Sicily — On Non-Swimmable Seas

I’ll be the first to express my disappointment over the inaccessibility of this blue, blue water. I live beside a sea that isn’t for swimmers; I wake up to water that taunts me. Rocks and boats and marinas barricade the water from the land but the water pulls me toward it with a force greater than the mid-autumn heat. I want to touch the sea and feel the salt on my fingertips. But the rocks are too many, the pathway down too steep, the water for the boats, the sea no more than a landscape.

I resign myself to sitting here and looking out past the island, notebook in hand, eyes searching the mountains.

Maybe it’s a good thing I can’t access the water because what if I don’t like it as much up close? The closer we go to beautiful things, the more likely it is that they stray from that flawless first impression. The more likely it becomes that I find seaweed and seaglass or cut my toes on rocks sharper than they appear.

Right here, on the cusp of the water yet so, so far from swimming in it, I see rows of fisherman who wear polos and jeans, the bottoms of their big bellies exposed to the sun. I have yet to see any of them catch fish but the Italians don’t run on any standard clock. They’re okay with waiting. I wonder how they get all those fish over the rocks. I wonder if they’ve ever dropped any on the way. I wonder how the sea makes the mountains seem like they could sink, how the water looks like it could swallow the mountains whole, how the little red sailboat remains afloat. It’s allowed to swim where I cannot.