’re seeing Venice itself wake up after the humans have gone to bed. The question was with human silhouette, or without?

It’s not a very romantic silhouette. If a woman in a gown had been walking home, that would have been better. Or a gentleman, paused with the yellow light on the brim of his fedora. This was some schlub with a daypack and an awkward gait. Hardly romantic, just right place right time.

So I posed the question to my lady. “What do you think of this one?” I gave her a moment to look. “And with the figure, or without?” I clicked over for comparison.

Bangkok was at its best after dark

Normally her first response to these questions is pursed lips of consideration, but this time she flinched. “Oh no, those are creepy.” I was flabbergasted. How so? They’re sepia-textured memories, or tilting recollections, maybe boring, but not creepy.

“No, they’re definitely creepy,” she informed me. “They’re walking home alone at night through empty streets with lots of dark doorways and alleys, hoping you get home safely.”

Because why not wander the closed market of a border town?

When I walk around a city late at night, as I love to do, and pass a darkened doorway, my thought is probably “Is there a photo here?” if I notice it at all. I don’t think “Is there someone in there about to jump out and attack me?” No one wants to live in fear, but choosing not to is much easier for me, through no effort of my own. The stakes are just lower. If I’m wrong? I lose my camera. Maybe a black eye. I am not forced to confront the thought that the very sanctity and safety of my body might be taken from me, by a monster that actually exists.

Okay, Havana is safer than my kitchen, but still.

The difference between my lady’s perspective of that midnight street and my own was a shock. But that’s the problem, the disparity is so...quotidian. Ubiquitous and insidious. I try to be aware of my privileges, in the hope that awareness is an important step towards extending them to everyone, but the manifestations are sneaky and constant.

So did I print the photo? No. I don’t need to post an image of menace in my everyday life. But I do hope I can take the lesson, repeated as often as it takes, that we have not yet reached our goal.

Step by step.

[Did I post too late on Friday? It's here.]

There's something about Venice

Venice was after a quiet quarter eternity crossing Croatia and Slovenia. On the cliffs of Kotor and alleys of Piran I was stunned speechless, which was fine since there was no one there to hear my awe anyway. Perhaps my first, perhaps my worst, and nearly the only conversation was with the Australian I'd courted through the lanes of Ljubljana. Her laughing eyes had gone pensive when she asked me to help her pick out a present for her boyfriend in Prague.

“You have a boyfriend?” I asked, consternation and sad irritation.

“Well, not really a boyfriend, no. Just a guy I’m kinda into. But he’s kind of a jerk. And he’s ten years younger than I am. And he’s more into my friend than me.” And I was ready to scream.

So back into the solitary wandering of off the beaten path, until I reached Venice, and a hostel somewhere in the labyrinth of Dorsoduro, where I had just the one oddly shaped dormmate, of drooping disposition and uncertain provenance, his only utterings such indiscernible mutterings that I couldn't even listen for an accent.

"What's that, my perhaps German friend? Say again, you maybe-Englishman? Did you know I'm going insane right now? That I talk to myself, and can't quite tell when the monologue is internal or external?" I had a surplus of myself built up inside, seeds of speech sprouting despite the infertility of an absent audience, so the lasting impression I had of Venice was a labyrinth where my mind had fuzzed away from full coherence.

“Venice?” I would have said. “Sure. It’s…Venice. Yeah, you should go, just to see it. Whatever.”

But this chance to be a guide took me back there. To the Austro-Hungarian causeway, where I felt my skin prickle as the lagoon opened up before us, where boats and history swirled and breathed. I was back, with a busload of humans labeled clients but defined as friends, and I would have no time for useless wandering, no luxury for blurred brains, and any word I made was likely to be heard and noted by the alert minds of my companions. And Venice itself? It was there, present, visible in a way I hadn’t been ready to see before.

Now I had no interior fog to obscure the columned balconies of ancient homes, no haze to hide the green appeal of winding waterways, and no fugue to muffle the drifting lyrics of gondolieri somewhere around the bend. I was left, bare and aware, vulnerable to the romance of Rialto and saturated memory of San Marco, where history washes around the walls that inspired Napoleon on the echo of the campanile bells.

This job, this opportunity, is a gift. To see past places in the mindful present, new things with avid eyes, and the traces of my past wanderings from the balcony of my present.

Venice? There’s something about Venice. See you there.