SavocaWeb

03-21-05 Savoca (June 3)

Seeing my name on every street sign and manhole cover perhaps gave me a false sense of celebrity – I owned this town.

Granted, there wasn’t much to own. Most of the buildings were empty, boarded up, rotting, inhabited only by pidgeons and dust. Dad and I mused briefly over the real estate possibilities of a place like this, but having to farm for my own food is not on my list of specialties or desires.

The one establishment that brought any life at all to the town was the Bar Vitelli, famous for its role in The Godfather as the place where Michael meets Apollonia’s father. After we mentioned our last name to Maria D’Arrigo, the bar’s proprietor since before Pacino sat on her porch, she handed us a postcard and offered to sell us paper-thin t-shirts proclaiming her as Mama del Mundo (mother of the world). Of course, as they listed the name of the village, we couldn’t resist. Ahh, the only thing worse than a tourist is a tourist who’s a sucker for gimmicks.

06-20-04 – Persistence of Memory

With the regret of a child leaving its mother, I boarded the plane and left Rome. True, having secured a job at Renfro Design Group in New York City, I had plenty to look forward to, but on the lonely journey across the ocean, I experienced a homesickness for the wrong country. I was hesitant to return to a world of luxury, where all food was always in season, where the people pride themselves on the size of their automobiles, where you didn’t have to check your wallet before ordering another glass of water. I longed for the inefficiency, for the ancient buildings in decay, for the mysterious (but now more decipherable) language, for the portions that left you with just enough room for a gelato.

Granted, New York is probably one of the most “European” city in America, but looking around at the SUVs and the commercialism and the excess, it also feels very much like one of the most “American” cities as well. And now here I sit in my apartment across the street from DAAP in Cincinnati, and I have quite a bit to tell. So here are my final diary entries detailing my trip down to Sicily with my father at the end of one of the most fantastic times of my life.

Savoca Town Gate

My time in Italy was, in a word, life-changing. As difficult as it was to return to the States, I came back refreshed, with a new perspective on life.