An Infinite Emotion (Honor)

Last night I slept poorly, woken at midnight by my neighbours arguing, and kept restless and sleepless by persistent wheedling mosquitoes until finally attaining slumber at 6a.m.
So today, I didn't surface till 12:30. I had work to do to send back home, and so it was 3pm before I finally left the apartment. I felt daunted by the prospect of Venice beyond my door. By the language, by its bustle and erratic pace, by its unfair head-start on a day I had only just begun. But I set off in the sunshine, and, surrendering any plans for a sensible itinerary, I allowed myself to get a little lost instead, and favour curiosity and instinct over iPhone Maps.
I gave myself the goal of simply finding something I wanted to draw, but of course this was complicated by my also desiring somewhere with minimal distraction and (for my first attempt at drawing in public here) minimal audience participation! After rambling this way for an hour or so, I was drawn - because it was narrow, long, quiet and had verdant vines tumbling into it - down a little alleyway that opened onto the Grand Canal. I walked to the end and, as so often happens here, one step took me out of a humble space and into a grand one: suddenly I was confronted by the majestic façade, across the broad, agitated expanse of water, of Palazzo Vendramin Calergi, which houses Venice's big Casino.
A boat escorting a wealthy couple to the canopied entrance bore the Casino's tagline: 'An Infinite Emotion...'
I suppose that sums up gambling addiction.
For my part, on the humble side of the canal, it was a dead-end. Two girls, who had been walking ahead of me, had investigated the narrow bank and found no further path, and now passed me as they retraced their steps. I was about to do the same, when I noticed something very special.

Una sedia!
It was there on its own, abandoned or waiting, I couldn't tell. There wasn't a soul in sight. I pictured the burly, bad-tempered workman who might emerge from the scaffolded building behind me for a cigarette break, only to find his chair occupied by a sketching dilettante. I imagined scuttling away at his gruff rebuke, cheeks burning and pencils scattering in my haste... and then I took a big breath. The chair was mine. I was meant to find it. It was put there by the benevolent sprites of Venice to entice me to draw. So, I sat.
I was not disturbed by anyone, and I sat there for an hour or more, while the Sunday evening traffic of the Grand Canal chugged by: families with small children, as blasé about travelling by boat as an Aussie child is by car; a group of ragazzi with their music pumping loud and their polo shirt collars turned up; ungainly vaporetti packed with tourists; slim-hipped gondoliers who held my gaze as though to seduce me across the water; I smiled and kept sketching the Casino and its garden as the shadows lengthened.