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Monday, July 11, 2005

moments that take your breath away
That was a subject line/post title/whatever the kids are callin' 'em these days over at Sarah's home of bloggy goodness, and as soon as I read it, I knew I had to steal it. Because I'm like that. But really, I'm just trying to make it up to you for writing about my underwear earlier, so I thought I would try my hand at writing something, um, nice. I can do that sometimes. I think.

Actually, when I think about this, two specific moments spring to mind. My first thought is one that involves the look in this boy's eyes in the split second before he kissed me, and in that split second, I was nervous and excited and I knew what was coming and I was trying to delay the inevitable (and I was also talking complete nonsense about squirrels) and I was thinking and thinking and thinking about how life is such a funny thing, and then he did kiss me and I couldn't think anymore. But that's all I'm going to say about that.

Instead, I'm going to tell you a story about another breathtaking moment, one that is completely different from the one mentioned in the previous paragraph, but still ranks in my top five greatest moments of all time. It goes like this:

I was 20. I'd been in Venice for less than a week, and I was still kind of freaked out about the fact that I was going to be living there for the next few months. A few of the girls in my Italian class decided to go check out this Mexican restaurant called The Iguana (Italian Mexican food is an experience everyone should have at least once), and I figured I'd go along. As we walked, a street vendor with a bunch of roses approached me, put a flower in my hand, then asked for money. I didn't actually want the flower, so I told him I had no money, and he told me to take the flower anyway. We got to the restaurant, and ordered a couple of pitchers of strawberry margaritas. When they arrived, we discovered that they were little more than pink tequila. We were really hungry, and the food took a really long time, so we ended up getting really drunk. It was a good time. We talked, we drank, we laughed, we were weirded out by the food, which was good, but still. Weird. We walked around the city, and I discovered I was wearing the wrong shoes for walking around the city. My roommate Emily and I went to the other girls' apartment so I could borrow a different pair of shoes, and I ended up with Tracy's sneakers, which were half a size too small, but good enough, I thought. We went back out. Emily and Melissa met some gondoliers. We walked around some more. Our friendships were cemented. And suddenly, it was really late. We had class the next morning, and Emily and I lived really far away (or so it seemed at the time). So, we decided it was time to go home. And that's when the adventure began.

We waited and waited and waited for the vaporetto (the bus-boat-thing) for awhile, and finally decided it wasn't coming, so Emily figured we should just walk home. By this time, I was really tired, and the half-size-too-small shoes weren't doing it for me anymore, and I was getting just a little, oh, cranky, but I didn't want to sit and wait by myself, so I followed Emily towared the Accademia bridge and our apartment.

First of all, Emily is like a world-champion speed-walker, and I'm like, not. Second of all, my feet had been tortured all night long and after awhile, I started to fantasize about taking a nap on a bridge and catching up with her in the morning. We were kind of annoyed with each other and we walked and walked and walked and walked over bridge after bridge after bridge and the streets were deserted and I thought maybe I could get my feet amputated and have roller skates put in their place, and I was so tired, so very, very tired, and how much further could it possibly be? Our conversation was short and fast. We walked and walked and it seemed like it was never going to end.

Suddenly, Emily stopped. I wondered why, and I may have even asked, but then I caught up with her a couple of seconds later and knew the reason. There we were in Piazza San Marco, the place Napoleon (Bonaparte, not Dynamite) called the most elegant drawing room in Europe, and it was, in a word, breathtaking. History and marble and moonlight and starlight and the hushed singing of the Venetian lagoon in the distance. And not a single pigeon in sight (a marvel, to be sure). I felt small and reverent and amazed and grateful that everything in the world had lined up just right for me to be there at that exact moment. I don't know how long we stood there, trying to process the enormity of that moment (because right then, it was). Maybe a few seconds, maybe longer. I think we both remarked on how absolutely unbelievably beautiful what we were seeing was, but we may not have, I don't remember. I was alone and I was a kid and I had friends and I was a grown up and I was in Italy, oh my God, I was in Italy.

I don't know how else to describe it, really.

I walked through that square hundreds of times over the next few months, including several times at night when the place was deserted, and though it was always lovely, it was never quite so beautiful again.





posted by jamelah
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