Paris November 2004 – Part I Ryanair. Thrill to take-off as it used to be. Roar of motors, lifting off the ground. Paris. Metro. Steps and steps. Circumventing square in search of cab. Lane behind iron gate. Low houses painted sky-blue, pink, yellow. Steep half-width steps winding up (one floor only, thank our stars!) InstructionsContinue reading “Paris”
Author Archives: Erika Bizzarri
Museum Hum
Museum. Architecture for people – without people. (2000 and November 2004) White rooms, doorways leading to other white rooms. Pictures, straight-edged, in the straight-edged architecture of the rooms. Muffled voices in the carpeted room. Intermittent sounds detaching from what should have been the underlying silence. A hum persistent low key elusory pervasive inescapable. Barely perceptible.Continue reading “Museum Hum”
The Watcher: Sicily continued IX
Campino Because I was a friend of one of their families, I was somehow not a stranger in Campino. It was a tiny village up in the mountains. Including the chickens, there were perhaps 150 inhabitants. Threaded between the houses with their thick stone walls and heavy stone roofs were narrow pathways and under passageways,Continue reading “The Watcher: Sicily continued IX”
Ahnenpass
The history of my mother’s family is actually rather complicated. My ancestors are remembered, some I knew and loved like my grandmother and aunt Toni. Others remain names in the Ahnenpass. Ahnenpass, a genealogical document required in Nazi Germany listing birth and death dates, occupations, where lived, who they were married to – all toContinue reading “Ahnenpass”
The Watcher: Sicily continued VIII
Milan and family The train approached Milan. The land was flat, a strange jumbled chessboard of green and yellow. The corners of the fields were all square. The violence of the Sicilian sun had abated. But here too the wheat was already bleached and reminded me of Van Gogh with the red of the poppiesContinue reading “The Watcher: Sicily continued VIII”
Ghosts III January 11, 2004
The dark of night flows in like water, fills the room, imprisons me, a creature in its burrow. Eyes wide-open turn inwards to a world alive with ghosts that break unbidden through the fragile diaphragm separating out from in. Phantoms of the past exempt from time and space come one by one and then are gone.Continue reading “Ghosts III January 11, 2004”
Ancestors II
Eugenie (Jenny) Voetter 1876 – 1936 1899. She was 23, a concert pianist and a soprano, when she sat forher portrait in Munich. In a year. she would have her firstborn child,on a forlorn island in the Pacific where she had followed the man withwhom she had fallen in love. And where a dark-skinned nativeContinue reading “Ancestors II”
The Watcher: Sicily continued VII
Taormina Again a town, and again, a people to discover. The soldiers on the bus from the railroad station to the town itself were singing the songs of the Alpine troops. Perhaps it depended on the time of year, but the doors of Taormina seemed perpetually closed, jealously hiding their life behind the stone wallsContinue reading “The Watcher: Sicily continued VII”
The Watcher: Sicily continued VI
Although Piazza Armerina was rather out of the way, Andrea insisted that we make a detour. Most people went there for the girls in bikinis decorating the mosaic pavement, so modern yet centuries old. But I discovered other things there as well. The male torso in the ruins left me breathless, so strong and beautifulContinue reading “The Watcher: Sicily continued VI”
Ancestors
ANCESTORS (January 2004) Ancestors I knewand those I never knew.Family trees.They grow and branchbut backwards.We say we’re looking for our roots.So who is branch and who is trunk?I am the end product,the result of endless matingsbut in turn branch out into others.I am the sumthe penultimate answerof a penultimate answer. Who were theywhere did theyContinue reading “Ancestors”
The Watcher: Sicily continued V
Sicily, a land of contrasts: Agrigento The bare mountains around Palermo gave way to valleys and more rocks, a harsh wildness sweetened by the soft blush blossoms of the almond. There was a fierceness and a starkness to the land yet it was covered with flowers, stalks of pale stars, small white and purple blossomsContinue reading “The Watcher: Sicily continued V”
First Thoughts
First thoughts – 1994 and 2021 The wind, the rain a wavering leaf caught up let down motion life New Year passing of time motion. No fireworks last night unless meant to celebrate the passing of a year – infausto – inauspicious, fatal as no year before. Although in other times and places For otherContinue reading “First Thoughts”
The Watcher: Sicily continued IV
Goodbye Monreale If Monreale were a village in the middle of the jungle, I should probably get along more easily. But here in such close proximity to culture, or signs of culture, it was too easy to expect of others the same careless acceptance of things learned long ago and now hidden as if behindContinue reading “The Watcher: Sicily continued IV”
Winter is a time of skies
Winter is a time of skies Jan. 15, 1994 Winter is a time of skies of winds that blow through empty trees and pipe their plaintive solo melodies with crevices of house and door as reed. All foliage, excess verbiage, has fallen by the way. The unencumbered beauty of what lies beneath is now revealed. DeceivingContinue reading “Winter is a time of skies”
The Watcher: Sicily continued III
Palermo puppet theater I was told that somewhere in Palermo there was a puppet theater. But it seemed elusive, hard to track down. I thought I could ask at the corner bar near the pensione. The owner knew me by now – a blue-eyed man with thinning wispy hair, sort of tired looking as SiciliansContinue reading “The Watcher: Sicily continued III”
Befana
What is Befana:The Befana or Epiphany is the arrival of the Three Kings with theirgifts on January 6th. Over the years, I sent a little girl who lived inthe United States some of the Michelangeli frogs. She will now soon bea mother and the frogs will be bequeathed to a newborn child. Thestory was written forContinue reading “Befana”
The Watcher: Sicily continued II
Monreale One didn’t need the Pied Piper’s flute to be surrounded by children. A camera would do, but a sketch book was even better. People were sometimes suspicious of a camera –not sure what was being photographed. And perhaps still felt that a photograph took part of their soul. But they loved to watch theContinue reading “The Watcher: Sicily continued II”
Time
Was there ever a time without time, with what was and is and what will be? It is the clock that tells us that now has given way to past, heedless of the future. Only you and I project ourselves into time as yet unborn as we try to stop its onward march with allContinue reading “Time”
The Watcher: Sicily
Sicily February 1956 The boat for Sicily left in the evening. After watching the lights of Naples fade in the distance, I ate a good dinner and then slept till dawn. Sunrise and rocks on the horizon turned into the mountains of Sicily. Steep and stony, except for a beach and a plain that wasContinue reading “The Watcher: Sicily”
Christmas Aftermath 2016
Ribbons, yarn, cord Tied in a bow, knotted, looped Narrow, wide, twisted, flat Purple twine Scarlet satin Glittering gold Leftovers from Christmases past The twine my son, practical The scarlet satin, older friends Each ribbon matches the person who chose it, wrapped the package, thought of you and thought of me.
Erika Bizzarri 