Monday, September 29th, 2008 – Venezia, Italy

(this is the continuation of a travel journal that begins with the September 10th entry further below…)

Even with thousands of others, in weather that is at one moment too hot and bright and stifling, and at the next blowing cold wind all around you in the alleys, even not feeling well with everything throbbing inside and outside of you…Venice just steals your heart.

I was prepared of course.  My love affair with Venice started long ago.  It is an enduring romance, as none of the surface tensions rob it of its glory.  It is a work of art slowly sinking, which makes you love it even more.

This has been a trip of miracles and radiance, and it has also been very difficult at times.  Traveling from city to city, from boat to bus to train, never stopping long enough to recuperate is not a vacation…it is harder work than being at home.  I start trips soft, and finish them hardened.  But then the shell cracks and a new self is born.  I start trips green, and end them ripened.  I always remember the world in my heart, but I forget the world in my body when I am secluded on my little pearl of an island in the green-blue sea.  Every time I come out into the world again and force myself beyond what I can possibly take, I become more and more worldly in a way it is hard to describe.  My sense of home stretches, whether I like it or not, to include everything.  The world is my home.

However there isn’t a trip I have taken, to eighteen countries in eleven years…many of them two or three times, that I haven’t felt like Frodo having wandered too far from the shire.  I have everything I need at home.  Sometimes I think I am a masochist to do this to myself…to love the world and travel the way I do.  A masochist, a hedonist, a glutton of experiences…it is hard to say which.

When it is particularly hard I don’t really feel myself anymore.  I am still me in my heart, and I still look and act similarly, but the truth is that the light begins to go out of my eyes when I am so deprived of sleep and food and clean air for such long periods of time as often happens when one travels.  This all sounds rather rough, I know, and the truth is it frequently is.  But then I finally stumble into some restaurant with divine food and candlelight and my spirit begins to return to me.  Or I sleep well one night and I wake up remembering what relaxation feels like.  Or I find myself looking out the window of a cafe that Casanova once had many rendezvous in looking out onto the Plaza San Marco, and I wouldn’t be anywhere else in the world.

Or someone, rather than bustling by you in the crush of massive waves of tourists, takes the time to be more kind and generous than usual.  Those kindnesses are golden.  So many people have been like angels along the way.  Never underestimate the power of a simple kindness.  I don’t.

We have been invited as guests in a woman’s home on the Grand Canal…another great kindness from only a slight connection.  It is luxurious and a special pleasure to be there, and tonight we will have dinner with a meditation group she holds there.  How wonderful to meet the spiritually kindred here in Venice.

Venice seems born from a dream world…a city with streets made of water.  It is as if birds could swim here, and fish could fly, and somehow it wouldn’t be surprising.  It is a perfect place to do my end-of-trip reflecting, on what has passed and what is coming next.  It is so important for an Oracle (and a Pisces) to dream, and to reflect…

So, again I have shared with you a slice of my life this Monday afternoon in a bookstore near the Piazza San Marco, still drifting in the world, a fish out of water and yet surrounded by it…a feeling so many of us know so well.

May you all be blessed with time to dream and sweet comfort within which to do it.

Love from Venice, Jennifer

Sunday, September 28th, 2008 ~ Florence, Italy

(This is the continuation of a travel journal that begins with the September 10th entry further below…)

Well my friends, it has been quite a trip since I wrote you last…hard and beautiful as so many of the best things are, and finally I write you from Florence, just about to leave for our final destination on this trip…Venice.

There would be no way to tell you everything that has passed since Santorini in the time I have, so I will just say it has involved a lot of movement, from Santorini to Athens to Rome…from Rome to Assisi where the energy was stunning and magical, and a cold front blew in and I got sick…to here in Florence where I got better and have experienced exquisite art, delicious coffee, and organic gelato, and where some of the meals have been the kind that bring you back to life.

Now my time is running out…so quickly…and we are off on the next adventure. I will write you from one of my favorite cities in the world very soon. Sending love from Italy, Jennifer