November 30, 2011
I don’t know about your Big Dream, but mine was born in a flash when I laid eyes on Europe as a teen. I gotta move here, I thought.
A decade or two passed. There was always some excuse: too far, too expensive, too late, too early, too impractical, too scary, too risky, too crazy. Too, too, too. There was marriage along the way, and it was too hard to convince my husband. The dream remained nothing more than that. A fantasy moldering in a dark corner of my mind. Another decade passed: 9-11, my mother’s death, more gray hair.
You try hard to push it away. To pretend a dream is just not that important.
Then came the day “when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” (Anais Nin)
But it was a slow flowering; there were long delays and growing pains. That frequent feeling of What in hell’s name am I doing? What don’t I just go back to where I belong?
I was looking through photos the other day and found this. It caused a small feeling of horror.
My kitchen 2009-2010:
But I’ve learned: it is so worth letting yourself bloom.
There will be tears, fears, the gnashing of teeth. That’s inevitable.
Push through it and grow.
What a gift to yourself.
What are you waiting for?
My kitchen 2011
Click to subscribe to BaroqueSicily.
February 20, 2011
This was my bedroom, before. Crusty, water-stained walls and semi-ruined tiles from the early 1900s.
 Bedroom Before I plastered, painted, and had the floor professionally scrubbed and polished. The tiles look better but are still very distressed. But that’s OK. After all, I moved to Sicily to embrace antiquity, didn’t I? They’re refreshingly cool in August, ice-rink cold in December. Someday I hope to afford an antique Sicilian lace curtain.
 Bedroom After  Bedroom After Nice old blocks of sandstone were discovered on one wall, so I left it raw.
 Bedroom After I added a new knob to the squeaky old door. For €20 you can get a glass one made in Venice!
 Bedroom After My gaudy plastic chandelier lights up my life.
 Chandelier from Coin (sort of an Italian Target)
Dogs bark in the distant canyons at night. Mornings I wake up to sunshine, gonging bells, and fluttering doves.
The room is still a work in progress. I’d love to hear if you have a design idea. And please don’t say “pull down that horrid chandelier.”
****
Click to subscribe to BaroqueSicily.
September 21, 2010
Spotted in a Sicilian antique store: Baroque armoire of honeyed rosewood. Curlicues. Cornices. Roomy shelves. Way out of my range.
I keep going back. Just looking, I say, petting the piece. The price drops. But still…
“Bellissimo,” rasps the bleached antiquaria, pulling on a cigarette like it’s oxygen itself. ”One of a kind. From the villa of a barone.”
I imagine it in its former life, surrounded by Chinese porcelain, bibelots on the mantle, gilt-framed mirrors, Persian carpets, embroideries heavy with tassels. I fork over a wad of euro-cash, and she stubs out her cigarette and says two delivery guys will be on the job posthaste. And won’t it be absolutely gorgeous in my salone.
I don’t have the heart to admit it’s going in my bagno, bathroom, just steps from a toilet.
My buzzer goes off and two rosewood-laden guys heave into the house. My joy sinks a notch when I see her, the antique dealer, imperiously bringing up the rear.
I point toward the bathroom. When she sees how I’m violating Sicilian protocol, she exhales a puff of black smoke, utters a curse, and waves her cigarette around.
Later, I wipe out the centuries of baronial grime, fill it with my plebian doodads, and sweep up her long trail of ash.
Click to comment.
Click to subscribe.
***
For all of you who love Stromboli, or the Aeolian Islands, or Sicily, or Italy–would you help save a gorgeous (earthquake-damaged) church on Stomboli by signing a petition? It’s the project of one of Baroque Sicily’s readers, Beatrice Ughi. Signatures can only be collected until the end September. The link is in Italian, but it’s simple: go to the 3 long, thin boxes at the bottom and put in your name, email address, and the verification code. Mille grazie!
http://iluoghidelcuore.it/san_bartolomeo-stromboli-isole_eolie
***
August 19, 2010
I’m furnishing my home with trash.
The orange trash guys drop by on a daily basis. One day they’ll cart away secco, dry stuff. The next day it’s umido, wet stuff. Another day it might be plastica or carta or lattine. I still can’t figure out what the last thing is. To make matters worse, each kind of rubbish must be tightly wound up in a different-hued bag: lava-black for secco, pistachio-green for umido, and so on. I don’t expect to ever really catch on to a system that’s as complicated, in its own way, as Sicilian codes of honor.
But all that’s beside the point. What matters is not the debris they haul away from the house, but what they bring in. Last week one of them, eyes ablaze, said, “I hear you like old stuff, Signora.”
“You heard right, Signore.”
“Well, I have a piece of an old Sicilian cart. Do you want it?”
I took it, of course, along with his picture in the too-bright sun.
Then the next day along comes this: a rusted grinder, still smelling seductively of caffè.
So we’re in business, me and the garbage guys. Will the house soon look like a moldering antiques bazaar?
Click to comment.
Click to subscribe.
July 15, 2010
A working kitchen has finally emerged from the rubble like a phoenix rising. After two nail-biting years. No longer do I boil up boxed soup on a hot plate, despair, mix paint around with a carrot stick, despair, write on a plaster-encrusted sawhorse lit by a bare bulb. I have a real table, lights, a working stovetop. Not just any stovetop, amici, but a Renzo Piano one. (Renzo Piano is the Italian architect who designed the Pompidou Center, the new wing of the Chicago Art Institute, etc.) The stovetop is a piece of impeccable Italian design, though tricky to light and hard to clean (makes perfect sense as form usually trumps function in Italy).
Flies buzz in tight circles. The Iblean light beats in every morning, shining off the mirror-like floor.
The centerpiece of the kitchen is the cathedral dome out the window, and the soundtrack to my life are the bells, scaring me out of bed at 7am, marking the passing of each quarter hour, ringing for the dead, for weddings, for evening vespers, for morning mass, and for festa—four crazy-making days straight.
I love my Sicilian kitchen, and I’m grateful for each day I spend there. (What are you grateful for? Come on, tell us.)
***
Click to comment.
Click to subscribe.
|
My Tourist Tips for Southeast Sicily
|
