July 12, 2013
You need at least a dozen if you live in Sicily.
One to wash dishes, one to schlep wet towels from the machine to the clothes line, one to hold clothespins, one for picking or storing oranges, one for mopping stone tiles, one for the compost, one for glass, one for plastic, one for paper….
They must be in a rainbow of colors, so that you don’t mistakenly schlep the clean laundry in the floor-mopping tub or wash the dishes in the compost bin.
In Sicilia, you’ll find them liberally sprinkled around balconies and back doors, like urban bouquets.
Click to subscribe to BaroqueSicily.
Find me on Facebook.
My photography website.
November 12, 2010
The bras on the line are symbolic.
Moving to a Sicilian village means exposing yourself to public scrutiny, undies and all. You’re watched, eyeballed.
One morning, a tall villager spots my husband Kim—who has just returned from the US—in the piazza. “So,” he says, winking, “the sheep is back in the pen, is he?”
How did he even know Kim was gone?
For two weeks, I leave the house early, before 7am, to work on a project with a friend. I finally get a day to sleep in, but the buzzer squeals violently, over and over. I throw on a robe and open the door. “Oh, sorry signora,” say my neighbors, “to disturb you so early, but we know you will leave the house soon and we need to talk to you.”
They’ve been tracking my movements?
I smell what neighbors are cooking for lunch. I hear them singing, bickering. Living life here is like reading a tell-all, and being shocked to see you’re one of the characters.
How will I fare, exchanging an anonymous life for an examined one?
Time will tell.
***
 Click to comment.
Click to subscribe.
June 6, 2010
“I know you,” said a tall man with olive eyes as we crossed paths last week.
I racked my brain. Had we met?
“We drink coffee at the same bar,” he laughed. “All stranieri, strangers, are famous here.”
I cringed.
“Do you know Louise from England?”
I shook my head.
He pointed to a low, crumbling building adjacent to the cathedral and pulled out a ring of keys. “The church is trying to sell this building. Do you want to see inside?”
The two dank rooms inside were pigeon-pooped and depressing, but I saw two old chairs I liked in a pile of junk.
“I gift them to you, Signora.”
I politely protested.
“But they’re worthless!” he said.
Old Sicilian church chairs—seats lovingly caned with a thick, rough twine—have been replaced by pews.
Heading up the stairs to my house, a salvaged chair under each arm, I felt another rush of Sicily-love.
There was also regret. Why had he let them go so lightly?
***
ADDENDUM: It’s true that the little church chairs were riddled with wood-munching bugs—tarli, as they’re called here. But there’s a simple solution. My friend Roberta (left) taught me the antitarlo recipe: Buy a syringe at a farmacia, don pink plastic gloves, fill the syringe with toxic goo, plunge it into each and every pinhole (there were millions), then wrap the chair, Christo-like, in plastic and let rest for 2 weeks. Unwrap and enjoy with a glass of Nero d’Avola.
Click to leave a comment.
Click to subscribe.
May 6, 2010
My kitchen sink arrived from Tuscany in a beat-up truck with a blue plastic curtain. The truck came to a halt in front of the house. A burly driver got out and slowly slid open the curtain to unveil the sink as if were an opera d’arte.
Which, in a way, it is.
Having walked into my renovation blind as a bat, I’ve been, generally speaking, a catastrofista. But not this time. The sink is perfect. It’s made of graniglia—whatever that is—and is supple as silk. I run my hands over it the way you’d stroke a cat.
It awaits a backsplash of colorful Caltagirone tiles.
I no longer need to bathe from two old buckets or stoop over an old shower drain to brush my teeth. I have a sink!
I’ll be washing dishes in this sink soon. That’s right: No dishwasher.
My life in Sicily is all about getting into the rhythms of a slow island life, stepping back into another century, learning to dawdle. Less is more is my new mantra. This does not mean that I’ll give up my computer and subsist on snails and wild chickory, but it does mean I’ll forgo a dishwasher. A dryer, a freezer, a car. Even a TV. I’ll start savoring the way stars light the night. The way vines drip with grapes. The way doves strut and coo on bleached terracotta roofs.
***
Click to comment.
Click to subscribe.
***
You can win this cookbook!
Toni Lydecker’s Seafood alla Siciliana is somewhat smaller than coffee-table size, with thick, glossy paper, wonderful recipes, very pretty photos, and stories about Sicily’s cuisine. All you have to do is leave a comment on any of my blog posts between now and May 9, and I’ll enter your name for a random drawing on May 10, 2010. (You can enter one comment a day, max.) The only hitch is that you must provide a US or Canadian address for the shipping, so my apologies to readers on other continents.
April 26, 2010
Tragedy in the bathroom.
Remember those beastly expensive Italian glass tiles I naively ordered?
These are them, installed.
When I sprayed glass cleaner over my new sea-blue walls, wiping away the obscuring film of white plaster the mason had left, I could not believe my eyes. Not a single straight line! As if an ill-tempered four-year old had been hard at work.
How could I have allowed this to happen, you ask?
Well, early in the day, curiosity kept prompting me to run down two flights of stairs and check on the work. After 30 minutes of this, the mason said I made him nervous, and would I please go away and cease to bother him? The work is molto delicato, he said, and it is necessario to concentrate and be left solo.
And so away I went, full of cockeyed hope that I’d soon have a useable bathroom.
I returned to the house after two days, descended into the winery-cum-guest quarters and beheld anarchia. Thousands of tiny mosaic tiles stuck willy-nilly onto the wall. I felt like I’d been gored.
But I refused to face reality. Don’t panic, I told myself. It’s rustic. Rustic is good. It fits the theme of the wine cantina. Molto rustico! Charming in its own way. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?????
I called over a few friends to have a look. Horrid, they said, daring to utter the bald truth. Really horrid.
It doesn’t look bad from afar, though, does it? If you kind of … squint at it?
Now what do I do.
***
Click to leave a comment.
Click to subscribe.
|
Subscribe to Baroque Sicily
Copyright reserved -
All photos and text on BaroqueSicily are Copyright of Jann Huizenga ©2009-2015, unless otherwise noted. Material may not be copied or re-published without written permission. All rights reserved.
|
