Dancing with a Mystery: The Ancient Eyes of Sicily

                                

Lauren Aufiero

            As a little girl I would lay awake at night restless, writhing with sweat in my Sesame Street pajamas; my eyes, nervous, innocent brown moons shifting from one side of my room to the other.  A fear gripped me, one that in a milder sense still clutches me today.  A fear that another pair of eyes would meet mine through the dark and unfamiliar shadows. 

            By daytime, it was a happy place, colorful and safe, but when the sun set through my pink chiffon balloon curtains and my small body was hand-packaged like a sandwich in between mounds of soft blue quilts, the scene grew dim with the fading peach sky.  I watched in a panic as eyes, inanimate plastic beads by day, glowed with life by night; as white moonbeams penetrated a secret energy into their steady pupils.  My doll collection became a fierce array of frightening porcelain faces, my stuffed animals a live cotton petting zoo.  Their sinister gazes begged for human interaction.  Everywhere I looked I met cold, unnerving stares, motionless and hard, enduring the entire night without waiver.  Daytime's most friendly and lovable of playmates, such as Super Chunk, the black gorilla who sat propped against a toy box in the corner; morphed into a wild-eyed beast, greeting the night with giddy primitive delight. 

            This is the eye, what it can do to you.  The trancing power of the eyes goes far beyond any paranoid child's imagination; the eyes cast can cast intoxicating spells.  No other feature can convey emotions or thoughts with as much intensity or captivating allure.  Little circles that can take you by surprise in a blink, turn from tranquil to threatening, calm to cold, silly to satanic.  It's the spontaneity and the constancy of the eyes that make them so beautifully mysterious yet so daringly dangerous.  In a place such as Sicily, where the eyes, not the mouths, do the talking, one has to be careful of where they gaze.

            One evening in Taormina, I sit perched like a tiny bird upon the orange-tiled rooftop of our hotel.  As I overlook the surreal landscape of a white-capped volcano peak under a waning purple sky, a quote from the original Batman movie comes into my mind.  Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moon light?   This is that light, I think, repeating the Joker's fast, breathy phrase over and over in my head.  Light, and what it illuminates, plays a huge part in what our eyes see.  Cameras can only capture an image if the lighting is right, the same holds true for our brain.  What will Sicily's pale moonlight show me?  What will it hide?  In a blur of thoughts I begin to frantically scribble in my journal.  Mt. Etna watches me in my cathartic hour.  Even as darkness blankets the cliff side I can still see her towering silhouette, spying on me, provoking me.  Even Etna has eyes.  Perhaps hers are the greatest and wisest of them all because she has was born forth from hot layers of ancient earth miles below cool, blue Mediterranean waters that will never break her secrets.  I cannot divert my mind from the eyes of Sicily.  Whether they are haunting me or I am haunting them is something I will never know, all I can do is record what I am shown.  And I write...        

            Some brutal and tragic, some radiant with mercy and grace, the eyes of Sicily whisper her intimate story.  From the bulging, bloodshot eyes, staring lifelessly at me from a goat head hanging in the Catania marketplace, to the pious, serene look a miniature Jesus shoots at me from his crucifix, perched atop an altar in a narrow alleyway in Cefalu, the eyes of Sicily harness a profound affect on those who return their glare...

            I knew from the start that eyes would come to embody my travels in Sicily.  They seemed
to call out to me from wherever I looked with a mutual curiosity only I was gifted to see.  Was I crazy?  Maybe.  Looking a little too hard?  Always.  As everyone else searched for the tangible paper topic, such as fishing, religion or the isolation of island life, I discovered the utter perfection in a more fleeing and intangible theme.  Eyes were not only a world in themselves, but they blended into the worlds of everyone else's topics.  Why limit yourself to one topic when you can touch them all in one metaphor?  The more eyes I found, the more my excitement and obsession grew.  The layers of meaning were as deep as the ocean.  A mystical side of Sicily was opening her eyes to me, and I wiped my lashes, and my lense, clean and opened my eyes right back.

            The critical moment had to come several days into our journey.  It was here that literary fate sent me a message that I will never forget.  It was nightfall in Palermo and I was on a hunt.  After an elaborate seafood dinner of countless courses, my sweet tooth was crying for some sweet loving.  Gelato, the dessert of the gods, is what it craved.  Gelato came to be my creamy, frozen delicacy of expertise after ten days of conquering cup after cup of incorrectly-pronounced flavor after flavor.  Spotting a gelateria in the distance, I raced from the rest of the lagging group towards its bright lights and red and green awnings.  Entering any Gelateria in Sicily is like entering a big-top circus: the dizzying colors, the lively Italian music, the stuffed animal displays and the yellow and blue tiled floor.   Sheer bliss seized me when I saw the glistening case spanning almost the entire width of the store.  The effect was similar to a mind-altering drug.  My eyes scanned flavor after flavor, color after color, meaningless perfect cursive-scrolled name card.  In my euphoric frenzy to make a decision, I neglect to pay attention to the face of the man who serves me.  It is only until after he scooped my tri-flavored treat and reaches over the counter to hand it to me that I look at him.  His eyes burned shock and awe when they met my own.  A hesitant smile crept across his face as I locked in a gaze with one brown and one sea-green eye.  The neon lights overhead caught the bulging brown eye at such an angle that they outlined its awkward edge and enhanced its artificial details.  Like a circus freak I stood mesmerized by the glass eye.  It was just so odd looking, so off.  As the green eye blinked and shifted naturally, the brown one rested stationary, its painted black pupil piercing me with its hardened reluctance to move.  The magnetic connection was so bizarre that I snatched my gelato and bashfully lowered my head.  My mother always told me it was rude to stare.  It was this moment that I knew the eyes of Sicily were looking at me to tell their story.  An age-old story of a land rich with culture and tradition.  A land whose eyes stir with life, with one stuck in the past and the other intrigued by the future.  Two separate worlds that are only visible to the eyes of an outsider.  Sicily, just like the man in the gelateria, has one ancient, brown eye planted in the past and one fresh, moving, green eye, searching for its place in the future.        

            The eyes of our first stop, Cefalu, greeted me on every cobblestone corner and winding coastal passageway.  A tiny fishing village out of a storybook, Cefalu is the type of town in which you  picture Pinnochio turning into a real boy.  Maybe this is why almost every tourist tee-shirt from Cefalu has a picture of Pinnochio on it and all the trinket shops sell wooden Pinnochio puppets in every size.  Lost in a pristine period of time and grace, Cefalu is very much as unaccepting of modern culture as her worn-smooth cobblestone streets would lead one to believe.  Protective mothers and nonies clutched their children into black, crocheted shawls as our group made its way through the town's labyrinth of alleys and side streets.  Suspicious eyes watched our every move.  Even the curious little children were hesitant to get close, like the plague of our 21^st century modernism was a disease that might befall them.  From twisted iron chairs outside cafes and panerias the old men observed us.  Chewing on soft rectangles of golden brown panini
oozing with melted white cheese and thinly sliced pink ham wrapped delicately in wax paper, their eyes scanned each of us in hypnotic gazes.  I was a dangerous stranger, my blonde hair as alien as the awkward hunk of Minolta metal around my neck.  The doubt we raised was  unnerving.  Photographing these people seemed impossible, but we slowly learned how to master the art. 

              At every twist and turn something jutted out from the surface of the cement building or home.  These artful edges caught my attention immediately.  I crept closer and on my tiptoes peeked into the body of a hollow that was a little higher than my head.  A miniature vignette of holiness lay inside the scooped out enclave.  A tiny altar, radiant with Sicilian spirituality.  A little Jesus resurrected over the globe spread his arms out to me in forgiveness.  His hand-painted face alive with careful detail; a scruffy brown beard and moustache, a peaceful expression brushed on his pink mouth.  His eyes met mine with love and sincerity.  The back wall of the altar was painted with divine visions.  Swarms of angels, clouds and bright stars concealed its cement identity.  Altars such as this one were everywhere.  Not only in Cefalu but in every other city and village we visited.  Some erected several foot-tall statues of their patron saints who glared out from inside dimly lit caverns.  Some were dedicated to simple Sicilians who had died.  One in particular stands out in my mind.  In a stucco wall of a bridge that ran parallel to a busy road, an altar about the size of a shoe box had been constructed.  A candy-apple red glass plaque mounted on the bridge's wall displayed two dates and encased a color photograph of a young man.  The engraved name read ÔCiao Simone.'  He had only been 19, my age, when he died.  I ran my fingers across the smooth glass surface, touching his olive cheek softly.  Ciao stared out into the noisy street from his landing, frozen in youth and in life.  If only those eyes had known how short lived their existence would be, I thought, as reflected on this young man's fate.  Ciao---Simone,
I whispered.  A burst of orange tiger lilies and budding yellow flowers sprouted underneath him.  On each side of the display red candles painted with Christ flickered in the sea breeze.  Daily, fresh flowers are placed in altars such as these.  And daily, offering boxes are emptied and candles are re-lit in a cycle of devotion.  These altars are as much a part of Sicilian life as religion itself.  This faith is something that the people are careful to not lose sight of.

              In Savoca, a mountainous village of crumbly earth tones settled over a carpet of lush green hillsides sweeping high above sea level, we encountered for the first time in our travels, a place where the rock of Sicilian faith was shaken.  The church of Santo Miguel, Saint Michael as we know him, loomed over us from the village's precipice.  The sky hung dark and foreboding clouds puffed grey mists around its high steeple and iron crucifix.  The locked cathedral was opened by a cloaked woman villager with a large, metal key.  We stepped inside and adjusted to the darkness.  There before us stood marble and concrete thousands of years old.  Columns held up majestic arches of ornate detail over the altar.  Although deteriorated, the church was still magnificent.  My eyes glided to one wall where the light from the open doorway scintillated off silver fixings.  These shapes, about the size of my hand, covered the wall.  A glass case protected them from theft and corrosion.  In the darkness, my eyes met hundreds of other eyes.  I stood amazed as clusters of silver eyes, each of a unique design, gleamed at me from their wall.  Rosa, our guide, went on to explain the eye phenomenon.  They were offerings, made by the locals, to Santa Lucia (Saint Lucy) the patron saint of the eyes.  After bizarre occurrences such as levitation, specters and the bleeding and upside-down rotation of a portrait of Saint Michael had gone on in the church, the townspeople left Michael and turned to Saint Lucy for protection and healing.  The silver eyes stand as a shrine to her, aside a wall-length portrait of the saint holding two, blue eyeballs in her hand.  Standing face to face with Santa Lucia I realized again the recurring theme of eyes that was weaving its way through our voyage.  Faith, like beauty, is more than skin-deep.  It is what goes on behind our eyes that really matters.  Soon after Savoca, the catacombs of Palermo illustrated to me what humans look like when their eyes have left them.  What purpose then do the empty chasms serve?  Without the eyes, the face is a barren wasteland of useless flesh, a stale image of life extinguished.  Without faith, a soul may look the same way.

              The underground catacombs of Sicily are stark reminders of death, the destination we are all moving towards.  A suffocating, warm stairwell led us into the dank crypt devoted to preserving the face of death.  Inside, horrifying eyes bombarded me.  Hollowed out holes in the skulls framed by bits of stiff skin.  Half decomposed cadavers lined the corridors, either shelve-stacked in open coffins or hanging precariously from the walls.  Dressed in various clothing, these bodies had been down here for hundreds of years.  They sat there, like mannequins in an unchanging display.  I had never been amid so much death before.  I was at a loss for a thought, an emotion, a word.  As I strolled slowly up and down the identical halls, I narrowed in on the eyes of these poor souls.  Some wore definite expressions, whether it was from their mouths, their cocked heads or their deformed and crusty skin.  These expressions, did they wear them at the time of their passing, or did they make them after they had seen the other side?  If so, were the sinners the ones whose eyes were opened looking tragic and frightened?  Were the good people those whose eyes were closed, depicting peaceful expressions of eternal relaxation?  I tried to analyze the moral status of each corpse as a stared into their eyes.  Some still had the remains of eyeballs.  One, a little baby girl in a blue satin dress, stared out from her gold-laden crib.  She looked alive; eyeballs intact, completely blank expression on her face.  Blank maybe, as her young soul was at the time she died.  It was bizarre, the intimate repertoire that the catacombs enable the living to form with the dead.  There's nothing I can do for you, now, I said to a male cadaver in his bedclothes who helplessly peered out at me from his dusty casket.  Sinner, I muttered as I walked away, just because I could.

               Leaving the catacombs I felt as though I had died and then been given a second chance at life.  There are two things that I will probably never appreciate as much as I did that afternoon: the sacrament of reconciliation, and fresh air.  Observing the eyes of the dead made me question the living, myself included.  Death was a fate I could accept, but living and being dead inside was something I could not.  I recalled the sad eyes of my grandfather a few months before he passed away.  Looking into them as he laid miserably in stiff white sheets on his nursing home bed, I knew that he was already dead.  Too ill to speak, my mother and I would sit beside him searching his eyes for a connection, but could find nothing.  Was he happy?  Did he feel satisfied when he reflected back on his long life?  In his old age and failing health, his eyes had grown vacant, two abandoned sand lots in field of wrinkly peach skin.  It was something I had seen before, with my grandmother and with other old people in nursing homes where I had done community service work.  Eyes of the living that had died prematurely, as if the curtain was suddenly drawn on the play of their life, right in the final act.  Truly one of the saddest and most pitiful stages of life.  The stage when, for whatever reason, all you want is for it to be over.  Yet, empty eyes were a sight that I never saw in Sicily.  Even the eyes of the very old sparkle with life.  Their elderly are strong and passionate, crusaders of life.  I pondered how and why this exuberance had faded in the elders I had seen, the elders of my country.  Sicilians lead such simple and deserving lives, I wondered if this simplicity brought true happiness, like a light to the soul.  If the eyes truly are the windows to the soul, then old Sicilians glow with an eternal flame.  Some of the fieriest old Sicilians we encountered were those who lived in Polizzi Generoso.  Like the munchkins in The Wizard of Oz's Munchkinland they initially hid out of shyness.  Yet, intrigued by our ruby slippers they one by one sprung forth from their mossy bungalows, and welcomed us with a playful enthusiasm and charisma reminiscent of the Lollipop Guild.                     

               Polizzi Generoso is the type of place you visit and cannot truly comprehend until you leave.  Sure, it's breathtaking while you're there, but the full value of its splendor takes way longer to process.  Even now when I think back on Polizzi, I cannot believe a place of such humble majesty actually exists.  Polizzi's old world charm and jaw-dropping mountain peak backyards have become little more than a dream to me.  A quaint town that lays hidden in the sky, Polizzi's air lingers on the nose, spiced with the scent of wood burning stoves and a jolt of mountain freshness only detectable at extreme altitudes.  I trudge up the steep paths, lined with potted plants and hanging clotheslines.  Above my head the wind whips pink sheets suspended from a balcony.  Across the way pairs of white underwear flap proudly in the breeze.  Around each curvy bend I perk my ear to a wooden door creaking open, or squint my eyes to make out a timid face playing peek-a-boo from a tiny window or rickety stairway.  Immersed in this rejuvenating spring of mountain purity, I imagine Oz's little munchkins outstretching their arms and yawning to the sun as they climb out from their beds atop huge flowers and bluebirds' nests.  This is Polizzi, a vision of Munchkinland nestled in a dreamworld of clouds and snowy peaks. 

               One by one, Polizzi's eyes revealed themselves to us as little munchkin men crept out from alleyways and vine-covered portals.  In the main piazza our group stood bound together in awe.  A once empty square was awakened with life as hunched-over men in capes and hats cautiously encircled us.  This charm and curiosity is something I seldom see in the old.  The tailored gentleman gathered near us, as sunlight warmed the walls and marble fountain surrounding the piazza.  A handsome old man cloaked in a blue cape led the welcoming committee.  His sparkling blue eyes as cool and crisp as his clothing.  When we looked at each other, I could not believe the clarity of the whites of his eyes.  They hadn't even a hint of bloodshot or weariness.  I was amazed.  Fearless and bold he inspected my camera with shaking fingers.  His cronies bumbled around him, careful not to get too close.  He drew them near and made them pose with him for a picture.  We snapped away.  The connection was beautifully engineered.  Everyone was smiling and laughing despite the language barrier.  After several minutes of striking poses, the man in the blue cloak approached me and made a writing gesture.  I reached in my bag and whipped out a pen.  On a piece of paper from his pocket he scribbled down his name and address and handed it to me with questioning eyes.  I knew immediately what he wanted me to do.  As he made the hand motions of putting something in an envelope and sending it from point A to point B over and over again I fumbled for the words or motions to assure him that I would mail the pictures.  It was not until we locked eyes that the understanding is sealed.  All that we had been trying to convey was suddenly absorbed.  Trust is something that you can just see.  How could I not fulfill any plea that those vivacious eyes asked of me?  He watched as I folded up the tiny paper he has scrawled on and tucked it inside my camera bag.  I nodded.  They will be sent.

               When the times comes to leave Polizzi I am struck with mixed emotions.  Sad to say goodbye to our new friends and their glorious village, yet somewhat relieved that our presence is no longer contaminating such pristine soil.  It's too good for us here, I think.  I know I could never live in a place such as Polizzi because my eyes have been corrupted by the greed and soullessness of modernism.  The innocent twinkle that comes with knowing the value of a simple and organic life is something my eyes were never gifted to shine with.  A life where material things mean nothing unless they help you to survive.  I wonder what Polizzi Generoso will be like ten years from now, or twenty.  I wonder if materialism and modern technology will have polluted her sacred fields and disturbed her pure and quiet spirit.  As we pull away, I can still see the rooftops of Polizzi, steadfast yet graceful, perched on the mountainside.  A beacon of hope and inspiration for la vida pura.   For some reason I feel that she will be safe.

               About an hour later we are gliding down the autostrada, moving parallel to the seacoast.  At our backs, the sun dances for us, glittering over the azure waves as they cascade over one other in a race to the white sand finish line.  The entire coastline is visible, the mountain peaks spectacular in their jagged poise.  A pool of light turquoise water closer to shore greets her darker and deeper royal blue counterpart farther out.  The mystery of the Tyrrhenian sea seems endless.  Houses lined in between neat rows of olive trees speckle the green carpet earth, minding their distance from the unpredictable sea.  I watch the shadows of clouds sculpt faces on the mountains ahead.  Jeremiah talks about how they are all cool nuances of blue.  Just one color, yet an infinite number of shades.  We round a bend and the suns rays catch a patch of meadow.  The rich green is intoxicating.  I press my face against the cool glass of the bus window and pretend it is the moist, green coolness of the pastures.  Brilliant yellow orbs of lemons shout to me from dense treetops as our bus rolls past them.  They want to be adored too, and they are.  Sheep and cattle roam lazily through the terraced hills.  No boundaries.  The olive trees humor me with their depth of character.  Each one is so unique and differently shaped from the next, like stout little Sicilianos they stand; unwavering in dignity and soul.  In this moment the essence of this magic land is finally realized.  I saw it all along, but only now was it truly mine.

               Although Sicily is a land of many eyes, to appreciate it, you only need one.  And even though Sicily shared some of her secrets with me, I knew that the key lay in uncovering the hidden truths with my own eyes.  The real treasure of this island was how my vision has changed since she touched it.  A transformation took place in the way I see life and time, and in how I measure happiness and worth.  Although my chasing of eyes may never stop, at least now I know what I am looking for.