bathtimejournals

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Poets

Mina Loy Muriel Rukeyser P.K. Page Dorothy Livesay

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Favourite Artists

Nikki de Saint Phalle George Maciunas

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I had devoured Giovanni’s Room on our first day in Venice. The next day I was left bookless. Though there are many days I don’t read, there is never a day I don’t have a book that I’m lugging around, or that lies tauntingly on my night table. Call it accountability, call it guilt, call it hipster signaling, call it the capitalist compulsion to order something on Amazon, call it whatever you want really. It’s my pet, my comfort object. I’ve given up vaping and my hands require a smooth square familiar object that represents social reprieve and externally identifies me as a sexy mysterious intellectual etc. 

One of Venice’s best qualities is its arrogance to such American conveniences as wheeled transportation and doorstep delivery. It seeds out the awful gauche tourists who rely on Uber and electronic maps to navigate European streets made specifically for strolling, judging and smoking. So while my family had grown utterly exhausted from this lifestyle of leisure and sulked home to snore holes through our linoleum AirBnb walls, I split off with a singular mission in mind. I took like a fish to water and dove into the nearest canal, with perfect form from my days of competing in diving contests adjudicated by my oldest cousin on hot summer afternoons. It turns out the pencil dive is much more suited to a body of water deeper than 4 feet, and so after a sprained ankle and a few shocked (admiring?) looks, I flounced out on the slimed steps and lounged on the Ponte to dry off, in a perfect leaned back mermaid posture. 

Once my pesky mermaid tail had shed and I had regained most of the feeling back in my feet, I set my sights on a book store that was supposed to have an English selection according to a quick Google search. I was still in high spirits, grateful for the ease with which I shirked off my family and had the afternoon to myself to feign melancholy, thoughtfulness, and exasperation, miming the Italian attitude. 

The first two bookshops I had pinned were simply non-existent, unless perhaps in a secret passage way that required me to tap three times on the third brick and wait for a pidgeon to poop on my hand. It was charming, in a way, that updating Google on the the coming and going of stores was not a priority. The pre-modern, village simulation was an uncanny. Yet I had an itching suspicion some devilish medieval sprite was playing a trick on me, because there was really absolutely no remnants of a store where indicated. The second time it happened I was left very untrusting of my phone’s directions, so I popped into a quill and stationary store to ask the clerk if she had ever known a bookstore to be right in front of her establishment. She nervously laughed at my predicament, and kindly directed me towards a bookstore that was supposed to have a few English books. 

Still hopeful, I continued on my mission and walked about 10 minutes until I arrived at the Libreria Alta Acqua. I might as well have stumbled upon the gates of heaven. There was a 6 foot stack of vintage tomes that looked like the kind Shakespeare might have written. Upon entry, my eyes ricocheted off of every surface so as to create a quasi stroke like effect. It was delightfully colourful, and with each new step, a gemlike book niche sparkled -- vintage Italian postcards, 1950s collage cards, bins of your uncle’s basement film photos, first edition comic books, records, movie poster matchboxes-- leaving me in a state snake charmers probably spent decades training to induce. I Though there were an abundance of lowlit dusty corners that any cat would sacrifice their 7th life for, the main salle orbited around a black Venetian canal boat that stored whatever couldn’t fit on the walls.

Not only had I found a shop that tickled everyone of my depraved senses, I tripped on an Italian version of The Little Prince, a childhood book that my best friend and I have always had a soft spot for. 

at the register... ozzy, bookmark

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We went to a restaurant in Tivoli that Patti Smith had visited in the 80s. This pasta was delicious, but the red wine gave me a headache. The air was heavy, like walking in knee deep water. A girl in the bathroom had on an all white skin-tight outfit, with 1999 in gothic letters tattooed over her ribcage. Her sheath of hair flew behind her, like a leash pulled taut when the terrier bounds away, slipping away from the swinging door just as it slammed shut. I couldn’t help but call her tacky to myself, but karma took care of my bitchiness when I looked in the mirror at my splotched complexion and bruised coloured eyes. It’s a funny feeling to be embarrassed in an empty bathroom, the mirror a constant threat to your private shame. I keenly fixed on washing my hands, but in the same rushed and hurried way I usually do. If I was quiet before, I was largely silent for the rest of the dinner, contributing only some cheerful comments about the food. The girl in the white catsuit threw her arm around our waiter’s neck, and kissed him five times on the cheek before falling into her long stride behind her boyfriend with a tattooed neck. The water had reached my ears at this point and I heard the rest of the night in faraway echoes. Walking to the car was sad, our last meal in Italy, a beautiful trip folded neatly in a silky cloth napkin. But not in a sad that it’s over way, more in a guilty relief that I didn’t have to speak anymore, when I knew opening my mouth would only fill it with more water. Climbing into the cool car with its plasticky leather seats evaporated the guilt, leaving only relief, everyone’s collective sigh blowdrying me down. My head was still slightly waterlogged I guess, because I barely complained about my dad’s absurdly jerky maneuvering of the soft stoned cobbled streets to get back to the hotel.