In the summer of 2011 I traveled to Venice, Italy with my family. As a curious rising 6th grader I spent five minutes one day just watching the street life. I remember everything about those five minutes of observation. Five minutes of absorbing every movement made, every word spoken, and every person on that street in Venice. Five minutes, of which some was spent just taking a person and imagining a life for them. Five minutes, each one showing a glimpse of 20 people’s lives at a time.

“Mommy look!” I heard a small child behind me talking to his mother. I assumed they were touring Venice just like my family. He had been pointing at a man, a type of street performer. The man was in long baggy brown robes, the type you see monks on TV wearing. One arm was holding onto a cane that was pretty much just a branch from a tree, and he was sitting with his legs crossed. The odd thing was the man was two feet above the ground, and the cane seemed to be the only thing preventing him from falling. People walked over and swiped their arms beneath him as if checking for invisible chairs or stilts, and the man just kept his head down, never moving a muscle. I was pretty amazed. I thought about how he was doing it until my brain hurt, and then I moved on.

Then I noticed something beautiful. Actually, everything beautiful. I continued to see it; how people sat in the restaurants, at the beautiful tables, on which sat beautiful silverware and dishes, that held beautifully prepared italian breakfasts, accompanied by a beautiful italian espresso carrying a roasted fragrance for blocks. The beauty was inescapable, surrounding every person, thing, and place in the city, it was extraordinary.

Then I saw a boy dropping a rock into the water, the splash leading my eyes down underneath the bridge to see a gondola riding past. The gondola had now gone under me, cutting off my sight and forcing me to move on from the canal. Then moving on to see two Italian men in suits arguing with one another, my imagination took hold at that point. I imagined a whole life for them. They were no longer just plain Italian men, probably arguing over business, but Italian mafia arguing about how to take care of Talkative Tony; who’s been to one been talking to the wrong people about the “family business”. That was much more interesting.

As my imagination wandered and I looked for another make-believe life to create. I saw a few birds flying out of an elderly woman's way. The birds led my eyes to a balcony above me. On that balcony was a slightly older looking gentleman, who sat with a distinguished posture reading a paper, and drinking what I presumed to be a morning espresso. He reminded me of Robert De Niro playing a part, in that untouchable crime boss sort of way. Then my mind wandered back to the two men and their “family business”. Maybe this was the man in charge. He gave off an air of importance the way he carried himself. He sat in his chair sipping his espresso with a king-like stature, facing towards and looking down on all the people in the street, but not in an arrogant or selfish way, like he earned everything he has and he knows it. After I finished imagining that my eyes wandered once more to the rest of the street.

This time instead of focusing on a single person and their story, I focused on the whole of the street. It was sort of chaotic if you thought about it. So many things happening at once without interference from one another, people walking through the streets all had different motives yet everything worked in a way so that every person could accomplish their task without delaying someone else’s. It was a systematic chaos, perfectly fitting to everyone's ambitions.

In those five minutes I felt that I had seen a hundred years worth of culture. I had imagined whole lives for people, and seen a tiny peek into a hundred different people's stories. I’ll dream about it for many nights to come, and as my mind fades into the abyss and subjects itself to the fictional world of my dreams, a different image comes into focus, meeting me in the pit of sleep. A curious child in an Italian street, and I will hear those words: “Mommy look!”