Hello Adventure

Chapter 25

Seeing the Piazza San Marco empty of crowds on a chilly, wet autumn morning is a gift. This is not something everyone gets to experience, my heart told me, as my eyes ran from the wind.

Spinning slowly, my gaze swept over the travertine stone ground, sheening iridescent and pearl-like; and then my eyes carried upward, high over the archways, the pink Verona marble facades, and the roofs scaled in terracotta tiles; then my gaze lifted higher still, passed the clock tower, swells of domes, jutting belfries and spires, until there was just the heavy sky of dawn—wide and low-slung, impossible and mouth-opening.

"Wow," I whispered to myself, my voice snatched away by the wild winds and cawing gulls.

I made myself light-headed, dizzy, whirling around like that with my head cocked back, drinking the world into me from the top down and taking it into my sternum, right into the passageways of my heart's chambers, so that I could never forget this feeling.

The briny drizzle pecked my bowed eyelids; my face turned up in supplication the heavens above, in praise, in exultation. And I couldn't give a damn about getting rained on. In fact, I couldn't give a damn about anything at that moment. I was too nakedly happy.

I had eaten the éclair on the walk over, but my mouth still tinged with the warm sugared taste, which I knew the bitter caffeine would soon cut through. For the rest of the day, my fingers would smell of the flowery peach filling. And each time I'd get a hint of it, I'd think of Dale.

Puffed up, dank pigeons clucked and bustled in the arches, and bells as old as souls clanged in the distance with echoing vibrations. But mostly I listened to the quivering gusts against my ear and my own swallowing heartbeat going da-lump, da-lump, da-lump.

The pink-frosted glass lamps ticked off one by one, then all at once, and the gaudy and gussied-up basilica tried to steal the show at dawn.

Here was something else travel was giving me, I realized: This.

This remarkable moment was mine to revel in. And it was a revolution to me because it is not in my nature to "live in the moment" or "be present" or whatever trendy phrase you want to use. I cannot just be. I am terribly un-zen and not at all good at relaxing. Instead, I am good at rat-racing, always planning for the future, always thinking about the past.

But being here right now, in such a magnificent place on such a moody rainy day, forced me to be still. To stop. To stare. To marvel.

Don't believe me? I dare you to wake up really early and go to the Piazza San Marco and not feel moved.

I did not know how much I was missing.

So I breathed in and I breathed out. For the first time in a very long time—or maybe for the first time ever—I was at the very center of something inescapable.

*

Caffè Florian was just opening its doors as the rain picked up. I trotted down the arcade of curved arches toward its shelter, and an older gentleman led me to a table in the Far East inspired room, "The Sala Orientale," he called it, where the high walls were covered in raw silk and mirrors and pictures of elegant women.

I took off my wet coat, laying it on a chair. I knew why Dale told me to go here, I thought before I even sat down, running my eyes over the place, so graceful and historical. I ordered an espresso and took my time sipping it and just staring out at the rain-soaked piazza. I just sat with me, myself, and I. And as I did, I thought about myself. Not my resume, not my public persona, but who I knew myself to be.

My whole life, I trained myself not to like myself very much—you see, I had to not like myself very much in order to keep striving for more. Not liking myself and my life kept me motivated.

To like myself now, to appreciate this messy, work-in-progress life, was to say maybe I don't need the life I spent years dreaming up and working toward; it was to say maybe this, this was good enough. Maybe I'm okay with this small taste of perfection...