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Sick in Sicily.
The church bell rang. Hallow and deep. Bong. Bong. Bong. Even slower than that. Then a second came. Clingclangclingclangclingclang. Faster. Impatient. Two two-sided claps, maybe three for every bong of the first. Competing. Dueling. Beckoning the parishioners out of bed and into services. Bongclingclang. Bongclingclangclingclang. The ringing rabbit in this race outlasts the plodding big, bronze shell, but it wasn't until the rapid succession of a third sound that I was awoken. A choking cough that caused a spasm. Coughs and repetitive bodily spasms. My own coughs and spasms that knocked me off the bed and onto the floor and wedged me between the box spring and the railing of my loft. With no end to my coughing near, my head and body rocked back and forth, jackknifed, from the fetal position. I hit my head on the metal railing. The pain rifled through me, as if the layers of mucus suffocating my brain weren't enough to worry about. The bells stopped ringing, but the noise between my ears did not. It was 6:45 a.m. And I was sick. Sicker than I have ever been. One hand on my head, the other germ filled as it covered my mouth. Between coughs I begged for mercy and promised to be next in line at the church services if health was in my immediate future. But then another spasm of coughs consumed me for twelve minutes no less. And then I did what I never thought I would do - I upped the ante on my wish; I wished I were dead. I wished the bells were ringing again calling me to the gates of a better place. A place where the weather is so consistent you only feel it when you open the icebox and grab a perfectly chilled bottle of beer. For the first time since I have been in Sicily I dreaded the one-sided conversation I would have with Adrianna, my doorwoman. It would go something like this. You take the cold too much. You fly too much. New York, Paris, London, Milan. What do you expect, she would say smiling and waving her hand from chin to past her ear as if her cupped hand were pulling the shame right out of me. The Sicilians never get sick, because the seasons change slowly. Summer settles into Fall around mid-October and then Fall kindly whispers in January to its neighbor Winter, "it is your turn." In January the temperature finally drops below 60 degrees. But the Sicilians are prepared for the frigidity of 50-degree days, because, in November, Vitamin C begins dripping from trees. November is Orange Harvest season. Oranges are everywhere, piled like pyramids in shop windows, juggled by old men in piazzas, overflowing from shopping bags and rolling down the streets with lines of little boys and girls chasing them as if they were new born puppies running for the first time. It has been four days since my return from Paris and it was ungraciously Thanksgiving Day. I have a101 things to be thankful for, but no one to thank, no one would want to be near me in this foul state. When my coughing ceased for twenty or thirty seconds, enough time to lift myself off the floor, I decided to stop pitying myself, and that I was going to beat this thing. Sickness is a mind game. I will go for a run, I thought. Starve a fever, feed a cold, or sweat the sucker right out of my system. I held tight to the rail and descended the stairs of my loft. I touched the power-on button of my computer but it didn't provide me with the annoying but gratifying, I am here to serve ear-piercing turn on noise. I touched the button again. I held it down. Closed my eyes and pushed it again. My iBook whizzed and wheezed and coughed like me before the monitor itself spasmed into a blue screen. Even my computer didn't want my infected fingers anywhere near it. Angered, I wondered what the weather would be for my jog. Opening the patio doors would have been a novel idea, but I do that only when I want to feel nostalgic. Due to the current state I was in, I decided I should layer. And I imagined that weather.com was predicting bright blue skies in New York where my friends and family would be watching Sponge Bob and Dora the Explorer soar down Central Park West. Down the stairs I went. Adrianna, asked me where I thought I was going. It was raining. She motioned for me to turn around and climb the stairs back home. I couldn't believe it. It hadn't rained in Sicily in five weeks. In our courtyard, I stood eyes to the heavens with a 60-year old, Italian woman wearing black holding a broom staring at me. I decided I was going to press on. This would be the defining moment in shaking me of this sickness. Besides, the rain is Sicily comes at you like the water sprayed out of those mist machines found on NFL sidelines in stadiums in Arizona. First it was the computer which wouldn't turn on to present me with the day's forecast; then, an Italian mother, who has dealt with the sickness of children, told me to turn back, but I wasn't listening. What did almost drain my spirit was when my iPod decided it was the appropriate day to burn out its battery. When I run, I need the block-rocking beats of the new Franz Ferdinand album or the aha-shake-heartbreak of the Kings of Leon. It is not just my current condition and the rain in my face, running is boring. Without my iPod I can only think about my feet pounding in the puddles and how dreadfully stupid I am. Just ask the 30,000+ runners of the marathon earlier this month. If it wasn't for the piles of people lining the piped streets through the five boroughs, offering candy, Gatorade, bananas, apples, good cheer and support while bands were playing cover tunes and frat boys were doing guzzlers from buckets of cheap beer, how ridiculously boring would it be to run 26 miles of New York City streets? Ah, but how glorious the Marathon is. The New York City Marathon is New Yorkers' favorite spectator sport. It is an opportunity for New Yorkers to watch their neighbors torture themselves so they can reflect on their own life's accomplishments and realize that running 26 miles in one day and not over the course of two or three months is pure stupidity and they don't feel bad when they decide to scratch it from their ever-present "to-do" list. So, the cheers they mouth are not supportive; the spectators are not there to see you win. This is the New York version of NASCAR, spectators stand on the sidelines stuffing their faces with bagels, cream cheese and beer, five deep on the street, wanting to see runners collapse or at least shit themselves when their intestines take too much pounding up and down and their colon starts to spasm. And believe me, no satisfaction in running the marathon pays the return on the investment for wasting three-six-nine months of training when one can be slurping beer at a bar watching someone else play sports. [Ed. Note: the writer of this tirade truly supports the runners of the world's most famous race. He, himself, has run the New York City Marathon in under four hours.] Now the Sicilians, they know how to run. They are professionals in their wind and rain repellent plastic jackets leaning up against 100-year old oak trees slowly stretching their hamstrings, calves and thigh muscles. When they do run, it is as if they would be moving faster if they were walking. And when they finish one lap (4-tenths of a mile) around Villa Bellini, they stop, slap each other on the back and go home. On this day, I was a few mind numbing laps into my resurrection, and spotted some Sicilians who had already celebrated their success of conquering the rain and their morning run. I sneered under hair that was matted and dripped water into my eyes, my own breath fogged my glasses, and I was wiping my nose on the sleeve of my shoddy sweatshirt, which wasn't shoddy at all when I paid $40 for it at J.Crew just one "look what's hot this Fall" season ago. I finished another lap and another two Sicilians slapped each other on the back and headed home. There were only two people left in the park - me and the lonely woman operating the carousel. She was sheltered inside from the rain. The ashen yellow, pinkish red and grayish blue lights atop the ride flickered and finally the woman shut them off and I knew it was time to go home before I would be hospitalized. Thank You
Post 16 - November'05 Back to home...
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