Christmas...

In Venice for Christmas.

Beautiful and cold day, ice blue skies, sun shining, if low in the sky, and Venice very empty at 9:15 AM as we left home for church. Waterbus was vacant, stroll through an empty S Marco Square. We left church at 1 PM (yes it was a long service as the Metropolitan was presiding and, among other things, the parish priest read the Patriarch's Christmas message in both Greek and Italian with each reading taking 15 minutes, Holy Cow!). Nevertheless, the Good News is "Xristos gennatai doxasate! Christ is Born! Glorify Him!" 

TheTemperature in church was about 5°C lower than outside. Outside was 6°C. But we are used to that, I wearing longjohns, Laurie her fur. So when we exited we discovered that Venice had filled up during the preceding three hours especially with Italiani here for the day and also with thousands of Japanese.

While on the waterbus home up the Grand Canal we saw a number of gondola convoys packed with Japanese, some with "singing" gondoliers. Yikes, being in a gondola with a wind whipping across your face on a freezng day listening to that. As we passed the Japanese flotilla, the Japanese all waved to us on the waterbus. This waving business is beloved of Japanese. I would guess it's the need to be recognised as being here. Similar to the Japanese incessantly requesting that their pictures be taken before well known monuments or signposts. It is one's attempt to place themselves, to overcome the estrangement and homelessness of man in the 20th century. As the American novelist Walker Percy suggests, it is a signpost in a strange land to fix their existence.

Last night (Chrismas Eve) dinner at sculptor Joan Fitzgerald's Fenice apartment. Other guests were  Jerret Engel and Cort Tramontin who make documentary films and are in transit to New York from the townships near Capetown. Also there was Alan Benjamin, Venetian resident, man about Venice, ex New Yawk. Chef Mauro Stoppa from Certosa (in the lagoon) made some scrumptious fish courses, all former residents of the lagoon itself. Thank you Joan and Mauro.

Went to midnight mass at Santo Stefano on the way home. What a dreary affair: terrible organ playing, no singing, inaudible prayers, temperatures at 4°C, no joy, underdressed (from a fashion point of view) parishioners, rote prayers and responses. Nothing like St Ignatius Loyola on 84th Street, St Pat's, Farm Street, or even St Francis de Sales on East 96th Street.

Sculpture by Joan Fitzgerald.

Happy Christmas, All!  (PS, grandson to the right...)