We sailed to Venice for my wife’s art show, “Beautiful Imperfections,” and, as if riding on the title’s wave, I experienced what it means to live with a beautiful lightness of being. And the difference when I live without that lightness.
I prefer to live with it.
We left at the crack of dawn. The city’s night lights still on, some people prepping for the day, some going to bed after a long night. Sliding on the flat water of the harbor heading out at sea gives an unusual perspective on everyday life, like being able to sea the forest for the trees. It always feels precious, intimate, powerful.
The day is cloudy, the temperature is warm, not humid.
We are the only boat in sight.
As the sun rises the sky turns into a masterpiece.
We sail on waters studded with oil and gas rigs. When I was a child there were two. Now it’s tens of them spread over several miles. I am always amazed by human’s ingenuity and creativity in building these things on the water.
We got some sun from mid day on. A veil of haze, scattered clouds, and a slight breeze made it just right. After twelve hours we sailed into the Venice harbor. This is our second time arriving in Venice by boat and the feeling is like none other.
Venice (the Republic of Venice) used to be the most powerful maritime city of the old world. Sliding on the waters between Lido and the Grand Canal you can feel all that ancient energy. I believe that Venetian’s current attitude is a result of that original power still embedded in their DNA.
Finally we docked in Certosa Island, a green blossoming stretch of land in the Venetian Lagoon.
We take a walk to the other end of the island to visit the Marina Vento di Venezia where we are. One fo the first things we see is a lovely library. Four book boxes carved into three marine wooden poles. Books are in various languages. We bring some and take a couple.
The land mixes with the water. I love both and a constant smile forms on my face.
The fields are bright green. On the trees along the way red cherries will be ripe and ready to land on tables everywhere in a couple of weeks.
When the sun sets we are in Lido, waiting for the ferry to take us back to Certosa. It’s low season and mid-week so there aren’t many people around. We feel like locals instead of visitors. It’s intimate and personal. It feels good.
When the sun sets behind the clouds we look forward to dinner on the boat and a good night sleep.
We spend the next day visiting some of the installations of the Biennale of Architecture. 
Beauty, creativity and curiosity are everywhere. One of the most interesting installations for me was the Unintended Architecture. A group of architects from Macao showed a series of projects that were intended to be one thing but turned out to be successfully used as something else. 
For example, a video showed a historic stairway in Venice which was the access to a big church. During World War II the church was destroyed, but the stairway still exists as passageway and touristic attraction for everyone who visits. 
Or, a sound proving material was developed but once installed it looked beautiful and it’s been used for interior design. 
Peggy Guggenheim
We visited the Peggy Guggenheim’s Museum and what I loved most, above and beyond anything else, is Peggy Guggenheim. A creative, strong, fun, quirky, brilliant woman who helped art, and thus humanity, like few others in history and lived by the beat of her own drum. The museum used to be her home in Venice for thirty years and as I was walking through the collection I kept feeling her presence, I felt her in the living room, in front of the fireplace (which is no more now) and I could feel her incredible life energy as if she was there welcoming us into her house. I felt very lucky for experiencing all this.
We had two heavy pieces of luggage packed with all of Annie’s art. We could’ve used the ferry but it would’ve been a 45 minute-lot of work ride with potential hazard for the art itself. The prospect of it wasn’t attractive. So, I kept asking around until finally I found a guy who got us on his ‘topetta’ (typical wooden Venetian service boat) motored by an electric engine all the way under the bridge next to the art show location. It took us fifteen minutes. 
The electric engine makes no sound and being in the Grand Canal with just the sound of water around us, felt incredible. 
A water taxi would’ve been E100. The topetta was E20, and we got to navigate and see stretches of water that the main vessels, and the majority of people, never see. The ride with the art started as a hurdle and it ended up being better than we could’ve expected. 
We installed the thirty-two pieces of Annie’s show in four hours on Thursday night. The ferry ride back to the boat late at night was spectacular.
Friday afternoon we had the opening. 
The turnout was great. Annie and her show were written up on an Italian newspaper and people loved her art, jewelry, apparel and accessories. We felt very happy for having showed up every step along the way for all this to happen, and grateful for people’s and the universe’s help. 
The following day while sailing out of Venice two things broke on the boat that would’ve made our stay on the Croatian coast unpleasant and potentially difficult. 
I immediately suggested to sail back to Rimini, 
“But what about the planned vacation to Croatia?”
As it turned out we got a spectacular day of sailing, with a favorable wind that took us straight into the Rimini harbor at night, in a gorgeous spectacle of lights. In the following days several thunderstorms populated the waters where we would’ve been had we stuck to our original plan. It would’ve have been nothing even close to the spectacular, easy, fun day we had this way. 
I thought that unintentional architecture, just as Annie‘s show’s title,
Beautiful Imperfections, should be the theme of everyone’s life. Certainly my own. When I embrace my beautiful imperfections and the different than expected results of my actions, when I chose to live with a lightness of being, I can only be happy. 
