Knowing Not-Knowing/Uncontrollable Journey

Knowing someone well enough to know you know them not at all is what keeps them interesting. Life would be pretty boring otherwise. GRACEFUL SIMPLICITY

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. JOHN STEINBECK

...Making the familiar strange and the strange familiar... NOVALIS

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless. PHILIP LARKIN

So it's farewell to Palermo with its doors...

... and high windows...

... its shutters and balconies, shrines and statues...

... and narrow, crumbling back streets...

... and its photographers taking photos of photographers. This person looks strangely familiar... Surely it's the same woman we saw earlier, she of the calm concentration and focused gaze..?

Farewell Palermo. We are leaving you on this uncontrollable journey for the deep, blue air and the turquoise waters of Cefalù further along the coast, Cefalù with its fortress-like cathedral, its Temple of Diana on the Rock, and its Black Magic...

Nothing... nowhere... endless...

The Churches Of Palermo

Two of Palermo's most interesting churches are the Church of Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio (known as La Martorana) - which is on the left in my pic - and the Church of San Cataldo - which is on the right. (Note the three strange red 'golf balls' on San Cataldo's roof.) In both churches you can see a mixture of Greek (Byzantine), Norman and Arabic influences. They overlook Piazza Bellini - a square named after the composer Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835), Sicily's most famous musical son (not to be confused with the Bellinis of Venice, who were all painters.) You find references to Bellini all over Sicily. There's even a pasta dish - Pasta Norma - named after his most well-known opera.

In La Martorana the blue and gold mosaics decorating arch and ceiling are simply breathtaking...

As is the more austere but equally beautiful interior of San Cataldo...

Palermo's cathedral is a bizarre hybrid of the medieval and the Baroque - I'm not sure that central Baroque cupola harmonizes very well with those Gothic bell towers...

However its 15th century south portico is a masterpiece...

The church of Santa Caterina stands opposite La Martorana and San Cataldo on the other side of Piazza Bellini. Its extravagant, over-ornate, wedding-cake style did not do a lot for me, I must admit...

Though, as ever, if you looked carefully, there were some fascinating cameos of great charm and craftsmanship among the Baroque excesses, such as this relief marble panel depicting the story of Jonah and the whale...

Palermo

It may not have the beguiling charm of Florence, or the elegance of Bologna, or the sophistication of Milan, or the dazzling, decadent grandeur of Venice, or the monumental magnificence of Rome, but the Italian city of Palermo is unfailingly interesting. It's an essential port of call on any trip to Sicily. We spent a couple of days and nights there. I didn't fall in love with it, but I liked it a lot.

Palermo was once Europe's greatest and wealthiest city - both an important trade-centre and a seat of learning. The Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs and Normans all settled here. Around 100 years ago decline set in. During WWII the harbour was heavily bombed. 70 churches were destroyed. Thankfully many churches were also left standing - such as the over-the-top Baroque confection of Santa Caterina, which straddles Piazza Pretoria and Piazza Bellini...

If you look behind the grid of 17th and 18th century, straight-as-a-die main thoroughfares, you can trace a sinuous network of narrow medieval streets, tiny squares with fountains, curving alleyways squeezed by tall, decaying, balconied and shuttered apartments. For me what makes Palermo so appealing are ordinary, back-street corners such as these in the city's ancient heart...

The best approach to Palermo is definitely from the sea - that way you can really appreciate how the huge limestone bulk of Monte Pellegrino dominates the place. But we arrived by coach from Trápani airport, emerging from the bus in hot sunshine, blinking and without bearings. After asking directions we pulled our cases in a daze to Hotel Joli, unaccustomed to the heat and the avalanche of anarchic traffic...

Sicilian Theatrical

Tu connais cette maladie fiévreuse qui s'empare de nous dans les froides misères, cette nostalgie du pays qu'on ignore, cette angoisse de la curiosité? (Do you know that fever which grips us in moments of chill distress, that nostalgia for some land we have never seen, that anguish of curiosity?) BAUDELAIRE L'Invitation Au Voyage

We are all a little strange, and we are all strangers to each other to a greater or lesser degree, and we can also sometimes be strangers to ourselves. Even our nearest and dearest, those intimate friends and family members, those husbands, wives and partners, those children who change in quantum leaps from one day to the next at a certain age - all guard a close mystery at their core.

Desiring to discover each other anew - after all, we'd been separated for months, she in one part of Spain, I in another - my wife and I took off for Sicily in the middle of May. She'd always wanted to go there, and so had I. We were desperate for some warmth, some sunshine, some long, jasmine-scented evenings. We pictured looking out over the Mediterranean and doing nothing very much at all. We'd come through a lot over the past few years, and perhaps it was time to take stock and reevaluate, to put things in perspective and count our blessings.

We traded a chilly England - drab under cloud and rain - for a world of vibrant colour, balmy heat and intense blue light. In Palermo, Sicily's capital, the prickly pear cactus was in flower...

... and in the theatrical street-markets traders shouted their wares and sang quick bursts of operatic arias. Fishes were piled high - gaping heads of tuna and swordfish, bright-eyed and glistening-fresh - and the fruit and vegetable stalls were a seductive riot of red and green, orange and yellow...

Flower shop displays flaunted themselves with gaudy panache...


The glory days of this old theatre were set firmly in the past...

The figure in the picture seems camera-shy, but actually she's studying intently the graffiti and faded paintwork with great absorption. Anyone who knows her (and I know her as well as anyone, but that may not be very well at all) will recognise this slow concentration of hers on small details as characteristic...

Though Fabrizio in The Godfather said that in Sicily women are more dangerous than shotguns, this woman seems quite benign...

And, since I mention The Godfather, these are the steps up to Palermo's Teatro Mássimo (an opera house renowned for its perfect acoustics) where that climactic bloody scene of The Godfather Part 3 was shot...