Sun Struck

(Steve)

"Oh, yeah. Bloody hell. I'm sweating in here. Roasting. Boiling. Baking. Sweltering. It's like a sauna. Furnace. You can fry an egg on my stomach. Ooh, who wouldn't lap this up? It's ridiculous. Tremendous. Fantastic. Fan-dabby-dozy-tastic."

-Sexy Beast

Surreal. The heat is mind-altering. 95 degree high today that weather.com said felt like 110.

We picked this day to make our way out of our own little San Marcos neighborhood, and first ventured far enough as the Dorsoduro to Peggy Guggenheim’s old palazzo crib of awesomeness-turned-museum. I’ve never been that close to a Picasso or a Pollock. Three inches, no more, a glass case the only thing protecting the howevermany million dollar canvases from my sun-swooned accidental sunscreen streaks. Then a Barney/Beuys exhibition, that only highlighted what an incredible jock Barney is.

We wandered a bit, but never saw much more than the sun and the Chiesa Della Salute (church of good health), the biggest dome you’ll see on this end of the canal. The only reason we went in was because the air coming out of the halfopen door felt “air-conditionated.” Back out into the heat a moment later (no offense good health, just that I don’t know how many more churches and pieces of ancient famous art I can take before that lobe in my brain hemorrhages culture all out onto the floor), walking by way of every shadow we could slink into, and back over the bridge over the canal to our side of again, the tourists really getting to me now, with their portraits against the scenic backdrop of the canal the shot stretching across all lanes of pedestrian traffic and we the rest of the hordes wait patiently while …………. 1……2…….3……. cheeeeese…….. gratzie! ….. and then a reunion of camera and subject-owner before everyone can commence. I charged down the other side of the bridge so fast I knocked someone who had edged into my own lane back and sideways, grabbing his arm and righting him, looking back only to make sure Courtney was there.

We trotted through piazza after piazza and then back out onto the most brutal shadeless tourist-clogged quay ever in the history of human civilization. Every other body moved glacially, every ounce of their energy focused on moderating body temperature, but we raged, weaving through and past all of them, leaping up bridge steps two at a time and hopping back down.

Then our turn and back into the neighborhood shade to our destination: the Irish exhibit collateral to the Biennale. We walked in the building, nodded to the only other redhead in all of Venice sitting at the desk, “It’s just about to begin” he said, and we walked through the blackout curtains. It was, but for a projected video on the wall shedding surprisingly little light on the rest of the room, completely dark.

Suddenly, out of that white-hot unbelievably bodied heavy hot slow sticky walk, we were still, and blind. I could not tell in that room how high we stood, if the theatre sloped down in front of us or dropped suddenly, how many sat or stood in the audience to our right. I stood there for a moment, dripping sweat in steady streams, and ought to have been content to just stand there at the fringe, but could not stop myself from trying to get my bearings. It looked empty, and it was possibly flat, but I could not be sure and had no visual or aural sense at all with which to tell. I shuffled forward an inch, fanning my right foot out in front of me, scanning for the edge, then stepped my left up to join it. I repeated this again and again and again, for minutes, until I looked back and made eye contact with Courtney who I could see in the dim light behind me and who, seeing me, the absurdity of it all having been growing in her all this quiet time, burst into laughter she just barely suppressed. I laughed then too, quietly so as not to disturb the audience, and then looked back to my feet, and resumed my slow shuffle.

I looked over to my right, still could not see anything after all this time to adjust but still could not be sure there wasn’t a group sunk in the darkness somewhere. Shuffle, step, shuffle step, until I saw my own head’s shadow on the projected wall, and realized that it wasn’t more than two or three feet in front of me. I looked back to my right again, Courtney continuing to erupt into barely suppressed intermittent laughter directly behind me, and with the screen at my back I could see that the space was empty but for us, and no more than 15 feet long by 15 wide. The theater was a small room.

I looked at her with my mouth open in disbelief and we both broke out in out-loud muffled-as-best-we-could laughter. She laughed louder and longer than I did and I really started to worry that she was suffering from heat-dementia, that she was going to faint, so I stood nearer to her in case she swooned. We sat on the floor in the corner. Two others came in, sat down next to me no problem. One other came in, turned, walked on them. "Sorry!" he yelled and backed out embarrassed.