M&M’s, Victorian couples, and a Giant Snail on a skirt of lady bug-infested grass are only a few of the costumes swimming past me in a sea of color and festivity. Chunks of paper fall from the sky like a shattered rainbow onto the masked crowds. Different bands play between the stalls selling straw hats and black and white striped t-shirts. One band, sporting elaborate, feathered Indian headdresses, begins to play the same song as a band nearby whose dreadlocks sway in the humming air, keeping time. This impromptu round gives the illusion you have not moved even as the crowd pushes and pulls your body past stall after stall of glass gondolas and lace umbrellas.
Past the vulture-like eyes of the sellers, my body is moved toward the bridge without my feet touching the confetti-covered ground. A loud whistle is blown in my ear and neon jacketed arms gruffly guide me to the correct side of the pedestrian bridge where the flow of foot traffic leads me into the wide opening of San Marco’s square. Sitting in the square, a stage’s bright lights flash on the faces of the screaming crowd, transforming the ancient site into a mosh-pit of color and jubilation. The white marble facades of the surrounding buildings become magical as the blue and green lights hit their time-polished sides.
My chilled fingers wrap graciously around the hot cup of red wine handed to me by a friend as we stand watching the pulsing crowd. The crowd’s members—older and younger generations united by disguised faces—dance the night away under the clear sky of Venice: a magical city surrounded by water, where tonight, everything and anything goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment