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, R
oberta, 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 i
magery. 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
