Saluti da Venezia redux

Yesterday I discovered a new reason to be especially glad I have a blog.

Storyteller Stephen Hollen and his writing introduced me to blogging in 2000 or 2001. I was intrigued so I started typng into an Easy Journal blogg of my own.

When Jim and I had our summer sabbatical in Venice in 2003 - I set up a travel journal - Saluti da Venezia to record the trip - and I did. The journal is still floating in cyber space.

Yesterday I sat down to make a folio book to accompany my show - Glimpses.

"you can write something by Friday," my friend Claudia casually suggested. So I sat down at the computer yesterday to struggle something forth. Mid-agony I remembered - I had written something - on the travel blog.

Yep!. There it was - the blog held the contents of the book I need NOW.

All those memories - small stories - even several poems - I extracted highlights, printed out images, added a full printing of the blog - for the hardy - and voila - quite a nice addition to the show. Venice Journal - 2003.

It is a taste of Venice, Summer, 2003.

I write this blog which I doubt has wide appeal - except for a few. Mine are not the musings of a "thought leader" - that's the new buzz title in storytelling for people who write things of consequence - but having it prods me to keep writing, to keep recording the ordinary and the everyday, to keep looking for stories. This blog is a place where I can talk about storytelling and art - and my life with them - to my heart's content.

you never know -




This is one of my Venice poems:







VENICE

Venice is spell binding.
Is it being surrounded by water?
Or the timelessness of the place?

Perhaps it is the light:

Soft light in the early morning
Outside our bedroom window
a greyness
a caress
light just coming up
softens the decay
old becomes beautiful in the proper light.

We emerge from the shadowed tunnel of our calle
onto the wide, bright fondamenta
the magic of Venice is spread out ahead
shining in the bright yellow sunlight.
e Schoettler 2003