I have a view over a city that is on pause. It feels like there is no energy coming from it. People maketh a city. I look out and traffic lights go from green to yellow to red and hardly a car moves through. The streets emptied and silent.
I wonder what it must be like in Venice now that the Venetians have their city back to themselves. Strangely I don't think the city would suit silence and empty canals. It is a city that lives and breathes it's uniqueness, it's glass-like fragility is made of people's creativity. It's a city that has known many plagues and survived. The Carnevale bird masks originated from doctors who wore them stuffed with herbs such as lavendar to make their rounds during The Black Death. It is my spirit city by proxy of my late husband who was Venetian. I feel when he departed on his next journey, that he bequeathed his Venetian blood to me and I have been transfused with it. It'll be the first place I go when the restrictions lift. I'm sure the proverbial stork dropped me in the wrong country. I am an Italian mama through and through. I think that's what my late husband recognised in me. I remember going over with him every June and being in the kitchen with his stepmother, cooking. She was from Puglia in the south and her recipes were flavoursome and spicy. I was in heaven, peeling peas for a risotto and then using the pods to make a soup; hand making gnocchi on the big wooden board that Italian mamas possess; learning the mysteries of peeling and cooking artichokes. His sister arriving from Sicily with a huge box of pastries that were beyond my imagination, one particular sort was the watermelon tarts, jellied watermelon in a pastry lined with chocolate and studded with chocolate chips. Unbelievable.
But I digress. Today I'm in rebellion mood. I don't want to do my exercises, I don't want to jog on the spot, holding my boobs, going nowhere. I don't want to pretend skip or do my online dance class with the crazy teacher who assumes I get the routine within a few seconds. I have tried not to eat the few pastries and mini cakes that are being delivered; I've kept them in a container for such a day as this. I think I'll eat them all!
I ponder whether to go on a dating app just to see who's available out in the world of quarantine but because I haven't changed my Italian number over yet, I can't connect and I can't be bothered to reconnect my Australian number. So I end up doing my exercises and I spice up my jogging routine by going around my conference room and office in a figure of eight, more boobs cradled. I am considering finding something on Netflix to binge watch, (which I've only ever done once as I'm not much of a TV person). I am morphing into someone else. I am officially over this being in one room isolating. I even look forward to the nurse ringing every day to see how I am! How pathetic is that?
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