Why Palermo, a friend asked when I was making plans. To gather the last strands of summer sun, like harvesters with a basket, I said, or something such. Everything sings in the sun. Instead, there has been some sun and much storm. The stone streets gleam slick and gray between the medieval buildings; the streets with arms extending out like a wet octopus.
I might have said more interesting things: I love the mash-up of cultures, the never-finished project of culture building. When I was 21 and dizzy with discovery, I said this was the first Arab country I’d been in. Was it the pressure of colors — greens, pinks of fish, oranges, figs, the persimmon I ate everyday with fresh ricotta and semolina bread on a park bench? Even locals here still talk of their Arab city — the gardens made urban market, sumptuous and overflowing in crowded alleys with fruits, fish, vegetables. It’s a vision of possibility – a world of overflowing excess – that exists, and exists, no less, in the shadow of crumbling buildings!
The streams of cultivaters — Carthinigians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Arab, Normans, Italians, Cosa Nostra – are all still felt. Along with palm and orange trees, cats, graffiti, conversation, cars, garbage. This fertile energy threatens to overflow at all moments, is always almost too much, pulls back with its own logic. To know a thing, you put yourself in the middle. That’s the beauty of it.
