Palermo, a seven layer cake
My preconceived notion of Palermo was humidity, grime and New York City on steroids. I was wrong. It’s not humid. It’s NYC after a two month garbage strike. Not that the Palermoians (I just made that up) care. They sit in cafes and restaurants surrounded by mounds of garbage, the odors rank, homeless everywhere, as if the city was an Eden. Many streets are pedestrian only, except “pedestrian” encompasses cars, motorcycles, bicycles and scooters. The drivers—rude and insane. Think New York or Boston drivers on meth amphetamine. It makes sense that millions of Italians, mostly from southern Italy, settled in New York. They might not care about litter or clean air, but they do care about what they imbibe or ingest. People here haven’t mentioned the state of USA politics, but they find incomprehensible what we’ll put in our mouths.
Maybe Palermo’s a metaphor for the current state of politics back home. I watched fifteen minutes of the first debate between Trump and Biden. Enough said. So Wendy and I roamed the ancient city, home to the Pumics, Greeks, Romans, Normans, Genoans, Napolitanos, Spanish and whomever else conquered the island of Sicily at one time or another, awed by the confluence of architectural styles, ruins built atop ruins, delighted by the colorful markets and who gives a damn attitude of the inhabitants. The catastrophe we’re experiencing in the States—well, just business as usual here—and that realization did somewhat alleviate the gloom.
During dinner at a small, out of the way restaurant we thought about our 48th wedding anniversary only days away and reminisced about Boomer life in the Eighties, my ridiculous working hours on Wall Street, the three children she raised while teaching doctors nutrition and writing a newspaper column, sleep deprivation and the MTV music videos she watched while nursing the decade away. Dire Straits: money for nothing and the checks are free; Joan Jett: put another dime in the juice box, baby; the Knack: My Sharona” becomes Rice-a-Roni; Springsteen: wrapped up like a douche, another runner in the night; Queensryche: I wanna be your dog. We could empathize with Biden’s mangling of the English language on the debate stage. The poor man was sleep deprived. Up past his bedtime. He desperately needed a nap and he should get one. A long one. We need someone who can defeat Trump and his handlers at the Conservative Partnership Institute and its nefarious progeny. But it sure as heck ain’t Joe Biden or the Democratic (sic) National Committee, an organization seemingly dedicated to destroying Democracy. But here we are in Palermo, a city that has seen multiple rulers of all stripes, dining next to Palermoians who’ve seen it all through the centuries, and they’re still laughing and singing and enjoying life on the one turn of the spinning wheel we get. Do they know something we don’t?