Threatening to Be Swallowed

On my last day in Venice back in April, I accompanied Cousins A. and K. to the train station and saw them off since their train was leaving a few hours earlier than mine. Afterwards, I decided to kill the time by taking one last stroll through Venice.

Since I had already seen the main tourist attractions, I took a walk toward a part of town I hadn't seen yet. It only took me 20 walking minutes to get there (Venice is really small!). The neighborhood was REALLY quiet. I came to a fairly wide canal, but there was as little traffic on it as there was on the sidewalks.

During the next five minutes or so, I strolled along the canal out toward the open water. So calm and quiet.

Suddenly, though, a booming sound came from the end of the canal back toward the center of town. As I stood there peering that way, a fairly large and very nice boat (definitely a rich boy's toy) came around the corner of the canal and headed in my direction. And the booming just got louder.

As the boat came nearer, I recognized the song: "Pokerface" by Lady Gaga. It just got louder and louder, so much so that it seemed to shake the buildings lining the sides of the canal. As the boat passed me and headed out toward the open ocean, the song's "PAH-PAH-PAH-PAH" and "MAH-MAH-MAH-MAH" lyrics filled every last ounce of spare air along the canal.

At first, I thought "What a disgrace!" But, then, on second thought, I thought "How apt!" After all, Venice has always been a major party city, in fact, probably the biggest one in Europe for a couple of centuries there. Anybody who was Somebody came here to shake their booties. This was the universal center of glitterati and paparazzi of that era. Cutting edge music, art, fashion, architecture, literature, etc., had its roots here. Capitalism was in a very healthy state.

It was a place where everyone lived for the moment and enjoyed every second of it. This only makes sense because people who were merely looking for community would have been the last to invest their hard-earned money here. This has always been a city that has been under constant threat of being swallowed up by the sea at any time. The highest point of ground in town is, after all, only about a foot above sea level. Here today. Gone tomorrow.

So I smiled and enjoyed every brash moment of "Pokerface" until the boat reached open water and headed away. Those folks way back then were truly onto something!