Sicily

Marina di Ragusa blooms in the summertime—the Mediterranean Sea used for relaxation, sport and beauty. Photo by Salvatore Cacciaguerra.

The Light Side of Sicily.

By Sally M. Veillette, founder, Hands-On Sicily

02 February 2011. I’m at Heathrow airport, awaiting a flight to Rome. Magic fills the air. The trip from New York initiated a wave of synchronicity that Sicily has taught me is, always was, and will remain, an everyday part of life. I’ve been uprooted today, flights shuffled (due to weather), then plopped down right next to a diplomat from Finland who solved, in the first five minutes of an eight-hour flight, a long-standing problem I’d had for over a year.

Now in the Heathrow waiting area, a second businessman, this time Japanese, is playing my knight in shining armour—il cavaliere—wrestling through his carry-on to find an electrical adapter for my laptop.

We can thank Motohiko for this essay. The formalities we exchanged flowed easily into friendship.

“Hands-On Sicily?” he asked. “Isn’t Sicily dangerous?”

“Well there’s the Mafia with the capital ‘M,’ and the mafia with the small ‘m.’”

Motohiko murmured something like a “Huh?” in a mixture of English and Japanese.

“The Big M keeps pretty much to itself, in big business.”

“And the small m?”

“That’s the insidious one.”

“It looks slow,” the Japanese businessman said, gazing dreamily at my photos. “It is so slow that it can appear to be still,” Sally replied, “But it’s not. Sicily is on the move. It’s very much alive.” (Photo by Giorgio Distefano.)

I wondered how much to tell him. His eyes were bright, deep, and questioning—the mark of a thoughtful man who’d enjoyed a solid career and was now nearing retirement. He’d been awaiting his first flight of the day back to Japan. He was rested. Eager. He could probably take the truth. So I continued.

“The small ‘m’ is everywhere—even inside each of us. It’s the part that fights with us, the fear that keeps us from following our dreams. In Sicily it’s so strong that it appears in 3D in the air around you…”

He was listening.

“Take my old boyfriend, for instance. He was opening a new beach club—light sandwiches, beach chair rentals, cocktails. That kind of thing. The small ‘m’ felt threatened, though, and threatened to burn it down. He had to place a 24/7 guard… Still, his brother got so scared that he left the partnership the day before it opened. Imagine that? Years of work, the endless Italian permissions obtained, obstacles overcome, bar stocked… and he walked away on opening day.”

Stories like these, movies like the Godfather, send people running away from the island. The best people leave, the locals like to say. But this man, Motohiko, was riveted. I knew I could go on safely. Sicily is like an oyster—rough on the outside, but full of riches and luminosity. I wanted this man to feel its paradox.

“Yes, this small ‘m’ corrupts Sicily,” I continued, “Distorts it. But it also sorts it out.”

By now I had let myself go with this stranger, glowing brightly, as I explained what it had been like to have visited Sicily since I was a mere 8 years old, the age of my daughter today (a daughter that I raised on the island). I marveled at the renewal that I experience with each visit there—even that day, with the mere anticipation of my arrival on Italian soil. The energy and passion that surges. The curves that I find again in my body and soul. In a final punctuated note, I added how my anger also flares at times, like a scorned lover’s, at the obstacles that the Italians find, in innumerable ways, to put up in front of forward movement.

Though Sicily is my motherland, the land of my maternal grandparents, at times I feel like her mother myself, the lone ambassador who sees below her surface to her roots.

“Do you have any idea how many people visit me each year?” I asked him.

“I would,” he said, “I want your energy.”

Motohiko will come to visit, in fact, and bring his wife. They have no kids. Hands-On Sicily will set them up, if they like, with children to tutor in computers or Japanese. We’ll arrange excursions for him, cooking classes, shopping trips or makeovers. He’ll enjoy the beach and piazza. He’ll relax, letting Sicily reveal herself to him. We’ll invite him to Villa Chiara, my home in Marina di Ragusa, an international oasis. They’ll leave the island feeling renewed—like they’ve just returned from a junior year abroad program, as a Hands-On Sicily fan likes to say.

Cuore Siciliano. The Sicilian heart. That’s the name of Hands-On Sicily’s biggest project yet, I told him—a double CD filled with the voices of 6- to 22-year old Sicilian youth singing classic and contemporary Italian songs. We’ve taken two years to bring it into the world, as an elephant might, I laughed. First, we launched the singing contest quasi quasi as a lark, an internet campaign. The energy surged. A television station from the Province of Trapani held a variety show for us. A singing school in the Province of Agrigento opened its historic castle for tryouts. Another singing competition in the Province of Palermo broadcast Cuore Siciliano’s appeal to its contestants. The island experienced a flare of collaborative spirit.

“Where do you get your motivation for what you do?” Motohiko asked me.

He wanted to feel such passion, too, he explained, his voice dropping a tone. Getting older, his job would be ending soon. Was my motivation passion, I asked myself? Or stubbornness? All I know is that, no matter how much Sicily demands from me, how much she stimulates me and infuriates me, how much easier it would be for me to raise my daughter in just America, not both lands, I can’t even think about cutting off our Sicilian roots. They fill me almost as much as my young daughter’s love.

“Sicily pulls the best of me out,” was my simple reply.

“I want your power,” the Japanese businessman said, eyes rounded.

“You can have it. There’s plenty to share.” Through Hands-On Sicily, I hope to give wings to Sicily’s deep roots, finding new ways for her love to flow to people all around the world.

Hands-On Sicily is my baby, who is quickly turning into a healthy young girl. “Hands-On” is a great concept to Americans. It means having an experience. But to the Sicilian mind, I explained to my new friend, “Hands-Off Sicily” might be a better motto. Sicily has been invaded 13 times over the last 3,000 years. Even an influx of tourism can send up inner flares.

“Is that my motivation?” I asked myself. Perhaps I’m here to help Sicily relate in a new way.

There isn’t even a future verb tense in the Sicilian dialect. It’s not so much that Sicilians live in the present, as Eckhart Tolle might preach, it’s that they can’t seem to envision or trust in the future (at least the island’s). The best Sicilians usually leave the island, as I’ve said, although I have my doubts about that. I think that the Sicilians that have remained on the island, avoiding the waves of emigration, are polishing the pearl in their oyster.

Hands-On Sicily guests would agree.

That beach club I told you about turned into the biggest success in town. A modern port, 70 long years in the making, came to fruition in 2009. Sons and daughters are breaking away from family businesses (not too far away, mind you, just a couple of kilometers), creating new traditions. The defensive island training, the deafening silence of omerta’, is showing signs of growth.

Sicily is an island of paradox. Dark and light coexist. Passion flares, push, at the same pace by which new government obstacles are created, as if to stifle rather than enhance development, and dampen one’s desire to progress.

“But it’s not working anymore,” I told my attentive friend.

Sicily is on the move. Each new obstacle no longer stops progress, but forms a filter for one’s passions, demanding that one clarify and intensify one’s desire. Big M’s, little m’s, government policies, bridges or lack of bridges to the mainland… it doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe that’s why it’s so much fun to visit Sicily. It’s like going back to the Wild West, where work is hard, life is tough, and dreams rule.

“It looks slow,” the Japanese businessman said, gazing dreamily at my photos.

“It’s so slow it appears still at times,” I replied. Stillness. An antique concept for the modern world. Families who live in the same town for centuries. Grown men whose days are ruined if they don’t start out with their glass of warmed milk, as their grandmothers had prepared for them for decades. Groups of friends bound together from nursery school. Sicily brings this safety, these creature comforts, to life. While, paradoxically, stimulating passion to grow from your roots. The kind of passion that fulfills.

Find your passion in Sicily’s emotion. Find your movement in its stillness. Let yourself go.

Baci ed abbracci,

Sally Veillette

Founder, Hands-On Sicily