Madonna
of Tears (cont'd)
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Later,
I got to voice my discontent at the archaeology museum. After going through
what I could tell were normally some of the best collections in all of
Italy of prehistoric and Greek-era artifacts, I approached the guest book,
which invited me to leave comments. So I told it that a museum which has
loaned almost every single major piece in its collections out to special
exhibits elsewhere and has stuck in their places just photographs has
no right to charge the full admission price. I could even cite you the
(more conscientious) Italian precedent of the archaeology museum in Taranto,
Apulia, which is currently charging half price since half the galleries
are closed for rearrangement.
I spent the later afternoon tramping about the Siracusan farmland, bushwhacking
through reeds and Dr. Seussian papyrus plants, fording streams, jogging
down the middle of railroad tracks, and broad-jumping over irrigation
ditches in what turned out to be a two-hour fruitless attempt to follow
the Ciane River all the way to it's source. The source is called the Fonte
Ciane, where the nymph Cyane who rooted for Persephone during her
the abduction by Hades was turned into this very stream by the
angry underworld god. Either that, or (other myths say) it's where Pluto
plunged back into the ground to take his newly acquired bride back to
hell after bursting out way up in Lake Pergusa near Enna and grabbing
up Kore as she picked flowers.
(Siracusa is full of these things; down near the docks on Ortigia, the
island core of the city, is a very pretty little natural fountain and
pond planted with papyrus and swimming with ducks. It was formed, so they
say, when, way back in the Peleponesse, the nymph Arethusa was bathing
in the river governed by Alpheus, and the River God took a liking to her.
As he grabbed her by the hair an began trying to rape her, she pleaded
for mercy and Artemis heard her. In pity, Artemis turned Arethusa into
a spring, and the nymph plunged underground, racing away from her captor.
Alpheus, not to be deterred, took on watery form himself and followed
her under the earth. When Arethusa burst back above ground, she had made
it all the way under the Mediterranean and popped out here in Siracusa,
gushing from a grotto as she still does today. Alpseus was hot on her
heels though, and he swiftly came flowing out of the grotto too, mingling
his waters with her for eternity. This, to the Greeks, was romance. They
used to think if you tossed a chalice into the river Alpehus in Greece
it would eventually come bobbing up in this pond in Sicily.)
But anyway, back to other watery nymphs and the Ciane, all this tramping
around activity only served to bring back my chronic heat rash with a
vengeance, so I am hobbling around again, experiencing both intense pain
and embarrassment simultaneously. Back at my hell-tel and after a welcome
shower in a bathroom I survived only by shutting my eyes to the squalor,
I returned to my room to regroup my energies and clamp a freezing bottle
of Gatorade between my thighs in an attempt to find some rash relief (this
was an extraordinarily delicate procedure, requiring me to ice certain
parts of that general region while keeping other, neighboring bits of
my anatomy from any contact whatsoever with the icy glass, for obvious
reasons).
I got in free, thanks to the nice tourist office lady, to a show tonight
in a medieval church with no roof but lots of hibiscus and flowering vines
spilling off the wall tops and down the columns of the nave open to the
stars. The entertainment consisted of an actor performing monologues from
various Shakespeare plays, then a baritone (accompanied by piano) singing
the operatic version of the same scene from operas by Verdi and other
based on the plays. Interesting concept; it was weird to hear Shakespeare
in Italian.
Odd day, in all. Late pizza dinner under dwarf palm trees and now a small
beer at a pub while I compose this message. I think I am now sufficiently
tired be able to return to my hotel room and fall asleep quickly so as
not to spend much time conscious in that place. Tomorrow morning I transfer
to what can only be happier quarters.
Copyright
© 1998 by Reid Bramblett
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