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.
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