the cassandra pages

How to Survive

 

Ambroglo Lorenzetti, Madonna del Latte (Nursing Virgin), tempera and gold leaf on panel, c. 1325

On the bus today, I watched a little boy in a stroller, whose mother was ruffling his abundant black hair. He turned his head and looked up at her with such a beatific smile, and she looked down at him the same way — a sort of Madonna and child moment — and I thought of what was going on in Washington and how little it had to do with that, with these most basic ways in which we are human. And of course, it has everything to do with it, if you are one of the unlucky ones caught in the crosshairs, like countless mothers and children in the world’s war zones, or those who fear deportation or persecution.

I’m not watching the news or reading it today. That’s a choice. We can actually limit the extent to which we allow ourselves to be invaded by negativity, threats and pronouncements that may or may not be acted upon, and the resulting stress and spiraling worry they create. I am not advocating putting one’s head in the sand, or failing to name, protest, and resist all the wrongs that we can. However, the period we’re entering is going to be rough and invasive, and our first responsibility is to ourselves and those around us: to be as strong mentally and physically as possible, and to remember and celebrate our own humanity in the face of a darkness in which it’s so easy to become lost.

My primary job, as I see it, is to be a person who carries, communicates, and encourages hope, joy, creativity, and a positive lifeforce — in spite of everything. And this IS a job - it takes work. What helps? Using my senses to pay attention, because there is almost always something life-giving to notice, like the mother and child on the bus today. There is color. There is music. There are words. There’s the smell of food being prepared, or flowers in a supermarket display. There is the cold of winter on my cheeks, and the warmth of the distant sun which can still be felt even in sub-zero temperatures. There’s the taste of coffee, salt, lemons, chocolate. We miss so much when we’re wrapped up in ourselves and our worries — and our screens — and we have to train ourselves to turn back to the actual world, which is right there, existing, waiting to be noticed — full of sorrows, yes, but also full of beauty, joy, and simplicity.

Last week I had the privilege of being in New York City and visiting the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Siena: the Rise of Painting, 1300-1350.” The detail at the top of this post is from one of the pieces I saw there. Here is the full painting:

 

Just look, for a moment, at those colors.

And then at the harmony of the composition, and the gaze of the mother.

The exhibition traces a remarkable period in art history, when a small group of painters in Siena, Italy, began to break from the rigid tradition of Byzantine iconography to paint narrative scenes filled with human emotions. Instead of stereotypical depictions of apostles and saints, in prescribed poses, the people they painted looked like individuals who were completely human, doing human things. Their faces show fear, awe, sorrow, confusion, joy, serenity.

This flowering of new art only lasted in Siena for fifty years: not one of these painters survived the Plague of 1350.

 

Duccio di Buoninsegna, sections of two panels from the Maesta altarpiece. The Transfiguration of Christ (left) and The Raising of Lazarus (right).

But just look at the colors, the gold, the vibrancy of the work they left behind, which influenced so much that came afterwards and still has the power to move us today.

Noticing is the first step. Moving from noticing to inspiration, and from inspiration to creativity and growth -- which can be planting some seeds, baking a loaf of bread, playing an instrument, studying a language we’ve always wanted to learn, finally sewing those squares of calico into a simple quilt, or innumerable other pursuits -- brings us closer to our own humanity, and to a more positive sense of self that we can then share with others.

The key, I think, is distinguishing between the things we can change, and those we cannot. Just as the Siena painters couldn’t have predicted the plague, there are things which are unfortunately out of our hands, but we don’t have to be paralyzed by the thought of them. Most of us have a choice every single day of how we are going to live it, of what kind of attitude we’re going to bring to it and to our encounters with others. Do I do this perfectly? Of course not! I’m human, I have my eyes open, I see what is happening, and therefore I feel depressed and even despairing at times. But I do recognize the pattern and I do not want to succumb to it — because that powerlessness is exactly what allows the darkness to flourish and robs us of our most precious humanity.

The photographer Ralph Steiner (1899-1986), a wonderful man who I met several times and my husband knew well, curated an exhibition of prints by many photographers at the very end of his long life. The pictures showed children, old people, impoverished and well-dressed; dancers, lovers, animals, trees, mountains, quiet interiors, still lives, ice formations, clouds. The title of the catalog/accompanying book was In Spite of Everything, Yes.

I’d like to leave you with two quotes from that book. The first comes partway through:

Some of these photographs give out their YES easily, even eagerly. Some ask a bit more thinking and opening up of the feeling-valves. We get used to moving so fast that we miss yes-saying things. If we get used to missing instead of feeling, the openings of the heart shrink down. —Ralph Steiner

And the final words of the book are these:

Hope is a risk that must be run. —George Bernanos

Hermit Diary, Montreal. 11. What to say?

Olive prunings, Roman Forum, Rome, Italy.

 

Writers write.

At the beginning of March, when we cancelled our trip and it became clear that the virus was coming to North America, it was natural that I -- like so many others -- would turn to the written word as a way to think about, work through, and share my experiences. I began on the following Monday, March 8: "So I thought maybe I'd keep a diary of these unusual days." I kept it up daily for a week or so, and was surprised by the number of comments and the amount of traffic on my blog, greater than it's been for years. I was happy to hear from thoughtful friends and former bloggers who were coming out of the woodwork, and dusting off their literary chops. And of course, on social media and in the news, the torrent of online words became unrelenting. I began to question myself, and what had felt facile for those first days became considerably harder. A few others were having similar thoughts; here's an entry from Nick Cave's Red Hand Files that expressed what I was feeling:

"The Red Hand Files has always been a space in which I could offer dubious existential notions, religious meditations, unsound advice, millennial senilities and general annoyances, while hopefully simultaneously extending a little human kindness and compassion. However, these sorts of ruminations came from a more privileged and fortunate time, when we had the oxygen to muse and to play. Things have changed, we are faced with a common enemy — impartial, unfeeling and of immeasurable magnitude — and it is no longer a time for abstractions. Now is the time to be cautious with our words, our opinions."

"Now is the time to be cautious with our words, our opinions." Twenty days have passed now since I began writing, and the gravity of the situation is such that I cringe at the casualness of those first words: "I thought maybe I'd keep a diary..."  What, indeed, can I say, can any of us say? And yet there are plenty of people, most notably in the U.S., who still don't get it, who are ignoring the science, and arguing about things that don't matter and ignoring things that are literally a matter of life and death. They are not just the leaders, but ordinary people too. And all the while, in places closer and closer to home, the bodies pile up, like the facts that we are beginning to understand about this virus, which will one day come together into a solution for this particular threat. Heroes, both likely and unlikely, emerge. Every one of us, no matter how limited by isolation, fitness, or age, is presented with opportunities to be of service to others. But the looming question is what we will learn in a larger sense: as the human race, and societies, and as individuals.

The most-read article in The Guardian today is a letter from Italian novelist Francesca Melandri to her fellow Europeans, and to the United Kingdom. In it she says "we were just like you," and traces the pattern I've alluded to here: the progression from the arguments between those who say "it's just like the flu" to those who know it's not, to the early novelty of self-isolation, the focus on food, the fleeting attraction of apocalyptic books and films, the obsessive fascination with online connection and video meetups, the online fitness workouts and virtual cocktail hours, the fights with our elders to try to get them to stay home, the ways we buoy each other with songs from balconies and rooftops, the dark humor, the growing awareness of domestic abuse and the divisions of class -- and the gradual falling away of the superfluous and superficial, the transparency of our friends' and families' behavior, the sleeplessness and anxiety, and the sense that nothing is going to be the same ever again.

So, yes, writers write, some better than others.

The advice I'm giving myself today, from decades of writing and editing, and after thinking about the words of Cave and Melandri and others, is: write what you know, and then ask yourself if it feels necessary to say out loud.

Sometimes the best thing a writer can do is listen.

Hermit Diary, Montreal. 8. In Italy, Derek Walcott

View from the theatre at Segesta, Sicily toward the sea, oil pastel, 2018.

Many of us think of Derek Walcott first as a poet of the Caribbean, but he was widely-traveled and wrote some of his most evocative poems about, and in, the different places he found himself. In his elegiac book White Egrets, written late in life, there's a sequence of twelve poems under the title "In Italy." In the fourth poem, he speaks about coming to that beautiful country late in life, and how perhaps that was better. I feel the same way. Even though Italian art and music, and Italian food and their zest for life, had always meant a great deal to me, I didn't visit Italy in person until I was over 60. It was as if an impression I'd built in my mind finally took on its true color and sound, taste and smell, and became so much more vivid -- and also more nuanced -- than I had been able to imagine: I fell in love with Rome, with Palermo, with Catania, and the ancient Greek cities on the coasts; with the Roman pines and the lichen-covered ancient stones; the pale frescoes and glittery mosaics; the lemon trees and the blue sea; the wizened olive trees and vibrant purple artichokes and glistening fish markets; and most of all the people, without whom Italy would not be Italy. What they are going through now is so terrible, and yet the pictures of the streets that we see, and the people singing from their rooftops, are a moving and beautiful witness to what makes Italy, Italy. Walcott's poems capture some of that combination of beauty and melancholy. Here's the fourth and perhaps best-known one, because it appeared in The New Yorker, and in coming days I'll post a few more.

 

In Italy

IV.

Roads shouldered by enclosing walls with narrow
cobbled tracks for streets, those hill towns with their
stamp-sized squares and a sea pinned by the arrow
of a quivering horizon, with names that never wither
for centuries and shadows that are the dial of time. Light
older than wine and a cloud like a tablecloth
spread for lunch under the leaves. I have come this late
to Italy, but better now, perhaps, than in youth
that is never satisfied, whose joys are treacherous,
while my hair rhymes with those far crests, and the bells
of the hilltop towers number my errors,
because we are never where we are, but somewhere else,
even in Italy. This is the bearable truth
of old age; but count your benedictions—those fields
of sunflowers, the torn light on the hills, the haze
of the unheard Adriatic—while the day still hopes
for possibility, cloud shadows racing the slopes.

--Derek Walcott

More Sicilian Explorations, and a Watercolor Disaster

An Olive Orchard, central Sicily. Transparent watercolor on Arches cold press, 13" x 9".

Thank you to everyone who commented on the last post. I appreciated what you wrote very much, and it made me feel better to hear your solidarity and shared sorrow.  One commenter, Robbie, said that he felt it was important to be informed and not turn away from the unpleasant facts -- and I agree with that very much. He also wrote: "I worry too about the exaltation I find as I delve into singing; might I be using music as a temporary insulation against a distinctly non-musical world?" My own answer is that we all need places of exaltation, because this is where we find the solace, strength, and --yes-- reasons for going on and continuing the fight for what matters. It's not insulation to spend time doing the things that make us feel the most human and join us with some of the best aspects of the human spirit throughout time, it's only insulation when that's ALL that we do. If I didn't make that clear before, I want to emphatically do so now.

One thing I try to remember is that there have always been stubborn people who have continued to do art, read and write books, make music, love and protect nature, cherish and guard all aspects of human culture, and take care of one another even when life felt the most hopeless. Often they have also been the same people who quietly sheltered refugees or the persecuted, visited prisoners, wrote underground tracts, participated in protests, smuggled food for people in need...the list goes on. These are not the people who get written about in history books, but let's try for a moment to imagine what would have happened if they had not existed. Where would we be? That's what is meant by action and contemplation as two sides of one coin. People who have found their own sources of strength and renewal -- what I like to call "wells" that we are able to go back to drink from again and again -- have more ability to see what needs to be done, and help others. So no, I don't think we need to feel guilty for spending time doing these things, not at all. We just need to try to see the whole picture, and move back and forth between the active and contemplative parts of our lives, keenly aware of what each is, and how they complement each other. As for me: our choir season starts this coming week, and I can't wait to be singing again -- for the joy and challenge it presents to me, for the community of other musicians, and for what it gives to the listeners who hear us each week. That music during the Sunday services seems more important than ever.

 

The painting of the olive orchard was done over two working sessions on two separate days. I'm trying for a more expressive use of color and brushwork, and it's not easy for me. Here, my original idea was to make the field (actually a very dull, uninteresting brown) a beautiful pinkish color, complementing the intense chartreuse of the grass in the orchard beyond. The shadows would be dark blue, violet, and dark green, with the painting unified by burnt orange and burnt sienna, as well as the silvery grey of the olive leaves. For a first attempt, I'm not unhappy with it, though I'd like it to be looser still. But I'm learning and progressing by pushing myself in this direction and thinking a lot about it. It would be easier in a different medium, too. A different approach might be to make the bare field violet or lavender, still complementary but toward the cool side of the spectrum rather than the warm. The feeling would be quite different -- less exuberant, but more harmonious with the silvery greens. Van Gogh and Gauguin are both great sources of inspiration for color ideas.

--

The painting at the top is the most recent. Earlier in the week I went back to the charcoal sketch from the previous post...

and made a color version of the same scene.

Artemisia bush at Segesta. Transparent watercolor on Arches cold press, 9.5 x 6.5".

I subsequently ruined this painting by running the top of it under the tap to tone down the contrast a bit, and then overworking it -- so this is my only record of it. But that's OK. If you're lucky, each watercolor painting has passages that are especially successful, or where something unexpectedly interesting (or disastrous!) happens. We can learn from these for the next one. I quite like the artemisia bush in the foreground - it retains some of the freedom of the original charcoal sketch. In hindsight, more problematic here were the brown hill and dark green vegetation at center right -- too much detail that competes with the foreground. You can see what I mean if you cover up that area with your hand. Before the rest got ruined, I washed over the brown with green, and it was much better. The strong color of the fields and the purple hill at the top, though, are important, and when I rinsed the paper, I lost that brilliance.

It was simply an error in judgement, and sometimes that can be the result of a mood, or an impulsive idea that isn't well-considered. In watercolor, unfortunately, those errors are usually fatal. I think it's important to share some of these problems here so you know they happen all the time!

 

Here's my studio working method for stretching watercolor paper. This is the traditional way that my mother taught me when I was young, using gummed, water-activated kraft tape that you must moisten and then attach to the sides of high-quality paper (in this case, Arches or Fabriano 140# cold press paper) that's been soaked for at least 15 minutes, and then laid on a block of plywood. It's fussy but really works to keep that paper from buckling no matter how wet it gets, and is so much cheaper than buying pre-made watercolor blocks, or extra-heavy watercolor sheets. To remove the tape when the painting is finished, you need to carefully moisten the kraft paper backing, without getting any water on the painting itself (I use a small sea sponge soaked in water and then partially wrung out) and then the tape will release. Sometimes it's necessary to use a single-edged razor blade to remove bits of tape residue from the margins. For working outdoors or when traveling, watercolor blocks are indispensable, and I always have several of different sizes on hand, as well as sketchbooks. For the moment, it's helping me a lot to work in a larger format, mostly 22" x 30" sheets cut in quarters and then stretched with 3/4" margins.

Agrigento

Rock wall and olives at Agrigento. Watercolor on paper, 15" x 11".

The day we spent visiting the ancient Greek temples at Agrigento, Sicily, is etched in my memory less for the temples themselves, as spectacular as they were, but for the landscape and the feeling of the long walk that leads from one building to another. It was a beautiful day, struck with that strong, bright Mediterranean sun that sets shadows in sharp relief and shows colors at their brightest; as for generations of artists before me, that light and color are compelling to my northern eyes that, once experienced, I continue to long for them. Maybe that's why I keep coming back to these scenes, trying to capture something of that feeling.

The "Sicilian wall" in my studio.

The painting at the top of this page was done over two sessions, on two days. Below is the earlier stage, at the end of the first day. I was dissatisfied with my photographs of this painting. I think the reduction in size as well as the photographic process itself results in a loss of immediacy and vibrancy -- probably that's just an inevitable limitation of sharing work online. The bottom detail below captures it best, but it also looks more accurate in the photo of my studio above.

This is after about an hour of drawing and laying in the first washes.

 

Detail of the finished painting.

 

And another detail. 

 

A niche that once housed an early Christian burial, long after the Greeks occupied this valley.

The vibrant ochre color of the rocks at Agrigento, which were full of fossils, created a stunning but entirely natural contrast with the bright blue sky and the sea beyond, and yet that was softened by the silvery olive trees, some of which were very old, with their twisted trunks and branches. At the end of the ancient temple road was the oldest olive tree I've ever seen; I made a drawing of it recently that, I'm happy to say, was bought by a dear friend, perhaps for some of the same reasons I loved it in person. That tree seemed to embody the spirit of the Greeks for me. I went up to it, laid my hand on its trunk, and stayed with it for a while.

NOTE: In a radical move, I've changed the layout of the blog slightly, putting the sidebar on the right (better for phone viewing, since the images sometimes got cut off in mobile view) and taking away the sidebar's black background. Please let me know what you think or how it works for you. Do most of you read the blog in a feed reader anyway?

 

 

 

 

 

Oil Pastels: Further Experiments, and a Temporary Refuge

View toward Palermo, from Segesta. Oil pastel on paper, 12" x 8.5".

This is a picture I started last week. Yesterday I worked on it quite a bit more, and am ready to call it finished. 

 

I'm finding oil pastel to be a strange medium and hard to get used to, but I rather like how it fits somewhere between painting and drawing. The technique is more like drawing, but the result more like painting. These details are a little larger than life-size, so you can see how the creamy, crayon-like pigment functions quite a lot like artist's oil paint. It sits up on the surface, can be applied quite thickly, but also blended with a finger or a rolled paper stomp. You can scratch through it to reveal lower layers, or rough it up with a contrasting color, applied quite lightly and dryly.

These days, I find the news has required concentration on something else, a different world of values, especially for us up in Canada. I must say, I'm not one for being very nationalistic (a common trait up here) but there's nothing like being insulted and threatened to bring us together. Listening to male bullies also makes me want to find refuge in something that's flexible, pliant, under my own control, and has a chance at being beautiful and reflective of a better world.

Olives

It's Holy Week, and so perhaps it's appropriate to think about olives and Palestine and the garden of Gethsemani -- but also about spring, and light on silver leaves. Over the weekend I did another gouache sketch in a toned-paper sketchbook, this time of an olive orchard we drove through in Sicily, one of many we saw, in the hills near Selinunte. It was actually harvest time, and we followed a small truck, laden with many boxes of large, just-picked olives, up a long winding road to a town at the top. There we saw a huge olive-processing plant, and many tents, occupied by migrant workers, all of whom were black, and, I suspect, refugees from Africa. I won't forget the sight of another truck we passed on the way back down, driven by a white man, but completely loaded with young black men hanging off the sides. Or the two young men walking their bicycles back up the hill toward the town - an impossible ride, because of the steepness.

But the olive orchards are sheer beauty. I fell in love with olive trees in Sicily, from the young sinuous saplings, covered with tongue-tingling, tiny, bitter fruit in every shade from grey to green to black, to the extremely old, twisted trees: noble and venerable elders that one sees, sometime in the middle of pastures or near an ancient temple, some of which have lived for centuries.

I'm familiar with the olive varieties that we buy in the markets, but have no idea what the different types look like as trees, or how they are chosen for orchards and different micro-climates, but in their great variety, shimmering in the light, they all seemed extraordinary to me and extremely beautiful. I saw for the first time, first-hand, why the precious olive became the symbol of victory and peace, and the symbol of grey-eyed Athena, always my favorite goddess and the particular patron of Athens and the Greeks.

So I've been starting to draw and paint them a bit, wishing I could go back and sit in the grass with my sketchbook. What is the essence of the olive tree? Van Gogh knew; I'm just beginning to learn.

A Sicilian Landscape

The first sketch, View from Caccamo with Norman Castle. 8.5" x 5.5", gouache on paper.

After finishing Luisa Igloria's book and sending the files off to the printer, I was anxious to do some drawing or painting. Winter being what it is around here, my thoughts kept returning to Sicily, and some of the beautiful landscapes we had seen. I decided to sketch a view from the village of Caccamo, high up in the mountains south of Palermo, with its 10th century Norman castle. It had been a dark day with some rain and dramatic clouds that came and went. As we stood in this spot and watched, the sunlight hit the field in the center, turning it chartreuse. The terracotta tile roofs were echoed in the rocks below the castle, and in pomegranate fruits growing in the nearby bushes. The river wasn't blue, but muddy from the rain, creating a line of beige that was similar in hue to the stucco and the rocky outcrop below the castle. The bright ochre hill at center right found cousins in the sunlit leaves and rocks. And if handled adroitly (which hasn't happened yet!) the darkest green vegetation could serve like drawing ink, leading the eye in sinuous curves across the foreground, up the outcrop to the castle, across the fields in multiple lines, and back across the bank of the river. In actuality, I didn't see that possibility until now.

I did these two sketches, which ended up being paintings in gouache, in a small sketchbook of toned paper -- and I wish I had done them larger, on good watercolor paper. That's OK: live and learn. And I did learn quite a bit about gouache, or opaque watercolor -- it's not a medium I've worked with very much, but I do like it for its saturated color, easy workability, and versatility when combined with other media.

The sketch at the top of the post was the first one, done very quickly -- I like its spontaneity and freedom.

Then I did a more detailed drawing:

And worked over it with gouache, then added some colored pencil at the end.

The second sketch, View from Caccamo with Norman Castle. 8.5" x 5.5", gouache on paper.

I don't think either of these attempts is better than the other, they're just different, and neither was intended as an end in itself. My goal was to have fun with the process and the medium, to try to capture the feeling of the landscape, to aim for harmonious rather than realistic color, and freely suggest the details and variation in the landscape rather than depicting them tightly. This would be easier if working at a larger size.

The details that follow are larger than life-size (this would have been a better scale to work at!)

It's interesting to use gouache rather than transparent watercolor - a medium with which I'm more adept and familiar. For one thing, you can work back into it - the color on the surface dissolves and you can play with it. It's an excellent sketching medium on uncoated, toned paper because the pigment binder makes it sits up on the surface, whereas transparent watercolor would sink in and lose its luminosity. Highlights and lighter details can be added later with other media, such as pencil, ink, acrylic, or with white-based gouache.

These preliminary sketches were a good way to begin familiarizing myself with this scene in case I decide to do a larger watercolor, pastel or oil, any of which would be worth trying. I learned more about what I liked about the composition, how the colors work together across the landscape, and what gives the scene "life," as well as what to leave out or de-emphasize.

One of the challenges of these Italian landscapes is that what attracts and leads the eye is strong, often dramatic, structure -- but also a lot of enticing and beautiful detail -- orchards and vineyards, patchworks of fields, outbuildings, ruins, hedgerows, rocks and outcrops, streams. If all the detail were lost, it wouldn't look like Italy, but we aren't Renaissance painters who want to paint every leaf, so there are choices to be made, and no one "right way" to do it. Drawing and color sketching are the best ways I've found to search out the elements in any composition (not just a landscape) that are the most compelling and that serve -- like elements of a novel's plot -- to move the picture, or the story, where it wants to go. What I haven't captured successfully here is the play of light -- and in this scene, the light was the character most responsible for the drama.

Monreale 2: the Duomo

The cathedral, however, wasn't open, and we began to internalize an important Sicilian lesson: shops,  churches, and museums close for a long mid-day break. Instead, we took the opportunity to walk around the small town looking for a lunch place that served something besides pizza, and was open during this non-tourist season. Eventually we found a little cafe with a white-aproned waiter proffering a tray of cheese and charcuteries at the door. We took the bait -- it was delicious -- and a blond woman who seemed to be the owner gestured us to one of two small tables at the back. "Perhaps you'd like a sandwich?" she suggested, in English, pointing toward a deli case full of cured meats and cheeses. "We have different Sicilian hams, cheeses...a glass of Sicilian wine?" An hour later we had consumed two delicious prosciutto, cheese and tomato sandwiches, some of that fine Sicilian wine, two almond cookies, and an espresso and a cup of lemon tea, and enjoyed a conversation with the proprietor and her husband, while watching the couple at a neighboring table eat an antipasto platter that looked even more delicious than our panini. Fortified and happy, we headed back down the cobblestone street, past a little market brimming with tomatoes and oranges, and down to the cathedral again, which had just re-opened.

"We should have visited in the morning," was our first thought when we entered the dark interior of what must be, in brighter light, glittering and brilliant. The huge, illuminated Byzantine mosaic in the apse, of Christ Pantocrator (παντός pantos ="all", κράτος, kratos = strength, might, power) dominated our sight for the first minutes, but as our eyes adjusted, we began to be able to see the mosaics all around the walls, and the golden coffered ceiling.

These mosaics were completed somewhat later than the building, and they illustrate biblical stories  -- on the top panel in the picture above, you can see Adam and Eve, and the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Below is the story of Noah and the Ark. It didn't matter at the time if many of the worshippers were illiterate: the cathedral itself was a picture book that they could read.

The floors are covered with the same sort of Cosmatesque pavements as in the Martorana in Palermo, and every inch of this huge interior is gilded or encrusted with stone inlays or mosaics. Because of its size, the space is overwhelming, and I found myself glazing over, unable to take it all in. But perhaps that was also in contrast to the light, airy, enchanting cloister, just a few hours earlier. We had a choice of going into an inner chapel, or climbing up into the northern tower. "Let's go up now, while there's still light," J. said, and I quickly agreed.

In the image below, you can see the southern tower that stands over the town's piazza. From the interior of the cathedral, we bought tickets from a clerk, bundled in scarves, and began climbing ancient stone stairs. On the first landing, we reached a window that looked out into the cloister, and then continued climbing until we came out on the walkway behind the green dome, and continues to the right of the picture, following the great nave of the cathedral.

Beside the walkway, this slanted roof of beautiful glazed tiles. At the end, a small door led into a dark passageway, just wide enough for one's shoulders. Light filtered in through arrow-slits on the cloister side, and also on the cathedral side. I peered through: we were above the choir stalls and organ, and then above the crossing, almost at eye-level with Christ Pantocrator. It was not only a place of worship, but a fortress: the Bishops's archers would have lined this passageway if the cathedral had been attacked, able to shoot down into the sanctuary. Two people descending from the tower met us in the passage, we all turned sideways, and squeezed by one another. J. and I kept going down to the far end, and then out onto the roof, where more steps, lined with intricately-glazed tiles, led up to the tower, with its pointed arches and geometric Arab patterns of tile and stone.

The view, toward Palermo and the sea, was magnificent, but also strategic. In those days, long before airplanes were even imagined, high ground was the best defense, and I began to understand why Italy had so many medieval hill towns. Thoughts of wars and sieges soon gave way to the wonder of standing in such a place.

That wonder increased when I later learned that King William II of Sicily, builder of this cathedral, had given refuge to friends and kinsmen of Thomas Becket, after the newly-consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury refused to do the will of his former friend King Henry II of England, and was forced to flee to the Continent. King William had become betrothed to Henry's youngest daughter, Joan, in 1168, when she was still a child. When Becket returned to England, and was murdered in 1170 by the King's men in Canterbury Cathedral, the marriage was called off, but after Henry did public penance at Becket's tomb, and Beckett was made a saint and martyr by the Pope, the relationship between the two royal houses improved again, and Joan was sent to Sicily where she and William were married, in 1177, just a few years after this cathedral was built, and by all accounts lived happily together.

Joan's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and her brothers -- of whom Richard I (the Lionhearted), and King John (of the Magna Carta) were two -- had plotted to overthrow Henry; one of the younger brothers had been sent to live with Thomas Becket, and wrote that "Thomas showed me more kindness in one hour than my father did in my entire lifetime." It's almost certain that Joan's sympathies were with the murdered archibishop.

In any case, the earliest known depiction of Thomas Becket anywhere in Christendom, which bears the inscription "Saint Thomas of Canterbury," is in the apse of the Monreale Cathedral. I imagined Joan standing here, looking out over the sea toward England, turning to William, and saying, "We must memorialize Thomas, who was always kind to me."

Monreale 1: the Cloister

We took our first excursion out of Palermo on a bright November morning after buying a ZTL pass that allowed us to take our car in and out of the limited traffic zone for one day. This time, in daylight, armed with our phone GPS and better prepared, we managed to find our way out of the tangle of streets that had snared us the first night, and soon were driving south, and already uphill, through Palermo's suburbs. Small trucks loaded with neatly-arranged purple cauliflowers, tomatoes, or artichokes were parked near intersections, and the farmers stood nearby, waiting to sell their produce to local residents who lived in these poorer, crowded neighborhoods. Soon we were out of the city, and heading upward into the mountains.

The piazza outside the Duomo, Monreale

The piazza seen from the opposite direction. The Duomo is the central building behind the tall palm trees.

Monreale is located only about 9 kilometers from Palermo, but the drive takes a while because it goes so far uphill. We encountered our first switchbacks, and stopped at a pull-off to look down on a valley full of orange trees and tiled roofs, and back toward the sea. When we reached Monreale, a medieval hill town, all the streets were sharply angled and narrow, and only the very top of the town was flat. We parked in a commercial lot far below the street level, and climbed back up to the Duomo, or cathedral, in the town's central piazza, through tunnels formed by the tall walls of the old buildings, now full of lung-choking diesel fumes.

The extraordinary main doors of the cathedral, with Arab, Norman, and Italian/Byzantine elements.

The large bronze doors of the cathedral were shut when we arrived, and it was unclear where to enter. On a wall at the right, we pushed open an ancient wooden door to find ourselves in a gift shop that had been set up inside thick stone walls. This room opened onto a courtyard -- and as we stepped out of the stony darkness, we gasped. We were in the cloister of the Benedictine monastery that had been established after the cathedral was constructed, a square bordered by marble columns, each decorated with inlaid mosaic decorations and carved capitals, arranged around four quadrants of lawns inside clipped hedges.

Each quadrant of this garden had a small tree at its center, and the walkways joining them met at a large, low palm at the central point. It was a monastery cloister, to be sure, but unlike any monastery I had ever seen in Europe; the feeling was Arab, Spanish, Andalusian, and yet the carvings were Italian, and Christian. In one corner, a second room of columns formed an open "room" that contained a fountain with a broad basin: clearly reminiscent of an ablution fountain at a mosque.

These were conscious choices. King William II of Sicily, the grandson of Roger II, built the Montreale cathedral in 1174, and dedicated it to the Virgin Mary; today it's one of the most important and justifiably famous monuments on the entire island, but in an oddly remote location. The reason goes all the way back to 831, when the Arabs -- Islam would have only been 200 years old then -- took control of Palermo. The cathedral of Palermo was immediately converted to a mosque, and the Bishop of Palermo was allowed to go into exile in the hills. He settled in the small village of Monreale, overlooking Palermo and the sea, and built a modest church to keep a witness to Christianity. It remained so until the Norman conquest of the island in 1072. The Palermo cathedral was re-consecrated; many of the Norman royalty, including Roger II, were buried there. Partly to honor the memory of the exiled bishop, and partly because the Norman aristocracy was beginning to use this rural area as a hunting retreat, King William II built his great cathedral in Monreale. He also brought a community of Benedictine monks to the area, whose mission was to proselytize and convert the Arabs who formed the majority of the population. As in Palermo, Arab craftsmen were employed in the design and building, and, as we can see all over the world, the new religious leaders incorporated elements of the local religion in order to make it more familiar and acceptable. It's unclear how many Muslims actually converted, but the years of the Norman reign in Sicily were largely and deliberately peaceful for people of different faiths.

King William II of Sicily and his wife, Queen Joan of England, the daughter of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. More about them in the next installment.

I have never been in a space that affected me quite like this cloister. It was one of the most beautiful and calm places I have ever experienced. We wandered through the colonnades and paths for a long time, studying the mosaic inlays and individual carvings, and absorbing the calmness that seemed to emanate not only from its history as a refuge from the outer world, but from the scale, colors, and harmonious placement of the individual elements, which achieved something close to perfection.

This was true for the courtyard as a whole, and also when one looked at the details: the stories carved on the column capitals had been carefully chosen, the inlaid mosaics which never seemed to repeat the same patterns. And instead of flower beds and vines, here were four single trees that reflected this particular place as well as the scriptures common to all the Abrahamic faiths: an olive, a date palm, a pomegranate, and a fig. I thought of my father-in-law saying, "When I think of the Arabs, I like to think of them in Spain." This was not Andalusia, but a place he would have loved just as much.

I washed my hands and forearms in the fountain basin, and we left to go inside the cathedral.