Writing Venice
Words have energy, and energy goes on, and on, and on.
Nicky Morris
Venice was always something of an unclear edge; a floating landscape of shifting borders. Arriving there, I discovered I was not on terra firma. It was some other kind of landing entirely, and I was totally unprepared for it.
When my husband and I decided to visit Venice for the first time a few years ago, I realized that I wasn’t certain where it was. If you had asked me to point it out on a map I would have struggled. I knew the clichés of course: the gondoliers and the carnival masks; but Venice itself was something of an unknown quantity, and though the maps gave me some coordinates, they didn't give me any handles. Venice seemed to exist without whereabouts, I wasn't even entirely certain whether it was a city or a country. If pushed, I may have said it had something to do with Italy, but it wasn’t established in my mind as being Italian, in the way Rome was. Venice seemed strangely unmoored, belonging only to itself, and whatever that self was, its essence, for me, at least, was unlocatable.
We had arranged to stay in a hotel on Sant'Erasmo, one of the lagoon islands. So, after arriving at Marco Polo Airport we took the vaporetto straight there, and spent our first day enjoying the quiet pace, and natural surroundings of this agricultural island. After breakfast on the morning of our second day, we boarded the vaporetto again, bound for the city of Venice.
Disembarking at the Fondamente Nove, there was something of a momentary collapse. I’d taken only a few steps along the quayside when the world fell away, my knees buckled under me, all the strength left my body, and I crumpled onto a nearby mooring bollard for support. There was nothing in my awareness but absence, and this absence, or emptiness, was also, simultaneously, a bewildering fullness. It was as if I’d just come back to life after having been dead for centuries. Tears were rolling down my cheeks, and I was drinking in joy and relief like someone parched.
After what was probably only a few seconds, I noticed my husband standing near by, obviously wondering what had happened to me. I opened my mouth to reassure him I was OK, but found that my tongue wasn’t working; no words were coming out. I was just gasping, like a fish suddenly taken out of its element.
Gradually, strength began returning to my body. I gathered my senses, stood up, and took a few cautious steps along the quayside, all the while noticing my mind scrambling to make sense of what had just happened. Nowhere I’ve visited before has ever had such an impact, and some part of me was now desperate for explanations. What exactly was the substance of this shift? How could I so suddenly and spontaneously have been emptied of all content?
First, I wondered if perhaps what I’d experienced was something like the Stendhal syndrome; that strange aesthetic sickness some people get in Florence. But it was too early for that. We’d only just arrived in Venice, I hadn’t yet seen any of the glittering palaces, priceless art works, or sublime sculptures which are said to bring on that state. I also wondered if my imagination had been overstimulated by what I’d just been reading. John Julius Norwich's book on the history of Venice was a spectacular accomplishment; maybe I’d somehow come under the influence of his inspiration. Alternatively, maybe I’d stepped into a boundary zone, some kind of mysterious, timeless ‘thin place’.
After a while, my interest in explanations faded. There may have been some truth in all of them, but none of them really accounted for that stunning, all-pervasive emptiness. It also occured to me that perhaps explanations were nothing other than the mind’s way of coping with the shock of its own absence.
The experience had passed, as all experiences do, and I was tempted to leave it at that. But the moment had left impressions which still resonated, and I continued to wonder about it. Even back home in Amsterdam, I could still sense echoes of that profound happiness lingering like a fragrance at the edges of consciousness. Although I didn’t understand this, I could definitely sense it, and I turned to writing as a way of trying to absorb myself in the essence of it.
Writing has long been my way of processing and digesting experience, but in this case I was hesitant, wondering about the wisdom of trying to write from such an unclear edge. Can the ineffable be put into words after all? Despite my doubts and reservations, I knew I had to give it a try. I also knew that allowing the memory of that experience to dissolve into the creative, contemplative flow of life today would mean trusting myself to the writing process more completely than I’d ever dared before.
Over the months and years which followed, the process which grew into this essay became more like a deep listening exercise; a kind of multi-sensory attunement. I seemed to be searching for frequency, pitch or range, much as singers calibrate their voice to a tuning fork. But what exactly I was tuning in to; and where the original sound was coming from, I had no idea.
*****
Listening-writing slows you down, like the practice of calligraphy. You enjoy the shape of each word, the flow of a line. You listen to the silence between words, pick up the pause, the pulse of the Still, and wait for a word to ring. You lay down your pen, roll your shoulders, get up out of the chair, stretch your back, and then, just as you walk round the table towards the kitchen, you notice some words arising: Enjoy the relishing!
These words don’t come from mind or from thought; they have nothing to do with pen, paper, desk or computer. They are so subtle they pass almost unnoticed, but they catch your attention, like a sparkle on water. You feel comfort in them, and your eyes fill with tears. You let them know that you receive them; you keep them company, and you thank them for coming. Tears are the sign. Defences have fallen; you breathe more easily.
Words find a way out through the body in their own time. Whether singer or writer, you find your range, your pitch. You can only truly voice what you most truly are. Slow down. Get up from the desk, water the plants, take a shower, and let words rise from the confluence. Relishing comes from being at rest! Go back to the pause. The silent stop. The empty Still. Revel in the buoyancy of forgetting your lines. Writing is for savouring; for being timeless, each moment.
*****
Places have the power to pull you in. Venice reaches in deep, and ripples out far. You are not the first to have lost your bearings there, and you certainly won’t be the last. You sensed its air of placelessness even before going there, but what you didn’t know is that you were looking into a mirror. What met you there was your own essential placelessness, and before you knew it, you were floored, speechless, soaked in delight! You have to admit it. You too are sprung from the sea: formless, timeless, and far less solid than you think!
The frequency of happiness is always available, and the nervous system is always longing to tune you in to it. Arrival on holiday helps clear the bandwidth of static. Your habitual thoughts and worries haven’t yet caught up with you. The vaporetto carries you. You are rocked, lulled, and lapped into a deeply receptive state. Travelling across that desert-like expanse of translucent lagoon water you come under the influence of extraordinary properties of light. You are absorbed into an immense reservoir of electrical energy. Tension is released, more subtle signals are received. The city swims, sings, washes you up in a wave of colour and sound. Relieved of the burden of having to make yourself up, you are simply, naturally happy.
Writing Venice is a being hereness; a great sound, re-sounding. Sensing the city, you write about love. Sensing the city, you are love. The source streams in on a tidal flow, irresistible to itself. The body resonates. The void isn’t empty; it is pure aliveness, more fully ‘you’ than any other you you’ve ever known. Being, is a light infusion.
You are the paradise you thought you had lost.
Enjoy the relishing!
*****
Acknowledgements: This essay emerged partly through my acquaintance with Focusing. I would like to thank Ann Weiser Cornell for helping me locate Eugene Gendlin’s reflections on the contentless “I”, and also Serge Prengel for his relishing of the Active Pause.
