Life & Death in La Kalsa

"Where have you gone my blue-eyed son? Where have you gone my darling young one?"- A Hard Rain is a Gonna Fall as sung by Brian Ferry

This is part 3 of my travel diary for my family trip to Sicily. I suggest starting a couple posts down with "A Past That Watches The Future"

Marsala:

On our way to the storied, infamous city of Palermo, we stopped at the seaside town of Marsala to taste some of the region's lovely wine and have a bit of pasta and swordfish al fresca in a local restaraunt. This sleepy town was the closest "city" to the village that my father's grandparents came from...so stopping here was also of interest for this reason.

As the tour group lingered over wine and desert, I slipped away and walked out to the water. I was enchanted by the windmills. I felt slightly melancholy, the way I always do when I'm experiencing something that I know I probably won't again...instant, paradoxically concurrent nostalgia...which is probably quite unhealthy. If I return to Sicily (or rather when,) chances are that I would not find myself back in Marsala. It is a bit remote, and not all that interesting except in the way that every rundown seaside town is fascinating to me. This is probably because I spent my formative (i.e. miserable) years on the outskirts of one. So I suppose I could return to Marsala, as I seem to find myself back in Port Jefferson every so often. If not, it was like having a memorable conversation with a stranger in a crowd who you shall not see again. I took a deep breath of the marine air and went back to the restaurant.
The winery was compelling, less so for the wine (Marsala wine is an intense, sweet dessert wine) then for the decorative folkart donkey carts which the winery had on display. They were so glam rock...in a late 19th century peasant kind of way. It was really hard to get a picture which did it justice in the dark cellar however.
My father told me that he remembered seeing similar carts in local parades in Brooklyn and Queens, in the late 40s early 50s when he was a little boy.

Mount Pellegrino: We finally arrived at the outskirts of Palermo late in the afternoon and proceed to drive straight up the massive Pellegrino mountain to the Sanctuary of Saint Rosalia, the patron saint of Palermo. I have been struggling my way through a song about this saint who, according to legend was born in Pa;ermo, of a Norman noble family in around 1130. Her piety drove her to leave her home as a teenager, to live as a hermit in a cave on this mountain where she died in her thirties. Nobody in the city knew anything about her demise at that time. In 1624, while a horrible plague haunted Palermo, a vision of Rosalia appeared to a hunter. The apparition of Rosalia told the hunter to find her bones in that sullen cave and to carry them through the streets of Palermo.
The hunter climbed the mountain and found her bones in the cave as described. After her bones were carried in a procession through the streets of Palermo, the plague stopped. After this Rosalia was venerated as the patron saint of Palermo, and a sanctuary was built in the cave where her remains were discovered. This sanctuary was to be our first stop.
Approaching the cave, I was not overcome with anticipation. There was a lovely rectory built alongside it, and the Sicilian sun shone warm on the tourists and locals alike. It seemed too bright and safe a place for anything profound to exist, and I had read accounts where the sancuatry and it's gift shop were described as "cheesy." These accounts were absolutely wrong and cripplingly cynical. Once you stepped into that cave it was a whole different world. It was cold and dark, and moist, and the little sanctuary built inside was at once so humble, beautiful, and strange that I could not help but be overcome with emotion. What a more perfect spiritual place for a boy who spent the better part of his youth locked away in small, dark bedsits than this cave and blessed Rosalia. Our tour guide, Roberta, told me that people write small notes for Rosalia and leave them in cracks of the cave, or inside this golden box which holds a statue of her, and maybe her bones (though I got different accounts on this from what i read.) I pushed mine through a slot inside the box where it fell against the statue. I was dizzy from it all, and spent a good few moments in quiet meditation. The ceiling of the cave was full of all these mismatched peices of metal that reminded me of a modernist art installation. Later I learned that they were for collecting cave condensation for spiritual/medicinal use. What a perfect collision between so called art school 'sophistication' and Sicilian 'superstition.' The blue lights around the statue, behind the alter, were beautiful despite the transparency of their moodiness. I guess that same sentence can be said about all the bands I like too.
I found this sanctuary so moving on both a sprititual and aesthetic level. The story of Rosalia is this amazing metaphor for what we can find, and lose, and bear in isolation and loneliness...and hopefully what can be redeemed. All the feelings I had in the Sanctuary of Madonna Della Rocca in Taormina were just multiplied infinately here. I felt close to the mystery and the answers all at once.

Monreale; Another historic area surrounding Palermo is Monreale, whose Cathedral includes an amazing collection of Byzantine mosiacs, and arabic influences. The massive mosiac of Christ "the powerful" is startling and intimidating. The surrounding alcoves and cloisers were also stunning and it was nearly impossible to take it all in surrounded by tourists and chaos. Our time here was limited and it was again, really frustrating. So, it remains another place I must return to. I got a chuckle coming out of the cathedral and walking amongst the shops, when I saw a beaten up scooter with an "I love Juventus" sticker on it, which in its own way was equally beautiful to me. But then again, I am a bit of a weirdo.

Palermo: We arrived in Palermo proper bit exaughsted and happy to take a shower and dump our belongings in our faux glamorous hotel. Some of the details were euro-modern, but the overall vibe was Ikea decorated prison cell, which again was better than sleeping on the floor when playing gigs, but less than what most of the other people on the tour wanted. Palermo was like Rome's seedier younger cousin. Beautiful Baroque interesections covered in deisel dust. Dark forbodding alleyways with little light. Traffic and crowds and energy. The Old and The New together in wary coitus. It felt like Film Noir waiting to happen in every tense moment. I loved it, but was just a little scared. The next morning we visited another cathedral in the center of the city, which while lacking the immense scale of Monreale, featured some really intimate nooks of byzantine/romanesque splendour and imagery. But the most interesting part of the day was the side trip I took with my mother, father and brother to the National Gallery, which was located in the infamous La Kalsa quadrant of the old city. Not only was the museum full of fascinating peices of Italian art, mostly Christian in origin, but the original structure, an old Sicilian palace, was amazing. Most people who visist this district, come for the gallery and then high tail it out of there. That is because almost all guide books describe this former arab district, which was partially destroyed (and barely rebuilt) during Allied bombings in WWII as the city's most impoverished and dangerous. It is a web of narrow alleys and crumbling limestone buildings opening to piazzas and churches and squalor. The term "La Kalsa" is sometimes said to refer to the arabic world Kalisa, or the The Pure, which would be ironic since what once was the capital of Arab controlled Sicily was now a bit of a disaster. Other accounts I read said the term "La Kalsa" refered to an arabic word for "the elected," and refered to it's role in governing the city. Either way, I decided to get up early the next day and explore by myself. That evening we travelled to the oasis-like Mondello Beach for a "farewell to the tour group" dinner of antipasti and fish...that was delicious. And the old seaside hotel which housed the resteraunt was also a shade of glamorous which I have rarely seen.

I got up early the next day and set out for the heart of La Kalsa. I felt completely compelled by the place! It was a bombed out medievel arab neighborhood stuck in the middle of a busling urban city. It was a low, desert colored seaside maze of possibility. And in it's own way it was the vaguely bohemian center of the Palermo art scene, something called Kalarts. I thought of how brave and bad-ass hipsters in New York think they are for gentrifying the ethnic edges of Williamsburg or Fort Green Brooklyn. La Kalsa was literally bombed apart! There didn't appear to be street lights, or even actual roads in certain parts. The signs of poverty were everywhere, but also of inspiration. Street art and graffiti shared blocks with beautiful Baroque churches. Small vendors and artisit set up shops down narrow alleys. Concerts and performances occured around the amazing roofless ruins on The Church of San Spasimo.

I felt like there was something about the timelessness of Sicilian suffering and inspiration, that was characterized perfectly/essentially by La Kalsa. This whole city of Palermo was an amazing document. It had catherdals and bombed out buildings, half a mile apart. Prada shops and opera houses in one quarter, and street vendors selling garlicy snails in paper cups, chickpea fritters for a quarter...in this one. I wandered around all day until I was overheating in the midday Palermo sun and pollution. I dreamed about playing for the nick-nameless Palermo soccer team like my hero Fabio Grosso. I called them "The Pink Falcons" because that's what their logo was! I wanted to be a Pink Falcon!

On the verge of hallucination I stoped at a gelato shop and ordered in pathetically bad Italian. The rasperry and chocolate cone was cold and delicious and it melted down my hand as I leaned up against the ancient outer walls of the district. It was time to go back to the city center and spend the evening with my family, eating at the amazing Foccacheria San Franscesco, window shopping, and looking for souveniers on Corso Umberto. Sleeping and leaving.

Sicily lingers the way all things beautiful, and terrifying...half glimpsed...always do. I will return to it as it does to me.

xoxo

Michael Della Grazia

Oh Hercules

"If I knew all about this world, do you think I'd stay here...that's absurd" -Felt

For those of you who are just checking in...this is part two of my 3 postings about my trip to Sicily, and I suggest scrolling down to the post called "A Past That Watches The Future," before you read this one.

Chapter :2 Mount Etna

The lovely resort town of Taormina continued to home base over the next day or so as various members of our group ventured off on day trips around Eastern Sicily. While my mother and father enjoyed some time unwinding by the pool, my brother and I happily joined a few other brave souls to visit Etna, Europe's greatest volcano.

The drive to the volcano was an interesting one, alternately fast flat highway and slow, windy snaking through towns. It is still really hard for an American to get used to the fact that every shop and town in Sicilia shuts down between 1pm and 4pm. The streets are empty. Where is everyone? What are they doing? Are there secret meetings? Are people fooling around in the afternoon? That would truly be 'so european.'

The ride got spookier as ghost towns gave way to bits of ragged wilderness and the lava tinged land and dirt got gradually darker and more forboding.

The bus crawled up the volcano, our ears popping as the sky grew grayer. There is only so far you can go up Etna by bus, and you had to pay a substantial extra fee to go even higher by ski lift. My brother & I passed on the ski lift, and decided to explore the two defunct craters that were upon to the public and departed the bus. The air was at least 20 degrees colder, and a strange grey fog dominated. The sun would slash through for a moment or two at a time...but mostly the landscape was like being on some goth planet. If not for the occasional chatter of teenage girls at the bar at the foot of the crater, one might have just collapsed from the loneliness and bleakness of the place. It was in this way...unbelievable beautiful.

Climbling the main crater was a mildly insane idea. First off it was quite high, the top of that sloping hill in the forefront of the picture below. Secondly it was like climbling up quicksand. The volcanic dust gave way beneathe your feet, meaning it was constantly one step up, half a step back. In addition the black sand was full of unfriendly chunks of of lava rocks to turn your ankles upon. Thirdly, the air was thin, and your lungs burned as they struggled to get the air needed to propell you up.

But after struggling for a good 40 minutes, my brother and I arrived at the top and plopped ourselves down on a narrow 4 foot wide plateau which sloped down precariously on both sides. The crater beneathe us was full of objects that people had thrown down into it. Offerings? Amazingly, someone had climbed down into the crater and spelled out something in Italian. I wondered if they had managed to climb out. The fog was really thick and Arthurian, and my brother who has more of a problem with heights than I, was visibly shaken. But I felt calm.

I believe that having had moments (long moments) in my life where death seemed as appealing as life...has made it a lot harder to scare me. Even though I love life now so deeply, and I am embarrassed of those days in the past, I think a bit of the residual steeliness remains. If I may go off topic for a second, there was this evening about 6 years ago, walking out of a dreary corner bodega in the relatively lonesome west edge of Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria NYC. This was during some of the darkest, zombified days of my life with lots of stuff in tatters. Anyway, as I'm walking out of the bodega, a car with tinted windows comes to a screeching halt, and two fellows with moustaches leap out with guns drawn shouting at someone getting into a car parked just infront of me. People are leaping behind garbage cans and little kids are screaming, and I just open up my bag of Doritos and keep walking as if nothing was happening. It was really then that I realized that I really needed to care a little more about life & death...one way or another. A bit of fear means you have something to lose. I needed a bit of fear, and something to lose. It wasn't long after that some bells saved my life. But that's another story.

In conclusion, I think surviving really bad times makes it easier to climb a volcano. In fact I made sure to steal a moment of silence up there on Etna, to take in the reality of A Dark Place Where Nothing Grows. To feel it's awesome power, to explore it's perverse beauty. But to give thanks that I could climb back down. Climb back out. To give thanks that there are still more gardens and seasides then there are black mountains of dust.

As far as climbing down...that in itself was a stimulating experience. It was so steep, and the sands so shifty, that within a few steps I was really just sort of sneaker skiing down the volcano at an alarming speed. Since I have actually never skied on a real mountain with snow...I was amazed that I wasn't rolling down the hill like a giant black snowball with a broken neck. I didn't...I just sped down the black dust whilst shifting my weight from left foot to right like some gold medalist at the Mope Rock Olympics. Very strange. Very fun.

Once at the bottom of the crater, it instantly felt like I had never been at the top at all. It was so dreamy and cold and windy and barren up there. I have no reference for it, save perhaps for a memory of one drunken evening in my bedroom listening to Joy Division's Closer with headphones on many many years ago. A kind of vast claustrophobia.

It was equally strange to go from that crater back to the poshness of our Taormina hotel. The world really is a place of extremes. Sicilia especially, essentially, so. Me, my brother and me mum and dad went out for cappucinos and cannolis that night and strolled past the shops and the African merchants with their good spread out on blankets. My mom got a pair of earrings.

Chapter 2: Siracusa

The next day was a trip to Siracusa, or Syracuse of the ancient Greek world. A place of myths and legends, gods and monsters...and for us, two important archeolgical sites; the theatre and the Ear of Dionysis.

The sun was surreal-y hot as we sat down on the 2,500 year old stone seats of the theater. During the more temperate months, the theater puts on performances of the ancient greek tragedies, which I think is unbelievably cool. I wonder if they are performed in Greek (which very few Sicilians speak) or Italian (which very few Sicilains speak...just kidding.)

Which leads me off on another tangent. The Sicilian language is an example of how biases spread misinformation about a marginalized people. I had often thought that Sicilian was a dialect, a kind of "broken Italian," or "peasant Italian"...which basically means "ignorant Italian" in code...which is absolutely not true, and just a misconception I sort of gleaned from the Italian American middle-class, and their prejudices about the "old country." The Sicilian language (now mainly an oral one) evolved over two milenium, predating Italian! It is a combination of Latin, Greek, Spanish, French & Arabic (and more, probably) and for a period of time was the language of romantic poetry...greatly influencing Dante. Just like Sicilia itself, it is a open language which assimilates and transforms the varius influences which are (often) forced upon it. Thus when my great grandmother said something sounding like "gabedu" to me as a child whilst pinching my face, she was probably saying something like "Che beddu" Or "what beauty!" Beddu being the Sicilian word, vs. bello in the Italian, Che being Italian for "what." However, when she said something that sounded like "bacauzu" for bathroom, she was probably using a Sicilian word that developed after coming to America...that is to say a Sicilian-ization of the English word "back house" or "out house" (detatched plumbing-less bathrooms.) Credit goes to my Mother for that particular bit of linguistic sluething. Another tidbit worth noting is that when you eat Chicken or Veal Marsala, named after the Sicilian city of the same name, you are eating Chicken "Marsa Allah" or "The Port of Allah", or the "Port of God" as the Arab Saracen's named it. Arabic influences on the language like these are common in places like Marsala and Palermo where

muslim influence was strong.
Back to Syracuse. The theater was very evocative, even if our tour didn't allow for hours to sit and take in the sense of time. The Ear, was a prison carved into stone, and it was quite creepy inside. It did however have great acoustics, and our guide sung an imprompru version of "Amazing Grace."

The city proper of Siracusa had a certain sleepy seaside grandeur, and the main church (which had been built over an ancient greek temple that predated Christ by a good bit) was a 3-d timeline of Sicilia's various conquerers. Spanish wood here, muslim arches there. An assemblage of styles and beliefs. You see it all over Sicily, like the spanish tiles above this sanctuary of Saint Sebastian.

We wandered the narrow streets of the city, pausing to take in the decaying facades of so many baroque townhouses. The whole group ended up a seaside fish joint with a vaguely futuristic decor. It seems that in Sicilia older is better, as the meal was the first subpar one I'd had in Sicilia.

Overall Siracusa seemed like a city that was hiding a bit from me. Maybe from all visitors. It's hard not to be shy when you're competing with a version of yourself from 3,000 years ago which included Hercules and giant seven headed dragons. Then again, it may have just been the long lunch break. I couldn't tell...I didn't have the leisure of being lonsome in this lonesome place long enough to enjoy it.

3: Agrigento

So we finally left Taormina the next morning after our return from Siracusa. I'm not sure can get to know a place without sleeping over, a fact which more than a few women have used as the criteria for gauging the seriousness of their suitors. Siracusa was just a noisy, confusing memorable first date with a chick with a lot of baggage.

We arrived in Agrigento a few hours after leaving Taormina, and I did more napping than sightseeing while on the bus. Agrigento wasn't much of a town, from what I read, but contained some of the most intact ancient greek ruins in the world...part of a place called The Valley of The Gods. Before we got to the ruins we stopped at this farmhouse pizzeria, which was delicious...and I downed glass after glass of watery 'vino a tavala' while hearing some outrageous WWII stories from a gentleman on the tour. Let's just say that when I was 18 I was listening to The Cure and playing wiffleball. This guy was sleeping in a whole he dug out of the German snow, with bullets flying round his head. Damn impressive. And such a cheery guy!
The dusty land upon which the ruins stood was vast and melancholy, and the light seemed to re-invent each visage by the minute. However our tour guide was such a monotoneous windbag, that I had to slip away and try to steal a couple of minutes of solace with the ruins. The guide was so clueless that he actually brought charts that he kept directing people to look at. I don't know about most people, but when I have the opportuntiy to see ancient ruins, I don't like to spend most of my time scrutinizing print outs from off the internet.

So I kept lagging behind taking pictures and trying to explore places which were technically off limits but guarded only by a small sign. No work of art in Sicily is actually protected from theft or vandalism. It's kind of upsetting. The upside being that you can explore a bit. It was really amazing, but I wish I could have seen them at dusk, without the group and the guide...and with a super 8 camera.

Right before we got back on the bus to depart the ruins, I spotted a couple of fellows playing soccer in the dust, and was reminded that I needed to find a place in Agrigento to watch the World Cup final between Italy & France that evening.


Our hotel in Agrigento was a pretty typical mediocre european hotel, the kind I would have been estatic to stay in when on tour (our last tour in Vancouver I actually slept in what appeared to be a large drawer in a converted brothel,) but I couldn't help but be slightly dissapointed after the glam & pamp of Taormina. Our dodgy meal further pissed me off, since we could have found a better one in any local "bar". Worse yet, we finished the meal right as the match was beginning, leaving me no time to try to find a suitable "bar" on the boarwalk to watch it at with my brother. Instead i watched the first half in some hotel conference room which had all the charm of well...a hotel conference room. At half time me, my brother and our melancholy guide Roberta ran across the town until we came upon a local cafe with out door seating and a big ol' television. I ordered a Peroni and watched a tense scoreless half with the Italian's barely avoiding elimation, as the goalie saved their pancetta a couple times.

Then came the infamous headbut from Zidane. The tide was turning.
Then came penalty kicks....which the Italians's are notorious for losing in these World Cups.
But not this time.

Italy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


After the match my brother & I walked along the boardwalk of this rundown, seaside town. We had just seen the Italian victory with a couple hundred people in a place which resembled the Morrisey video for "Everyday Is Like Sunday." It was glorious, yet sort of unreal. And although the Sicilians took pride in the national team (especially ace Sicilian defender Fabio Grosso)...there was always a slight bit of alienation to each Sicilian gesture, a sigh at the end of each cheer, even as the champagne poured. I had come to Sicilia to feel more Italian, but instead I felt less. I felt more Sicilian, which is to say...more of everything and nothing at all.


At the edge of the boardwalk we spotted a statue of the Virgin Mary with a neon halo, and I gave thanks for the Italian victory, a scene which spiritually/metaphysically/theologically and aesthetically was utterly blashemous. But I couldn't help it. You had to be there, and I was just amazed and thankful that I was.

I watched the Italian news coverage of the match in our little cookie tin of a room. I fell asleep as the third cousin of the kings of the world.

I dreamt about the volcano.

Part 3: Palermo and Life & Death in La Kalsa
Coming soon Punters!

A Past That Watches The Future

A thousand rainy days and I spoke
on tongues that talk of saints, burned down days like cigarettes for your hollow praise. Down the days that you forget, count the pictures that you keep. Keep it, hide it all away, let it never show... "Torch" - Pyschedelic Furs


So I have been back in New York City for about a week, and ironically...it is here in this First World country that I have been without electricity and hot water for the entire time. I'm stuck in a large, seemingly endless blackout which struck Queens (aka the Forgotten Borough) on last Monday. Power is returning to people slowly, but as of last night I only had one random light bulb working...which it strikes me may be how a cruel critic might describe my artistic temperment. Alas, my trip to Sicilia was pretty great, and what follows is a rough sketch of what I saw and a lot of photos. I would really like to write something substantial, like a novel, about what I felt when in Sicilia, but that would take some time that I don't have, and a few more trips to Italy which I can't afford. This was a trip I took with my parents, mostly about being with them, and rest assured we had a lovely time together but what follows are mostly my private observations and thoughts during the days here and there which I managed to steal away from the tour group (which was an experience in itself.) I hope you enjoy it.

Portrait of Sicily As A Broken Heart

I knew very little about Sicilia before spending a few evenings prior to my trip reading up on it. I knew all my ancestors (including my enigmatic, never seen French great grandfather) resided there, in a land usually talked about by non-Sicilians (including other Italians) in disparaging whispers concerning the Mafia, or the people's brown skin, or their emotions which always seem on the verge of coming undone.

I remember my two great grandmothers who passed when I was younger. Both had came over from Sicilia. My great grandmother Mary, spoke almost no English, and wore the weariness of her home land upon her brow, within her knees. Even her hair looked tired. She walked with a single crutch, and cooked all she would eat in a single pan. While she was alive, she was merely an antiquated mystery to a teenage punk with his mind on the future. Now, I finally have some clues...and a desire to understand them...but the mystery, as known to her, is long buried beside her.

So I learned what I could in 9 days.

Upon returning from Sicily, I now recognize certain kinds (or colors) of angst, anxiety, and desire...as essentially Sicilian. I also recognized a certain haunted quality in the eyes and words of our female tour guide Roberta...that I had always recognized in myself. All Sicilian's are mope rockers. It's just that the 'rock' is literal. She pulled me aside on the bus to explain how Sicilians lived mostly in "shadows, waiting for the light." And of how "one day brings happiness, and the next maybe death." Traveling around Sicilia, you don't see death lurking down every alley the way you might in Basra or Somalia. But I completly understood why she saw its form in an arrangement of clouds, heard its footsteps in the rattle of her vespa. I couldn''t explain it either, but I could understand. She taught me an amazing Sicilian expression which translates as "You cry with one eye." Which she explained meant that there was always sadness, and loneliness in life in Sicilia, but also always beauty and wonder...so you cry with one eye, and keep the other open to take in whatever magic may emerge. It struck me when she told me that, that I too, like my countrymen, have been "crying with one eye" all my life, and so have my songs. The expression reminded me of the Oscar Wilde quote which I have always so adored, "We are lying in the gutter but looking at the stars." Perhaps this is the natural human condition. In the gutters of London or Palermo or Bedford Stuyvesant. I've often felt ashamed of my watery left eye. Maybe it is nothing to be proud of, but maybe its nothing to be ashamed of either...I dunno. Perhaps we should just be grateful that we still have one eye that sparkles...and sees wonder.

A few things about Sicilia...

It is an Island, as all melancholy things are.

It is a broken place. Or perhaps better to describe it as a cracked place, a damaged place. Not broken. Never broken. But there was no renaissance there.

There are no Sicilians. They were just survivors, prisoners, resisters, immigrants. The first Sicilians, whoever they were...wherever they came from... were erased by 3000 years of occupation and empire by The Greeks, The Byzantines, The Vandals, The Arab Muslims, The Normans, The Spanish, ad infinitum. To be Sicilian was to be adaptible, resilient & woeful. Only once did they overcome their occupiers, when the lads at the Sicilian Vespers tore out each Frenchmen's tongue in 1282, drove them from the land. But then it was soon a return to being sold or given as a wedding gift amongst kings and tyrants.

Sicilia's land itself speaks of a broken heart in topographic metaphor. It is covered by fierce, forboding but beautiful mountains. To live in Sicilia often means finding a space, a pocket between or upon these craggily spires on which to rest. Sicilia is branded by the shadow of The Volcano Etna, which never rest. It smokes, it broods, it's onyx sands and frigid fog appearing like an inverted oasis. There is depth and awe in it. When it's errupts, the people pray for their lives to pagan spirits inside it. Go(o)d is forgotten when earth turns into fire. Sicilia is a mystical place, but it is as full of myths and monsters as it is angels.

What isn't mountain or ash is often arid plain. The Roman's turned the lush Sicilian wilderness into a factory farm during their reign to supply grain for soldiers. Much of what was green and tall was consumed for the glory of others. Those plains remain a weary breadbasket, scorched by the mediterean sun, scalded by the North African winds.

The cities are amazing, conflicted mysteries of poverty and antiquity. Greek, Roman, Arab, Norman structures mixed together...like a sleeve of architectural tattoos. It is marked, not designed. Everything is coated in the thick soot of cars and motorinos...even the Baroque intersection which is Palermo's most famous. The picturesque is a luxury in Sicily.

And along the coasts, people fish...sunbathe...stare out at the water...think about leaving...imagine what's across those oceans...

They fantasize about places that are flat and stay the same. In other words...the opposite of what we fantasize about.

Chapter 1) Taormina: It may have been better to have visited Taormina last instead of first. For of all the places I would see in Sicilia, it was the only one where pleasure and peace and a kind of old-school hipster luxury had prevaled over the chaos and corruption and decay which equally defines Sicilia. It was Abel without Cain. Taormina is a resort town which spirals up a seaside mountain. It is remarkably beautiful and isolated/insulated from the usual chaotic energy of Sicilia. It's transformation from impoverished 18th century town (itself a transformation from its ancient Greek splendour as a grand satellite of the great Syracuse) to what it has been now for about120 years... a panoramic, bohemian and slightely decadent tourist resort.. really began with the notoriety brought to it by a remarkable aristocratic gay photographer named Wilhelm von Gloeden.

At the end of the Victorian era, his provocatively "neoclassical" photos of young sicilian fisherman and shepards, recast as nude greek ideals...brought fame and intrigue (and later under Mussolini, imprisoment to his assistants) to both von Gloeden and Taormina. Soon Wilde, Mann and Klimt, and later Dietrich, Tennesse Williams, Capote, Faulkner and many others would seek inspiration (and perhaps obscurity) there, and many many more tourist followed.

In Taormina, the old hotels and bustling bistros that line the Corso Umberto, share space with Benneton and Diesel shops. They all share space with medievel churches and squares, a beautiful english garden, and the ancient greco-roman theatre, which is still used for concerts. It's a strange amalgamation of desires that somehow works. We were staying in the poshest hotel I'd ever been in, a new joint called The Grande San Pietro, which overlooked the sea. From the twinkling piano in the bar, to the pool set upon a rocky overhang, this was as close to Fellini-esque glamor as I was likely to see anytime soon. I read British Vogue poolside while British girls sun bathed topless. I swam some horrific looking laps, before returning to my Dewars & Coke. It was glorious.

After a day or so of gelato, birdwatching, and aimless strolling, I started to feel a bit guilty and decided to make a pilgramage to "Madonna of The Rocks," a small church/sanctuary located high upon the mountain, that would require many kcalories to reach...whatever they were. From all around Taormina, you could see a tiny cross on top of a crumbling castle looming high

above you. From the central square, it appeared to the left of the cross atop the main church in the picture to the left. That was where I was going. My brother took one route, a series of steps which led straight up the rocks to the sanctuary. I decided to wind my way up the streets, past the homes and pensiones and meet him there. Both were hot, steep journeys...and a really good opportunity to mediate, and do a bit of healthy suffering. For no matter how heavy a body feels walking diagonally up a rock in the Sicilian summer...it is nothing compared to weight others beared.

It was a long, dusty walk up the twisting one lane road, and I had to press up againgst a few walls to avoid being crushed by citroen vans. When I finally got to the sanctuary, I was rewarded with some absolutely stunning views of Taormina below, the sea, and off in the distance...the volcano Etna.
Inside the sanctuary was a simple little church carved out of the stone. It was empty but for one man keeping guard with a basket for donations. I put in a 5 Euro note and enjoyed a few moments of absolute silence and reflection. It was lovely.

Outside the church, I found that the main gate to the castle (upon which the cross rested) was chained up. I had followed that cross from faint apparition on the mountain, till now...and I could only look upon it from behind bars. I felt the heaviness of my flesh & bones...and thought it perhaps better that I should be reminded of the limitations of my elevation.

A moment later I heard my brother call my name and joined him on his walk back down the steps. Each section of steps was marked with an expressionist-ish sculpture of one of the stations of the cross.

Finally back in town we sat at the legenday Wunderbar cafe and drank Pellegrinos and ate sandwhiches in the same piazza that Capote and Fellini and others had. It had that same impeccably preserved, yet distinctly faded glamour that Le Duex Magot in Paris has. You can feel the history and ideas of the past, but it seems more likely that new one's will come from the cafe down the road. In New York, at the height of My Favorite, I used to go to the Le Gamin Cafe off Avenue B, to try to enchant my life with the Paris of Camus and De Bouvier. One day I ran into Stephen Merritt and his puppy, and we had a little chat...and I thought perhaps I had made it a salon through force of will. Now that I'm back in New York I think I'll try to find a new Wunderbar somewhere out near the dunes of Amagansett.
Sitting at that cafe table, I smiled sheepishly at how relatively quickly (if not effortlessly) we had gone from the silent and spirtual, to the very human and sensual. If anything had come to represent the paradox of Taormina...it was that feeling.

Coming soon (within a week or so)...Chapter 2...The brothers climb a volcano...see many ruins...rule the World.