According to my calendar I’m supposed to be working on a grant application this morning, but it’s my first day off in eleven days. Summer has been like this. My work, feast and famine. All the artists I know live this way, struggling to gather their bounty while it’s available to store away for the sparse months. Like pulling up garlic, bulb after bulb. Except the storing is getting harder. Cost of living up. Rent wars. Real estate impossible. Gig economy. No benefits. No paid personal days. Must be available and online always. Anyways. Creatives know how to flow with the rhythm of seasons and if they don’t, they learn. I will likely still get to the application, just not today. I’ll have to squeeze it into twilight hours either over stovetop espresso or a martini. Always a candle.
I threw open the blank page like I threw open my sheets to run toward my desk this morning. Giddy at the thought of what I’d find within myself. On my way, a pile of unfolded laundry sat by my bedroom window—clothes draped over the wardrobe. I considered making the bed and folding it all. Getting it out of the way before I can do what I really yearn to. Then some quieter quickening in my mind begged me to ignore it all. Go write.
There is always something else to do, someone in need, something seemingly more important than words on a page. The garden needs weeding and watering. Dinner made. Invoices sent out. Emails responded to. Kitty litter changed. Gathering with friends. A run. A swim. House cleaned. In the flurry of the hotter seasons, I knew it would be difficult for me to get to this place. Writing. What I didn’t anticipate was the longing I’d feel for a space I missed. The shape an arrangement of words makes inside of me is something nothing else can emulate.
In my apartment entrance hangs a photograph. The view from my studio flat in Palermo, Sicily. A view into a time passed. I remember waking in the morning and opening the shutters, to a cluster of sandstone buildings overlapping with terracotta roofs, cast-iron balconies, and striped curtains—red and cream, yellow and cream—blowing in the wind while jeans hung out to dry in the already hot sun. I was there for a week after central Italy. Alone to write and think. To mend and restore from my marital separation the year previous. Still, very much in the phase of disintegration of a former self, I found I was left with instinct, more a soft animal skin where I relied on my physical senses more than anything. I put an espresso on and sat at the small humble wood desk. Bedsheets unmade beside me. A large black and white photograph of two men close in a crowd, a green sconce and a shelf of books on the wall. The morning light filtered in through the narrow kitchen. I opened my notebook and recorded the days before, what I’d seen and heard and felt. The bumpy flight full of turbulence. The woman beside me crying in Italian. Words I couldn’t understand. A brief moment of intimacy between us when she pressed her hand into my left leg as the plane rolled up and down, left and right in the sky over the Tyrrhenian Sea. Perhaps her way of calming herself. Grasping at humanity. Once we landed the woman assured herself nodding, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” with a smile.
I thought about how to describe experiences at times and then didn’t at others. One of the quotes I’d scribbled in the front of that notebook was from Barry Lopez:
“Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.”
Somehow the details of where I was and what I was doing mattered. The story was forming inside me. Putting the scattered pieces back together in a new form. At the Palermo airport, a man named Mr. Caraciolo waited for me with a sign that read Jessica Payne written in crayon. I spoke piccolo (little) Italian and he spoke little English. He had gentle eyes and thoughtful gestures. He took my bag, paid for parking and drove me to Piazza Sant Anna Al Capo where we unloaded my belongings and had to walk to the flat from there. The streets were busy. Tanned bodies blurred under the yellowish glow of streetlights. My suitcase bumped along the cobblestone as I dragged it. Once inside I said goodbye to Mr. Caraciolo. I was alone in the dark then. Tired, with only a few hours of sleep. I decided to make tea. Took the electric kettle and set it on the gas stove. The plastic bottom began burning, with flames and smoke. A cord attached. The rubber melting on the burner. I threw cold water over everything, putting it out just in time. Crying, I called Mr. Caraciolo, while I simultaneously looked up how to say I’m sorry in Italian. When he answered I said, “Mi displace, Mi displace,” over and over. He returned to the apartment right away. Laughing and relieved to see I was okay. He raised his hands at the sight of me defeatedly hunched over in a chair by the stove and said, “God is good.” At that moment I couldn’t reason with him about belief or god, will or my own stupidity. There’s no time for that when lost in translation. “Yes, god is good,” I replied pressing my hands together in prayer wondering why I’d done this. I promised to replace the kettle before I left or leave money for one. He hugged me and patted my shoulder as if to say take good care and left me again, alone in the smoky room, quite late.
Morning broke and the space was bright. A golden glow across the buildings and over the floors. I emailed the owner, apologizing profusely for the kettle and requested to stay an extra night. I already loved the flat. No plans of where to go after. I looked around at the photos and paintings and wood art on the walls. I dreamed about gooey aubergine and nero d’avola. The salty sea on my skin. The sun. The opera.
I wrote, Palermo is the city of colour and flavour.
I want to try granita, cannoli, cassata, arancini, swordfish caponata.
I noticed a card with a map to the Capo Market and a number to call if I wanted to take cooking lessons. As I walked towards the Capo, I called the number. Gabriele picked up with an excitable Buongiorno. He had time on Friday to teach me some Sicilian dishes.
I’d fill the studio flat with a feast.
I did.
Cooking with Gabriele Nov. 10th 2017 Palermo Sicily
“When you cook taste everything,” began Gabrielle.
That day in the small kitchen we made
Antipasti: Caponata (Vegetarian and with Swordfish)
Antipasti: Sardina Becca Fico
Primi: Busiate – Pesto di pistachio, Gambero rosso di Mazara
Secondo: Orate al Cartoccio Con Potato Carciofi e Erbe Artichochio
The Caponata recipes are in the subscriber newsletter, but I will leave you with a mix for the bread:
Take chilli peppers, sundried tomato, olive oil and garlic and put them in a small bowl with a little oregano. Mix. Sprinkle with almonds. Spread over a slice of fresh bread.