Up until Venice,
getting lost had been Bill’s unique familial distinctive. Spatially challenged with a minimal sense of
direction, Bill had compiled a number of defining experiences (like managing to
lose his way on the final day of 4 years commuting to college) all together convincing
him never to consider wilderness guide as a career choice. Such incidences,
especially in his earlier years, had deeply troubled his dad – and why not?
Bill’s father, gifted with Leni Lenape Native American heritage, was accustomed
to disappear each November, often with Bill’s grandfather, roaming the
farmlands and deep woods around White House, New Jersey down near the
Pennsylvania border and living off the land during small game into large game season
until they could rumble triumphantly back to civilization with a buck tied
across both fenders of their hump-backed car. The family legend was that Bill’s
dad could be dropped into any woods and find his way home over the leagues with
the unerring accuracy of a faithful hound in a classic Disney movie. All that prowess was so evidently missing in
Bill that one day his exasperated Father took him to a crossroads and asked
which way they should go to reach a destination. Bill puzzled it over and made his
choice. His dad processed his unerringly and routinely wrong answer, regarded
him sternly for a long moment, and then issued these life changing words of
advice: “When you get to a crossroads, always look up and down both ways
carefully. See which way feels right to you. Then go the other way.” Ever
since, Bill has taken that advice to heart. One might say it is one cross Bill
has been forced to bear, when, of course, he can locate it…
Now, all this was
true until Venice. In Venice, he was
finally vindicated.
To keep the record straight, there have been places he and Aída have explored over the years that have been constructed to mystify invaders and leave even harmless sojourners with a sound sense of direction wandering hopelessly.
Pyrgos on the
beautiful Greek island of Santorini is one such labyrinth. Among the dazzling
white cities topping the high reaches of an extinct volcano, Pyrgos was constructed
intentionally as a maze to confuse marauding pirates and enemy soldiers who
soon became targets for the townspeople, crouching on the roofs above to rain
down stones or arrows or drop something unpleasant out the windows, as these erstwhile
victors turned victims, stumbling helplessly back and forth from street to
street. This and its sister cities are
strangely navigable to Bill. Our family rule is, if the roads make sense Aída’s
in charge, when they become confusing, Bill takes over.
Venice, however,
is something else entirely – a city where going around the block to intersect
with the street you just missed is beyond an option, because its thoroughfares
are not logically designed. Each street
or alley has its own trajectory and will not connect with another, despite what
the tourist maps claim.
St. Mark’s Square
provides the pool that visitors flow into over and over again. “All roads may
lead to Rome” throughout greater Italy, but not when one is winding around and
around and around in Venice. The main
spectacle one views in this city of a thousand jewelry shops is one’s map. Even
the pigeons appear to pause on statues’ heads, swiveling their necks nearly all
the way around, mystified at where the rest of the bevy might be flocking.
One reason why Venice
is so confusing is that it began as a refuge for Phoenicians in flight, hoping
the swamp would deter their enemies from further pursuit. It worked.
Apparently, their enemies looked down at
their boots, back up at the marshland, and figured with author of the
“Everglades” song (though yet to be born for centuries), that the “’skeeters”
would get them. We have no information on their speculation about possible
“gators.” So, now being the possessors of beach front property, such as it was,
the subsequent inhabitants began linking up the islands by waterways,
eventually agreeing with the sentiment of some African villagers that every
blade of grass should be banished from a village to prevent spirits bent on no
good intentions from lurking in the bush and bushwhacking unsuspecting
passersby. Of course, in Venice’s case, the substitution of cobblestone streets
was no doubt more intended to keep unsuspecting passersby from sinking into the
bog. But the result was the same. As the Greek islanders agreed: those who
can’t find us can’t hurt us.
Another reason for
the city’s meandering passages may be because of its amazing propensity to
attract first-rate artists so that the setting becomes in effect a great jigsaw
puzzle of art and crafts, and its government buildings and churches and
mansions and workshops and galleries mimic a huge installation of every
conceivable form of pictorial art, all jumbling together the classical, sacred,
secular, Christian, pagan, Moslem motifs, like a Titan child has tripped and
spilled creativity all over the city. Art now lies interspersed across ceilings
and walls and stairways: Jesus on the cross, hanging next to Paris carrying off
Helen, next to miniature models of minarets. On the streets the great, the
gaudy, and the ghastly compete, as sculptures of humans missing body parts carry
suitcases, while “authentic human bodies” provide a sepulchral incarnation of Leonardo
Da Vinci’s anatomical sketches. Missing, however, are grass and trees. The little there is in these prison-like
alleys of cobblestone and aging walls is locked away in Moorish fashion in the
inner courtyards of homes, or sealed off behind walls topped with broken bottle
shards. But the greatest works of pictorial
art still abound, so getting lost in this vast output of creation becomes a
kind of peripatetic art form of ambulatory discovery in itself.
So, rather than
sink in exhausted misery on the same piazza bench one has passed a dozen times
in quest of one’s lodgings, the best recourse for a lost tourist is to heed the
experienced words of Rick Steves’ guide to Italy:
Perhaps the best
way to enjoy Venice is to just succumb to its charms and blow a lot of money. Get Lost: Accept the fact that Venice
was a tourist town 400 years ago. It was, is, and always will be crowded. While
80 percent of Venice is, in fact, not touristy, 80 percent of the tourists
never notice. Hit the backstreets.
Venice is the ideal town to explore on foot. Walk and walk to the far reaches
of the town. Don’t worry about getting lost. Get as lost as possible. Keep
reminding yourself, “I’m on an island, and I can’t get off.” When it comes time
to find your way, just follow the directional arrows on building corners or
simply ask a local, “Dov’é San Marco?”
(“Where is St. Mark’s?”) People in the tourist business (that’s most Venetians)
speak some English. If they don’t,
listen politely, watching where their hands point, say “Grazie,” and head off in that direction. If you’re lost, pop into a
hotel and ask for their business card–it comes with a map and a prominent “you
are here.”[1]
Words to travel by, right there.
In a similar
manner, the Bible too assumes that at times we all get lost in life. Isaiah
tells us it’s a common human malady, especially spiritually, that “we all like
sheep have gone astray.” Like those whose maps have failed them, “each of us
has turned to his own way” (Isa. 53:6), and like tourists in Venice we wander
the darkening alleyways wondering if the darkness will fall before we stumble
onto our lodging. But unlike Venice where directions are often useless and the
experience of wandering itself is a pleasant past time, spiritual wandering is
not pleasant so the Bible provides helpful advice in finding one’s spiritual
way back home. What is the key guidance to get back to God? Isaiah concludes
his prophetic verse: “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” The Son
of God is the only sure way back to his Father. As Jesus assured his followers,
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except
through me.” Jesus is the only unfailing guide into the everlasting arms of the
God who created us and loves us dearly, so following his way is the unerring
path to our heavenly home.
Bill
