They say that a way to save Venice may be to fill the ground under it with water, which is funny because it's the water that's undermining Venice in the first place. While I was there a beautiful Venetian romanced me partly by detailing his vision of what the ruined future of Venice would look like, but mostly I think that Venice will look always in a state of decadent decay no matter how far above the water it stays. Late that first night I walked home and watched the crumbling bricks and hazy lights reflected in the puddles, feeling how the holes in Venice matched my own worn places. For the moment, sinking wasn't the worst thing either one of us could be doing.
They want to use the seawater to counteract the settling of the soil, to lift all of the place slowly becoming concave. But the high water doesn't bother the Venetians, who have long accepted it as a part of their lives. It's everyone who lives outside of the city that fears its eventual disappearance under the waves.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I prefer the idea that Venice would survive without our intervention, that the seas won't ever really take the town away. That the holes in it will not be its eventual undoing.
They want to use the seawater to counteract the settling of the soil, to lift all of the place slowly becoming concave. But the high water doesn't bother the Venetians, who have long accepted it as a part of their lives. It's everyone who lives outside of the city that fears its eventual disappearance under the waves.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I prefer the idea that Venice would survive without our intervention, that the seas won't ever really take the town away. That the holes in it will not be its eventual undoing.
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