Elephants of Clay, Elephants of Lava

"You know it makes sense, don't even think about it. Life and death are just things you do when you're bored."

The ferry from Malta lands at a port city named Pozzallo, where a small mini-van (suspiciously marshrutka-like) takes you to Catania. It was a pleasant ride, and I ripped off another hundred or so pages of The Historian. May the lord love and keep this compelling block of book-cheese. I used my mustache scissors to cut it in half. It's 700 pages long. The goal with this trip (and all trips) is to bring a bag heavy with books, leave them wherever I finish them, and head home with a light bag. So far, it's going very well. A hacked half of a vampire novel lays undead in a net behind an Italian bus seat. 

The first glimpse of the city was a strange industrial area where famous street artists had been allowed to decorate some chemical silos. I recognized several styles. My favorite was painted to look like a Campbell's soup can of "Minotaur Stew." I thought never to have a chance to photograph them, but the bus dropped us off only twenty minutes later. The station had a strange, crucified Batman hanging over the entry-arch. What is this place?

The trip was supposed to take seven hours but took only four, so I couldn't get into my room yet. Decided to double back and try to capture the silos. After a long walk, I was chased off by soldiers. So, a long walk back. Such is the pursuit of these things. Sometimes you drink the Minotaur Stew and sometimes it drinks you. Explored for a while, but my pack started to feel like too much (despite all the reading I'd jettisoned). I'd been up for a long time, that early early Maltese cab ride was a lot. 

It's Italy, so I quickly found a place to grab a "cappuccino" and some kind of roll stuffed with hot dogs and peppers. 

 

Town made a nice first impression, kind of a colorful Eastern Europe-vibe to it. A little shabbiness, a lot of faded grandeur, lively people talking with their hands. It's like if Miss Havisham shook off the dust one day and was like, "What have I been doing in this moldy old room? Time for this old bird to stretch her wings once more." 

In the shadow of a volcano, Mt. Etna, this place has seen its share of destruction over the centuries. Lava flowing down and trashing the place. They just take all the lava rock and make sidewalks out of it. And gates. And elephants. The symbol of Catania is the elephant. There's a very pleasant one made of black lava stone holding up an obelisk above a fountain.

It's a big deal, this fountain, and it was an unplanned pleasantness that my coffee shop was quite near it.

Once you know to look for them, you see elephants in curious places as diverse as "no parking" signs and woven into the logos of local businesses. There are many theories as to why this is so, but my favorite is an old legend about an 8th-century wizard who had business in both Catania and Constantinople. He had a pail filled with a special clay he would shape into the form of an elephant, which would then come to life and carry him where he needed to be. An elephant made of clay that comes to life. It's like The Golem, Genesis, and Hannibal all at once. 

Gobbled up a about fifty more pages of this delightful book and moved along. 

I still had an hour to kill, so I walked up Via Etnea and looked for something that wasn't hot dogs. Broad avenue with a lot of boutiques and activity. I made myself laugh thinking "Saldi" was a chain of discount stores, but it means "sale." A group of workmen were dismantling enormous holiday displays lining the avenue further than the eye could see. Miles of white frames with colored lights being slotted into trucks for storage. 

Found a little broccoli place and ate some broccoli and some kind of fried teardrop filled with rice. I would see these things everywhere, filled with... everything. I don't know yet what they're called, but they're a nice alternative to a roll or puff pastry. Stretched my legs and ate slowly, the taste of olive oil dominating everything on the plate. 

Eventually, I got a message from my host telling me her husband Mario would meet me to let me into the apartment in ten minutes. Paid and hurried over there. A group of Italian men stood in front of the building, and I was slow to just start yelling "Mario" at them. One of them guessed who I was, though, and saved me the embarrassment. I was let into a very tiny but very sweet loft called The Pupi Room. 

Pupi means "puppet" and said puppet was a large marionette of a soldier in the corner. It didn't stop me from cracking up at the name, though, (after Mario left). I made puppets in the water closet and took a long nap.    

Popped out for a quick dinner of "macaroni" and "fernet" with some pistachio gelato. All very fine. I haven't really been feeding myself very well on this trip, and a lot of it is because the places with good food don't open until 8 or 9 pm. They eat late here. I've been waking up at 5 and going to sleep by 7, so.. it's just the shameless places available to me. I'll need to rectify that before I leave and have one really good meal. 

Back to the room for writing, reading, and sleeping. It came slow, since the plumbing here gives a terrifying shriek every nine minutes or so, some kind of hydraulic pipe refilling a tank or something. It's the sort of thing a traveling companion would demand we change rooms over. It sounds like a power tool. Oh, well. It's only three nights! 

Woke up to a bunch of kids being yelled at by a nun with no discipline. She had lost all authority, and they were going wild. It wasn't so bad. Washed my face, my hair and proto-beard still crazy, and got out into it. Early morning; men played dice in front of a church. They were intense, humming as the dice were being rolled, suddenly silent as they settled, and roaring at the result. 

A man was almost hit by a car. It honked at him, and he hooted back. Though early, the streets and piazzas were filling up. I ducked out of the crowd, and behind a fountain discovered I was in a crazy fish market. It was a painting. Bright fish, many still breathing, arranged in fans and piles, glistening, gasping. Boys with bowls of seawater refreshed them at intervals. 

I was amazed and sickened, a confusing mix of revulsion and desire.

Blood stained the hastily written cards telling the market price.  

I've been in many similar markets, but this one was unique for its size, variety, and the almost sadistic effort to prolong the life of the fish. Shrimp of a kind I've never seen moved their legs with a kind of feeble defiance and arched their backs. Mussels pulsed. Life is murder. 

I moved through it to the meat area where clean bifurcated lambs hung from hooks. Ah, the meat section. They looked like anatomy posters, red and white half-creatures with their organs removed with the exception, I could not help but notice, of the liver left in its place. 

And those tables went on forever as well, as far beyond my range of sight as the holiday frames on Via Etnea. If you live here, you eat fresh food every night, and you belong in jail. The cell next to mine.

It affected me to the degree that even the vegetables, when I reached them, seemed like viscera to me. The bell peppers bladders, the cucumbers intestines, the beans giblets. 

It was one of those moments where what you're witnessing moves you to to change your life, to change the world, but you feel helpless. You feel like you spend most of your waking hours suppressing the concept that nothing lives without the corresponding exploitation or slaughter of something else. A trade of life for life. 

I reached the end, found a cafe, and had my first coffee of the morning. And a croissant. The guilt and disgust slowly fading. I read some more of that dumb, awesome book and went back out. 

The croissant was created to commemorate the defeat of the Turks by the Viennese in 1683. It's a crescent you destroy, said crescent being the symbol on the Turkish flag. When you eat one, you are celebrating the death of the Ottoman Empire. 

Did my favorite sort of wander, just looked for something on the horizon and headed for it. I'd left my phone and all maps in the Pupi Room. A black and white gate was far ahead, so that was the way. Long meander through a sort of urban area zoned for small shops. Most sold conveniences, many sold puppets, several sold magnificent porcelain heads. It's a much-prized art here. I was quite taken with them. 

When I reached the gate I was rewarded with a quiet plaza and a sign telling me it was The Porta Garibaldi. Made of lava and striped like something from a Tim Burton film. Random alleys and cul de sacs and a sudden view of Mt. Etna spewing smoke! I gasped. A moment of wonder. Looking down the next alley and the next, there was no view at all. Choosing that alley had been a marvelous instance of random fortune!

Further down were the remains of a giant lava stadium with curved arches, a kind of burned-out response to the Colosseum. Street cats, pimps, and piazzas. And then I had somehow curved back to the elephant fountain. How about that. A healthy walk and not yet noon. I wasn't quite ready to head back home, so I bought a fancy coat from a fancy store. I need something to take the place of all those books I've left on buses.  

Huge protest with no one over twenty filled the street and halted traffic. Signs written on sheets. Songs, laughter, youth. Teenagers with plastic megaphones led the children in call and response. Was it related to the morning chaos that had woken me up?

Siesta at home, then up in the early evening to do laundry! Laundry!

Found a place that does it in a neighborhood I hadn't been in yet and... discovered another fish and lamb market! As big as the first! What fierce appetites this place must have to support two such vast markets. I was amazed, but less depressed for some reason. Resignation? 

Did my laundry and melted more of that book. Ate another fried tear drop. It had spinach in it.

When I returned to the washing machine and removed my clothes they smelled pleasantly of soap, but I had used none.