July 12, 2010
The street sweepers here wear suits bright as orange rind and dance with twig brooms.
I see them in the early morning as I stumble across the piazza in the direction of a latte macchiato. They clear the streets of bougainvillea petals and the debris of summer weddings: hearts of confetti, bottles of Asti, handfuls of rice.
And every morning I pray, “Please Signor Sweeper, hold tight! Hold fast to those twigs. Don’t go all plasticky on me.”
I want to weep when I see the changes sweeping Sicily, her Americanization: the new shopping malls plunked down among the olives, the SUVs, the McDonald’s in Upper Ragusa (though grazie a Dio the one in nearby Modica went belly-up).
So I savor the twigs. Because someday soon they’ll disappear, never to return.
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June 29, 2010
Assai megghiu addivintirai si a la morti pinsirai, goes an old Sicilian saying. You’ll be a better person if you think about death.
The walls in Sicily are bulletin boards of death, so there’s ample opportunity here to think about it.
The black-bordered papers called necrologie are everywhere. Ciao Nonno Salvatore one reads. Bye Grandpa Salvatore.
A guy with a brush and a pot of glue rides around on his motorino plastering necrologie around town.
My Sicilian-American friend Mary, who has lived here for twenty-some years, says she was “freaked out” by the “morbid things” when she first arrived, but I find them endearing. They celebrate you all over the neighborhood for months, even years, while all we Americans get is a tiny newspaper blurb for a day.
Li morti aprinu l’occhi a li vivi, say the Sicilians.
The dead open the eyes of the living.
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June 19, 2010
Sicily’s shutters:
Defenders against the brash sun.
Mysterious louvered eyelids.
Guardians of secret lives.
Shutters here are called persiane (Persians).
The hot ghibli winds have blown in from the Sahara, along with sand. Come mid-afternoon, you close the shutters tight and lie down in a dark room on cool sheets. Guilt-free. Everyone else is doing it, too.
Later as the sun begins to drops, the village wakes and, one by one, le persiane creak open.
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June 10, 2010
There are rivers, cascades, torrents of steps in Sicilian hill towns.
 
Ragusa Ibla is a natural gym—better than a Stair Stepper. No wonder the locals live such long lives. It must be the steps (oh, and the olive oil that old-timers drink like water).
I gain no weight here, though I eat like a monster: great bowls of pasta alla Norma, cones of toasted almond gelato, artichoke flowers, deep-fried donuts filled with sweet pistachio cream, wheels of cheese.
    
To the hundreds of steps in town, add twenty-five more in my house. I lie in bed at night, head spinning and spinning. Legs aching and aching. And I’m happy.
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Does this life look fun to you?
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June 1, 2010
They came and took away the festa lights today.
Thank goodness the fun is over. Three whole days of it. The piazza resembled the midway at a Texas carnival: balloons, candy apples, cotton candy (zucchero filato).
Fireworks scaring to death—literally—the poor pigeons (carcasses all over town), large whorls of purple smoke ruining my laundry, wildly peeling bells at all hours of the day, our fêted patron saint (San Giorgio) paraded again and again through the tangled streets, three evenings of piped-in You’re Nothing but Hound Dog, three nights of blinding explosions that screeched like anti-aircraft fire—with sparks so close I was sure my house would melt. Via San Giorgio!
Great fun! See for yourself!
 
 
 
You can’t accuse Sicilians of lacking enthusiasm or the grand gesture.
And tomorrow’s another festa (della Repubblica)!
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My Tourist Tips for Southeast Sicily
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