Sicily Day 6: Far Niente

A series of day trips has kept me from writing. Taormina, Siracusa, Ortigia, Noto. All nice cities or towns. All a bit touristy. Taormina especially, perched on a mountaintop, snootily isolated from other towns, wholly enclosed in shops and restaurants, all the high-end clothiers and jewelers represented among the tchotchke shops and mini enotecas. Ortigia too, sort of a Santa Monica of the Sicilian coast, a place to see and be seen, but with churches and an outdoor market and a gazillion tourists.

And now we are spending a couple days at the lovely and luxurious Neroli Bio Relais, an environmentally-conscious vineyard in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and since we got here by driver and not our own rental car Dona and I aren’t going anywhere today, and will recharge before heading to Palermo tomorrow.

Far niente — to do nothing. When was the last time? After breakfast we came out to the veranda next to our room. Email, Wordle, Spelling Bee. Sit down to write this commentary, as much about nothing as about doing nothing. And then what?

Back home there is always something, some task or chore that can’t be put off any longer. There is, when those are attended to, the distractions of hobbies or media or other people, which always find a way to fill what could have been empty hours. Back home there is the occasional pang of loneliness, but there are no empty hours.

Not here. We are in the flight path of Catania airport, and some people who have stayed here before have complained about the noise from takeoffs and landings, but I welcome it if only to remind myself there is a world we will go back to tomorrow. And the flights are sparse. What one hears instead are birds, the wind rustling through bushes, the chatter of other guests, soft jazz over the winery’s sound system.

Can modern people clear their minds enough to appreciate the beauty of disconnection?

I imagine some people in other times, before mass communication changed us, looking forward to silence and solitary as opportunities to think, to consider, to create without the actual physical effort involved in creating, knowing they could come up with something profound and not worry about having to immediately write it down or sketch it out lest they forget among the cascade of responsibilities our lives have become. They would remember.

I will try. I used to, when I was writing for publication, keep a notepad or my phone’s notes function nearby in case I had a flash of inspiration for a story or a character. If driving I would strain to scribble something down and try not to crash. It seems a little ridiculous now, an exercise in self-validation. I know, I know, I am writing this and in a minute will publish it, but it’s not quite the same because as wonderful as you readers are for supporting this Substack, I no longer care who reads it or how many people do. It exists because it is what I do. What I was, perhaps, always meant to do. The lack of caring is not intended to be insulting or anti-social, but only to say that what I write is not beholden to the market or an agenda. It is a form of honesty, even when it is not right, even when it reveals the contradictions within me. It is more an exploration into myself and the forces that shaped me, and got me to this place, which I find fascinating and humiliating.

Enough. Time to stop doing something and do nothing.

Having posted this, I close the program, close the laptop. Open my mind.