Venice: days of the Milk of Dreams, nights of wine and wandering in velvety darkness amidst ages of stone, over a labyrinthine and changeable web of bridges, plazas, archways, narrow passages, and of course eely canals. Sometimes the buildings seemed like cats, placid and aloof and mysterious, appearing according to whim.

Does a city have a soul? Some cities merely tolerate their people. Others hate, prickly with hostile architecture. This one charms and seduces. Teeming with marvels, it is at ease with itself, even as it sways on uncertain ground. I dreamed on my feet, and maybe the city dreamed with me.

You turn fanciful in the dark. Spying wavering reflections of lit windows, I imagined a subterranean city, sister-mirror, where time had stopped and space was elastic. The legs would wobble, almost water itself, ready to dissolve into an underworld at once gleaming and shadowy.

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