Sampieri Space Aliens
R. YOUNG
It is a known fact among my friends in Ragusa that beings from outer space have returned to Sicily (after a long absence) and have taken up residence in refrigerators and microwaves, especially in and around Sampieri by the Sea. At twilight, residents along the coast spot the alien spacecraft hovering for landings up and down the rows of rickety greenhouses constructed of PVC tubes covered with translucent plastic. Exploring these abandoned hothouses, we discovered forgotten Frigos that once held bottles of mineral water for the immigrant workers to drink with their lunches of sardine spaghetti and biscotti covered with sesame seeds. Also found were rusting, burnt-out microwave ovens where aliens once heated bowls of soup made from tenerumi, the leaves, branches, and tops of snake zucchini, sweet and velvety, grown in la serra. You can also find biscotti sesame seeds scattered around the terrestrials’ hideouts to this day, despite the Tunisian winds that sweep in from the sea and thrash the loose sheets of greenhouse plastic, making a frantic and edgy sound which may annoy the aliens, but they don’t seem to mind where they hunker down in the wiring of old Frigos and micros. When we prowl the greenhouses, we feel like intruders seeking contact with the aliens in their homes, and we often remark on a lingering air of anticipation, an odd reaction to background noises we can’t identify, whirrings, soft moans like mechanical cats, and clatterings as of broken Chinese folding fans (the kind scented with vetiver) that won’t open no matter how vigorously you slap it again and again and again with rising emotion or angrily like winds that whip in from the Sea infused with scents of desert herbs, immigrant sweat, and cadavers. But no, that’s not correct. The clattering of the vetiver fan is never impatiently angry that way, not in the least. In fact, the sound is languid, like the pile of broken terracotta flowerpots outside the gate, behind the copse of carob bean trees, their leathery oval leaves shivering in the soft gust of the omen-laden voices of the aliens swirling in through the lemon trees.
One twilight recently, laden with trustworthy alien-detection instruments, we hiked the coastal highway toward the beach at Sampieri. At the edge of the village, we paused for refreshments at the Lone Star Lounge, well known for its cheerful owner, Mavis Castiglioni, a native of Amarillo, Texas, who settled in Sicily after retiring from the US Air Force. When asked about space aliens, she laughs and says they’ve taken residence in the cooling coils of her refrigerator and often sneak out at night to heat bowls of soup in the microwave oven on the kitchen counter.
“Have you ever observed this?” asks our chief engineer.
“Many times. I’m told that the visitors from outside our solar system were attracted to Sicily by legends of the landing of Giuseppe Garibaldi and his Red Shirts at the Greek ruins of Selinunte, which set the stage for the American invasion by General Patton at the same spot in World War II.”
“The aliens told you this?” I asked, hardly believing my ears.
“Oh, yes,” she laughed. “The aliens are quite garrulous, actually.”
“So you really talk to them?”
“Ha! Nobody talks to aliens. Our, um, interaction is nonverbal but conversational, like being on LSD.”
“But you’ve seen them?”
“Seen, not seen. It’s hard to explain.”
What do they look like?”
“Listen, you never actually see aliens. They come, and they go. Like characters in that Eliot poem, speaking words of Michelangelo.”
R. YOUNG, a native and long-time resident of the Gulf Coastal South of the United States, now lives in Saint Paul de Fenouillet, France, a village in the Pyrenees border country near Spain. He and his wife, photographer DC Young, have created Studio Arago to produce their individual and collaborative work, especially Kudzu, a series of handmade booklets and chapbooks featuring texts, drawings, photographs, and collages.
