Thursday, September 21, 2006

venezian dreams

I woke up today and suddenly it's already my third day in Venice. No blog entries while in Paris as hostel hasn't got any Internet connection... I don't know where to start. Paris? Venice? Or simply type a rambling of what my heart feels right now...

What it feels is a sense of peace. Of calm. Of eternal wandering and never seeming to be lost. That's how it feels like too when I'm walking along the streets / bridges of Venice. The island is so contained that sooner or later you find yourself having walked a circle.

Where did I go? Where did I walk? To Saint Mark's Square of course. Can't see the bloody floortiles 'cos it's filled with bloody pigeons dead or alive. And then to Rialto where I sat sipping bloody expensive spritz. And then there was S. Polo, S. Roma, and other S's. I can't recall all of them now, but they all look alike.

They all look like the backyard of someone's home, which they probably are.

The busier, happening streets of Rialto pulled me taut on the first day. I wanted to check out what everybody was laughing gaily about. While today, I walked along the calmer streets of goodness-knows-what. Just walking around aimlessly, seagulls flying really really low above my head, with Zhi and Yang discussing the meaning of life, gelatos, and whether girls are just eternally unsatisfied.

Zhi and I headed back to our B&B early. Yang continued walking around on his own. In our B&B everyone else is still out (the other tenants are these Taiwanese boys... we discovered they were Taiwanese boys last night as we climbed the stairs to our attic private room and they had their room doors open... some of them were flabbily topless). I felt like we owned the whole house. For the first time since the start of this travelling stint I felt like I'm at home. It probably helps a lot that the B&B is in a residential area in Mestre.

Walking along the short garden path, the breeze lightly blowing against my cheeks, flicking my hair back, caressing me as if with wispy kisses.

And that was when I felt peace.

Yet I'm still looking for something... Something more. Something that tugs at my heart every single time I long for it. Yet I don't know what it is. The mystery sends a chill down my spine. I may never find it - the impossibility wilts my soul. Or it may be just around the corner - hope sings through my blood.

Tomorrow we fly to Rome.