Further blips from former travels: Sicily 2000: I managed to comprehend the wobbly Sicilian language a man in a yellow shirt with halitosis spoke: Get to the grey building. I found the grey building, the bus station in the dilapitated city of Catania... An Italian boy just asked to rub the inside of my feet. I said no grazie... ...The plants love it here. They are my friends.... Hopefully a fisherman will let me fish with him without attempting to touch me... I lie on a bed of pebbles while watching topless tanners... After climbing 2000 steps to the town of Taormina, a blind man stopped me on the street. His head reeked of dandruff and sweat. He asked me if I was alone and to avoid harassment, I said no, my husband's in the pensione. He then asked if my husband and I would like to stay in his pensione. "Excuse me for asking because I am not a capitalist." I laughed. "Everyone is a capitalist", I replied... At the moment I am on the bus headed to Palermo. The scenery is lovely, however a bald older man in a suit is touching himself while looking at my legs through the small space between the seats. I am disturbed and should probably say something, but I have to pee and for some reason it's keeping me from having to go so bad. The bus drivers never make pee stops here... It is sometimes frustrating watching everyone go about their normal lives while I struggle to pronounce a simple sentence.... Shabby dogs run up and down the streets, begging, flies swarm around their mouths... Everyone looks shifty, like they have secrets. Sly dark eyes veiled in sunglasses and cigarettes, incessant ear scratching.... The people here are either remarkably lovely or hideous... Every day I walk and look and write and walk and look and write, and though I understand the beautiful simplicity of this time, I'm having difficulties accepting my lack of purpose.... I haven't had a conversation in weeks. I should just shut up and learn the fucking language... The first Norman attempt to seize Palermo in 1064 ended in a tragicomedy when they bivouacked on a hill swarming with a species of taratula whose bites cause painful farts...
