Their first day of Venezia truly began when they sat on the stairs of the Chiesa San Simeon Piccolo, they continued finishing the croissants they bought an hour earlier from an early-opened bakery. Cay slightly moaned at the wheat-based breakfast while licking off the fakes from his hands, Judas stared at where the sun was rising from. It looked like an orange yolk slowly floating upwards, distancing itself from the sinking city of an egg white.
The two’s business was interrupted by the sounds of local unloading goods from his small boa, the man was lifting the sacks of potatoes and crates of vegetables onto the raised pavement beside the Grand Canal. Judas looked as if he wanted to help the man who was neither struggling nor easing with every haul picked from the boat, Cay assured that he was doing his job by just continued staring at the man. Both were so transfixed at the man that they did not notice the sun had risen above the city horizon.
They packed their water bottles and left the paper bags, which once held their breakfast in the bin nearby before venturing to where their accommodation laid. It was in the Eastern part of the island, about fifty minutes’ walk to there if they kept relying on their GPS.
“You know, we have Suju’s instruction on how to get there quickly.”.
“I know, but its’ still early. He did say to come anytime in the morning.”, Judas remembered.
Suju was the owner of the hostel in which they would be staying for the next three days. From the look of the photo, the owner had Middle-Eastern features: a solid large nose, curly dark hair, and perfectly-shaped lips just like the Arabians and their neighbours from nearby countries (“The name suggested it”, said Judas). He mentioned about picking the two halfway if they followed his way of arriving.
“I don’t like this, why couldn’t we just be there instead of waiting to be picked up somewhere?”
“Maybe he was just being friendly?”, Cay said rhetorically, sensing Judas’s concern.
“We’ll just walk to where he pointed. I was just a little worried, that’s all.”, he shrugged and got up.
“Yeah, we get to see where we’re going, better than taking a bus on water.”, Cay snorted and rose.
They walked to where seemed to be a concentration of restaurants meant for tourists on both sides of the broad carless street. All the streets on the island prohibited the use of any land-transport, aside from the public busses stationed near the Stazione di Venezia Santa Lucia. The bakeries were the ones that opened their doors early, vivid yellow lights shone from the inside of the shop, welcoming any early workers and tourists that might come in for a cup of coffee and bread. The restaurants with their typical large umbrellas and short foldable metal chairs were stacked or piled alongside their respective walls, all looked almost identical aside from the slightly different manufacturing design.
It was unusual to see people in business suits walking on the empty streets in the early Italian morning, Cay had always pictured the island to be filled with only tourists and hungry-looking store owners, perhaps social media has influenced how he perceived holidays. The thought of his idea filled him with embarrassment, how naïve I am, whispered the slightly blushing Cay. Judas might have heard it but he probably would not be bothered to ask questions about randomly-derived remarks from Cay’s whispers.
They eventually reached the meeting point as Suju instructed, with only their GPS’s help when they got lost halfway through the maze-like structures of eastern Venezia. The two waited, standing until they saw the short figure of their hostel owner across a few blocks away from them, waving as he approached them with a faint smile on his scruffy small face.
*
If life was just a picture, then it did not have a meaning. It was the painting process that portrayed a person, not the finished result. Because we all lived differently but end the same, death. Hence, the finished was not what made things beautiful, it has always been the entire journey of making and shaping all along.
He did not consider himself to be a commoner, thought the fourteen-year-old Cay. Although he had always hated the shape of his body, his slightly lifted small nose, and his small Asian eyes, nevertheless he believed he was in this world for a reason.
To add a bit of touch, errors were considered as a minority of the process of human life. There were the ones whom caused the most impact, albeit insignificantly small compared to the entirety of a full, healthy age. He has a purpose, he thought, but did not know when it would materialise. He just had to wait and survive, in this harsh puberty stage within the vicious lifetime.
Madness was not doing something repetitively, hoping for a different result; Safety did not guarantee your condom would always work, assuming it could not break. Cay believed the way of living was to have faith in oneself, what was the point of not being your own?
Cay’s self-loathing was an unmistakable contradiction, however, he believed that the confusion was just a way to cleanse himself of what he possessed, and to transcend along with the vague purpose of his. He believed in self-confliction giving birth to an improved self, with less self-doubt and with a clearer conscious.
Keep on running, fatso, called one of his classmates one day during physical education, the entire class was running in two lines, girls and boys each, on the drawn field grass of his school. He heard and smiled at the teaser, while feeling a kind of depression and maybe hate, and continued running. He did not like the physical side of the curriculum, it meant that students must change into their less baggier exercise uniforms with awkward-looking black shorts once worn. He could feel the people of his class taking peeps at the fabric laying on his protruding belly and large-in-portion buttocks, which made his shorts stretched even more awkwardly.
Perhaps it was these countless observations that gave Cay his sharp sense of detecting people’s thoughts; Perhaps it was the paranoia that led to his conclusion right most of the time. Either way, Cay did not mind because all he wanted was to lose the excessive portion on him. He needed to lose wait but did not know where to start.
The basketball bunch in his class would not possibly welcome him into playing basketball with him. The others were either too unfamiliar with him or lived too far away for him to have any chances of meeting up. It was an obstacle all along, to set up all those inconveniences and awkwardness in the form of communication for him.
Perhaps this is my purpose, thought Cay. He had to start somehow, to begin the journey to reach his purpose, his own enlightenment. Whatever the cost, it could not amount to the process of hard work and its’ result. Cay fantasised about a fitter, more handsome him, a day that he would no longer had to shy himself away from others.
These thoughts occurred in Cay’s head while in the cafeteria with his classmates halfway finishing their meal. Cay noticed his obviously slowed-pace but did not mind, he was easing himself with his imagination. An idea of a better world for an ideal self, he could not ask for more.
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