Noto

"La nobilità," said the elegant landlady, "are still powerful. Troppo.” No doubt Sicily is built on the bones of the peasantry? I muse, addled by the sun during this my Marlboro moment, waiting for the sun to inch behind the lemon tree under which I'm sitting, so I can stop sweating. In her garden. "Da vero," I say, though I don't know what I'm talking about, not knowing anything about Sicily but what I read in my hated Lonely Planet guide, and the film The Leopard. I look at the pallazzo the landlady owns, where the yellow paint is flaking, and then I think back to the scene in The Leopard where Burt Reynolds steps naked out of his porcelain bath and his major domo withdraws from the room, ashamed. Then I think of something Engels said, about thought as the highest expression of matter. Then I drink some spumante. There's a black and white stray cat lying under the table on a teacloth, giving birth to a white kitten, then to a black one, then a black and white one, three variations of itself. I can’t help thinking that cats have it all worked out. You clever cats! I think, drunkenly, trying to make connections, when everything escapes me right now.