”Two Perfect Nights” - Last Notes

I don't know where to start. Last night I had a very vivid dream that I need to talk about with my therapist. Tonight I had a fabulous meal at Cafe Nabucco.

Milano has a very different tempo from Venezia. Here the cars and scooters travel at unsafe velocities, running red lights and even weaving through the traffic that has right of way. The last three days had been a quiet paradise in comparison.

The meal at Nabucco is always excellent - so excellent that I walked the 45 minutes each way to get there twice (back to back). Today my waiter was that rare breed of hunk-o-saur that's officially been declared extinct. At the end of the meal he plied me with free grappa. After downing that grappa I wasn't the same controlled man I try to be. I just wanted to put my hands on that youngster. "Don't do anything embarrassing, don't do anything embarrassing." The grappa was very good. If luck holds out I'll be able to get the bottle to the office for another grappa tasting.

The meal at Nabucco is always the same for me - grilled vegetables, the fabulous stuffed squash florets, and whatever the veggie special is. Today the special was a risotto with alba truffles. Yummmmmm! And then the dessert! (Yes, I guess I was doing anything to keep talking to this waiter.) The waiter listed deserts, puffy fluff this, tiramisu that. Like get to the good stuff will you? So then he offers me two chocolate items last. All the deserts are homemade. I said I would take the chocolate dish the chef thinks is best. I waited and waited. What gives... I thought the chef had already prepared the thing in advance? Well the chocolate pear pie had to be re-heated, and this being Nabucco, I guess the nuke was not an option.

Oh yes, why did I get grappa? Well it wasn't really the hunk waiter that gave me the grappa, the shop owner offered me the grappa when he heard me turn down the waiter's after meal coffee offer. You see the owner has seen me come around before, and there's always some story happening when I'm there. The alley Nabucco is on is a pedestrian mall with she-she shops and what not. Last time there were turf wars for concession stand space controlled through the black and Indian "mafia". Tonight the owner got all upset from some woman who was passing by and wanted something for free and when he didn't give it to her she was giving him the what for. Meanwhile the restaurant next door is always trying to lure away their clients. They (the other restaurant) now have a true to life Italian stud standing out front of their restaurant. I guess he's officially a "host". He postures and poses and whispers at the women standing in front of Nabucco for them to come over to his place. I've never seen such strutting before in my life. I was very impressed with his body poses until I started eating my chocolate pear pie. Just as I put the first bite into my mouth he knocked a flowerpot (full of water) off the stand and into his shoes. He somehow lost his composure for a few minutes :).

So it's very silly stuff, but it's part of the atmosphere here.

I had wished to see the tarot card reader who told me I'd have an Italian boyfriend in a year (two years ago), but since it was Monday there weren't any tarot readers to be found. So much for this coming year's predictions.

The train ride from Venezia to Milano was packed full of people. For some reason there were lots of people waiting at the stops in a couple of towns, so much so that people with first class tickets were standing for over an hour in the hallway. (Oh that standing on the train can be the most awful thing in the world, especially if you don't know what to expect. My first trip here was about standing for 2 hours and 55 minutes in the first class cabin's hallway with people smoking all around me and only 4 hours of sleep for the previous 48 hours. Boy was that a miserable experience.) There were old people (well at least one business man who could have been my father) standing in the hallway this trip. I'm afraid to say that I didn't get up to offer my seat. I should feel guilty, but I don't really. Everyone was gambling that they'd get a seat instead of spending $3 for a guaranteed seat reservation like I - me, the foreigner - had enough sense to do.

So I only have a few minutes of time left, so I'll wrap up the perfect nights thing and head back to SF in the morning.

I've had this recurring dream about the black object that tries to get in my face, and last night the dream reversed the story. The dream was about someone who wanted my attention and lured me to visit him. (Only in retrospect do I know that it was the same visitor from past dreams. In this dream the narrator made it a point to say that the other person had tried to come to me several times and failed.) So in this dream that is about the dream I meet the character that I've been so terrified of before, not knowing that it is he, and not knowing to be afraid I'm the one who reaches out. I reach out with my left hand, just a finger or two and put it into his hand. Out from the point of contact was a vivid explosion of yellow marbled like ice cream with the tell tale deep black. It was amazing.

The odd thing is I don't feel afraid anymore.
Two perfect nights.

Ciao! Ollie

"OMG's Three Perfect Days in Venice" - Day 3

It was 8:49 AM.

I looked at the clock with some relief. The day's best train for a day trip to the Alps had left the station at 8:43. No longer did I have to consider going to the mountains, or staying here in town - it was now too late to do anything else but stay here. I had rushed around getting the schedule, eating a rushed breakfast, showering and organizing my wears. The mountains would be nice, but I had been planning on three days here. I was torn. But the reality of the moment was that I'd have frozen up there. It's cold down here in the valley. What would it be like thousands of feet up?

It was great that I got to stay in town. I saw things that I would have missed otherwise.

Early in the morning I came across a mother and her children on a morning walk. The kids had kitchen utensils, like a large wooden spoon and pots and pans and were banging them together making a non-rhythmic clatter. It would have seemed like a minor unique event, however just yesterday I saw a whole parochial school of children meandering through the crowds near San Marcos, all of them clanging away to their own beat. I don't know what the event is that they appear to be celebrating, but we need kids in our country to enjoy a similar experience.

As the morning walk continued, I marveled at how wrong the predictions for rain had been. Yet another perfectly clear day, with beautiful weather; nothing like the two out of three days of rain they had been predicting. Fine with me though. Then I started to notice people practicing for a race. Then there were more of them. No, they weren't practicing; there was a race happening as I was walking though the crowds. The race was one of those treasure hunts. They had to course through the throngs of tourists, weaving in and out though all of those lost women (yes and men, but the women have a way of just stopping in completely the wrong place). So imagine the lost sensation I was trying to express last night. All of those little alleys all-alike, and you're in an unmarked foot race competing with others while carrying a map around. The race's course weaved in and out of the same locations and squares several times, so you couldn't just follow someone else around, you had no idea if they were on the same leg of the journey as yourself. And the collisions! I got bumped several times. The alleys were only wide enough for two people in many places, not two people (one completely lost) and the runners coming from both directions. I thought this was some sort of crazy mistake, but the scarf vendor informed me that Venice is noted for its treasure hunt races. They are as crazy as San Franciscans. The race took the participants back and forth through the most heavily traveled portions of town...

Along the way I ran into an Indian restaurant. I'm glad I did because by the end of the day I was confident I wasn't having Italian food one more night. I don't know how they do it here. In the states we say things like, "Not Mexican, I just had that yesterday". Everything here is "Fruitta da Mare" this and "Fruitta Da Mare" that, What do they say here in Venice, "No octopus again tonight, let's have squid". And you'd think that the lonely Indian restaurant would have throngs of people waiting in line to have something other than pasta with seafood. Nope, the smoking section was completely empty, and I got a seat without waiting a second. (Even the fact that they had smoking and non-smoking is fairly unique. Last night the waiter was smoking away as he performed his duties, leaving the lit stub behind at the chefs counter during his runs to the tables).

And now finally it's night again. I've finally realized that the boy to girl ratio must be 10 to one or something around here, I think it explains a lot of what I've been seeing.

Tomorrow, it's time to go back to Milan, and this store is about to close for the night.

"OMG's Three Perfect Days in Venice" - Day 2

"Sir, Sir!", the loud English phrase breaking the tranquility of the lapping water (and the beauty of the red sunset against the Venetian skyline's silhouette). The English conversation continued with its strong southern accent: "Aint ya'll got no bags?" I turned to see a black woman questioning the postcard/scarf/sweatshirt vendor. Oh to be an American.

Today, a great big US flag was hanging down in one of the small quiet alleys I ventured into. On my plane ride here, there were two guys all dressed up in red white and blue US flag jackets and red white and blue baseball caps. I think they were Americans touring Europe. It's just a guess...

This morning started with the cell phone ringing unbelievably loudly. It woke my neighboring hotel mates. "Mr. Graves" the unwanted solicitation started. Due to satellite lag and my grogginess, I was talking when he was talking, and when I finally let him speak whatever he was trying to peddle, a loud tone rang through the earpiece until the phone line went dead. I woke again at 2 or 3 AM, then not again until deep into morning, getting up finally at 11. Three days of sleep in one night.

Once again, the day started with me wearing only the shirt & pants and everyone else bundled up like it was winter or something. It ended with me cursing the broken zipper, adding extra layers and buying a scarf.

I hiked as far away from the main drag as I could, walking, in parallel with it, to the east. Then I needed to find the bathroom and I was back on the main drag again. The signs to the WC took me so far away from where I had been planning on going I suddenly found myself at San Marcos and the request for a purse mentioned earlier. On the way back to the hotel I got really lost. I had been wandering all day without a map (yes I've been here that many times that I don't need one most of the times) but without the sun to give me a sense of direction, I found myself reappearing where I had been only a few minutes earlier. And when I'd look at my watch compass it would tell me I'm traveling south a few minutes after I had started off traveling north. I was so happy I wasn't trying to get anywhere in a rush cause it would have been frustrating. Instead I was having fun with how weird it was to find myself looping around after trying very hard to travel in only one direction.

"Ugh", "Ugh", "Ugh" the babies let out as mom bounces them down the stairs in their stroller at every canal crossing. It's cute. I don't know if they instinctively do it 'cause the air gets knocked out of them, or if it started with some adult making silly baby noises at the bridge crossings. The bridge crossings are part of the fun. Today I saw grown men pushing (well, "trying to push" is more accurate) each other over a bridge in a wheelbarrow. They were having a lot of fun. They changed pushers and then the other got to ride around through the next town square.

That's what's up with the men here. These visits to Italy started with a desire to visit my old house, but now it's changed. It's not really been Italy that I've been visiting it's been Venice. The boys are nice here. It's not just that they flirt that I say this. It's that they are genuinely fun loving. It's noticeably different than in other parts of Italy.

This morning the woman behind the counter put my pastry into the microwave to heat it up for me. I tried to stop her, but to no avail. Boy was I happy she didn't stop. In all of the cold air of the morning I had a 6" long warming pastry in my hands and hot sweet-sticky apple-paste-filling all over my beard, possibly getting more attention from those Italian boys than I had intended.

I'm not sure what's up with tomorrow. I've got a hankering to visit the Alps. They're only a quick day trip away by train. But then I won't get to enjoy Venice tomorrow, missing out on a walk to the place I had been trying to go today. We'll see.

"OMG's Three Perfect Days in Venice" - November 8th - 11th, 2002
(Photos from this trip have been posted on the web: http://66.36.170.133/travels/italy/2002/)

"OMG's Three Perfect Days in Venice" - Day 1

I had a choice for how to start this letter. "Three Perfect Days" has meaning, so far, however "God Damn It!" and "Where are YOU from?" are close runner-ups.

On the flight here to Italy, the Hemisphere's Magazine, which I normally ignore, had an article about Venice, entitled "Three Perfect Days". It's their esoteric rhetoric about the perfect places to stay and visit while on an esoteric three-day jaunt in Venice. I don't have time to go places just to try wines, like they describe, however they do mention places that have just opened after years of renovation, and great restaurants that have just opened a second storefront, and are therefore less heavily used. Ever since I saw that article in the airplane, I've been feeling like this was a trip that was meant to be (this trip is a three day visit to Venice).

Back in Washington Dulles, I discovered I had somehow wiped my cell phone's SIM card clean. That evoked a silent "God Damn It". I've had that phrase on my mind ever since. How did that get into my vocabulary? It's that South Park. I really like crazy fat ass and his (and his friends) constant need for explicatives. You are what you watch... In Dulles I saw John Ashcroft speaking during a live News Flash on CNN. I chose not to watch him.

When I got out at the airport, the air was a crisp 34°F. Snow was on the nearby Alps. Winter was already here in Northern Italy. One of the Italian women waiting at the downtown shuttle stop was talking about how "freddo" she was. I giggled 'cause she was all bundled up like a Russian in Siberia, and I was standing there feeling perfect without wearing my coat and with my sleeves rolled up. (I was almost there with my shorts on but had decided to change clothes so as to not make too much of a scene.) Tonight (12 hours later) the tide turned on me. It's so cold my face hurts. And to top it all off, my coat's zipper broke. This was another moment when Cartman's raspy voice would have wiled out another "God Damn It!".

At the train station everything was perfect. None of the confusion of the past trips (delayed trains, getting the wrong tickets, railway strikes, improperly validating the ticket, etc.) occurred. Even found a Eurostar seat that was less than the InterCity train's! What a deal! In the train station I had to drop some things off at baggage storage (instead of walking around with luggage for an hour). The inspector opened the bags and as he looked at my stuff he asked where was I from. I didn't feel like it was a question he asked everybody. He only asked it after he had seen the unusual assortment of stuff I had in my bags (no there wasn't "a dildo" vibrating in my bags).

Usually I travel with at least one hand free, but this trip has an extra component tagging along - a tripod. Somewhere between the heavy tripod the four varied power cords, and the suitcase's side compartment spilling over with Cliff bars the inspector's interest in my origins was piqued. Tonight would be a perfect opportunity to go to one of the well-lit churches, or Saint Marcos square and take night photos with the camera and tripod. But I've already traveled 1/3rd of the way around the world, and I don't want to go one more step east until tomorrow (I fell asleep over dinner and could pass out right now, but it's too early to let that happen).

Why was I thinking about the guy who was talking to himself in San Francisco Wednesday night? He was upset with me at the 33 Ashbury bus stop because my cell phone conversation was interfering with the argument he was having with himself. I think it was just the way Wednesday morning to this point (Friday night) feels like one long day divided up into long waking segments split by random naps here and there.

And why is the guy in the mirror shaped like Dr. Smith?

At the end of my dinner some youngsters from the US sat next to me. They were an Asian man/blond chick pair (how many of you are there in my mailing list?) so I had to say high to them. They're here as part of a three month trip around Europe. They're from West Virginia. They stayed at a monastery in France exchanging architectural restoration work for food and lodging (www.sabranenque.com). That sounded great. I had to say that this didn't sound like anything anyone from West Virginia I knew would do. She said, "Yes. My parents are very upset.".