Daily rhythms

Rowing lesson, trying to leave the dock.


Our door at the dead end.


Our room, 'Where's Louis' part two. The laundry rack isn't always there, but we moved it in for a dinner party.



Sketch from Campo S. Anzolo


Waiting at our vaporetto stop on the Giudecca.



From Saturday:

Things of the day: sensory experience is such a part of daily life here. After our rowing lesson, much more of a success than I had predicted, Jamuna and I walked in search of a couple of the campos she is doing a study on. On the way we stopped into a tiny paper and book store, the size of a closet with shelves of books up to the ceiling, postcards of line drawings, pens, journals, and paper. It was a sensory dream for me. After walking through San Marco's square teeming with tourists, we headed into the fancier part of town, and stopped into a bookstore down the street from Prada, where I found a tiny book of watercolor drawings of some of the lesser known buildings in Venice. Turning the corner again, I stopped to sketch part of the facade on the Santa Maria del Giglio just around the corner. It's amazing how things flow here: you can be in the busiest part of the city and feel totally overwhelmed by the energy of the crowd, then turn the corner and be encased in towering walls barely shoulder-width apart, entirely alone. You are constantly squeezed and released, both by enclosure and by energy.

And then there are the stores, all tiny pockets of their own unique experiences. We stopped into one store for pasta, the neighboring store for bacon, and around the corner for fresh cut flowers. There is an incredible wine store near our apartment where you can taste any number of the bulk wines that the shop owner has behind the counter, and when you find one you like, buy it for only 2 Euro a liter. The best part is that she fills up reused plastic soda and water containers, so we left with our arms full of plastic bottles of delicious wine for an unreal price. Just the experience of moving through the city is a delight to the senses: by the time we got home I felt filled to the brim with happiness, without an ounce of feeling depleted by my day or my travels through the city. What a change from the daily commute at home; everyday life is so rich here!