Riding on a bus, from Catania to Palermo, my time on Etna was done. I had apprehensions about coming back to Sicily, almost cancelled coming. The last time I’d been here, someone, or some thing, tried to kill me. They failed, but not without leaving scars. With the passage of the last eight years, and all that we have been through, what with Covid and the ensuing chaos that surrounded that time, I didn’t know if getting on a plane to come to Sicily would be a wise thing.
Fortunately, last year, my experience in Venice allayed larger misgivings about travel. Look, Italy is a very easy place to be in, for many people. Even if one isn’t the most fluent in the Italian language or knowledgeable about the quirky regional customs, with a little humility and the faintest hint of awareness, one can navigate across Italy, and it can be a most pleasant experience.
No, Sicily has a current running through it that I find most alluring. The food, the colors, the light, the language, the customs, the cultures. Sicily was the America of the Mediterranean a millennia ago. Walking the streets, at night in Catania, or Palermo at sunrise, one sees quickly that this world is unique, exotic, possibly dangerous at worst, and beguiling at best. And with that, the little bus dropped me off at the Palermo train station.
How many times I’ve arrived here. This time, I was traveling light and knew where I was going. It was a homecoming of sorts. I would see family. I would walk down familiar streets. I would enter into places I’d entered into 50 or more years ago. And I would have a camera with me, as always.
I left my home in California when I was in my 20’s. And like Sicily, California has this irresistible force upon my being. The two remind me of each other, but for reasons different than most folks who have been to both places might imagine. The foods are different, as is the language. The cultures bear little, if any, resemblance to one another. Nonetheless, there is a thread of recognition that I have for both places that I don’t feel in my adopted state of Texas (we won’t even go into that here and now).
It has to do with that italicized phrase I dropped up at the top of this essay, “Imagining cultural difference that sheds light on the limitations of one’s own culture.”
Drop into the mix another phrase that just popped up: “Alone among strangers.” Here I was, roaming the streets of Palermo, as I had done scores of times ever since my first time there in 1971. It is one of my happy places to be, with a camera, unlimited film (now, larger SD cards) and good legs (and now, knees) and no fear. Nothing before me, nothing below me – leaping.
But, still, a stranger. At the very least, an observer. At best, the son of a son of a son of Palermo.
