Hope Floats
Posted by Moose on February 7th, 2008. Filed under: Travel.Venice is disintegrating. Riding a vaparetto down the main canal in May, we saw whole sidewalks underwater, waves lapping at the checkered black and white marble of a building’s bottom floor. Graves are interrupted by trees growing through them, sometimes forcing the stone top of the coffin aside. Churches are splitting apart, the paintings within blackened by centuries of sputtering candles. Walking past a side canal one evening, something fell in.
Maybe the earth picked up speed, or maybe it was just the moment that 400 years of clinging became too much. Whatever it was, a chunk of the stately building above the canal just gave up, falling with an audible splash into the water below.
We may have treated this example of a venerable city’s decay with blase disregard. “Did a piece of that building just FALL OFF?” We may have laughed, braying like American donkeys as we speculated on the purpose of the fallen architectural soldier – decorative or structural? Would the whole building follow suit, sliding gracefully into the canal as a displaced house cat hopped from window to sinking roof to the foot of a solid bridge? Or did someone on the top floor simply toss an apple core out the window because they couldn’t be bothered to find a garbage can? We continued over the bridge and the building, falling to pieces before our eyes, was forgotten at the sight of the first still-open gelato stand.
Only later did I pause to think about how Venice might one day be entirely under water. A magnificent city drowned because the foundation couldn’t hold its weight. Pieces are always falling away in life. Maybe it’s a job, a relationship, a beloved threadbare t-shirt, but we’re always losing bits of ourself into the water.
When we were in Venice, we were planning to try for a baby this autumn. Autumn has come and gone and plans have been put on hold. Not disintegrated, but frayed around the edges because the foundation wasn’t as solid as previously believed. Maybe that plan will resurface for us, maybe it won’t. But I accept where I am, and it’s a good place.
Venice is vibrant, even as it crumbles. It’s a city filled with wizened men smoking cigarettes and families parked on the street with baby in stroller, dog on leash, wine glass in gesturing hand. Sunshine can still bathe the whole, even as pieces fall away. Lopsided isn’t broken, it’s just different. Especially if you learn to gaze at it head on.
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February 7th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Will you still talk to me when you’re famous?
February 7th, 2008 at 8:11 am
A really good writer you are.
Perhaps they will someday be able to rebuild Venice.
February 7th, 2008 at 8:25 am
This was beautiful.
You are a gifted, beautiful woman.
Not many people can make me giggle one day and then speak to my heart the next.
xoxoxo
February 7th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Wow!
February 7th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Wow!
February 7th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Schnozz: Damn straight. Not only that, I will walk around telling people that you made me so. “Yes,” I’ll say, “I rest here on my bed of laurels and hundred dollar bills and it’s all because of Schnozz. Her encouragement and spreadsheets got me where I am today. On my hundred dollar bills. Please excuse me while I count them again.”
All Adither: Thank you so much! And, I certainly hope Venice gets shored up. Maybe while they’re at it, they’ll kick out all the tourists. You can still go, you just have to don an Italian suit and a fake accent. Maybe a handlebar mustache, the kind someone named Guido might sport.
Angella: Thank you, thank you. That is lovely to hear. Appreciating it muchly. (And making up new words in my appreciation.)
[Note to other readers: My mom emailed me, asking me to remove one of the Wows.] Note to Maw: Hell, no! I’m keeping all my Wows.
General note: The title of the post comes from a truly horrific Sandra Bullock movie. She’s a high school cheerleader, marries her high school sweetheart, who cheats on her with her best friend, reveals said cheating Jerry Springer-style, and she moves back in with her mother where she meets a greasy man. The end. But I really like the title. It seemed mighty appropriate at 4 a.m. this morning.
February 7th, 2008 at 9:41 am
I loved Hope Floats. Gosh, I would, wouldn’t I? I have to say I use the phrase, “You stink Justin Matisse” at least once a week.
Regardless of my poor movie choices, this is the best post I’ve read of yours. It grabbed hold of me. Life is so fragile, so rocky. It can crumble and crack so quickly but that doesn’t mean it’s not exactly the life we need.
That last paragraph, I’ve read it four times already. I think I need to read it once more.
February 7th, 2008 at 11:12 am
I used to like you but that was before you went around bashing Hope Floats. I loved the taxidermy grandma and the kid in the frog costume, dammit. The grandma especially. “I love both of my television daughters,” or whatever she says. Classic.
Sometimes I smell myself and realize I need to open the windows to blow the stink off me. Oh, taxidermy grandma. If only you were real.
February 7th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Not to do a politician-esque back pedal, but the phrase \”truly horrific\” as it applies to Hope Floats is hereby withdrawn. (\”Greasy man\”, however, is not. He was greasy. I stand by this.) I liked the movie. I even OWNED the movie. Before the bastards made VHS obsolete. Any storyline involving a kid in a frog costume is a movie that nuzzles close to my heart.
I think the only truly horrific thing going on here is my hangover. Send french fries. I beg you.
February 7th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
It’s too late. Your muse has abandoned you. But perhaps the pain of this will inspire even greater prose.
Don’t blame me when you can’t log into the spreadsheet tonight, grandma-hater.
February 7th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
VHS is obsolete? Really? Shoot.
February 7th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Beautiful post, and very evocative. Crumbling foundations seem to be abounding lately.
February 7th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Ahhh! Beautiful post, well-written descriptions of deterioration!
Increasing water levels because of global warming? Or the natural cycles and patterns of pieces “always falling away in life?” (including the bemoaned fading of VHS)
February 7th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
I don’t have a hangover, I have a beef-over. Not that it wasn’t totally delicious. Just that I ate too much.
February 7th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Awesome post, Moose.
February 7th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Beautifully thoughtful. It’s pretty incredible to walk around Venice and realize that all that glory, everything that looks so magnificent in the sunlight slanting across the water, all of it was at its peak 400 years ago. 400. And it’s still standing there in its pinkness, crumbing around the edges like an old Grand Dame, but there nonetheless. Even if it does one day slip into the sea with a quiet sigh, it sure will have had a fabulous run. Charles Dickens likened walking around Venice to walking through a dream. He was pretty much right. So are you. Thanks for recalling Venice for me.
February 8th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Awesome, beautiful. You outdid yourself this time.
February 9th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
That was a really beautiful post. I’m glad you’re happy at the place you’re at; that’s all one can really ask for (geez, I hate ending a sentence with a preposition, but “for which one can really ask” sounds way to formal and awkward for a blog comment). And that’s about all I have to say about that.
February 9th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
First of all, if you got pregnant, you’d have to begrudgingly climb aboard the old wagon. Ew? And if you’re anything like me, then you’ll think, Well, no alcohol for 9 months. I can live with that. But then you remember the whole breastfeeding thing and ALL BETS ARE OFF.
But as a new reader to this fabu-less (hahaha) blog, I wanted to say what an awesome writer you are. Mon dieu! This was moving.
February 10th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Beautiful, Moose. Loved it.
February 10th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
“Lopsided isn’t broken, it’s just different.”
That’s what I’m going to tell people next time they call me a weirdo…
(I’ll give you credit as writer, of course…)
February 10th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
If yours is Venice, at the moment, mine is Pisa (it could crumble if I gave it the swift kick it deserves).
Love is a beautiful thing, and yes, a painful and scary and smelly thing too sometimes. But don’t worry too much, my sweet and chocolaty cookie friend, because you’re great enough for the good to outbalance the bad. You deserve great love, and lots of fat squashy babies, and the universe will see that it happens.
February 10th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
PS: Simons just made a sandwich and didn’t offer me any (goes to lace up cleats). Bye-bye Pisa.
February 11th, 2008 at 12:33 am
I love your lopsided Venice. I love that nothing is perfect, even the places (and people) we expect to be.
(I also love! Hope Floats. I can’t help it. I own it. And I too quote it. “I just don’t want to be known as Bernice Matisse.” Heh.)
February 11th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
That is so sad. I went to Venice once when I was in college and I *loved* it. It was so beautiful, the weather was perfect, the food was divine, the people were, well, fairly nice. I’ve since heard about how rising water levels are doing it in, and it sickens me. I’m glad you had a chance to see it.