Of Marcello Veneziani
My father was a great builder of maricelli. As soon as he reached the sea, he undressed and began the work. He built a seat on the seashore with two larger flat stones and began his construction project with his feet in the water.. He gathered the largest stones in a circle, now moving them, now sliding them until they turn upside down, bringing their darkest side to light, an intense green belly inhabited by mussels, algae, crabs and snails. Then he created a double layer of enclosure for his natural swimming pool. He worked hard. Sometimes he finished the work when we had to go home.
When I was little the Maricello was made especially for me. I was happy to enter that paternal basin, I wallowed blissfully and protected; I was convinced that its very name, maricello, was derived from mine, or vice versa. But when I got a little older and went out to sea, my father continued his marine construction, with the same enthusiasm, even without a visible beneficiary.
He found emotional motivation again to build temporary swimming pools when his grandchildren arrived, and then my children. He made mischievous things for them, sometimes even double, to avoid interport conflicts between small usufructuaries. And he continued in his art of maritime construction even when they were grown up and he had now passed his gravest years. He arrived at the seaside and set to work diligently, as if he had a contract to respect with the harbor master's office or who knows. Or as if they were ex-votos for Neptune, for Aphrodite or for some unknown marine deity.
They were small sanctuaries, marine monuments built with indelible material such as stone, but absolutely precarious like flowing water. In fact, the storm surges, the afternoon waves, or simply his moving the following day to another point on the coast, they would commit him the next day to do the work all over again. A mix between Sisyphus' effort and Penelope's web; in any case a mythological work to which he dedicated himself as in few other cases.
He was a man of books and not of action, except building little maricelli. A philosopher in nature rather than in thought, my father devoted himself passionately only to vain works, socially useless, free, devoid of profit. I learned that trade from him, the art of dedicating oneself to useless things, because they are the most beautiful and ultimately the most necessary, even if they last the space of a morning.
Today at the seaside I'm building a little ship. Excuse me, but today it is Saint John, his name day and our summer celebration, and I wanted to dedicate a little memorial to him. How I miss them.
MV, The weather 24 June 2018