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!