Washing Windows in Venice

As human beings we have a special and a very admirable talent. We are on-line learners. You can´t switch off your learning mechanisms. The most amazing feature in our capacity to learn is that we can learn from other people´s experiences as well. You need not drink or drug your body and mind kaput yourself. It is enough to see what has happened to those who never stopped testing their limits as regards to drinks and drugs. You need not even see something to learn it. You may read about it - and in any language you happen to know.

Last time I wrote about bad-smelling last messages. Reading Amigos en las altas esferas by Donna Leon I got an opportunity to learn to describe that particular event and smell in Spanish (ISBN:84-322-1708-5) I do not have any idea whether you want to share that learning experience with me or not, but the Donna Leon´s description might be worth looking at:

"En el primer rellano, le salió al encuentro el olor. Viscoso, denso, penetrante, que hablaba de putrefacción, de inmundicia, de una suciedad inhumana. A medida que se acercaba al segundo piso, el olor se acentuaba, y durante un momento terrible Brunetti creyó ver la avalancha de moléculas que se precipitaban sobre él, se adherían a sus ropas y le entraban por nariz y garganta, portadoras del horrible recortadorio de la mortalidad. "

As to the original event I was tellling about - I´m not totally convinced that I would have reacted to the smell had I read the text sometime before walking up the stairs. We seldom percieve things that we do not expect to exist. - Maybe I can turn this text onto some more positive rails if I turn round the previous sentence: We percieve things and phenomena that we expect to exist. Our intentions become our goals and objectives.

I like to go to places by car. Anyhow, I feel bad for the environmental damage cars cause. My friend came to get me somewhere by her car. It is red outside and smells beige-coloured leather inside. It feels like a cat or a lazy panther. And it is gas-fuelled. I learnt that we have five service stations in Finland that sell gas for cars. The total area of the country is about 337 000 km2.

I immediately got worried about my friend having to plan all her trips from one service station to the next and not being able to go to Lapland, for instance. In Lapland there are only 14 people per square kilometre and the distances are long. It would be highly unlikely that they would have a couple of those five service stations there.

Technology does wonders. Until the end of the nineteenth century people thought that engineers were unable to make mistakes. Maybe we should restore that belief. When my friend starts the engine, it uses petrol. Then it changes over to gas automatically. She can drive about 350 kilometres using gas and when there is no more left, the engine starts drinking petrol again. And sitting comfortably in the beige-leather smelling car you know nothing about those changes. I find it amazing. My idea about gas-fuelled cars was something similar to the häkäpönttö cars and lorries they used during the war. They were carrying a kind furnace at the back. Every few kilometres they had to be stopped and somebody had to fill in chop wood into it.

It is easy to guess now what type of car I want to have in the future. I know that cars are not ecologically sound and sustainable, but maybe we could give our engineers opportunities to show that sustainable technologies have been developed and there are alternative solutions. In that sense we have hope. It is just the market economy that wants the process to go on as it now does.

Instead of a car el Comisario Brunetti uses boats - lancha y vaporetto - because he lives in Venice. One more thing that I learnt while reading about him and his work is that the houses in Venice do not fall down. They maybe sink, but they do not fall down.

I am also very grateful for Paola Brunetti´s idea about washing mirriors and windows. She says that you can wash a mirror and when it is washed you immediately see the result. But washing a window you do not see the result of your work before you have closed it. When you close the window the light meets it in a different angle and that different angle often reveals spots that are not yet clean. The only way to evaluate the work done is to change the angle you look at the results.

"/.../ cuando cierras la ventana, la luz vuelve a entrar con el ángulo de antes y entonces ves que aún está sucia por fuera o que te has dejado un trozo en parte de dentro. Entonces tienes que volver a abrirla y limpiar otra vez. Pero no puedes estar seguro de que cristal está bien limpio hasta que cierras la ventana o la miras desde otro ángulo.
- Y el espejo? - preguntó él.
Ella lo miró y sonrió.
- El espejo lo ves por un solo lado. La luz no lo atraviesa. Lo limpias y listo. No hay más que una manera de verlo.