top of page
essays | places
Italy
in one word: ciao
Burano, Venice / Italy · 2021 color corners
______
Ciao. If I were to put Italy and everyone and everything in it into one word, it would be ciao. But I would need to say it out loud and get the intonation just right, the melody of this nonchalant and sticky four-letter word. If you get the intonation right, ciao has the weight of a heavy dark-red wine. When you say it right, the texture is olive oil, and the consistency between al dente and cheese strings, and the color also cheese strings, white-yellow. Ciao is friendly, the C with arms wide open and the i winking, the a and o looking at you all googly. Ciao is yummy, and a loud kiss too. Ciao is a welcome and a goodbye, but a goodbye that is only ever a prelude to another welcome. Round around the edges and with a southern tan, ciao is beautiful, soft, and warm.
______
a glimpse
Burano, Venice / Italy · 2021 pink glitch
Burano, Venice / Italy · 2021 vaccinated with blue against the blues
Burano, Venice / Italy · 2021 flip, flop, flip, flop
breaking hearts since Shakespeare said so
_____
Verona / Italy · 2021 love in stone
He called their lazy human dominance and raised them an animalistic fierceness.
_____
Lake Garda / Italy · 2021 swan's lake
__________
places / stories
_____
Venice / When is Venice?
Venice / Italy · 2021 birthing boats
Venice / Italy · 2021 primary colors
When is Venice? Because it doesn’t look like it is now. It is a replica of a fairy tale and at least one hundred million stories old. I wonder how deep the water in the canals is, but I don’t want to look it up. Because I’m not sure whether I want it to be very deep or not deep at all. Every time I cross a bridge, I fantasize about plunging in, eyes first, to see what the water is burying.
Venice / Italy · 2021 water curves
You have to get lost in Venice for as long as you can. Bridge after bridge after bridge, always running in circles. Once you know every street and understand the ways of the maze, everything shrinks considerably, and it irks. Throughout the city, there are pedestrian highways that are understood, and everyone with a plan sticks to their loud fast lanes. All silence and secrets retreat into the musty alleyways.
Venice / Italy · 2021 please don’t sit here
An ambulance, a police patrol, a bus, a mailman, a bunch of teenagers borrowing dad’s ride – all of them boats.
Venice / Italy · 2021 water mail
Venice / Italy · 2021 everyone place
Venice / Italy · 2021 self-absorbed together
Burano, Venice / Italy · 2021 asymmetrical colors
Venice / Italy · 2021 brick window
Not much green, but more blue than anywhere else. The lagoon is salty, its islands sweet drops.
Burano, Venice / Italy · 2021 local alien
Burano, Venice / Italy · 2021 rainbow wave
Venice / Italy · 2021 aqua avenue
Venice is intense and you mustn’t overdose on it, so that you can come back for another hit.
_____
Verona / Love Plots and Knots
Verona / Italy · 2021 warm architecture
Verona / Italy · 2021 nearing night
How many real loves might have lived and died in Verona, where Romeo and Juliet’s is buried? Shakespeare eternalized Verona and now it must always exist lest the band between one man’s imagination and everyone else’s factualities be severed.
Verona / Italy · 2021 building along the bend
Verona / Italy · 2021 river blueprint
_____
Lake Garda / Pretty Pretty
Lake Garda / Italy · 2021 sunbathing in the lake
Lake Garda / Italy · 2021 the castle next door
Pretty pretty lake. Everyone wants it, everyone gets it.
Lake Garda / Italy · 2021 radioactive pool
_______
elsewhere
bottom of page