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Messina
Tuesday, July 14 2026
location: room 115, M.S. Monet in Messina, Italy
We were docked in Messina, on the Sicilian side of the strait where Sicily comes closest to the Italian mainland. Messina is considered strategic not just due to the proximity of the continental Italy, but also because the strait itself is an important shipping lane. Messina was bombed heavily by the allies as part of the softening up required before invading Italy. More recently, there have been a number of attempts to build a bridge across the Strait of Messina, but something always frustrates it. And if it is ever actually built, much of the money will end up funding the mafia.
This morning Gretchen was eager to go ashore to check out Messina, and for some reason she decided to include Kelly and Brian. To leave our ship, we had to walk down the pier some distance to the vicinity of a massive cruise ship, which was where the security checkpoint that we had to pass through was located. That was mobbed, of course, as a floating city was emptying itself through that one tiny aperture. We were carried along with the crowd out across several streets, where humans had to direct traffic because no algorithm could deal with so many impatient tourists eager to fart somewhere new.
Somehow we made it to Messina's big cathedral before that crowd. It enclosed a vast space but was comprised of an odd mix of styles. The apse was mostly Byzantine, as were the intricate decorations on the timber roof beams. (I'm not used to seeing timbered beams forming the ceiling of a cathedral, and I suspect these were put up hastily after the roof was damaged during WWII.) Meanwhile, the aisles on either side of the nave had been done in a Neoclassical style with figures in carved marble. Each figure was a saint, and below each saint was a three-panel "cartoon" providing visual information to the illiterate about the saint's life. And the third panel always depicted how the saint was martyred. After the others had marveled at the ceiling beams and graceful simplicity of the wall atop the colonnade, I brought their attention to the martyrdom panels, but Kelly and Gretchen mostly hunted the scenes for homoerotic content.
After leaving the cathedral, we went downstairs to its crypt, the only part of the cathedral charging an admission. The main feature of the crypt is the many whitewashed baroque archways supported by seemingly insufficiently-large (given what we know is upstairs) doric columns. At one end of the crypt is a series of miniature dioramas featuring Biblical characters fashioned from mid-Century Barbie-like plastic dolls wearing stiff ill-fitting outfits. The scenes mostly allude to a supposed visit by the Virgin Mary to Messina during Biblical times when she supposedly granted the city some sort of divine protection. Given the audience for these dioramas (the uncritical illiterate or children), the story must not be much more complicated than that. It's hard to imagine a real religious institution in America maintaining such a ludicrous display, but maybe this shines a light on something about Italian culture that I was unaware of.
We exited the crypt through an side door that led to low moat around the cathedral (it probably wasn't a true moat but instead perhaps the old surface that the cathedral was built upon, with Messina gradually building up like a Middle Eastern tell behind a retaining wall some distance away) and then went around to the front of the cathedral where it faced out into a wide piazza. I noted that some gothic features had been tacked on around the entrance at some point in its history. Also visible in the front of the cathedral is a massive astronomical clock on the side of the cathedral tower. (Gretchen called it an "astrological clock" because it included the twelve signs of the zodiac in a circle.)
Gretchen and Kelly wanted to go across Messina to some place that supposedly had paintings by Caravaggio, but Brian and I had had enough and wanted to go back to the ship. So us guys separated from the ladies and began walking back to the ship. We hadn't been separate long though before realizing I had Gretchen's ship ID card, so I ran back to give it to her. I don't know if it's even possible to get through port security without one.
On the walk back to the ship, Brian had some juicy gossip. [REDACTED]
Back on the ship, I relaxed in our cabin, watching the Black Mirror episode from the latest season called Eulogy, which is an exploration of the kind of regret one experiences when not pursuing a relationship with someone who, it was clear, was their ideal mate, and how it haunts one. It definitely haunted me, but I'm one of the few people who managed to get back together with my ideal mate after a twelve year hiatus. I don't remember it being so haunting the first time I watched it.
There was penne at lunch, as that seems to be the chef's favorite shape of pasta (even if it's one we hate so much that we joke about it). Gretchen and Kelly were back from their Caravaggio pursuit, and they had indeed seen at least one Caravaggio and been alone in a room with it. Then Gretchen had somehow figured out the bus system and she and Kelly had ridden it back to the pier for free. Now, though, Gretchen was worried she was coming down with whatever illness was going around the boat. I'd had it a couple days ago, but then Brian had had it and so had both of the veterinarians. More recently, Eric the health vegan could be heard coughing through the paper-thin wall between his cabin and ours.
I took a very long nap this afternoon, as did Gretchen. She'd been concerned she might be too ill to make it to dinner tonight, but Dirk had already told her that tonight she could give a speech promoting the march against animal testing she is organizing, so she rallied, came to dinner, and gave a very good speech. Meanwhile, I food-wise, I was forced to pick between sweet potato and pumpkin when it came to a main course, and, since I find pumpkin somewhat less terrible, I chose that. What came out was a huge slab of unflavored pumpkin that there was no way I would eat. It was by far the worst meal on the cruise. It also led me to tell Brian a West Virginia joke that my old friend Zelig (circa 2004) used to tell me. Question: "What do they do for Halloween in West Virginia?" Answer: "Pump kin!" It's a terrible joke, but it was similar to an equally unfunny joke Brian had been telling me that referred to an English rapper named "Tinie Tempah" but somehow had a punchline of "tiny tempeh." He'd been coming back to this joke repeatedly and was now just referring to it by its punchline.
A massive cruise ship near ours in the Messina harbor. Click to enlarge.
The Messina Cathedral's Byzantine apse. Click to enlarge.
Byzantine timbers overhead in the Messina Cathedral. Click to enlarge.
A colorful Byzantine-adjacent Christ in mural form in the Messina Cathedral. Click to enlarge.
See the homoerotic third panel depicting how St. Andreas died in this Neoclassical part of the Messina Cathedral. Click to enlarge.
Baroque flourishes above undersized columns in the crypt beneath the Messina Cathedral. Click to enlarge.
A miniature diorama in the crypt beneath the Messina Cathedral. Click to enlarge.
Another miniature diorama in the crypt beneath the Messina Cathedral. Click to enlarge.
Yet another miniature diorama in the crypt beneath the Messina Cathedral. Click to enlarge.
A life-sized diorama in the crypt beneath the Messina Cathedral. Click to enlarge.
Gothic flourishes on the front of the Messina Cathedral. Click to enlarge.
The zodiac dial of Messina's massive astronomical clock. Click to enlarge.
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