Sicily 6/28/24
The view from the big window of my rifugio has a foreground of hazelnut forest, a middle-ground of two mountain ridges with a clay-roofed village on top of each, while the smooth waters of the Tyhrrenian Sea form the background, with a northern horizon. I cannot see the sun itself rise or set, but I watch the sky fill and then drain of color at the beginning and end of each day.
It took half of June for me to even care, and I’m aware of how jaded that sounds. But it was as if I had forgotten how to take in beauty, at all, or particularly when it forms the backdrop of everyday life. (When your eyes are taking in strip malls, slovenliness, total disregard for nature and public good, you cease questioning whether this is the stage on which your life is to play out, and you cease to question how this affects what you think about your life.)
Walking through the glowing forest at dusk last night, the cloudless sky over the sea shades of pink and orange, for the first time it moved me, or rather, for the first time I was able to be moved by it. In that my heart was lifted up as it used to be in childhood.
I was not able to overcome the distance to the sea on my own two feet. It has a cost. Either it has the social cost of relying on others, or it has the monetary cost of having to call a taxi. The limitations imposed upon me have clarified how deeply I do value the shore, closer to the horizon. But it has also made me appreciate my life up here in the hills, looking out at it. The cool air, the kind villagers, the windowsill where I can read in the afternoon sun, the abundant work to be done. Prior to yesterday, I was trapped in a kind of battle with the constant availability of the sea (by right or by might, by bus or by foot), and I was always asking myself what I wanted, rather than feeling alive in what I had, or making efforts towards what I didn’t have. Today will be just like yesterday, at home.
On my last night in New York a month ago, I was helping il mio ragazzo to make borscht. Washing, peeling, and halving the small beets, the bowl looked like it was full of hearts. He called it “Half My Heart Went To Italy Soup”. But I haven’t heard from him in ten days, nor has he heard from me, as per his request. When the Sicilians find out that I’m not married, they say, But where is your man? How are you doing without a man? Is he coming here? Do you have a man here in Sicily?, even, Are you able to sleep at night?
My vocabulary doesn’t extend very far, certainly not far enough to describe my sleeplessness in New York, along with the rashes, an ebbing-and-flowing death wish, the chain smoking, and paralysis of soul, none of which are present after a month here. If I told this to il mio ragazzo, he would take it personally, he would think I was saying the improvement comes from getting away from him. But no, as my life comes more and more into balance on this island, the more fondly I think of him, the more I expect to find him waiting for me, to run and jump into his arms after being apart, as I did last summer when we first met.
Do the Sicilians even know self-torture? If I could describe it to them, would they know what a self-tortured ragazzo is? No, I just put my hands over the left half of my chest and mime the heart breaking.
But the thing about love and individual needs is that there has to be some agreement between them. Especially when an individual need is manifesting as a strongly-held, dearly-kept vision, from that otherworldly part of the soul. Then, the beloved has to disengage and understand that they are neither the cause of nor the cure for the suffering of the one they love. Otherwise, it will all come to tears.
Usually the cicadas start singing around my birthday in early August, but here they are a month earlier. It’s my absolute favorite sound in the summer, besides that of a thunderstorm rolling in. The Greeks said that the cicadas are the voice of a handsome prince, beloved by the goddess of the dawn, who was granted eternal life but not eternal youth. Only his voice remains as his body has shriveled.