Notes from Sicily

Cu mancia fa muddichi. Or. don’t ever put rosemary in the sauce.

(I know I said I would post something about basil. And I will. It’s coming. But this insisted on coming first— written while on the island. Kinda fast and furiously, a process. Thank you for your patience and your support, always).

1.

Most of my work is here, in these mountains of Sicily. Where I’m writing this from.

These mountains are jagged, in the heart of the island, where everything grows wild and everything tastes like it’s been waiting for you your whole life. Where sheep run in the middle of the road outside your nail tech’s shop. Where village is a verb. Where I randomly (or not so randomly) was pulled to almost ten years ago.

When I say work, I mean the kind that breaks you open. Ancestral work. The kind that wakes up in your bones and does things you cannot even name before your brain catches up to form the language, to be able to explain it, which I barely am able to do.

It’s messy. Clunky. Weird. Sorrowful. Shocking.

But also like your body is stretched in awe the length of the River Salso.

Your cells excavated like the tombs in Catalluccio.

It’s sometimes waking up in the middle of the night and looking down and seeing the sea as particles of your life come from you.

It’s when you realize there is no separation between Persephone and Demeter. They are and always have been one whole unit of magic.

And sometimes it’s a bottle or 3 of cheap Grillo wine and a chunk of speck stolen from someone’s fridge at 2 a.m. Sometimes it’s dancing under pine trees with gin and tonics and kids young enough to call you “Mamma” and mean it.

Yesterday—or maybe the day before—I was talking to someone from a nearby village to the one I stay in. I didn’t know him. He didn’t know me. But we talked. That’s how it works here. He said, “We live in paradise.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “Why?” I agreed with him, but I wanted his answer.

He pointed with his chin, the way Sicilians do. “Fresh air. Fresh water. Fresh food. No one goes without.”

He wasn’t wrong. This place feeds you. Literally. Emotionally. Spiritually. Sometimes in ways you don’t want, it’s just too much. But then you remember you are also too much, but you still may burst. You can’t take any more in. You want it to stop, but not really. You learn to open up more, create more space. It’s all beautifully too much.

Paradise isn’t a stretch, depending on what you value in life. Do you value expensive things? Fancy homes? Do you want what you want? Or do you want it how it’s being given? Do you see time as a line? This might not be paradise for you then.

Of course, it’s always more layered than one thing. There are always many truths. Everywhere is complicated. I think why I was drawn to these mountains is because of obvious idyllic rhythm that’s here, they way they do relationship over plan, pleasure over schedule, but also the darkness doesn’t disappear in the beauty. Beauty is complex, liminal. Sicilians are just so good at finding the sunlight at every edge of shadow. They own the edge of it. And then they create a song from it.

And if you let it, it claims you. That edge, and the soft spots in the middle.

Even when you fuck up. Especially then. If you are doing it right, being present in the right way, you will fuck up deliciously. And the grief and wisdom that follows is so good.

When I first started coming here—ten years ago, give or take some months—I was writing about Sicily like it was a place, a place I lost, a place I was trying to find again. Like it was separate from me. I was trying to relate to the myths or re-write them. I was trying to write from ancestral memory. Something to describe, something to understand. It was a place I longed for. But, Sicily isn’t a destination. It’s not a place to understand.

It not even a remedy for longing.

It’s a mirror. It’s a trickster. She’s an elder who will scold you. Medusa who will school you. The womb that will birth you. The mother that will never abandon you.

I’m inside place. I’m still not of it, but I’m no longer just a visitor, even though I’m totally still a visitor and my longing might be stronger than ever before. But— I’ve bled here. I’ve sobbed here. I’ve buried things in this dirt. Including bone particles of my father whose family has been here for as long as anyone can trace. I’ve cried in the laps of salt water.

I have grieved miserably here. Gotten lost in a necropolis, scared I was going to dehydrate. That I was going to have to curl up in a cave and become among the dead. I have carried the grief of others here. Been transmitted the healing here. I’ve channeled spirits here in ways I am not sure I ever want to do again, but then again, I keep coming back, asking for more. I want more.

But also, I don’t need a thing.

2.

I came to these mountains the other day for rest.

Rest sounded good. Just for a few days before I’d have to drop into Palermo to work. Palermo is where rest essentially goes to die. Where the air sticks to your skin, makes sweetness between your legs. Pools in the curve of your lower back. The streets sweat history all over you, and you come undone on the walk to buy a bag of olives in the market that you sit on a curb and sloppy laugh sob.

Palermo takes you by the throat and tells you who you are. How to let go. How to submit. How to recline and die in ecstasy.

I needed stillness. Or at least distance from the thick of it all — from people, from tourists, from the heat.

Here, in the mountains, I thought—here I’ll get quiet.

That was the joke.

These mountains don’t really offer rest.

Sicily in general runs on another kind of time, output. These mountains pulse with emotion, spontaneity, connection. There’s an energy here I still can’t name. It’s not restful. It’s awake. It’s a stay-up-all-night portal. It’s round, robust, fecund.

It’s cracked me open over the years. There’s a spaciousness the body softens into. My body understands the coordinates. I’m now mapped to this time. I ache for it, really, especially when I am away. And I am becoming miserable and functioning in the time back home in the states.

There’s a specific Mother energy here —something that shakes you, then rocks you back to peace. It’s The Mother of High versus The Mother of Underneath (Palermo).

Also, these mountains are filled with salt. There are salt mines from ancient Roman eras underneath them. The frequency is different when you build villages on top of 6 million year old enormous salt caves. That’s just science.

3.

The first night I was there, my friend—twenty years younger than me—asked if I wanted to go out with her after dinner. I said maybe.

I ate dinner that night with the mayor, some other people from the local administrations, along with old friends, their partners, their kids, their new babies. It was one of those evenings where I tried to explain American politics in broken Italian. I began with what felt like an obligatory collective apology. This village leans far left, so trying to explain our current state was both painful and embarrassing.

“But didn’t the people vote for this?” they asked.

I shrugged. “I suppose. But also maybe some fraud? Some people just didn’t vote. Most people didn’t vote. So we got what we got. Probably what we’ve always had.”

I mean how do you explain any of this really, without the depth of the language?

I was trying to say that we weren’t all complete fuckwads. I didn’t have the words for it—how deep the mess feels. How far we’ve really fallen from humanity.

I said this felt like an ancient monster, an old demon being summoned back to life. I tried to say that in Italian. They seemed to understand that part best.

I asked them a lot of questions about politics and socialism and culture— and I listened. This is what this work is for—this kind of travel. I’m not just here to experience; I’m here to remember something important, something to embody, somehow. That dinner reminded me that the real work is in the connecting, the conversations. Even in bad Italian. Especially then.

I ate my pizza with a fork and knife. One of the many things I’ve learned.

Another thing I’ve learned? Say yes to as many invitations as possible.

The more yeses, the more learning.

These yeses might mean less sleep.

So I texted my friend and said, sure—one drink after dinner. Just one. Then bed.

4.

We had one drink. Then we had one more. Then she said: “There’s a disco in the pine forest tonight.”

She says it like it’s normal. Like that’s a thing.

Because it is.

On the edge of this village, the municipal government built a full-on open-air disco inside a pine forest. Part of a protected national park. DJs, drinks, a food truck. Stars above. Pines around. An Ancient Greek theater just next to it. Teenagers dancing and possibly screwing in the shadows. Bureaucracy at its wildest and most beautiful. Beyond the pines, was forever, or whatever we all are running away from.

I tell her it’s too late. I’m too old. She says she is too.

We go anyway. Because I am remembering to say yes. Saying yes is right. My body says yes but my rational, linear time brain is saying no. I let my body lead.

Sicily doesn’t offer rest the way we think of it. It pulls you into its rhythms. One minute you’re deep in ancestral grief; the next, you’re drinking gin under a pine canopy. That’s the work too, I’m learning. Just as important. If you stay present.

The walk uphill was brutal—the pine forest is at the very top of the village and the village is built along the side of a mountain. My friend called it training for Palermo. “You’re practicing for 18,000 steps a day,” she said.

By the time we got there, I was sweaty and out of breath. Old enough to be the grandmother of everyone there. I was feeling like I should just go home and go to bed. But a couple gin and tonics in and we were dancing. Because I will always dance. Even if you have to wheel me there one day—make sure you dance me to death. What a glorious way to go. And then bury me in those pines. Have my send off in the ruins of that Greek theater. Hire a DJ.

Around midnight, I told her I needed to go home. I could get a good 8 hours sleep if we left now.

That’s when he ran up—one of the village boys. Last summer, he hung out with my daughters when they were here with me. He hugged me. “Mamma Mary,” he said, “Where’s Sula?”

I told him she wasn’t here this year. Mi dispiace.

His parents run my favorite bar in the village. Where I get my morning coffee. My afternoon spritz. Where I sometimes write, watch people, read.

We caught up as much as we could —my Italian, his English, both stumbling. He left for a moment and then came back with a drink for me. I pretended to sip it. I had hit my limit. I was thinking of all the ways I could and should just say goodbye and walk away and back down the trail and into my soft bed in my apartment.

Suddenly he asks me “Vuoi la pasta?” (Do you want pasta?)

He yells in my face, above the volume of the music.

My friend hears and she answers for me:

“Si! CERTO che vuole la pasta!” And there goes my sleep.

5.

We’re all piling in his small fiat and we drive down the hill out of the pines and around and around the one village road that has to go around the whole village to get to the bottom. We end up at the front of his parents bar. Obviously it’s closed because it’s now 1am.

We go inside the bar — he has the keys.

We aren’t breaking in, technically, but it still feels like we are.

He takes us upstairs. I always wondered what was upstairs of this place as I ordered my morning cornetto.

Upstairs is a dream for those of us who cry happy over kitchens and making food. Hanging cured sausages. Barrels of flour and sugar. Giant blocks of cheese wrapped like treasure. Tomatoes still on the vine. It’s a cathedral of ingredients. It is a church. If I listen closely, I can hear the bells in the distance.

He opens a fridge and grabs a massive hunk of meat, I’m thinking it’s speck. He goes into a pantry and searches for the right package of pasta, which is spaghettoni. Of course.

On the counter from a crate he grabs a bunch of tomatoes, still connected to each other. A chunk of hard cheese appears and he puts it in a little plastic to-go container and shoves it in my hands. A bundle of fresh parsley is placed on top. He smiles at me and says— tell Sula to marry me.

The next stop is the professional meat slicer. The boy begins slicing the meat while the other one catches the slices— about 7-10 thick pieces. Definitely speck.

I took a video — the whole thing was miraculous. This food. This slicer. The red of tomatoes against an iPhone flashlight. And I know I can’t share any of the videos publicly because I’d reveal myself for what I really was. 51 and breaking into kitchens, hanging out with 20 year olds, being somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. But what a great reel it would be. This is how we do it. We break into kitchens. Slice speck. Steal tomatoes. This is how we let the island lead.

I’m also thinking the whole time, please don’t slice a finger off. But who am I to think this Sicilian kid who probably took his first steps in this bar and started slicing meat at age 3 was at risk. He could do this with his eyes closed. He also grabs 2 or 3 bottles of white wine from the fridge.

Back in the car with all our ingredients, somehow another person is in the car with us so there is no room— but there is food!

I have no idea where we are going.

Five minutes later we’re in the countryside, parked in front of a stone casita that looks like it was born from the dirt itself. Olive trees lean in from every angle. Vines curl around the door like arms. The building is pre-electricity old. Inside: one gas stove, one couch, a small table, a kitchenshelf filled with glass jars of infused oils and dried herbs, and the smell of a thousand meals cooked in the scent of Sicily.

This is someone’s family hideout. Where they escape their 2,000-person village for an acre of vines, orchards, tomatoes and silence. Where sauce gets jarred. Peppers get pickled. Eggplants get their dignity preserved in acid and oil. It’s a sacred space disguised as a small “house”. It’s an ever living history of lineage and food and land.

The boys set up shop. Mario—the serious one with the neck tattoos—starts prepping. This was his family's country home, I was pretty sure. My friend and I are handed tomato duty. We wash them like they are relics, bright red holiness.

While we did that, the boys opened a glass jar of oil —it smelled like dark earth and truffles. Garlic. Olive. They all smelled it and did that hand gesture— the one that meant wow, mincha, how beautiful.

They heated up a pan, put in the oil, added the speck. Let it cook down. It sizzled and shimmered.

They threw in the tomatoes.

They tended to the pan for a little longer, went outside for a smoke. The tomatoes, speck and oil just sizzled and the smell took up the whole one room house.

I stayed in the kitchen watching the pan. Using a wooden spoon to move the sauce around. Scrape the sides. I noticed all the cute glass jars full of herbs that no doubt someone’s mother or nonna or nonno had gathered and dried and stored here.

I spent some time with the dried rosemary I found in a jar and took out two tiny rosemary needles.

I moved them between my thumb and second and third fingers. I said thank you to them. Rosemary is such a fierce mother energy. I could feel her sing and sting. Her heat and clarity. She burns so beautifully and tenderly.

As a small spell I tossed them in the sauce that was cooking down. Just a tiny flick of rosemary. Under this full moon. In the mountains. In Sicily. I just felt like it had to be done. I only put two or three tiny rosemary needles in. That’s all.

May all be well. May we all be protected. May we all be free and clear to be.

I stirred it up. I did my hand gestures, or signatura, as they say. It just came through like it always does, being led by the moment.

All I could think of was the smell of this sauce, the taste that would come, and to never turn down pasta when someone wants to make it for you. What a blessing, even in my exhaustion, what a blessing this is.

I walked outside to sit under the moon, to join the others. It was about 3:30am or maybe 4am at this point.

The purple of cardoon flowers openly glowed globes and tiny hairs. Tall, dancing, wild fennel were spider legs against the moonlight. Swaying. The olive tree leaves shined white then green, they sparkled, shapeshifters.

Everyone spoke to each other in Sicilian. Not Italian. This is why it takes me so long to learn Italian. I am learning Sicilian. I am immersing in places where this is the language even the kids to speak when together.

I sat on the stairs, feeling so drawn to the sounds— the cadence, depth, the boom, then quiet lulls and then sudden fireworks. The staccato of independence of each word but also how they are all inner-connected in the back of the throat or inside the belly of the cheeks. I swallowed the sounds as they hit the air hoping to digest and regurgitate one day. I allowed it to be a prayer. Landing on my cells again.

The boys who were cooking went back inside to tend to the sauce and I hoped they were going to start the pasta water. And we could eat.

The light was creeping in from the dark. I stayed out there with my friend as well as the extra person whose name I never got, enjoying the full moon.

But then there was yelling from inside.

Real yelling. At each other.

My friend, who was on the stairs with me, looked at me to explain— “They’re fighting,” she said.

“No shit.”

She told me they were yelling about the sauce. Someone ruined it. Someone put rosemary in it. They were blaming each other.

“Fuck. It was me.” I told her. “I put a tiny bit of rosemary in it when you all were out here! It was barely anything! How could they even notice?”

We were speaking in English, our secret language, nobody understood it.

“They absolutely could,” she said. “Rosemary?! Mamma MaryBeth. No rosemary in this sauce. How long have you been coming here?”

“I thought it was so beautiful. I only put two needles! Just a little rosemary spell. I’ll go end this and tell them it was me. Tell them I didn’t know. That I’m so sorry.”

“NO!” She hissed at me. Don’t admit it. Let them think one of them did it. It’s better. She shook her head and laughed at me.

“You guys are the crazy ones,” I said.

“I know,” she said, “we are. We are so crazy about food.”

I was so in love with this kind of crazy.

I could have been this crazy about food if my grandparents never left here.

I could have small country houses with people over in the middle of the night and feed people and get in fights. I could have been cardoon under a full moon. I could have been olive trees.

The boys come back outside, cursing each other in Sicilian so filthy I can’t even translate. One lights a cigarette. The other throws his hands in the air like he’s calling on saints.

Then the argument shifts. Something deeper, something else comes up. Old history. They are fighting about something other than the rosemary now.

“They needed this,” my friend whispers. “You gave them a doorway with the rosemary. Now they’re in it. They have been holding on to this shit for too long.”

They remind me of coyotes under the moon just going at it. Back and forth. Hard but with a level of respect and decency, a level of wild but also a sense of humanness, a tender dog-like loyalty in their fight.

The hash and hash it out.

And we just sit. Witness. And wait.

The rosemary didn’t ruin the sauce. Well, maybe it did. But, it opened a wound that needed cleaning.

I guess the spell worked.

This is the subtle validation of how fast magic works (here) (anywhere?).

They had a few more words, but they were descending. It got quiet.

They walked back inside together.

In the kitchen, they put their hand on the other’s shoulder. The kissed each other’s cheeks. They put the water for the pasta on. They stirred the no-longer-ruined-by-rosemary-sauce.

It wasn’t awkward. To witness conflict, a fight, a hashing out in public. Cigarettes lit. Hands flying. It was art. It was consensual. Not transactional. It was relational. It was who we are. Who I was. Who I could have been.

The fighting is what brings about a deeper repair. We are here to go at it. With love. About rosemary. About other things. Under a moon. In the middle of the night. All because we say yes. This is ancestral work. This should be how we write when we write about being within a place.

Mario took some pasta water in a small cup and poured a little it in the sauce. The other strained the pasta. Threw the pasta in the pan, tossed and tossed. Light red sauce splashed all over the tiny kitchen backsplash, all over the stove top. The pasta jumped and landed back down.

It’s 5:30 a.m. The sky is shifting from navy to milk. The moon is still out, round as a coin and twice as bright. We plate the pasta. We pour wine. No one says much. Everyone is starving. We eat.

The pasta is perfect.

Slicked in speck and tomato and whatever truffle-oil spell they conjured to override my rosemary. Parsley tossed on top. We eat with quiet reverence.

A new day cracking open around us. Birds tuning up. Plants taking more shape again in the morning light. Everything is popping.

Persephone has pushed her head up and out.

I look out and realize where we are—clinging to the side of this mountain, staring out at the village where I somehow belong. The one that always takes me back. Take me in. Shows me things.

Above us, a sanctuary to the Mother. Below us, six-million+-year-old salt caves. Around us, the kind of company you can only find at 5 a.m. after a night of dancing, theft, confession/fighting/spell, and sauce.

I’m sticky with sleep-deprivation and tomato. There’s sauce on my chin. I’ve never felt more alive. Say yes. Time is bendable, non-linear. Magic lands.

Because when you’re in the mountains where your bisnonno worked the land, and you’re eating tomatoes that still have soil on their skin, and the wheat was milled ten minutes from where your nonna was born—food stops being food. It becomes an answer. Or at least holds the questions.

I eat every bite. Even go back for seconds.

6.

I fall asleep later that morning like a baby—arms spread, belly full, mind shut off.

Because this is the work.

Because this is paradise.

Because this is who we are. Who I still am.

It just goes without saying this is how it should be.

Or at least how I think it should be.

I sleep all day. When I wake, I remember:

We don’t learn the old ways from textbooks.

We learn by saying yes at midnight.

We learn by slicing speck half-drunk.

We learn by making a mess, then cleaning it with bread.

We learn from fucking around with time, with place, with space, with each other.

We learn by loving enough to know how to fight. To know to hold the other’s truth.

Cu mancia fa muddichi.

Who eats, makes crumbs.

Participation is the rite.

And Sicily—wild, maternal, relentless—never lets you stay tidy for too long. Don’t believe the influencer reels.

Lu suli nun si po’ ammucciari cu na sippa.

You can’t hide the sun with a sieve.

I keep coming back. Because this is paradise. Somewhere between the moonlit pines and the purple dawn, the mountains claimed me—and I said yes.

NOTE:::: I will be holding a writing workshop (5 weeks) called MOUTH.

All my paid subscribers will get a generous % off. Subscribe if you want this discount. I will be sending out a code in the next week or two to paid subscribers. So get in on it!