Between the stories - The voice of Venice

Neon-light artwork by Maurizio Nannucci (2003), @ Peggy Guggenheim Museum.

The world is under testing...

The Brexit, the most fresh US election, the ongoing refugee issue, the war in Syria... The old stories we hold on to seems no longer prevail. The new story is yet to be born. "We are in between the stories", as Thomas Berry (an Eco-theologian) once said...

For my 40th birthday, I took a trip with my family to Venice. There, with no cars on the street, no high skyscrapers in sight, no noises nor pressure, the time seemed to slow down...and the "timelessness" start to debut.

With the camera as my tool and intuition as my compass, I zigzagged through the maze-like Venetian streets. Slowly voices start to emerge from the little details that captured my eyes, I call it the voice of Venice. A voice from a changing place, at changing time, with changing thoughts, toward the changing future...

Venus on the lion statue (united in one side, defeated the other) in honour to King Victor Emmanuel II for united Italy.

Near the Sr. Marc square, the Emmanuel II statue is safeguarded by two sides of the bronze sculptures: one side the defeated and oppressed Venice, depicted as a fallen yet determined woman holding a broken sword, with the lion of St. Mark covered in the chains of Austrian rule. On the other side there is a free, independent and united Venice. The lion of St. Mark has broken through the chains and in its best roar with freedom.

So I ponder: If the war is inevitable, and the longing for freedom is universal, what kind of defeat and transformation we must go through to welcome the next unity, freedom and peace?

StartFragmentMasks are centuries-old tradition, and the major ornament of Venice. The masks served once as the important social purpose - that is to keep every citizen on a equal playing field by hiding the wearer's identity and social status. For with no faces, everyone had equal voices. Yet later the mask has been misused for other illicit or criminal purposes. Therefore its use is reduced to only carnivals.

Ironically despite the purpose to hide the real identity, masks often took over and become the identity of the wearers. It is associated with "persona" in psychological terms. Just like power figures we see in political world. Aren't they wearing the Venetian masks? Aren't they trying to put the most splendid masks on themselves and portrait the most ugly and terrifying ones for their rivals? And for audience, it's harder and harder to tell what we see is true face or merely illusional masks. It's good to be reminded about the original moral of the masks. Use them with caution and purpose, yet remain detached to be true to ourselves and be kind for others.

Venetians put a lot of details into their doorbells. Among all different types, I was particularly captured by these ones. They look like the Gargoyles of Norte Dam. You ring the bell by pulling those heads. Gargoyle protects, by scaring away the evils.

Studying those tongue-stretching figures, I can't stop wondering: are their face intending to frighten or merely trying to mock? As centuries of the days and nights gone by, they must have seen millions of by-passers: The adults, the children, the rich, the poor, the beautiful, the ugly, the kind, the cruel, the joyful, the sad.... what kind of "truth" is in the eyes of those Gargoyles?

This is my favourite. A small saint statue on top of a door is accompanied by a live pigeon at its foothold. The words came immediately up in me are "Hope and Faith". Then I got a bit confused. What is the difference between the two? The web dictionary says: "Faith is grounded in the reality of the past when lays hold of the present; hope is looking to the possibility of the future. Without faith, there is no hope, and without hope there is no true faith. Faith is the servant and server of hope".

I must admit that I am still not very clear with the distinction, and I shall leave to the eyes of the beholder to figure out who is faith and who is hope in the picture. But one thing is for sure: my love of this image comes from my imagined relationship between the two, and the "human touch" of the halo of the saint made from a electric wire...

When we first arrived at the St. Mark Square, it was a giant pond. The full moon (and the closest to the earth in so many years) had apparently pulled up the tide so much that the whole square was flooded with high water on that particular day. In all the wet chaos, all travellers that temporarily lost orientation quickly grasped the implicit order: Some bought plastic bags and started to "skim" around the water square. They seemed to have much fun about this unique experience. Many others walked on the wooden-box built bridges like ants orderly moving toward the joint destination, forming a scenery on its own. All are the part of the whole. The lead and the follow alternate. The dark force has created hurdles but also opportunities for new way of moving.

The next day, when we pass by the square again, the water is on its way exiting through the drains in the ground. The square therefore is covered by the moving water in swirls here and there. I remembered the Chinese saying from the Book of Change (I Ching): "The nature's law of change, the movement in cycles... Even the darkness has its dark ending".

There will be a moment when light is returning. Before it will happen, let's hope. And when it happens, we have faith.

StartFragment

A few leaves stuck around on a tree at the entrance of the Peggy Guggenheim museum. A sentence is whispered into my ears "Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" This last sentence of Percy's poem I learned first time in Chinese, it was equally beautiful.

I guess, a small yet big voice in me is saying, taping into the wisdom of my ancestors, that the nature always follow its magnificent cycles: day night alternation, season's shifts... So long we can imagine what is about to happen and be ok with it, so long we believe that our next story shall be built upon the full experience of the present one, we live our inner peaceful truth, which is connected to faith, hope, and our creativity in dealing with the changes.

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Ode to the West Wind

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 - 1822

... ...

StartFragment

V

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

EndFragment