America 9/14/24
September 1. It’s nice having a hot shower and a washing machine, though less exciting than I thought it would be. There was something about the struggle against heat and decay that made life feel more heroic in the rifugio. Scrubbing up with soap at the sink and then taking a sharp breath while I rinsed off under the icy spring water was always such a tender experience, it was something I was doing for myself, rather than to myself. I couldn’t tell you what my shower was like after getting home from the airport last night, I’ve already forgotten.
Where has the horizon gone? Where is the sea?
The first thing I did today was drive north to the only fabric store that has anything good, an old Sew and Vac in the mountains with printed cottons based on 19th century shirting, and walked away with 16 yards. My father refinished my sewing table and took the machine in to the shop while I was away. I think Sicily was the first place I fit in wearing my own clothing. Not only because the women there are very feminine and put great effort into their appearance, but because the environment supports it too. Pluck any one of them out of Sicily and land her in an American suburb and the neighbors would avoid her, but she’s so at home on an arid coast where cacti grow, where the bougainvillea put forth their fuschia leaves and the sea is the color God’s eyes (one can imagine).
We become what surrounds us. But maybe I can do otherwise, maybe I can live in this world but reflect a different one, a world with bougainvilleas and their tiny, secret flowers within.
I feel a new love for humanity, because I have seen what we are meant to do, not only what we do. Unable to decide on what sort of sleeve to cut for the first blouse, I sit and change the strings on my guitar. Running my thumb across them, still out of tune, the resonance is deeper and I understand the necessity of it all now, the necessity of doing something human, the necessity of bringing beauty into the world. We must be the vanguards of beauty, otherwise it goes away.
Outside the window, the night is alive with insects. I can feel how big America is, how wide, how tall.
September 13. Preparing to return to New York again, where I spent my first week back. How long? I don’t know. It could be a day, it could be ten years. I came back to Pennsylvania to sew for a few days. When I want to make something, I become gripped with the obsession, and this has happened to me since I was a young girl, it must be genetic. After so many years, with a needle and thread in hand I can do whatever I want. But when I finished the shirt and the dress and snapped back into reality, it was time to get back to the city.
I packed a big bag of things I might need to keep in my car. This has been my life for the past year, sort of living here and sort of living there, not really able to do everything I need to do or see everyone I need to see in one place. But at least, after Sicily, the world in general is a brighter place to me, so I know that it was right that I went there. And the understanding that life really is that simple, when it comes down to it, I’ve brought with me.
Giro wrote to say that he has been abandoned, but I never have time to answer him. Life in America is busy, and I’ve just started making the rounds of people I want to visit. I have invitations to New England, emails sitting unread, dates to set, shows to see, and then I also have to sleep and eat on top of it all. I didn’t think I had a busy life, but now that I’m back, and more alive than I was before I left, my memories of Sicily are like a dream of the slowest place on earth.
September 14. I am no longer really here, no longer really where I am: I used to feel tied to the Earth, but I am not anymore. I am somehow still in my window looking out at the islands, taken out of time, completely free in the only way that one can be free, which is alone inside four stone walls, behind a wooden door with an iron lock. Taken out of time, having given up on the world as I knew it, I let it go — and we all know the old adage, that only in letting go of something can you see if it comes back to you.
I don’t mean to say that I’m not afraid, or that I know what is to come — because I have no idea, and I have never known. But I don’t care anymore, as if I had experienced being all spirit and seeing the matters of this world from far away, like watching the boats on the ocean from the mountainside.
My fears about returning were unfounded. I have returned, and now the world whispers to me, All that I have is yours.