Rows upon rows of plastered face paint, glitter, and feathers try to compensate for the vacant eyes which star back at me as I move from one stall to another outside of San Marco’s square. Occasionally those vacant eyes are filled by the hopeful tourist, curious whether their eyes are a match to the new character they will become. Many move from stall to stall, turning away from the insistent sellers who follow with their mirrors to show you who you have become. A woman in purple moves away from an outstretched mask as a mirror shatters to the ground: seven years bad luck. Each stand has at least four sellers circling like sharks to their prey.
Behind the stalls, near the vaporetto docks are the men selling their wares without stalls. A whistle blows near the bridge, which is ready to collapse under the picture-taking swarm, and one of the men pops up like a jack rabbit with his wares and runs, with a glance over his shoulder, away from the sound of the whistle. More and more costumed tourists disembark from the vaporettos as the few locals board them, The costumes bypass the colorful stalls and head directly into the crowd, pausing every five steps for a photo op, before reaching their ultimate destination of the square. To their right, underneath the a row marble pillars a couple sits, cuts off from the drunken celebration by a circle of flickering candles. Their gaze does not caress the many curious, painted faces of the crowd but only one another’s face. Within the chaos of Carnivale, these two have no need for the vacant-eyes plastic disguises, they can escape from the madness around them through the loving eyes of one another.
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