24.9.09

nutella. tivu.

italians are addicted to nutella. stefano says, 'you know when you watch a sad movie and you get depressed its perfect to sit down and eat the entire jar and then you feel so much better.'

what a girl.


dario saying 'i hate to leave the past in my mouth, so i have to rinse it out.'
he was talking about brushing his teeth, which he referred to as 'one of my favorite things.'


my tunisian neighbor came to me and said 'you must put one of these satellite dishes on your balcony.'
neither of us speak italian well, so i misunderstood him. 'i dont like tv.' i told him.
he said no no i need it for my tv. he has lived in this apartment for 3 years with his satellite dish in the same place, and i hear his crappy arabic sitcoms with dubbed in laughter when he's not working, nearly all day. he says it doesnt come in clear enough and needs to face inside the island, which it cannot do from his house.

i told him tv is bad for him anyway. his argument was that it was arabic tv. i said that dish will be ugly and i dont really want those waves going through my body. he said you can close the door to the balcony.

i thought about the food his wife makes me almost every night for dinner which is perfect when i come home from work and am starving and have no food in the house and said, 'come vuoi.' as you want. whatever.


later i came out on the balcony to watch for stefano on his bicycle and found my neighbor out there, staring hard at my balcony with a roll of wire in his hand.

oh, tunisians and television. dedication.

insurance is power.

stefano and i drinking white wine in the afternoon over a newspaper, headline shot of a boy in salute with trumpeting men behind, a military procession. stefano points to the article and says 'look. six men died, our men died in iraq fighting the war YOU started.'
my eyes grow hot with knowing guilttears and i shoot back angrily, 'i did NOT start that war.'
'oh excuse me, the president YOU elected.'
'you're an asshole.'
'oh excuse me excuse me the president you elected TWICE.'
'you are such an asshole.'



why is italy fighting in that war anyway? he says we're allies you saved our ass in the second world war and now we have to go along with every war you start which is every couple of months. iraq! okay... afganistan! iran! okay...

he says i was almost home. for a couple of months after the second world war, there were so many us troops in sicily who had set up shop to go north and kick hitler's ass, they wanted to make sicily the 51st state. then some shit happened with the CIA and the project was aborted.


i went today with marilia and the three babies to the doctor. we didnt pay for parking, parked right in front of the building actually. there was no one in the waiting room, which was clean and modern and uplifting to walk into. the walls donned beautiful colorful abstract paintings and collages. we were sent immediately back to the doctor's office, which was also the examination room. this sounds much scarier than it was. it was an office with mismatching eye-pleasing furniture, some toys, old style scales and a table with doctor's tools in a cute kiddie toybox. he had a medicine bag that opened down the middle like those in the westerns. he was kind of old, talked for an hour with marilia about the children's eating habits, teeth pain, and development in walking, and examined each of the children thoroughly. the room was large and reminded me nothing of the sterile, stifling doctor's offices in america which make you sick just by sitting in them.

since this was a private visit (he is a public doctor but marilia lives outside of his geographical boundaries), she paid him. for the 1.5 hour visit, and three patients, it was 80 euro. he wrote her 3 prescriptions for the babies, and helped us carry them out to the car, using his umbrella to shield them from the rain.

when we got home marilia called the farmacia and told them what medicine she needed. they delivered it about 30 minutes later. faster than most pizza places. and free.

what the hell is so scary about any of that? that is the best you can get even if you want to pay for it and it is still much cheaper MUCH cheaper than america. if you're going to pay taxes anyway what the hell should they go to? public education is a joke in america and roads should be a given. what has your government done for you lately?
why are americans pretending they have money to throw at insurance companies? why are they resisting using their tax dollars to help everyone lead healthy lives?

for a country that prides itself on being a step ahead of the rest, america is really behind the times.

and for a christian country it sure is a selfish one. fuck helping my brother out with my tax dollar, he'll abuse it anyway.


ivo summed it up in a thick italian accent while we watched obama on tv. i asked him 'why dont the american people want free healthcare?'
'insurance is power!'

23.9.09

disney.

it was raining today. my super modern rainboots carried me outside anyway, where i had to do my shopping at discount prices at a local supermarket. my hair was frizzing but perfectly cut under my yellow umbrella.
while waiting for the bus, a car drove by and swerved to avoid a cat, driving right into a puddle of wet, soaking me under my umbrella, and my groceries. the driver immediately got out to check that he hadn't killed the cat. i sneezed and shivered in the cold, and this strong beautiful man turned and saw me standing there, dripping wet with my groceries.
a bright toothy smile flashed at me and i melted like a bowl of sugar left out overnight and covered with beads of morning dew. i looked into deep blue eyes and didnt realize we were floating towards eachother, traffic stopped behind his sports car. he came close enough to smell, my favorite shopping mall cologne floated into my nostrils and i nearly swooned. this was the man i'd been waiting for all my life. he took me in his arms and tilted me back, planting the kiss of all kisses upon my awaiting lips and i knew we would be together forever.

then god came down with his angels and blessed us.

and a couple months later santa claus was very good to me, filling the stockings with expensive lingerie and an engagement ring. we married in a church by the sea. elvis came back from the dead and sang during the reception.
i was a virgin my wedding night. and god came down again from his throne and fucked me first, a gift for keeping my legs closed all this time. god and i begot a son, of course, because a daughter would be weak and lame, and this became the son of god. my husband wasn't jealous though because who can be jealous of god? also because we are never jealous of eachother.


then i woke up and realized that hollywood and disney are the devil and create stories entirely for setup and disappointment. the love story of amelie, the love story of beauty and the beast, i dont care who the fuck it is, it doesnt turn out that way. show me the end, the gruesome bloody truth, the years after of confusion and doubt. the death.

19.9.09

castles by the sea.

empty brand new interstate stretches repetitive patterns of metal
a hideous beautiful factory for a mile by the sea spewing cancer into the air surrounding barges on the horizon with power. fog.
neon green planted in a perfect grid shimmer in wet sunlight.
empty castles, does ANYONE live in this endless expanse? shells of stone homes come at me from a dream a lifetime before.
chameleon sand colors dirt in the hillside no, a house it is a home it was.
an abandoned castle with four fancy bishop spires charcoal dark graffiti by the... ocean? looks like it today, looming out of the fog brushing on sandy shores, extending in the shape of a waning moon.

18.9.09

the sea is the ocean now.

a single light in a forgotten house in the middle of a distant dark field. the sea is the ocean now, a black void after city lights, a hole into the earth from which you can see everything into which you can see nothing.

17.9.09

the smell of a catholic italian.

i want to take a photo sing a song of the smell of a catholic. italian.
the breath of a catholic italian.
the scent of the aged
perfume of mass
incense
stale.
bread.
skin spots.
belly laughs or pursed red lips.
fermentation.

healing lips.

when i dont speak for a day i can feel my lips
growing together
healing i'd have to pull hard to break the seal break the spell break the silence

agrigento

la citta dove abita il mio amico dario e agrigento, a vast steeply rising hill covered in trees with a jetson's highway on stilts falling out creeping out of the sky the trees grow into apartment buildings of varying towering height, pale shades of yellow and peach.

16.9.09

pieces out on heavy bear

http://www.heavybear.janecrown.com/HB3/HeavyBear.3/ click here.

12.9.09

rusty seaweed.

the pilgrimage of rusty seaweed jellyfish from their deep sandy home.
released from the rocks they float through the pressure of deep sea
to the surface
just under the surface
caught in a current find themselves trapped
between the bumpers
one and two
in and almost out
forever more.

Kali jones and her stories.

‘he seemed like a nice man. He had two wives.’
Eating sheep’s brain with the man of two wives.
The sheep’s head offering in a village where she was shown the video of the calves with their throats slit, slipping all over the blood-covered terrace, bleating bleeding. The children parading the heads on sticks in the streets.

On the terrazzo she shows me the marks in the tree from the cat years ago who finally got to the family of baby birds they were protecting. In her sweet light accent she speaks of the bits of nest and feathers. All that was left.

I tell her she reminds me of flannery oconnor. The punchlines always in the gut. Her response is the story about the pregnant female cat who used to hang around on the terrace, beautiful one day she showed up with an empty belly, alone. Sometimes when cats give birth they are so weak that they have to eat their babies. Especially in siracusa.




Standing in the kitchen in a breezy marmalade nightgown, Italian coffee boiling over into the fire on the stove, facing me with hands clasped pressed over her face, suddenly remembering a dream.

The dream of underwater volcanoes.

I am swimming along on the bottom of the sea it is like when im there with my eyes open but with much less color. Switch to view from above the water is turbulent and like cutout shapes of waves but dark. There are a few people bobbing. A warning. I told you so.

It starts and I am fascinated, there hovering above the seafloor and it starts, a bubble under the surface of the sand. It grows.

And into a caterpillar and tall and a flash of one and two it explodes jelly fire shoots into the water into the sky.

People are hurt.


A man afterwards shows me the small fresh wounds on his finger, focusing on a particular one on the side. The same spot where I woke up to a terrible zanzara bite.
He says it just kept bleeding all night and they extracted the live ember that was embedded there, stewing and churning and burning its way through flesh.

His finger was emitting blood like a volcano emits its blood.

the sea's alive.

the sea's alive and i hear its breath as it heaves a sigh, a moan
back and forth
makes love to the rocks all its life.

all its motion all its energy bent on the moving in moving out
coming in coming out
and the collision
myself against myself
sea against sea

caught between the rocks the in and out
somewhere between one and two
a mass of confusion wraps around eachother tries to hold on but has nothing to grab onto

is a sieve.

thrash.

i thrash about flail my way to my favorite rock and cling there laughing at the ferocious waves as we play the game
they knock me loose

to make a swarm of bright white and swirl in them. something like an lsd trip.

11.9.09

the red queen.

the things i keep forgetting about italy...

friends walk down the street looking like lovers. girls hold hands, occasionally i've seen men arm in arm, and men who greet eachother with a handshake and continue to hold hands while having conversation.

i find the european cheek brushing, occasional cheek kissing exciting, but prefer for my friends to give long tight american bearhugs, occasionally accompanied with cheek kisses, that are actual kisses instead of the usual cheek to cheek brush, fake kissing.

the lunchtime glass of wine. how nonna gave me thick sweet syrupy orange liquor at breakfast and was disappointed that i wouldnt be her drinking partner all day.

i always take cold showers. and they are fast.

how cheap freshly made bread (80 centessimi for a perfect loaf), water (22 centessimi/ 2L), fruit and veggies (i buy handfuls of them at the supermarket for well under a euro), milk (59 centessimi per 1000 ml) and cozze (2 euro/kilo) are.

how nobody uses air conditioning even if they have it, and the few who do use it do so with the door wide open.

how those living on ground floor keep their door wide open and you look into people's kitchens and living rooms as you walk past them on the tiny street.

women do not change their last names when they get married.

divorce was only recently legalized in italy. until then a man had many wives, instead of a wife and ex wife(ves). still the term ex wife is not used, rather 'my wife,' for each of the two or ten.

people give you rides when you ask them for directions to a place.

when the current is against you it takes all the swimming you can do to stay in one place. it reminds me of the words of the red queen.

cut foots.

the air here is cooler now that the storms have come. the sicilians call it 'freddo,' cold, which means for us kentuckians that it is not hot. the air is still warm but at night it is just cool enough that i am glad to be wearing long sleeves and long pants. i watch a lightning storm illuminate heavenly clouds over the sea and the veins of light spread and flash in my brain reminding me of my mortality and my smallness in this world and i am filled with excitement.

the rainy season has begun and i will need to buy a pair of rubber boots very soon. the drainage here is not much better than in lexington but more in the way that it puddles in uneven streets instead of washing toothin college girls down drains.

i feel safer here than i did in lexington, despite the mafia, who doesnt touch women let alone foreigners who arent land or business owners. i walk in the streets and can feel at home. my apartment also helps me feel that way.

there are chocolate hazelnut biscotti, cookies i eat after almost every meal. i bought a kilo of them for 2.5 euro, and they are lasting me a good while. it feels nice to be able to satisfy my sweet tooth. at home i almost never bought sweets. i also have on two occasions splurged and spent 2.5 to 3 euro on a bar of modicana chocolate, once with bergamot and once with pistaccio. it breaks into four little bars and it is so strong and crystallized in your mouth, it makes a symphony of sound while you chew and you are overcome with happiness. sometimes i reward myself with this.

the photo that kay crump took of my sisters and i when we were 13, 16 and 19 sits on my nightstand. it has been displayed in all 5 of the places i have lived so far.

i awoke this morning and felt very very far from home. it is unbelievable to me sometimes how far i am, and that i actually made it here.

i am very blessed to have such good friends as kali jones and stefano. these are the kind of friends i had in america. strong and true. it is a very good feeling.

last night before my date with davide, kali jones made photographs of me behind a semi-transparent screen. they are reminiscent of those jim hall made years ago, and are really beautiful and exciting. im privileged to be part of her artwork. she has a beautiful mind.

i have succumbed to the european habit of the bidet.

my tunisian neighbor often brings me heaping bowls or plates of ramadan-approved food when i still have her cute bowl slowly being emptied of food in the fridge from yesterday.

stefano gave me some italian music so i can learn the lyrics. it is actually not bad and i am surprised. i often hear britney spears, r.e.m., radiohead, the eagles, and other famous american music spewing from bars and street-level apartments and passing cars and have yet to hear a good song on the radio or from many italian people. they often like the worst american music that is made, or music that i liked when i was twelve. (cranberries, nirvana, shaggy and tupac to name a few)

my feet are more often than not in the process of healing one or two semi-deep small wounds from the rocks. skin dangles from a toe or heel and i walk kind of funny for a couple days, frequently reminded of the fun had while frolicking amoungst the rocks and waves and brine. i tell stefano if you come away from the rocks without a wound you aint doing it right. we compare wounds when we climb breathless from the sea. his skin is very very dark and his blood looks neon against dark brown toes. i can always see him when he has beat me to the rock, from a couple hundred feet away. i merely look for the darkest, skinniest body amoungst the tourists.

i feel like i have a million pets sometimes, as there are stray cats galore and stray dogs as well, though the cats will rarely let you get near enough to touch them. in siracusa as well as roma, and apparently all of italy, people are fools for cats. they do not spay or neuter their animals.

marilia has said they will hire me back again for the week as well, for the rest of the month of september. i will be paid 6.5 euro per hour on the weekend, for about 13 hours, and during the week will work 4 hours, and she said we will work out a price for the week. i told her last month's pay will not do this time, as it was well below minimum wage and i have to eat. i am however very excited to have work again, and still may receive a call about teaching english.

the streets here are so tiny. the largest of them in ortigia about the size of the smallest alleyway in america, others just large enough for a vespa.
everyone hangs their clothes outside, and you have to duck around underwear as you walk down the alleyway.

you also have to dodge dog poop as it is more often than not where you will be stepping in the street. i take my shoes off at my front door and sweep and mop every couple of days.

all the houses here are hundreds of years old and are crumbling every day. i eat on my balcony and hear plinks and watch dust pile below the wall which reveals its many layers, down to the metal gridded structure where the concrete was poured. our houses fall apart and we sweep them away, every day.

there is a building here where kali jones pointed out a large crack running down the exterior wall. it was one of the few buildings to survive the earthquake of such and such year 600 years ago and this crack is the battle wound.

i found that if i go to the edge of my balcony and lean out and look up the street i have a sea view. it is larger than some of those my family and i saw, advertised in florida as 'ocean view homes,' and i feel very lucky.

the sea is not the ocean. this is something i only learned by coming here. it is heavier, floats you easier, the salt is gentler in your mouth and on your skin when it dries there and the water a bit sweeter. it is less apt to giant waves and more often than not rather calm. i never saw a rocky ocean but i like the rocks in the sea better than sand. they cut your feet but you never bring them back with you into your home or car or into your eye when you shake out your towel.

i started my compost pile about a week ago and have since upgraded. i found a huge tin used for palm oil near a garbage can, clean as a whistle and makes a good drum too. i dont really have much to add to it in the form of vegetables right now but then again i dont have much to grow either. i save my 2 liter water bottles, cut them in half and use them length wise for planting olive pits and tall-ways for things like random seeds i found in roma.

i have my water bottle planters sitting in a wooden crate i got from the market. they throw many of them out each day and they are very decorative and charming, as well as useful. i am now using one for a bookshelf and hope to get another soon to use as a table when i eat on the balcony.

i sigh sometimes as i miss everyone, very much, and at times am a bit homesick and lonesome. nevertheless, this stuff is so nutritious i may never have to brush my teeth again.

no but really. a world outside of my world has opened up and i am apt to explore it. i'd be a fool not to.

8.9.09

lacrima.

lacrima delle madonna. the tears of the madonna.

there was a neighborhood here where a picture of the madonna got wet one day. a scientist tested the liquid and declared it human tears. a miracle.
they bulldozed the beautiful old neighborhood and built a hideous jagged-edged raincloud colored teepee, complete with statue of mary at the highest peak. it can be seen from most anywhere on the island. everything is metal and concrete, reminding me of the back wings of rupp arena.
i see a sign for il cripto, the crypt and i am intrigued. i cross myself in the old habit with the murky holy water and wonder who has spat and pissed in it.
an uber modern church setup in a dark circle of concrete, chairs in rows, the seats of those more like the Infallible Father akin to Star Wars thrones.
for no apparent reason a thirty foot long rock juts awkwardly out of the conrete floor, seats set around it in complete ignorance.

i scoff at the souvenir shop, dare someone to tell me to leave for bearing my shoulders, click pictures, digital sound echoes, and dip greedy fingers into another vat of holy water. for everyone likes free shit and isnt that what catholic churches are good for anyway? cool water sifts through the hairs on my forehead, dip into a nostril, drip from the tip of my nose. free crackers and wine and should their god be real, a free blessing from him.
the sirens echo inside and eventually the ultra creepy reverberation of children's, father's voices as if deep in a cave, mixed with the groan of traffic.
they are conrete ghosts.

it may be muffled underground nuns singing or a cd playing or the man i saw dressed like gandhi with a cloth around his waist but they sound like pigeons cooing and flapping their wings. the main floor is underground and smells of mold and mildew. behind a curtain i find darkened closets stacked full of altars and the scent of catholic mass secretly excreting.
a room of handicap access confessionals lined up like hardwood porta potties a button for english, italian, french, deutsch. i am terrified as i was at the age of eight but i try to open the door nonetheless.
in spite of myself i feel fear genuine and old running through my weakened legs. the door and the skeleton keyhole are solid. i think i may see someone sitting behind the darkened glass but it is only my reflection though i am not sure.
a scale model of the monument, ten feet tall, lit up as if it were night time, made entirely of matches. i am disappointed to find that il cripto contains no more stench than the decay of half assed superstition and no more dead body than that of human intelligence.



the notes of the bell tower are creepy.
i assume they are a recording until i notice how flat the notes.

6.9.09

boatsnobs. granchii.

i am proud to have grown up on the water.
the ship 'next wave' is a good ship. she is from sweden and needs painting. a little rust running down the sides just like i like em. i almost got to go up in the crows nest tonight after sunset but my long red skirt prevented me. i ate dinner with everyone below deck and swam for about an hour. under the water you can see nothing but color and your hands in rhythm outstretched in front of you, a beautiful illuminated color of brown, yellow, surrounded by blue lime green, koolaid that didnt get stirred well enough. if you open your eyes by the boat when the light is just right you can see her huge hull underwater and a hint of what may be the anchor chain splitting off at a steep downward diagonal into the unknown seven meters, thirty feet down. a real ship has two anchors.
i found some boat snobs. they are akin to the roadbike snobs in lex. boat hipsters. they say a boat without sails is just a floating piece of metal. they think they are really cool.


manfo is from ghana. and he is black as coal. he cant swim but he will if i ask him to. he wears a lifejacket and we teach him how to kick and float.
he doesnt understand white people named darko because it is the last name of many darkskinned folk in ghana. he caught two crabs that crawled on the side of the boat. who knows where the hell they came from, she was floating in the middle of the bay. they pinched him but he said he didnt care. in ghana he would stick his hand way down in their tunnel in the sand and catch big ones. he says they would bite me but i would say i am going to eat you. and he did.

4.9.09

coloseuchrist.

one of the girls on the boat, a chinese girl named barbara who spoke english with a little bit of trouble, asked me as the sun set and the moon rose high and huge and full and orange about my tattoo, the key to my heart?
we shared a love and tears at the sight of the coloseo, colloseum but i did not go inside. she said oh it was beautiful, they had a giant cross inside, are you christian? i smile and say no. she presses her hands to her heart and sways like someone in love and smiles it was just beautiful.



the colloseum doesnt have shit to do with jesus christ, but if you want to associate your god with mass man and animal slaughter for sport, be my guest.

tunisia, yellow.

i miei vicini, my neighbors, are from tunisia. i lie on my bed with the doors to my balcony flung wide, a tank top and underwear in mid afternoon warmth, and listen to the haunting singing of indians, moslem land.
i think i hear a violin in there, shaking around with the voice like a rock in a tin can rolling down a cobble stone street.
and smell garlic.
how they can stand to start cooking so early in the day when they still cant eat is beyond my current understanding.
last night i came in and as usualy their door was wide open. their bed is just without sight, but i can see the4 sea from there. i called out a greeting and got no answer. but ten minutes later he came to my door, apologized for not responding.
he was in prayer and while in prayer they do not speak.

i wash my favorite yellow skirt, yellow victoria secret panties and grey arden b tank top with one of the tablecloths that came with the apt. it is indian too and very fragile but i put it in my new lavatrice on 90 degrees celsius anyway, hoping to rid everything here of germs.
everything comes out mud colored, occasionally a bit magenta, red, pink, orange. i kick myself but then reason that i am still young and therefore a bit stupid and will likely not be this way forever.