The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman

Gaiman’s narrative begins on a doleful note. The unnamed Narrator has just left a painful funeral, but instead of driving to his sister’s house for the wake, he finds his way back to the place where he grew up. Although his childhood home is long gone, he continues down to the end of the lane, to the farm where a girl called Lettie Hempstock once lived. Like his old home, Lettie is also long gone. He is greeted, however, by a woman who reminds him very strongly of Lettie’s grandmother, but it has been so long – surely she must be her mother. And yet…

And so at the Hempstocks’ farm, sitting next to the pond, memories of childhood adventures, once lost, now surface again.

What follows is a wondrous tale of good versus evil in a world where little girls can be ancient, where broken toys can defeat monsters, and where ponds can be oceans at the end of the lane. The darkness of the beginning is recurrent throughout – there is death, and rot, and violence. Yet gloom is incessantly fought back by light – the warmth of a kitchen fire, the strength of a friendly hand, the enchantment of magic. The Narrator will find that memory lane holds more secrets than ever expected, many of which were buried for a reason. The quest against evil in the past is echoed by a journey of self-discovery in the present.

Ultimately, Gaiman’s fairy-tale narrative carries hope – that light will prevail when it is most needed, and that what is lost will find a way of coming back to us.

Sicily, Day 14

Airports feel like home. The mingling scents of pastry shops and kerosene and deep fried foods and perfume and books and tarmac and wind. The high ceilings and high windows looking out to wide open stretches. The well-practiced routine – check-in, passport control, security control, duty-free, gate, boarding-pass. The clear signs, straightforward directions. The great board of scuttling tiles or digital displays, standing at the entrance like a totem, showing you all the possibilities. “Come on,” it whispers. “Just imagine it. Anywhere you want, it’s all here. And you’re here! This is where your adventure begins. This is where everything begins.”

Then there’s the people, who move in this and that direction, then stop to check their passes, then mill about a little longer. The people from every walk of the world – dressed in suits or hoodies or sarongs, looking happy or lost or teary, speaking all kinds of languages, wheeling all kinds of suitcases. People running for the last call, or shuffling about, hung-over with jetlag. Goodbyes and hellos alike.

And the sense of being on the edge, being in transition. The knowledge that you’ve left something behind, and that whether that fills you with newfound vitality or racking sorrow, you’re moving on. And you’re not alone. Everybody around you has left something behind.

Today, I leave Sicily behind. The end of one journey, the beginning of another.

Gelato, Gelato

In honour of Sicily’s treasure-worthy ice-creams –

Favignana – in a lazy mid-afternoon alley

Echoes of sweet childhood delights

 

 

Palermo – on a car-filled boulevard

Blissful anticipation at a calorific novelty

A Smile in the Sky

(Sicily, Day 13 – Palermo, post-fall)

A rainbow lining to every cloud

A simple smile, and you remember

 

Sicily, Day 13

I fall. In the middle of the streets of Palermo. Maybe it was the startling lime green of the car in front of me, or the abnormally high pavement. It was probably my absurd natural equilibrium deficiency. Whatever it was, I fall straight down to the ground. Scraped knee, twisted foot. Nothing time won’t heal.

As I hobble down the sidewalk, intent on avoiding uneven cobbles and open stares, it strikes me – I can’t remember the last time I’ve fallen. I think harder, frown a little, laugh more. Eight years ago, that’s the last I remember. That can’t be right.

Everybody knows the old saying – why do we fall? so we can learn to get back up.

The temptation is to teach ourselves how not to fall in the first place – why do we make mistakes? so we can learn not to repeat them. And so we safeguard. We tread with care, watch out for bumps, stand still for the longest time till the way is clear. But the fall was so painful and the shame so searing that we teach ourselves too well. We take the familiar path, the one most travelled by, whether we like it or not. We mistrust those who push us over and those who don’t alike. We watch each other warily, keep at arm’s length, circle around and around.

We get very good at this. We excel. An art, a way of life, a mantra. We do not fall.

Until one day, we do. And as we lie there, face to the dirt, we start again, from scratch, thinking we’d been right all along. We pick up the broken pieces and use them to build the safety nets from the ground up, with painstaking effort, with renewed conviction, and with ever increasing mistrust and fear.

We do not learn how to get back up – how to brush it off, shake it out, treat the fall for what it is: just a few scrapes and bruises, that time will heal. The lessons learnt from our mistakes, our falls, our misgivings, should not make us shrink into a corner – they should make us grow, stand taller, walk stronger. Because in spite of the pain and shame and lingering darkness, we have survived that fall, and that means more.

Sicily, Day 10

The mountains stand watch over the road and the hills like titans of old. Feet on the ground, head in the clouds. Roots drinking from the fiery pits of hell, hands reaching up to the heavens. One of them is shaped like a mammoth’s head and ears and shoulders. It is quite close to us – I see it from the beach, looking out to sea, perhaps pondering on the absence of ice.

Here, they have taken bites out of their mountains. Humungous, angular bites, like the dragon living under the mountain tried to eat himself a skylight. And the disfigured titans make the ones left intact seem all the more imposing. Unapologetic.

Today, we visit the Greek temples in Selinunte. It seems fitting to have to pass through the titans before reaching the home of the gods – or what is left of it. My first glimpse of the carved columns imprints itself into my memory. For a split second, there are no cars on the road, no ticket counters, no people – just the temple, standing amidst the ruins of another, and some trees and bits of cloud. Like a breach in time.

I am glad there is no guided tour, those things tend to distract me. As I walk up the stone steps and through the columns, I think: they have walked here, too. Call it heightened perceptions, call it augmented reality – the place carries its history like Atlas carries the world.

The Hungry Mountain

A silent cry rattles the ground

The mountain-side shudders to life at your approach

It is scarred and one-eyed and it is beckoning you

Won’t you just sneak a peek inside the beast’s ancestral maws?

Where Elements Meet

Gods of sea and sky, torn from each other

Star-crossed lovers

Forbidden to touch yet cursed to yearn

Meeting at last in one stormy embrace

Sicily, Day 8 (part 2)

Acid green, scorching purple, icy blue. In town, at night, soft neon lights glimmer and shift in snaking streaks or blinking prickles – a slick, cosmopolitan sheen. San Vito Lo Capo’s heart beats to a different rhythm than Favignana’s.

In one of the streets, at least a dozen little white boxstalls line the pavement, advertising guided tours and day-cruises. The words are Italian, Spanish, English, French, Russian. And I hear them on the street, too, all these different languages. Tourists like us.

On the edge of town, right by the beach, the night market shines its bright halogens onto passers-by. They hang coiled, naked bulbs above the displays. Like fairy lights, except these are too white, too harsh. Yet the trick works – they attract the eye like a lamp attracts moths. I am reminded of Favignana’s cradle of stone.

I haven’t found an ice-cream shop which can live up to its predecessor. I think I like it better that way.

Sicily, Day 8

Day 8, and it’s back to the main island. The port is crawling with homegoers and vacationers alike. Luggage everywhere. A ferry waits – Zeus is its name, and I wish we could climb aboard, but it is not for us. Ours has yet to arrive. It is 9:30 am and the insistent sun is already beating down onto our bare shoulders. “Che caldo!” says the woman next to me. Her daughter fans her face in agreement. A rumble of relief moves through the crowd as our ferry approaches the stone jetty, a purring machine of blue and yellow. Ropes are flung, and walkways deployed. Its heavy, heavy doors open wide and expulse the passengers in a slow but steady regurgitation. It is some time before we can get on, and the boatride to Sicily seems very short in comparison.

We alight at Trapani, even busier than Favignana. A transport takes us to Palermo airport, where we pick up our rented car. Freedom tingles at our fingertips. Shift of gear and we’re off to San Vito Lo Capo, our new seaside town for the next seven days.

Sicily unfolds before our eyes, long valleys and low mountains, flickering in and out of the sunlight. Rolling thunder clouds loom on the horizon, never too far away – summer is shuddering to an end. As we pull off the highway to engage small, twisting roads, I puzzle over the map, trying to make sense of the disappearing sections and odd turns. But we do not get lost, and after only a panicked shout or two, we enter the town of San Vito Lo Capo. I can tell it is bigger than our previous location, if only by the length of the sprawling beach reaching out to the lapping waves, or by the amount of restaurants and shops spilling out onto the seafront.

I wonder if here, too, hides a small ice cream shop with flavours from another world.