Sat 14 April 2001 (Sabado Santa), Holy Saturday.

PROCESSIONAL:   Last night was a blur of painkillers and wine. We ate something or other, staggered out to the streets. Streetlights and most store and building lights were turned off, flaming torches and red candles were everywhere, and the streets were filled with expectant throngs. At least I suppose they were expectant. Anyway, crowds gathered at the basilica plaza, the robed hoodless processionaries started assembling, but I was dead on my feet. We returned to the dimly-lit hotel through fiery streets. I crashed, distantly hearing the cat chorus.

Some time later through open balcony doors I heard singing, then instru­mental music and percussion. I threw on some rags and schmatzas, ran downstairs and pushed out into a swirl of singers, brass band, drums, torch-bearers, bier-bearers carrying a Jesus-figure atop a coffin, robed hoodless processionaries, townsfolk in plainclothes, glowing crosses, all flowing up this narrow steep-walled street.

(A note on the main street of Minori: In all these coastal towns, what are now the main drags only became so very recently. All traffic was formerly afoot, traveling walkways both level and staired; and a river ran through the center of each canyon-straddling village. With the advent of motorcars, wider passage was needed. The rivers were roofed over, the roofing was paved, and VOILA! High Street!)

Now it's Saturday morning. No processions or ceremonies are scheduled for today, and no masses as far as I know. The weather forecast is for rain of course, with SNOW at higher elevations. Italian spring break starts today, heavy traffic is expect on the highways (although the weather may cause a few changes of plans, eh?) We're too tired to walk, too scared to drive, too cold to swim, too heavy to soar. Maybe a nice boat ride to Positano later, if the sea isn't choppy and there's no hail. Or maybe not.

Songs: ALL ON A GOOD FRIDAY
EASTER COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR
HOLY FLYING SAUCERS, BATMAN!
SLEEPING, BREATHING

later on Holy Saturday

So Saturday we're tired, I stomp around to the churches of Minori (they're mostly closed and I can't find one); we sit outside lunching on pizza and grilled swordfish during a thunderous downpour and cold snap; but otherwise we lay about and rest. Saturday evening during and after dinner the hotel lights keep snapping off. Yow.

Easter Sunday 15 April 2001 (Pascua), BUENA PASCUA!

I dimly recall something that may have happened in the last few days, a marketing proposal to rent a box at Beyreuth Bavaria for a Wagner festival, probably a Ring Cycle. This happened over a fancy lunch, When we arrived at the elegant eatery, a bear and swan were seated at our table. The bear (smallish) was led away and the swan (larger) flounced off on its own. Roger and Avril were to share the festival box with us. I don't recall what was served for lunch. Was I dreaming?

BUENA PASCUA:   Now it's Easter morning. The day looks less ominous, though the air is brisk. We run (well, stumble really) up to the rooftop solarium, gaze upon the calm sunny splendor of the sea, then turn around..

Hoping for the best, we hobble up (westward) the corniche road for Amalfi. (Maureen was nearly lamed by our Good Friday stroll, but she can slowly walk the road, avoiding stairways.) The walk is quite glorious, if chilly. Many details of terrain, villas, craftwork, are only to been seen from afoot. Driving by just doesn't cut it. Gardens, old churches, cascades, ever-snowier views of the local and further mountains, all unfold for us, The Easter morning traffic is light, but this can't last, eh?

TO ATRANI:   We squeeze through the narrow passages west of Minori. We peer up at Gore Vidal's huge white 'villa' snugged under the belvedere at Cimbrone. We pass Castiglione, the junction to Scala and Ravello. A room over the road is for rent. We swoon. Discreet and nearly-hidden 4- and 5-star hotels fall beneath our feet, rise overhead, lurk behind foliage.

Aldo drives up in his minibus, stops, asks if we'd like a ride; but no, we're doing fine. We traverse Atrani by upper and lower paths, and as we reach the tunnel to Amalfi the traffic on the corniche starts to snarl. Early mass is over, outsiders are arriving, cops are waving arms and blowing whistles, other strollers are out, the last day before The Season is in full swing. It's midday, the sun is bright, the air is warm and clear, only mountains on the horizon are snowy.

IN AMALFI:   From the Municipal Plaza we sneak into a side entrance of the Amalfi cathedral via a maze of tiny tunnels — and suddenly there we are at the heart of the celebratory mass, choir swirling, organ stomping, lights flashing off burnished surfaces, the place is packed, the joint is jumping!

In the center nave, thousands of worshippers are standing immobile or swaying with the overpowering music. In the side aisles, people are moving, talking, confessing, staring / twitching / strolling about, chatting with priests / family / lovers / conspirators, all in motion, all just life as usual while music and worship churn overhead.

The music stops, the preaching starts, we head out, back down the dim side entranceway. An old lady with dark glasses and cane falls at the foot of the steps; I pick her up, we put her hands on the cane and railing, and make sure she's ascending steadily. These secret passages can be as treacherous as a bishop's heart.

We clamber through a further maze to a space just under the high Duomo entrance, then retrace back to the promenade, the waterfront, and eventually we find the boat to Positano. Tickets in hand, we head to the Duomo Plaza's best cheap pizzeria for provisions, then back to quayside for a devouring session. Much of the pizzas' thick crust is eventually tossed to waterside pigeons who are themselves tormented by a macho little dog.

Hey, most of the town dogs here are little macho attitude hounds, usually quiet but often clearly embarked upon specific missions. Not like the country dogs, who seem shyer.

GOING AFLOAT:   Now we're on the boat. That same dog, a slightly scaled-up Chihuahua-like beast, is chasing straggling passengers aboard, jumping and barking at their heels. We launch, stare at the high dissected coastal mountains as they flow by, and see all those little villages tat were previously just names on maps and us schedules. They're all real, all there, all inevitable. Wotta trip.

Since this is Pasqua, Easter Sunday, the bus schedules are all a-snarl. So our time in Positano is very constrained, just an hour for some passage-shopping and gelato and lounging. The joint is jammed, the beach is crowded (but no topless women are visible), The Season is imminent. We boat and bus back through increasing crowds, and collapse.

MINORI:   We revive briefly. I resume searching for the last of Minori's churches, and I FIND it! It's above and behind a small underground general store we've frequented, accessible through an old entryway that may once have been the antechamber of yet another church. There's a single-bell campanile, and an incessant electronic bird chirper, and iron bars before an open electric-candle-lit shrine in memorium for children and mammas of local families. Very personal. A resident tells us about the chapel as we're leaving; she's sorry it's closed so we can't go in. A very personal shrine, like many minuscule holy spaces squirreled-in amongst these human warrens.

In the glory days of the Republica Amalfitana, the first rise in Italian maritime adventurism since the fall of Rome, Minori was a commercial and military power to rival Amalfi itself. The Republic's warships were built in Amalfi but the commercial fleet was build and based in Minori. The local merchants had their second homes in Constantinople, next to the Byzantine Emperor's digs.

Arab technologies and products were funneled via Minori to the rest of Europe: papermaking, citrus, carpets. more. When other Italians learnt papermaking, Minorians milled grains — and instead of just baking or boiling the dough, they dried it, thus inventing pasta and made the world's finest for some time. When a Neapolitan king moved the pasta technology over the hill to a locale less susceptible to invasion / disruption, Minori's economy collapsed.

BROTHERHOOD:   And that's when the Brotherhood, those fellows in white hoods and robes, organized as a benevolent society to assist the impoverished, and orphans and widows (and especially the widows?). Anyway, these guys used to be penitentes, flagellants, scourging themselves to prove their devotion to Jesus. The robe'n'hood thang is a serious toning-down of how it was in the old days. They still wear ropes wrapped around their robes in certain suggestive ways. But in a death-oriented religion that practices ritual cannibalism (communion), nothing is surprising.

GOING COASTAL:   None of the original Amalifitan communities were along the shoreline. All the older villages were up in the hills, far from any possible maritime marauders. Smart move — it's pretty hard to attack UP these slopes.

Then a coffin washed up on the beach, of a girl who'd been beheaded at the behest of her father because she refused to marry the mate he'd chosen for her and apparently wanted to give herself to Jesus. Her corpse was being shipped somewhere for internment when ZOOM! shipwreck and ZAP! washup and ZOW! discovery, by a priest from one of the up-canyon hamlets. And that priest read and interpreted the carvings on the coffin and decided that:

1. she was a saint, and
2. her name was Trofimena, and
3. the village should move down to the beach because GOD wants it and Santa Trofimena will protect everyone there.

So that's how Minori started. And the priest may have gotten #3 right, because Minori has never been invaded since that time.

PS: Nobody has ever found any source for the name Trofimena, and if you know anyone of that name, they or their family originated in Minori.

LEMONS:   Anyway, among the stuff transshipped from Arab sources via Minori, lemons are prominent. They grow very distinct lemons here, an ancient strain, ancestors of lemons raised in the rest of the western world. Suck'em up, eh?

There are many other relevant historical tidbits which be found in the general guidebooks so I won't deal much with such here. The town has been wiped out by plagues and floods and the occasional earthquake. There are ancient features here, including the rich 1st century Roman villa and the 11th century fountain lions, and the inevitable old churches. Like many coastal towns here, the current "main street" is of fairly recent construction — the river that ran through the heart of town was roofed and paved over, and channelized a bit to direct some of the flow along the town/valley edge. Building show traces of the frameworks that used to connect everything, frames from which first paper was dried, and later pasta, and probably animal hides. This place used to stink.

Mon 16 April 2001 (dell'Angelo), confined.

HOLIDAY:   Bank Holiday today, bus and business schedules promise to be disrupted again. Sky is cloudy, rainy. What to do?

We're caught in lockstep, carried along through the cogworks of vast mechanisms, carried through the gears of the weather machine, the Italy machine, the church machine, the SAGA machine, the dining-room machine, etc. Schedules within schedules, all meshing to keep us in certain places, keep us from straying from our appointed hours and locales.

Escape is possible, merely expensive. We could call for a helicopter to whisk us away to some of the many sights we'd wanted to see. Or even just search exhaustively for a car rental (difficult / impossible on this national holiday) or take a boat to somewhere (same problem) or walk up into the mountains or under the sea. Or lie back and drink the rain.

There's a nice mix of strictness and chaos here, both serving to constrain our activities. So much yet to see and do, so little time for it, and so much formalism and froth blocking the windows of opportunity. What to do, what to do? Maybe Jenny can scare up a car rental for our last couple days. And maybe monkeys will fly outa my butt.

SPRINGTIME?   Eventually the early gloom of this Bank Holiday lightens, the angels stop pissing on us, and we stomp Minori's streets again, snapping some images of locales we'll not see again until/if we ever return. And we note a certain change of season, now that Easter is over. Some shops and studios that were previously shuttered are now opening. Lighter brighter clothes are worn by townsfolk, less gabardine, more bluejeans. Is it resurrection time?

Well, it's time to start stocking up for the return journey. Some wine and limoncello and cookies, some candies to sample for gifts, something for Mom. Tomorrow at the last moment, some bread and apples for the flight. And we still need cat tiles.

Some take-out pizza, some cash'n'carry wine, a few pastries, and it's a fine lunch we're having on our balcony, watching the pool and cats and clouds. Then I'm off for a tramp over to Maiori one last time, in rain at first but later sunned-upon. The two-level municipal garden has filled with water, the river road is nearly depopulated but the beachfront is hopping with holidaytrippers. I clamber up old stairways on the east side of town, find many old shrines and chapels and the old Jewish quarter. An old woman wants to talk about her neighborhood. Passageways even steeper and narrower and higher than Minori's loom here; around a bend, and the coast and newer apartments and even the old Duomo disappear, and the hills of Tramonti dominate the view. Back on the coast road the holiday traffic is in full swell, drivers asking me for directions, buses taking my signals, pandemonium developing, yet more happy chaos. We'll escape just in time, eh?

ANOTHER HISTORY NOTE:   These isolated hill and valley villages were/are quite insulated and ingrown. The same given names and surnames appear in records and on burial slabs dating back a millennium. The families interbreed. A Minorian once needed Papal dispensation to marry a Maiorian (the towns are 2 miles apart). In such a static world, about the only way to widen the gene pool is by invasion, conquest. Without invading troops (and lonely sailors) raping / pillaging / whoring and/or moving in to set up their own domestic establishments, there would NEVER be any new blood. And since St. Trofimena has protected Minori from invasion for all these centuries, well, you can draw your own conclusions.

Songs: T.L.P.
CONSTRUCTION
I SAT AND DRANK SOME WINE
JUST A PARTY ANIMAL
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
DONCHA WORRY 'BOUT ME
PACKAGED EXPERIENCE
BLUE, RED, BLACK
IS YOU OR?

Tues 17 April 2001 (S. Aniceto), fading.

Ha, our last day on the coast - what to do? Morning starts with thunderstorms and heavy rain. Again. So much for walking the hills. But after breakfast and a rest, the sky looks better. We hop the SITA bus for Vietri sul Mare to buy the last few ceramic gifts and bus back to Amalfi for yet another overpriced lunch and some great stompabouts in enchanting old passageways. Then back to Minori (all our bus tickets are now gone) for the last few supplies. Now it's time to pack and prepare for departure — and the sun has finally emerged. Darn.

HOW TO (FISCALLY) SURVIVE DINING IN AMALFI / POSITANI / CAPRI:   Avoid from all ristorantes, pizzerias, trattorias, tavernas etc, especially those with 'specials' and those whose waiters (male only) kiss their fingertips when describing an item. Instead, patronize snack bars and especially pizza carryouts. Buy your own fruit and bottles of cheap wine and water at local markets. Sit with your provisions in a scenic or sheltered location and devour. PS: "Special fish" means you'll spend six times the cost of a decent bottle of local wine for a plate of scaly greasy fishy protein complete with head and tail, whose beady eyes will stare at you as you spit out its bones. IF YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST DINE INDOORS: Note any cover / service charges. Note / track what you've ordered. Ignore the waiter's suggestions. At the first sight of 'specials' or fingertip-kissing, run away.