July 31st to August 8th, 2022
i - Drive to San Francisco International Airport
ii - Layover in Copenhagen, Denmark
iii - Flight to Palermo and Taxi Ride with April
iv - First Evening with April
vi - Of Palermo and its Geography and Wildlife
vii - Of My Wanderlust and Of Andrew's
ix - Sunny and the Boys
x - Of the Eating Habits, and the Night Life
xi - Of the Beaches of Sicily and the Bunker
xii - The Boat Ride
(i.) - Drive to San Francisco International Airport
I woke up to the gentle serenade of my alarm, not one minute too early or too late. If I ignored its pleas and my weighted eyes receded back into dreams, I would be awoken in panic, late for my flight. Even worse, if in an anxious, restless sleep, I awoke of my own volition before the alarm sounded, and refusing to rest, I was forced to lay awake, I would be faced with the even more terrifying prospect of tense anticipation in waiting. In those liminal hours when I might have packed and eaten, and I would be left to sit, holding no will at all to maintain another task or hobby in distraction, and the anxiety that I already knew to accumulate later would be made exponentially worse.
And so I balanced my sleep on a thin rope, and awoke as promptly in time as I could manage to ready myself. I sat in the passenger seat of my own car as Sam, patiently reigning the steering wheel, guided me down the highway to my dreaded destination. No music could soothe me, no joke could humor me; in Sam's quiet presence alone could I find any remedy. At the drop off, we shared a gentle goodbye, brief at first in a rush to depart and continue our segmented obligations but soon prolonged in realization of our separation. This tenderness clung to me, and I felt frustrated that now more than ever I desired not to leave. In the days leading up to this trip, I had a lingering anxiety and a feeble desire cowering behind it that I would come down with an illness, perhaps COVID, and be regretfully freed from the obligation of this trip. I thought of the dismaying prospect of notifying April that I had to decline her generous invitation. This fear progressively worsened as the hour drew closer to that fateful day, in which the chance of this misfortune would become more brutal the more last-minute it arrived.
In a trance, I wandered the halls of the airport, enamored with the growing collection of faces, hued in many shades of earth as I crossed over into the terminals of international flights. In a dream, I was sitting by my gate, and then finally wandering down the tight walkways of the flight cabin, the neat rows of cushioned seats like coffins that the lost souls around me reposed themselves within. I seated myself in my own assigned grave, the tension of the journey building into a fierce fit that climbed up my body, resigning itself in my chest. I reached for my phone and typed a few humble farewells to my family, and again to Sam. I stared at what I had just written, and I was punctured with grief. My frame heaved in a restrained state of hyperventilation as tears welled in my eyes. Soon, overwhelmed, I wept in great fear and sadness, as if I had just said a final goodbye and was now wavering on the threshold of death's door. The suppressed tension of the months leading here overcame my composure, and I cried with difficulty, hoping that my mask was enough to hide my state from those around me. In slow resignation, I recomposed myself, and endured the long journey in silence and in a daze as if already dead.
(ii.) - Layover in Copenhagen, Denmark
As the hours of accrued wakefulness encumbered me into a state of lurid hallucination, I half-stumbled onto the carpeted floor of the Copenhagen airport and found an uncomfortable seat near an outlet. I was delighted to see that my adapter was working, and I sat inattentively in the searing light of day. I did not think myself ready for bed or adjusted to an early morning. I sat in a strange Scandinavian afterlife outside of time where daylight perpetually streamed through these large glass windows. Owing to a dreadful habit of insomnia, I found no moment to sleep on my flight. I stared at the messages flooding my phone as my friends recounted the events of yesterday. This was perhaps the most disorienting aspect of my jet lag. Despite the restless hours on the plane, time had fused together into a brief period of sludgy nonthought; a dark plane of infinity robbed of reflection. To be ejected from this limbo only to see friends speak of those unrecounted hours as if a few days had passed was a bit unnerving, like I had blinked for a moment and let slip precious years of my life. In a desperate plea to my body for rest, I wandered aimlessly to a quiet corner of the airport and reposed on a bench. I couldn't call what I did sleeping or even napping, but the moment of recline was enough for me to drift off and convince myself that I had recuperated. I was interrupted occasionally by encouraging words from loved ones; Ted and April in particular guiding me through to the next markers of my journey. My fatigue was such that I didn't in any way feel overwhelmed by the foreign nature of where I stood; I couldn't even begin to comprehend the distance I had just traveled, and I felt a strange companionship with the people around me, despite their differences.
(iii.) - Flight to Palermo and Taxi Ride with April
In the final stages of flight, I entered a state of post-awareness, exiting the catwalk as the cabin air cycled out and my skin was flushed with a damp humidity and gentle boiling heat. I had stepped back into a memory of my tired journey to New York in the summer, greeted by a similar disposition of weather. The crowds of families dispersed down unknown corridors and I stood nearly alone. The airport hallways felt smaller and dim under the weak fluorescent lighting. I did not know if my taxi driver was waiting for me or if some other step was necessary. I sauntered down revolving doors and found myself once again among people, my sister waiting patiently amidst the assemblage. She insisted on lugging my bags down the final stretch and I obliged, realizing later that their straps had dug ruthlessly into my bruised skin. She jokingly reprimanded me for wearing a mask, and in my feverish daze, I realized that I was the only remaining passenger who bothered to wear one, the transition between masked and unmasked made slow as the cultures of COVID shifted during my journey. It had been what felt like years since I had last seen April, and we made restrained small talk; I tried my best to seem courteous and April was light on the dialogue, perhaps aware that the stress of the trip rendered me a vacant shell.
We absconded with our taxi driver, Massimo, who seemed to have developed a loving kinship with April, although I would soon come to realize that this was just the general attitude of the region. Of course, April, in her affable and stoic Western beauty, could always manage to attract the warmth of the Italian men. I apologized that I wasn't particularly chatty, suspecting that there was an interest in my opinion of the trip so far, and I joked that Andrew would offer much more to say when he arrived. After all, I couldn't see much of anything in the late night, apart from the looming silhouettes of the nearby mountain ranges. Even in the dark, I could make out their jagged, rocky peaks. In truth, my mind was nearly empty, and I scrambled to think of anything of substance to say to my sister. April and Massimo launched into some banter with April wryly translating his rants to me before falling into a fit of coughing, which she blamed on the air conditioning. I was reminded of the night my family drove us from the airport to our new home in New York, and I lay on the car seat, ill with motion sickness, clenching my stomach in discomfort as I gazed wearily up at the dark windows. Then and now, I had been completely disoriented and unaware of my geography. I may as well have circled in my flight and landed right back home, or worse, landed in some hellish underground colony after reposing for the final time in my cabin coffin.
(iv.) - First Evening with April
Here now, I will speak more loosely of my general trip with a few notable stories. My first of many nights with April was painted as with the rest in musings and poetic discussion about family, life, and country, fueled by good food and wine. Of course, I abstained from the wine, much to the dismay of April and Andrew who seemed slightly insulted by my disinterest. In shame, I must admit now that one of my lesser anxieties that plagued me leading up to the trip was a fear of confrontation with my sister, who had a sharp intelligence that could disarm and cut through pleasantries, never shying away from contentious topics. Being the younger sibling with a much less formative relationship to April growing up, I feared that I would be caught flustered in some argument with her that might wound my ego. This was more a vulnerable and selfish point of pride in my own intellect than it was a judgment of April, as I deeply admired her wit and especially her opinion of me, even in disagreement, seeing in her a kindred spirit of art and thought.
And so, though daydreaming after nearly a day and a half with no sleep, the bustling nightlife of April's small town courtyard revived my senses, and I foolishly held a vigilant attentiveness to every point of dialogue as we sat outside a restaurant. April guessed me to be disengaged in my insomnia, but I was very much focused on what we were discussing. Over the course of our dinner, I naively felt my anxieties confirmed, as I was often at a loss for words, frustrated that I was so unable to articulate myself in front of her. However, April was only comforting in what she spoke to me, a hint of further reflection hidden behind her watchful gaze, which seemed to follow and analyze me in those moments of silence. I desperately anticipated the arrival of Andrew, when the attention could be diverted from me onto someone more desiring of it.
In perhaps the greatest gift of this journey, I would come to slowly disarm myself in the presence of April, attempting to forgo my own ego and love my sister wholeheartedly as she deserved. I saw in her a desire to know us, an unnurtured love propagated by years apart in distance and time that she had hoped to renew in Andrew and I with this trip. In these quiet and unassuming days of relaxation, when the bruises and responsibilities of my job faded into obscurity and I was tethered only by the bitter longing for Sam, the three of us shared a companionship that seemed to echo a distant memory back in childhood days when Andrew and I were smaller, chauffeured in April's steed as she revealed to us her taste in art and her skill in stories.
(v.) - The following chapter details my first night of sleep in Palermo and the strange sleep paralysis I endured. It will be included in “Leave Me Alonw, Earnie”.
(vi.) - Of Palermo and its Geography and Wildlife
When I awoke for the final time, I was surprised to find that April had already returned with Andrew despite my insistence on joining her in the morning and acclimating to the time difference. However, it was a pleasant relief that for the remainder of the trip my rhythm of sleep merged speedily with the hours of Italy, and I was blessed with peaceful nights, no longer haunted by fell terrors.
I lay for a long while in my bed, pondering the events I endured, surveying the room that seemed so much duller and less threatening to me. I looked again out at that dim window, and I could hear the debating churtle and cooing of pigeons in discussion. I stood tall on the ends of my toes in an attempt to peer over the high windowsill and look outside, but even elevated, there was nothing of interest to see. Just inches apart on the other side stood the adjacent apartment wall creating what must have been an impossibly condensed and suffocating alleyway. I remarked to April about its narrowness, and asked if there was even any way to reach this space between the walls, remembering that her street held no such alleyway entrance. She said the city housed many such unreachable corners, architectural oddities carved into the mazes of uneven cobblestone roads. The "Sicilian Defense" was the affectionate term given to its elaborateness: a chess move in which the defender creates a false opening for the opponent to move into.
As a result, this labyrinthian design made Palermo appear insular and secretive, filled with dead ends. I asked April if there was much crime, and she refuted in admiration, and truly, even in a strange place such as this, I walked at night a little less afraid of the people around me than I ever had in America, though not completely unguarded given my paranoia. I don't think I spotted a single impoverished individual during my visit, nor anyone that warranted pity. I can't say if where I stayed had an effect on this perception, but April insisted that this was representative of all of Sicily. Instead, I was pierced with a different fear of loneliness and homesickness, especially wandering Palermo during midday, when the quiet streets lay abandoned. Residents closeted themselves inside from the brutal heat while I'd roam sometimes with April and sometimes with Andrew, always alone but never outside the watchful gaze of the city. I felt at any moment, the doors would burst forth with people in an ambush, if only I would speak the proper passphrase.
I wandered the town with April on one such Sunday afternoon when the lethargic haze hung most potent in the stiff humidity, and the glaring sun beat down on our leathered necks. We walked by ornate temples of worship and heard the chanting of congregations inside. We tightened our noses in disgust at the putrid stench of a mauled cat on the pavement, its corpse baking in the heat. April told me not to look, but the sight was so horrible and the smell so arresting that I couldn't help but give a passing glance. The animals of Sicily were more akin to fellow inhabitants of the city rather than sheltered companions. Cats and dogs alike roamed the streets as collarless vagabonds, perhaps the only homeless residents I could perceive, though April insisted they made due with scavenging and the kindness of strangers. This specific trait of Italy bothered the suburban sensibilities of Andrew and I greatly.
A great church bell echoed in the empty afternoon streets as pigeons nestled in the building crevices and swallows darted in search of prey. April had a particular vendetta against the rock doves, who festered in great numbers on her roof, procreating, excreting, and making general discord above her apartment. According to her, any loving instinct she felt towards these creatures had been slowly chipped away, left only with a resignation to their eradication, which she enacted with the help of an exterminator. And now, her shelter held its own deterrents so that she was fortified against any further assaults. I did my best to empathize with her predicament, despite my sympathy for the creatures. However, it didn't stop me from admiring their plumage, the strange and exciting foreign birds becoming one of my primary interests during the trip.
Stumbling downhill, we came across a street of vacant apartments in disrepair. Their abandoned exteriors were difficult to distinguish surrounded by other ancient stone architecture, but peering inside through doorways drooping off rusty hinges, I surmised the decaying remedies of a modern life amidst the trash: a fridge left opened, bottles of Gatorade, tin cans, a discarded broom. The floor was littered with rubble that had peeled off over time from ceilings and walls like cracked flour dough turned dry. From these exposed patches, one could make out the supportive beams of the roof. In some places, the second floor was completely caved in, and stairs became cliffs leading to sheer drops. I felt like a dog tugging on my collar; I desperately wanted to step inside these dank, moist rooms, but I was held back by my obligation to April, who I guessed did not have such an interest. I also feared the likely presence of loitering residents, but I was blocked lastly by a rusty lock at the door, easy as it might have been to overcome.
On the other side of this street could be heard the trickle of water on stone, and we stopped to read a plaque summarizing the life of this particular aqueduct, whose years drew back into mythology so distant in time it was incomprehensible to me. I marveled at the history of this city, and all of Europe: how vast and ancient it seemed compared to anything in the states, how difficult it was to even perceive it as being that old, and especially how integrated it was with the daily lives of those who lived here. Here, the hideouts of loitering teenagers were shared with that of the Romans, Arabs, and Normans. April marveled with me, though she also added that people who lived here were often unaware of this privilege, and perhaps even flippant about it at times.
(vii.) - Of My Wanderlust and Of Andrew's
Even taken in with this wanderlust, I came to realize that I wasn't alienated by Palermo's foreignness. I remembered Ted expressing his cultural shock upon leaving America, but even amongst the novelties of this place, I felt a strange familiarity with the landscape of Italy. It was in many ways not too dissimilar from the west coast, though the exact nature of this connection is hard to articulate. Its golden hills rolled along a coastline of water admittedly more blue than anything I had seen in California, and its mountains more romantically sharp and jagged than the towering walls of Mt. Umunhum. The state of timeless limbo that I sat in during my flight's duration made the distance between me and home seem smaller than it should have felt. I knew I was "far" in an abstract sense, but no further than New York perhaps, which I could more accurately judge since my family had driven that length of the country. In truth, the world as a whole seemed smaller to me, less grandiose and infinite. I felt that I had merely stumbled upon a section of California unexplored, and at any moment, I could sit for a few hours in a plane and return home. I dissuaded myself from lingering on this feeling. I was grateful to be here and to experience this difference of culture through my sister. Sparked in me was an excitement in exploration and adventure and a chance to learn more tangibly a foreign people. In one way only was any cynicism successful in poisoning me, and that was culling my interest to photograph. I'll speak more of this in my second email when I discuss my floppy disk camera.
Much of the joy I experienced in Italy was vicariously through Andrew, who was more smitten with wanderlust than I had anticipated, though it shouldn't have come as a surprise to me. At times, he spoke with increasing passion of moving to Italy, of being engrossed in its nightlife and valuing the familial kinship of its people. With the women especially, he seemed spellbound by their alien beauty, and I admired his courage and perseverance in somehow managing to make friends in a foreign country despite not knowing the language. He listened enamored to April's observations of Sicilian disposition. I was also in admiration of the country, but even more so, I enjoyed seeing April's own enthusiasm for a place she connected with so intimately. Those that I encountered were as warm and jovial as she often described, though the Italians' fierce loyalty that bound their relationships to each other I thought bordered on the excessive. As April herself expressed in her own encounters, their love for each other was passionate but also possessive, jealous even if fostered with insecurity. It was a way of loving that I couldn't connect with, at least not the envious kind, even if it was grand and operatic like some Hollywood romance. At its best though, it could be direct and confrontational in its tenderness, which was refreshing for someone like me or Andrew, who dealt often in passivity and tempered, unspoken feelings.
(ix.) - Sunny and the Boys
Andrew and I were accompanied on our trip by Sunny, April's fiancé, and his two children, Keeyan and Kamren. We both had previous experience with Sunny, who was immensely charismatic, and very quickly became engulfed in the family despite his brief visits. He was a tall, chiseled figure with a dry British wit, and he was ebulliently in love with my sister. He sometimes felt unreal in his brilliance like a lover leaping from the pages of a Romance novel, but there was no hint of deceit or any suspicion to be had, for despite his ruggedness, he was a very kind and patient man.
His sons were both deep-set in their teenage years and fairly temperamental, though never unpleasant to be around. Comparatively speaking, to the timid men of our family, they had a liveliness similar to their father. This fluctuation between their seeming indifference and invested joy was disorienting to Andrew and I. At moments, they appeared aloof and annoyed, completely rejecting the trip, but within hours, they would eagerly remark to their father that this had been their favorite vacation. April had learned to adjust to their moods, and managed it fairly harmoniously.
Their English sensibilities were very amusing to Andrew and I as I'm sure our American traits were to them. At the point when we were comfortable with one another, we often traded expressions and habits of our respective cultures, laughing in jest at each other's absurdities. However, it took them a bit to get acclimated to the dynamic of the trip, and Andrew and I went about defusing their guard in different ways. I was strategically closed to the boys because I interpreted their reticence as being unimpressed or uninterested in us. I hoped that by being relaxed and only revealing myself when necessary that they would open up to me in their own time. Andrew, on the other hand, was more eager to be friendly. I couldn't help but feel some level of embarrassment in his attempts to joke with them, assuming the worst in their perception of us. I even expressed as much to Andrew, who, no surprise, was slightly insulted by my suggestion to tone things down. Either way, with enough time, the boys grew to be more friendly, much to our joy. They were as charming and funny as their father, given enough energy.
(x.) - Of the Eating Habits, and the Night Life
The night life was one cultural distinction that I never quite adjusted to in all my time visiting Italy. I had vaguely heard of Europe's contrasting eating habits beforehand, but much of my own knowledge of Italy was what April relayed to us, taken at face value. However, the Italian's particular habit of eating small meals throughout the day before indulging in dinner very late in the evening was something I noticed almost immediately.
During my first night, I was immediately aware of how many children were up so late. At the time, it was about a quarter to eleven at night, but the atmosphere of the town made it seem earlier around six or seven. There was no indication of things winding down, no child seemed at all lethargic or moody. In fact, their supervision in general was extremely loose. April's assertion that the people had no fear of crime comparable to the intensity in America felt like a sharp contrast to the events I experienced at the Fourth of July lake party, when the unaddressed presence of mass shootings that day plagued the hidden anxieties of the crowd. The children here were given a level of agency to roam freely with the assumption that they would find their way back. It was distinctly old-fashioned in a manner that made the city feel even more ancient despite its modern draping.
The light day meals were easily manageable in spite of my usual appetite, mostly because my eating schedule was so thrown off due to the time jump that I never felt hungry at the appropriate hours. The food was also familiar enough in sensibility that I was never repulsed by anything, to use such a strong word. The late evening dinners also felt suited to my late eating habits at home.
However, exhausted as I was by the trip, the intense level of social interaction during the night was the most difficult for me to endure. It didn't help on the occasions when we would enjoy the night life at outdoor club venues especially where the music taste was too divergent and the people filled with endless levels of energy that I couldn't even begin to compete with. Of course, Andrew was exuberant to find a cultural disposition that matched his own, but even he had his limits. I got the sense that April, fully entrenched in the Italian lifestyle, was disappointed in my damper attitude, but this is a disappointment I have learned to begrudgingly resign myself to with anyone who wishes to go out with me at night. I had a particular encounter with a friend of April's who watched puzzled as I lay attempting to sleep amidst the crowd at a nightclub. April playfully teased that I didn't drink and I didn't dance, and she then acted as a translator to our exchange. Her friend looked at me with bewilderment and asked something in Italian.
April translated "then what do you do?"
I was taken aback by the question, as if there wasn't anything else to enjoy in life besides drinking and dancing. In an embarrassed search to find something that I did in fact do, I ran through my list of hobbies before replying with "I read", which I instantly regretted knowing how it would make me look given the situation. April grinned in amusement, perhaps knowing the outcome and translated my reply. Her friend raised an eyebrow and looked at April and then at me in complete disbelief.
"I don't think I've read a book in years," she said, translated with even more amusement by April.
My head ran through a slew of insults to bitterly bite back with, but it was perhaps best that because of the language barrier and the lateness of the hour and my own habit of non-confrontation that I didn't dare say anything. I merely smiled at my own inadequacy according to this woman with the small and selfish victory that this would be a funny story to tell my friends.
(xi.) - Of the Beaches of Sicily and the Bunker
I had an intense but justified paranoia of sunburn in Italy because of my pale skin. This fear was further insisted relentlessly by April as well as Sunny, who ironically did not like the sun. Collectively, we lathered ourselves with layers upon layers of sunblock, sunscreen, and all other manners of snake oil; my eyes would often stream tears from the secreting juices that would leak and sting them with irritation. During our visits to the beach, I sheltered beneath the assigned umbrella canopies littering the shores and sketched the landscape poorly or read some Tolkien. I'm a very sensitive reader so I only ever managed a few lines of text per session amidst the noise of the beach. April and Andrew were both very disappointed at what they perceived in me to be a lack of enthusiasm for the beach, but I never quite had the urge to wade in the water. However, I greatly enjoyed the unscheduled time relaxing. April gave me an old book of Italian fairy tales and even read a chapter to us about an ape who dressed in a dead lady's clothes and was insultingly mistaken for her, among other stories. I did sit briefly at the foot of the shore and let the waves lap the trunks of my swimsuit. The water here was warm, almost curated intentionally for people on vacation. And it was incredibly blue, a pearly sky blue with occasional hints of green and teal. At times, it perfectly mirrored the sky: a rich dark cobalt of sea sheets. Other times, it was transparent, like pure crystal or clean glass looking down onto the sandy dunes below.
I was tempted enough on one occasion to leave the beach umbrella and explore the nearby cliffs, which housed what looked like military bunkers from the war. A good chunk of my photographs towards the end of the album are set during this exploration. I came across a tunnel opening that was camouflaged in the rocky crevices of the hill. Its dark portal was like an optical illusion, only visible when standing directly in front of its frame. The entrance appeared improvised, the remnants of a long corridor that perhaps jutted out from the hill, but was sliced short, leaving a gaping stub of a hallway. I trekked inside, finding myself in complete darkness only a few inches from the first sharp turn of the corridor. The path was short lived, for it only moved down a second hallway before ending at another bunker with an opening back to the cliffside. Inside was littered refuse, mats and bottles and other less recognizable trinkets. It was strange to think this place was reduced to a homeless encampment or a teenage hideaway given what history it might hold. I returned later with Andrew to show him my discovery. Trudging back to our umbrella in the heat, I watched my feet tread on the rocky shores, the stone debris becoming more and more granulated until, reaching the grasp of the crashing waves, it was reduced to a fine pebble powder. Here though, the rocks were so large and flat that it almost felt like smoothed pavement on a cobblestone road, and we both walked back without difficulty.
(xii.) - The Boat Ride
On one occasion, we perused the coast on the sails of a small boat, stopping intermittently to snorkel. This was when Kamren triumphantly claimed, despite having a fever, that this was one of his best days ever. I didn't join myself, but I enjoyed the scene, though I knew all too well that I would become seasick within an hour, and I did, much to my own foreseen sadness. Luckily, Ted had purchased Dramamine for me in anticipation of the plane ride, and I was so well-versed at this point in the routine of this ailment that I firmly rooted myself in my seat, swallowed my pill, and sat staring at the horizon while chewing a piece of mint gum. I never vomited, though the captain eyed me nervously and motioned "vomit?" to me with his hands. I politely shook my head, but I must have appeared near death's door being already so pale. This was a calculated risk when I heard we would go sailing, and I'm proud to say that I put up with the suffering as best as I could. I waxed philosophical in my thoughts as I sat staring at the horizon, focusing on the exact nature of my discomfort, thinking about suffering and the experience of pain more abstractly.
To be concluded in “Leave Me Alonw, Earnie”