Venice | Teen Ink

Venice

January 21, 2012
By lookingformargo SILVER, Ithaca, New York
lookingformargo SILVER, Ithaca, New York
8 articles 0 photos 2 comments

Favorite Quote:
A child said, &quot;What is the grass?&quot; fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven... and now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. -Walt Whitman, Leaves Of Grass<br /> <br /> <br /> We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and falling. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail. -Looking For Alaska<br /> <br /> Here&#039;s what&#039;s not beautiful about it: from here, you can&#039;t see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You see how fake it all is. It&#039;s not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It&#039;s a paper town. I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I&#039;ve lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters. -Paper Towns<br /> <br /> It is so hard to leave&mdash;until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world. -Paper Towns<br /> <br /> Elsewhere the landscape is more frank.<br /> The light falls without letup, blindingly. - A Life, Sylvia Plath


"Don't live in Venice," she said
As her mind traded warm bodies on cold nights
For an office and a kitchen too big and empty to cook in.
"Too many tourists."

Stability.
Roots.
Tether yourself to the ground so you can neither fall nor fly.

Nobody understands.

I know tourists flock to Venice
Armed with cameras, sunglasses, and return tickets they paid too much for.
Perhaps they are nothing without the city
But the city without them is lonelier that I could take

Picture it.

The gondolas pass and nobody stops to notice
The gargoyles spitting water from sneering mouths



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This article has 2 comments.


on Apr. 8 2012 at 8:09 am
bethlillyan SILVER, Canberra, Other
8 articles 0 photos 2 comments
This is beautiful. I adore Venice (the week I spent there was honestly the best one of my life), though I've never thought of it this way. I love this poem.

on Feb. 14 2012 at 6:16 pm
laurensoccer SILVER, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida
8 articles 0 photos 67 comments
I love this. Venice is one of my favorite cities.