Proud Scape

PROUD SCAPE If you want to build a ship, don‘t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. Antoine de Saint-ExupéryVenice the city of pride. Proud was the city. Rich was Venice, it was the centre of the world. How many traders sent ships from here to foreign countries? How much gold exchanged hands in all the market places, exchanged for silk, salt and ivory? The city was full of pride and it was told to the world, presented to everybody. The magnificent buildings, all on stilts built in to the sea. The might still present and felt in the old walls. How many Venetians died in wars fighting for the city? They ruled the Mediterranean Sea, proud seaman and clever traders; they build their houses on stilts in lagoons. Where has the pride gone? The Venetians leave their home behind, escaping to the main land, leaving their city unprotected.

Venice the city of escape. Since the beginning the city tried to escape. Even the very first posts ram- med in to the muddy ground fated the escape. This escape was to last, it was set for life. The Ve- netians tried to find protection from their enemies. Strangely today this movement of escapism has been reverted. Now the invaders are fleeing themselves, the Venetians are escaping from their city and are fleeing to the mainland. Although inhabitants know that wealth and tranquillity are not to be found in their city any longer, invaders still escape their own homes trying to leave poverty or stress- ful life behind. Left behind is a backdrop like Disneyland in the lagoon. No place to live, no place of wealth, no place of tranquillity.

How to revive and fill this empty shell with pride and real life, with sorrow, luck, laughing children, loving couples, fighting siblings, mourning widows, mother shopping, buzzing students?

Venetians’s enemies are different today, both whether as humans or as liquid, flooding the city which is defenceless.

Proudly escaping, for Venice this is no contradiction, it is rather the cities character. Her escape enriches the city, since time is money. Leave us alone, we will be back in a few months, we need our tranquillity for working, for living.

May she escape, may she just make off, but the escape will strengthen her. Inhabitants will be proud once more, but more importantly they will live, suffer, be happy, children will laugh, couples will love, siblings will fight, widows will mourn, mother will shop and students will buzz. They will present themselves, they will show their pride to the world and show their newly flourishing city to foreign cities and they will learn from each other.

And their action will be an example in a society which doesn’t show any weakness which is all the time available. It will show that we do not need all these global networks, all these news form all over the world, it will show that isolation would bring the essential things back in our lives. It will show that proud escapes are possible, that weaknesses have to be admitted. The escape as a sign of strength.