The Birth of Web Venus©

Walking through Venice I felt an irrational desire to touch the city. Feel the walls that surrounded me, as if my eye had spied a softness in them that I had never before experienced.

Once you come off the tourist track Venice becomes a sensualists dream and the idea that water passes through everything takes you with it.

Monica and I lay in our gondola, silent, taking in the surroundings. Suddenly I saw a familiar face staring at me from an overhead bridge, we glided beneath it and he was lost. As we came out on the other side I turned to look for him and saw that he had crossed the bridge to do the same.
His face looked exactly like it did so many hundred years ago, except for a boyishness that was of this century. We held each other’s gaze until the endless labyrinth of canals swallowed us up.

My breathing became so shallow that Monica turned to see if I was all right.
- Are you ok?
- I saw Botticelli*.
Monica was used to hearing things like that when she was in my company.
- And now?
- I don’t know.
I didn’t remember all of my past lives all of the time. Whenever someone surfaced, it all came back with incredible clarity.
We continued to explore Venice throughout the day and finally settled to have wine in a small piazza that was frequented by locals. As expected it didn’t take too long for him to find us.

The most welcome of images. His golden mane, full of ringlets, his blue eyes and that body I once knew so well. His smile warmed the piazza and pulled me in.
Our eyes were moist but we laughed and hugged and let our palms fill with each other’s hair and neck and face.
- You’re here again, he said.
- You called out to me and I came.
- The last time you left too early. You won’t leave?
- No, I won’t. I smiled and touched his face again, not being able to control my appetite for him.
- I painted you in everything for years. He said.
- Shhhhhhhh. I know. I know

A few hours later I was curled up, sitting on the white bed in the middle of his studio. Botticelli put his hands around my ankles and looked into my eyes.
- I asked to be buried at your feet**, he said dragging me down the bed towards him.
I felt so small and feminine, as though my entire body could fit into the space between his arms and torso. Then there were no words for hours. We breathed each other in and out until we emerged in the morning, our mouths dry, our bodies raw from pleasure.
I got up to fetch water for us.
- Open the window and let anyone that it lucky enough to be passing by see you. You are my masterpiece and the most beautiful sight to behold in all of Venice, he said, his body rising from our sheets, intoxicated by his own passionate rhetoric. Then a change of thought appeared across his face and he lay back on the bed to watch me.

I crossed the room and opened the window to stand on the balcony. The zephyrus wind blew in from the Adriatic waking my skin and brushing the hair off my shoulders.
My body adored being naked in the open air. I was suddenly bathed in an overflowing sense of freedom. Botticelli came out to wrap me in a silk robe embelished with spring flowers and take me back into the warmth we had spent the night creating.

I had just been born again.

*Sandro Botticelli 1445 – May 17, 1510 An Italian painter of the Florentine school during the Early Renaissance. Details of Botticelli's life are sparse, but we know that he became an apprentice when he was about fourteen years old, which would indicate that he received a fuller education than did other Renaissance artists. He was born in the city of Florence. Among his best known works is “The Birth of Venus”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sandro_Botticelli_083.jpg

**Simonetta Cattaneo de Vespucci, nicknamed la bella Simonetta 1453 – 26 April 1476. Simonetta was discovered by Sandro Botticelli upon arriving in Florence. She died in April 1476, She was only twenty-two at the time of her death. Botticelli finished painting The Birth of Venus in 1485, nine years later. Some have claimed that Venus, in this painting, closely resembles Simonetta
It is suggested that Botticelli had fallen in love with her, a view supported by his request to be buried at her feet in the Church of Ognissanti - the parish church of the Vespucci - in Florence. His wish was in fact carried out when he died some 34 years later, in 1510.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sandro_Botticelli_066.jpg