7:30 BELLS: Burano Blues

This blue house on Burano, with its blue sheets fluttering in the wind, enchanted me. When I visited the island, a short vaporetto ride from Venice, I’d wanted to see the exquisite lace in the lace museum. (The island was once a historic lace making center.) But I didn’t know the island was also famous for its brightly painted houses. How simple, I thought, to make something utterly beautiful out of something so simple as paint and bedsheets. The bells rang.

Then, the bells began fading, because I suspected that the blue house with its blue bed sheets had been staged for tourists. That whoever who lived there didn’t really arrange her domestic life with such artistic sensibility.

Then I realized that the intent behind the blue house didn’t matter. Paintings and sculptures are staged in museums for tourists. If I’d seen this scene as a painting titled “Burano Blue House with Blue Bed Sheets Blowing,” I’d had loved it. The scene before was a piece of living art. And I didn’t have to wait in line to see it.

And so the bells rang on.

LORE OF THE BELL:

Embrace the enchantment that comes