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July 3, 2010 The great thing about shooting in Sicily is that people beg to have their photo taken. Really! Girls, this one’s for you. A look at real Sicilian men… Fruit vendor:
Booksellers:
Fishmonger with stingray:
Drinking buddies:
Three guys debating parsley:
A fine fellow, too:
He’s the reverse side of the stingray seen above. ***
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. ***
June 23, 2010 Peaches grown on the lavic slopes of Mount Etna! They’re called pesche tabacchiere, and love poems should be scribbled to them.
I gobble them up, consoling myself after the new bathtub leaks (again) and the painter calls to say he cannot come (again). They’re flat, with a juicy pale-yellow flesh. The size of mini-donuts, but even sweeter. They remind you of how things must have tasted in Eden. In fact, the fruit vendor says they were the original peach. “How peaches were,” he says, “when they were born.”
I don’t know if he has scientific evidence for this, but I am completely convinced that this is the way peaches—and everything else—tasted in Eden. *** 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.
June 15, 2010 We make up a long list—masking tape, towel racks, electric drill, olive tree, hooks—and drive through the scabby detritus of Upper Ragusa’s industrial zone to Brico, a do-it-yourself Sicilian version of Home Depot. The smell of the sea fills our nostrils as we pull into the blazing parking lot. I don’t approve of big-box stores or the mall-ification of Sicily, but my hardware-hungry husband has landed on the island, we have a rental car, and I’m a hypocrite. Kim tries to get in the exit doors, but they remain stubbornly shut.
We’re a little frustrated that we can’t decode what’s in all the pots and the tubes.
At Home Depot you get boring batteries and drill bits at check-out. Here you get great pots of basil and fragrant mint.
We agree that the best thing about Brico is the aromatic do-it-yourself coffee bar with mod Italian tables and chairs.
For forty cents you can get not only a delicious caffè espresso, but a caffè lungo, caffè macchiato, cappuccino, caffè corto decaffeinato, caffè macchiato decaffeinato, mocaccino, cappciocc (what’s that?) cappuccino decaffeinato, cioccolato forte, cioccolata al latte, latte, latte macchiato, latte al cacao, and te al limone. Plus at the press of a button you decide if you want the above dolce or amaro. It’s Starbucks (but much better) in a machine the size of a jukebox. Can you beat that, Home Depot? |
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We finally escape the hot fingers of the sun into cool Brico-dom. Kim marvels at the dainty shopping baskets, wondering where all the flatbed carts are.
Floor space at Brico is devoted to garbage cans no bigger than my purse, and to jars for canning marmalade. We buy an olive tree for the tiny balcony and a rug made in Iran. Matinee idols deliver service with a smile (where are the Home Depot employees when you need them?).
