In the rhythm of the Marangona

Somnabulic fantasy

That oneiric night, wrapped in a mantle of rain drops that was tapping a gloomy cadence, a oneiric night illuminated by a lunar reflector, and darkened by rainy clouds, Annabel found herself in a smallish campo [1], one of the numerous in that town, not knowing how she got there, lost as every reader, looking for a yarn hank to catch, a lighthouse on the literary offing, however, the magic of the words is always hidden between the lines.

The clouds were crying on the sky because Annabel was barefoot. She turned around like a whirligig, taking a threatening look at desolately environment, while the sky tears were caressing her. As the balloon pin, strong déjà vu stabbed her or it was jamais vu, depending on the angle of observation, she shuddered.

At the very edge of midnight sight, she saw the mysterious figure under the umbrella, surrounded by a smoke aura. The handsome simulacrum. Let the reader imagine, carried by fluttering bookish sheets, some weird concetto [2] which faithfully reflects this atmosphere, for what are words but merely outlines of thoughts, darkened silhouette on a white paper expanse.

She went to the stranger and asked:

"Where am I?"

The man ignored the question and replied to her:

"Come under the umbrella, madame. You will get wet."

Annabel was not paying attention to her dress which, quite soaked with rainwater, became transparent and so the contours of her naked breasts appeared, magnificent as two miniature Brunelleschi’s domes, which are the splendour among numerous models, such as Titian’s: Venus with a mirror, Sacred and profane love, Venus by Urbino, Sleeping Venus (with Giorgione), The Penitent Magdalene, Danae, Danae with the nursemaid, Diana and Callisto, The Abduction of Europe, Venus blinding Cupid; A lady from Caravaggio's The seven works of mercy, Correggio’s Danae, Raphael's: The Three Graces, The baker; Leonardo's Leda and the Swan; Piero di Cosimo’s: Simonetta Vespucci, Prokrida; Diana hunting by Domenichino, Rembrandt's Bathsheba, Gabrielle di Estrees and one of her sisters of Fontainebleau school, Botticelli’s Venus, Vasari’s Andromeda, Vasari’s The Painter’s Studio, Flora by Bartolommeo Veneto, Eva Prima Pandora by Jean Cousin the Elder, Nymph by Jacopo Palma il Vecchio, The Serpent tempts Eve by Lukas Cranach the Elder, The Seven Ages of Woman by Hans Baldung Grien, Tintoretto’s Danae, Atalanta by Guido Reni, Bathsheba by Hans Memling, Dürer’s Eve, Rubens’: Venus and Cupid, Allegory on the blessings of peace, Helen Furman , Cellini’s Nymph of Fontainebleau, Flora Francesca Mencius, The Abduction of the Sabine Women and allegorical Florence who triumphs over Pisa by Giambologna, Venus by Luca Cranah, Amanati’s The Goddess of Abundance, An Allegory of Venus Anjou Bronzino, Gabriel d'Estres (School of Fontanbloa), The girl in the bathroom by Giovanni Bellini, Graces by Antonio Canova, Veronezi’s: Disappointment, Respect, Venus and Mars, The Abduction of Europe, Education of Pan by Luca Signorelli, Van Ike's Eve, Danae by Jan Gosaert...and so on.

Annabel covered herself with an umbrella, stepping into a fog made of smoke that, by its turbidity, resembled to her current state of mind, and she repeated the question:

"Where am I?"

"Does it matter? Anyway all this is māyā . "

"What?"

"Mirage. Illusion."

"I expect a different answer."

"Do not you recognize me?"

She didn’t have a clue where she was. This unreal ambience was, although confusing, in some miraculous way a comfortable and nice to her as it was getting under her skin, but it can not be said that it was carved in her mind. Bearing that in mind, she replied:

"No.

"Nota bene. The reality is a parody of dreams, and even when inveterate realist falls asleep, he also accepts romantic method."

While he was holding an umbrella in the left hand, in the other he had a cup of steaming coffee. He gave it to Annabel:

"Help yourself."

She accepted a cup, took a three-quarter sip of this harmonious blend of Arabica and Robusta, which began to irritate her sensitive senses and imagination, and her thought started to accrete, free as the birds in the sky, perfumed by fantasy which can be smelled only by bookworms: coffea Arabica Linnaeus, two thousand meters of altitude, tropical climate, six feet trees, three years of seeing through from the land, flowering, harvesting, Brazil, May, June, July, August, coffeea Canephora Pierre ex Froehner, Africa, six hundred meters of altitude, wet, dry method, sunbathing, abduction, peeling, burning, two hundred Celsius degrees, grind, combination of caffeine yin and yang into a whole ... all flashed through the mind in one forte espresso sip.

Her bare feet felt rainy discomfort from the sidewalk long time ago, so she moved from one leg to another, heard the sound of numerous bells, and saw that her tonality of perception had changed, and she asked:

"What's that noise?"

"Quintet from campanile: the Maleficio,the Trottiera,the Mezza Terza,the Nona and the Marangona."

"The Marangona?"

"The ancient bell, only which survived the fall in 1902, ringing at noon and at midnight."

Since her memory is short today, as she fell from the sky and found herself in this intersection of time and space, she didn’t notice that the map of the whole city was embroidered on the inner side of her dress, with sewn bells in all the places where the bell towers are. Instead, she was watching the beautiful Savinelli - Orient pipe, which made a thick cloud of smoke around them, such that it clouded up the square step, which otherwise the umbrella cleared. An inscription was glistening on the pipe, engraved in gold calligraphy in the Ancient Greek language.

"What does it say on the pipe?"

"'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.'"

Annabel was combing now that longhaired inscription from the pipe in her mind. Oh, what a shifty feeling. She woke an association of the circus-distorted mirrors, on those concave and convex metaphors. Annabel's manner, by the way, was to idealize each particle that approach her within reach, or better to say, at gunpoint of imagination.

The gentleman with a pipe started some boring monologue, which Annabel was listening with half an ear:

"Private aesthetics eats what it wants, protected by a wall of subjective hunger. Beauty is a personal understanding of curved and crooked lines, a perfume reflection on the fragrant mirror of skin, attitude toward sigh...All silences do not smell the same. For example, a writer, as a literary filmmaker, is making a fresco on fresh mortar of an elusive imagination, which the reader consumes, whether for breakfast, lunch, snack or dinner, through its kaleidoscope, creating a unique tutti frutti experience, maybe hearing silence in B minor…" He was talking indefinitely.

The conversation become even weirder to Annabel, to the extent that she began to listen more carefully the language they were speaking, because it seemed magical tuneful and melodious, and at times strange.

As she did not notice the inside of her dress, she also was not aware of any writings on the outside of her dress:

That dreamy night, wrapped in the mantle of the snowflakes that were falling in sleepy adagio pace, like parachutists in the form of words that, swaying, were landing in the invasion on you, Annabel, tucked up in her bed, was galloping through the endless meadow of dreams, where grass is greener, where sugar is sweeter, where a violin key better slides in oiled note’s lock, where adjectives sound more beautiful, where flowers smell like Parisian perfume essences, in a word, where is everything bathed in irresistible comparative. An aware boat set off to the open sea of unconscious.

An amethyst amulet in the shape of a key rested on her neck, for an assumed keyhole through which we try to peek in eyes wide shut. A candle was burning on the bedside table, chocked in the candlestick made of black African ebony, which once was decorated with milky white flowers, and now, on the other continent it itself decorates the literary interior of one novel, in the form of eared woman listening to the opening chords of Rachmaninoff Concerto No.2 in C minor, which shyly appeared from somewhere, wrapped in crackle cellophane of an old gramophone.

While shaded silhouette of flame was playing seductive pirouette on the wall, snow-white cat with cute markings, in one move of a paw, brought down a hank from the nightstand, which began to unwinding with questionable outcome, like a river flowing through unknown place intertwined in downfalls and glorification. It rolled down the stairs, with a triumphant cadence, in an unknown direction. If you were able to look at the mirror, in that abrupt staccato moment, you would see that on the cat’s necklace was written “Andaira”.

The conversation was in the same manner for a while, but there is no need to bother a curious reader with wideness. Let’s move on.

All of this became too saturated with mystery to our heroine, but since she felt that unconsciously imposed pace, some dreamy momentum does not allow to spread the story because she was incomprehensible, inert lack of time, it seemed that these events had been staged, orchestrated by one's invisible hand, and literary metronome speeded up the beats. Someone flipped upside down clepsydra, so the sand waterfall bunches grains, so she get to the point:

"What am I looking for here?"

"A hank."

"What kind of a hank?"

Instead of answering, he addressed to her with another bunch of enigmatic words:

"When a snow avalanche takes an effect, it is constantly increasing by picking up snow along the way and getting stronger, destroys everything in its path paving the way, but also as game leaves a trail like a thread in a needlework that is of special color and thus determines a pattern or flow of events through which it passes, the guiding thread that should be straighten out, and which is dealt by Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, the sign for the labyrinth exit."

Annabel was not able to hear any more of this mysterious plays, lucid, but painted in the sfumato [3] technique, drawing her in the sleeping atmosphere.

"Let’s don’t waste our time. Which way?"

"Do you see that cat?" The man pointed his finger in the direction of a cat that has just disappeared around the corner in fast graceful little steps, let’s say allegro gracioso.

At the same moment, Annabel moved on in swift steps to the cat, which knew how to subtlest purr and mew among all those cats’ choirs, whose color was the color of the purest snow colored by melted caramel, with brindle mottled tail in shades of milk and honey, which had Murano glass key around her neck. As the cat ran, at the same time, all the city’s bell began to ring.

While Annabel was leaving the campo, at the other side, passing each other, in a counter direction, a black gondola appeared in a splendor voga alla veneta style with a distinctive tin facade, driving three ladies, each carrying one object: stem, globe and scissors. From a distance, it seemed, as it was moving on a conveyor belt, since the canal was not visible from that angle.

Annabel was searching. She had in mind a hank like a lighthouse, not knowing what or why. She was cruising in a crescendo style down the cobbles of water that remembered luxurious glory and endless chapters of rich history, with a handful of charming bridges that cover the water arteries decorating unique picturesque coulisses of this town, which Annabel called “a fairytale on water”. She experienced this city as an island, deliberately ignoring the fact that in the middle of the nineteenth century it was revised in the half-island by the railroad. It's because of some her internal aesthetic to which she subjugates even commonly accepted reality. She was lost in some literary space that cannot be caught by the head or the tail. In one moment, she felt the rustle of paper in her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper in surprise, apparently torn from a diary, on which the following lines were written in penmanship:

I wake up in my bed under the influence of a dream that saturate my starving night. I cannot escape that dreamful impression, which was deeply engraved on the parchment of dreamy night. I stand up and step out toward the window, somehow anticipating that surprising sight was expecting me there, opposed to the usual gloomy picture that claimed the right of the unchanging landscape that cherish weed of monotony like a precious plant in a pot. Going forward to the window, cognition overtakes me, like in a dream, when you are aware of a fact although you do not have any information about it, that I am actually on the piano nobile and how the sound of waves lapping this facility do not cause to me.

I remove drapes from the window, which play the role of theater curtains, and they rising, open up, in front of my eyes, a scene that takes my breath away. Fantastic panorama of the Grand Canal, seen by fabulous kaleidoscope, by that dreamful optics ...

She continued her route down the inspiring labyrinth of narrow streets, admiring the picture gallery of magnificent facades that ably created novelistic atmosphere.

The curiosity about Annabel's interests is the obsession with the city on the water, which by its magnificence, awoke insatiable literary insomnia in her, distinguishing by a fetish aspirations of a bookworm who passionately devours most diverse literature in the form of encyclopedias, lexicons, dictionaries, history books, biographies, autobiographies, hagiographies, travelogues, guidebooks, magazines, monographs, diaries, letters, correspondences, records, transcripts, notes, pocketbooks, notebooks, copies, memoirs, annals, yearbooks, chronicles, confession , narrations, retelling dialogues, discourses, sermons, monologues, orations, comments, anecdotes, myths, legends, traditions, manuscripts, fragments, atlas, cards, maps, stories, short stories, novels, romances, the most diverse fictional creations, epics, poems, songbook, collections, chansons, canzonets, parodies, comedies, tragedies, inscriptions, brochures, manifestos, proclamations, pamphlets, pastiches, forgeries, imitations, pasquinades, codes, codex, protocols, testimonies, proceedings, studies, essays, polemics, treatises, bibliographies, journals, articles, various newspaper records, compilations, scrolls, Dream Books, grammars, textbooks, instructions, recipes, breviaries, albums, librettos, sheets, lists, genealogies, collages, scrap books, calendars, geographies, scrapbook, proverbs, sayings, fairy tales ... and so on, and so on, and covered by, more or less, with common themes of a charming Adriatic lady.

Otherwise, Renaissance versatile eruditions, deeply willful, auto didactic tempered, Annabel was filling her bibliophic head with selected information, feeling devastating anachronism with the time in which she exists. Anchoret of a teary smile. As we have, I think, already found, Annabel idealizes each particle that approaches her within reach, or better to say, on the gunpoint far from imagination.

Like paper, which absorbs ink, her subconscious was absorbing factographic, aesthetic, topographic, dreamy and other threads, weaving thought palimpsest where traces of various manuscripts overlapping in the same place making the illusion of a labyrinth in which each reader individually is lost and searching for a thread of the hank to grip, so Annabel, wherever she looked, she felt an unconscious footnote that sparked in her.

With mind sharp as the King's Gambit, and with soul checkered by essences of precious virtues, chiaroscuro reflected in technique of character girl who gives birth to this description.

Well, now. It is debatable that thing with reading, considering that Library of Alexandria, the largest library of the ancient world, was destroyed three times by three different empires.

We recognize that there is a risk of verbosity, thus we are speeding up our pace.

After an exhausting search that should not be seen in time level, as it is relative in this case, Annabel finally stops in front of a house, get in there and tries unsuccessfully to open the door. She peeps through the keyhole and sees a girl with eyes closed and tucked in a bed. From the room was coming the sound of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2 in C minor, as cellophane wrapped in the crackling of an old gramophone record.

She leaves the house and under her graceful legs she also leaves a number of streets and bridges, passes through a small calle [4] , where everything below was covered with torn bookish leaves, so it is hard for her to, barefoot, wade candescent letters, then, not far away, she notices a suspicious person on the bridge, tearing sheets from the book and throwing them into the canal. These two scenes come to her as two bookworm slaps.

Finally, she arrives at the large square. By the way, a man renders to her, by surprise, a saucer on which there is the engraving carpe noctem, and he addresses her:

"Here you are, madame."

She takes from the saucer a hedonistic dessert named after the famous master painter from Urbin who was known for his Madonnas. She bites him. She heats up of leceder’s climaxes, notices aforementioned cat with a weather vane pinned on the tail, and since there is no time to lick her finger, she sets for her across the former stream of Batario [5] canal towards famous pillars [6] in order to pass between them to see if her soul is pure, to find out whether she is going to sleep or she is going to wake up. At the same time, a flock of pigeons flies at an height of several thick books. She feels that septet of chakras sparks.

The sky is of cloudy blue color. The whole scene is taking place in slow motion...if you could peek under her dress, leaving the moral aside for a moment, you would see the label on the edges:

 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

… and exactly at that moment I noticed that my Parker Sonnet pen dries up, and the words become fainter, and a candle wick reduced, burning down and dripping on the paper ...I hope that ink will remain t

---
[1] Campo - Venetian term for the square. Otherwise, the campo (Italian) - field.

[2] Concetto - Baroque figure of speech known for its strange, far-fetched, bizarre comparisons with the aim to impress the reader by its literary virtuosity.

[3] Sfumato - Renaissance painting technique, shadowing. From the Italian. fumo - smoke, sfumato - undetermined, nuanced, blurry, blurred, shaded.

[4] Calle - Venetian expression for street

[5] Rio Batario - the canal that once flowed across St. Mark's Square. It was buried in the 12th Century. Rio - Venetian term for smaller canal, as opposed to the word Canal, which is used for example for the Canal Grande. Otherwise, rio - ital. (poetic) stream.

[6] Pillars of the winged Lion and Saint Theodore that are at Piazzetta Interestingly, the columns after they arrived in Venice, stayed lied down, until 1172. Nicolò Barattieri who lifted them. He did it with tightly bound wet ropes that were drying tightened and withdrew little by little pillars, under which sand bags were placed as props.