Florence my life partner, Venice my love affair.

carnevale, an homage to the world. farewell to meat, exploitation and love of life’s luxes. barons and cash money millionaires of 1500’s venice called their city to don masks, that venetians may make love to any person of any class without consequence. equally good, equally bad, equally coveting the same thing. human fun and folly. let the tradition ever continue, cin cin! Auguri! (happy everything).

a celebration of colour, sex, disguise, mischief and dreams. WORLD-ON-ECSTASY celebration. while mozart’s wife, a family of tigers and leonardo davinci are dancing in san marco, countless casanovas wander windy streets silently with their busty louvers on their arms, gliding like ghosts. moderation in moderation. inherent sin and show-off grandeur.

arabian facades and untamed decrepitness refer truthfully to shakespeare and his cohorts that wrote of the trickery in the old stones. venice, designer of the rich and famous- who now lets everyone join. you can ride its universe RIGHT at the moment it moves through your bones. but you may forget everything you know about europe as you see the head of the grand canale welcoming infinity and its clouds into the city.

venetian home doorways open to canal waterways. what if you have no boat? how deep will you fall? i love water because it terrifies me just as well. nowhere to start or finish, getting lost on the island is impossible and inherent. there is no time to be serious when your city is drowning. old-as-time-and-in-costume signores stumble out of morningtime belini bars. ask the polizia for laws on drinking in public, they will kindly show you to the market to buy a vino rosso.

venice is everything at the same time.

senses aligned, so exponentially heightened-

that they have disappeared like people’s faces

filling dreams and nightmares.

like a one-night-love-affair with casanova- his city gives the dazzling attraction of the lump sum over what is more regularly doled out in a lifetime of installments.

under the procuratie nuove in piazza san marco (marble arches, iron and orb lights) you will find the triumph of venice, the Florian Caffe of 1720, where men of letter and of art convene over earl grey and tartuffe. lord byron, and goethe himself as patrons. us proletariats become kings by sitting in the state tea room with menthe linen walls and hand carved darkwood marble tables, and our own silver tray of treats. visit and wear your fanciest velvet and fur. put on your best face-of-a-poetry-ambassador even if wine has made it smile like a clown all day. preserve venezia just as the romantics lived it, and intended for us to as well.

in venice, be a fortune hunter.

cover you eyes if you want to,

because there is everything else to do but see.

and there is everything to see.

casanova, king of italy.

cultivating whatever gave pleasure to my senses was always the chief business of my life, i never found any occupation more important. feeling that i was born for the opposite sex of mine, i have always loved it and done all i could to make myself loved by it. giacomo casanova, venice 1780

pencil drawings of marble sculptures: unidentified woman; Slaves by Michaelangelo; Galleria Dell'Accademia, Firenze (because the accademia is my next-door neighbor)

the antique gold elephant

is the best piece of gold i found ponte vecchio window shopping.

waffle, nutella, and panna alltogetherlikebutta in hand.

new red lipstick!

and a whiter shade of pale.

love letters-

words of love implied, not boldly proclaimed.

samples of the perfumery's musk scents for my bedside table.

vino rosso for breakfast, photos of louvers for lunch.

drawing David's ass.

(the best valentines day there was)

happy valentine's day.

what feels good, is good.

tell me what makes you drunk right now.

Il faut être toujours ivre, tout est là ; c'est l'unique question. Pour ne pas sentir l'horrible fardeau du temps qui brise vos épaules et vous penche vers la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.

Mais de quoi? De vin, de poésie, ou de vertu à votre guise, mais enivrez-vous!

Et si quelquefois, sur les marches d'un palais, sur l'herbe verte d'un fossé, vous vous réveillez, l'ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue, demandez au vent, à la vague, à l'étoile, à l'oiseau, à l'horloge; à tout ce qui fuit, à tout ce qui gémit, à tout ce qui roule, à tout ce qui chante, à tout ce qui parle, demandez quelle heure il est. Et le vent, la vague, l'étoile, l'oiseau, l'horloge, vous répondront, il est l'heure de s'enivrer ; pour ne pas être les esclaves martyrisés du temps, enivrez-vous, enivrez-vous sans cesse de vin, de poésie, de vertu, à votre guise.

"You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

Charles Baudelaire

i do not speak or pronounce a lick of french. nor do i like french fries. (though french kissing is perfect). but these french words make me drunk right now.

this is how you feel in florence...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr_MJAOyOeU&feature=related

...or any other place you are, too.

La Giostra, the carousel.

the best things in the world happen early in the morning. {but really, think about it...}

the only thing calling for my departure after 3 hours spent with my dinner at the tiny, haunting lair of La Giostra was the now-almost-nothing candle stick on my wooden table with mismatched tablecloths, and the tin holder brimming with its hot wax.

it was the secret of Via de Benci, with no sign to speak of. my head could touch the facade of the tiny doorway that we had guessed would open to the ristorante. greetings with a sparkling bianco, old photos of Chef Tonarelli and the Boss (the Bruce Springsteen Boss), community wooden coat racks, and thousands of strands of christmas lights. snow on the ceiling.

La Giostra's building has lived for 400 years, housing an old merry-go-round from a piazzale (no wonder it is magic), until years ago with the Hapsburg Lorena Princes. they were bound to the recipes of their heritage, as their grandmother showed them what she called "the big magic" in food. they coined their own tastes and named la Giostra, paying homage to the quaint ruggedness of its history...

"the sciences are not like Minvera, that came out of Jupiter all armed, they are daughters of time."

food should reflect the feelings posessed by the instant. yet history's most perfected combinations at the same time. just like how everything is most ripe, prime. nothing should be tipica.

Ubaldo Tonarelli is to his chef-hat and tinsel-white hair as his son The Prince is to thousands of worldtravelled peuter bracelets and bone necklaces around him. they bring one plate at a time from the steamy kitchen. freshness that tricks you into thinking you are eating something still cooking in the oven. like making a birthday present for your mama and finally giving it, beaming more pride for your talent than the Jayhawks. Ravioli di Pecorino Toscano e pere Williams. smells enough to satisfy hunger, of pinching butter, watermelon and chives. Sheets of cream-thick early-morning crafted pasta like cashmere blankets holding the pearbutterpecorino babies.

i have never known what spending time on taste is like.

Grazie mile, Prince. ---"Preencessa, Prego Mile... my love..."

florentines of all kinds. hippies from it's Haight and Madame Butterflys with their louvers and fur. all in subdued merriment defined only by a Brunello. merriment you could only imagine to be soon followed by piano playing, wine and lots of loveandsex to be had all around.

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." -virginia woolfe

i find it almost impossible to penetrate authenticity with a camera lens. but i will try next time i am at la giostra, i will get a photo of the prince and his bones and bracelets, pear and pecorino. until then, found snapshots of the lovers lights.