What scraps I have to show...
 |
| The time it snowed which meant preaching time at Galata Tower |
 |
| Blizzard breaks for a moment, ohhs and ahhs |
 |
| Travel |
 |
| morning |
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| Art Gallery run-throughs |
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| the best |
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| X-Mas day forest ramble with crew |
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Buyurun (here it is)
Friday, December 6, 2013
Loosed
Brother Luke just went upright and vital. Moonwalked across the void between two Contradictions. He calls it the edge and when he does you can watch him ride headlong into a native sunset rioting upon far away. Eyes amok, swaddled in cool, solely frontier. All of your nonliterate self might combust into being when you read what has been written.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Thanks, Givings
As the season whirls on, I am at the whim of cycles as well. Winter walks toward us softly -- or as softly as such a giant can -- and sun doesn't seem to make it out of bed in the morning, propping itself up on an arm and lazily peering down upon the city (it never moves above a 45 degree angle in the sky), then hunkering back down again early. It becomes dark by five.
It has become cold as well. And as we begin to witness one another's breath, I am reminded that this is also the "tacit way we express the intimacy that no one talks about" (that's Gretel Ehrlich). Rain swoops in like the seagulls that dive after boats on the Bosphorous, then sits in heavy for the long haul. The forecast is grey matter, seemingly forever. So we keep it in.
Which begs an introduction of... the MEN OF CONSTANT SORROW:
 |
| Savage and Phillip not depicted, as they are currently mustache-less |
Standing with Shady on the corner the other day, we realized that we both had mustaches, similar haircuts, were wearing each others clothes, and that our slang has mingled and grown into a peculiar idiom. But I'd like to think that our exchange moves through more than just our expression -- in a city that has me feeling so, so far away from nature (and acute awareness of things moving inside you that comes from being in it), what we share has become my solace.
At this point, we've moved beyond the newness of meeting one another, and now realize that our time here is passing, will pass. The community that we've grown here (it's not all bros, I swear) feels simple and essential, like family. At least in my eyes. All in all, Shady put it right -- our time here is moving deliciously fast. So here's a little diddy of mine inspired by our wondering about the cultural dialogue that we've all struck up together...
"Whitman once bequeathed himself to the earth beneath our footsoles, and if we are to find him there, then you may find me in the voice beneath each and every mustache we have bloomed here in this city. Call it collective effervescence or general mayhem, but we move into and past one another, sharing much more than clothes and the ways in which we might place them upon our bodies.
In thinking of us, and Istanbul, I’ve found that our dialogue here, although conveyed through haphazard fashion and the solidarity found in seeking a pure otherness – achieved in expressing a distinct, genuine presence – glows as a result of our acceptance and willingness to slip into an intimacy from which we might never recover. Whether or not it be caused by the convenience arisen from the brevity of our stay together, we fall into one another’s arms and speak with each other’s tongues and we are loud and if men are not loud then they are old.
Thus, we commune only with those who are willing to pull the edges of our horizons down into each smile, to render the seemingly infinite possibilities of our time quite simple; ours is a deep trust in a life that moves much like the river that we sit above and ponder over – forever swift, with us forever caught in its current.
Maybe, in seeking orientation and guidance, truth, we move too quickly over ground not yet solid. And if this shared dialect fades like all things do, let us hope that this new sincerity will find itself manifested over and over throughout the rest of our lives, packing down hard and tough, some roadbed for us to finally walk upon.
For resting: what I love most of all about our youth is this – in this grand becoming, we are such, such fools for the world. And yet, whoever you are, I mustache you something – are you not one too?"
While I'm at this, I'm just going to keep going...
In final thanksgivings, I am deeply grateful for the river to which I attend daily. Orhan Pamuk says that Istanbul derives it's strength from the Bosphorous; the river is the soul of the city. And there I sit on the waterfront, feet dangling like a small boy, gazing out. Watching it all go by. It brings me to a passage from Rilke's Second Elegy:
But we, when moved by deep feeling, evaporate; we
breathe ourselves out and away; from moment to moment
our emotion grows fainter, like a perfume. Though someone may tell us:
"Yes, you've entered my bloodstream, the room, the whole springtime
is filled with you..." -- what does it matter? he can't contain us,
we vanish inside him and around him. And those who are beautiful,
oh who can retain them? Appearance ceaselessly rises
in their face, and is gone. Like dew from the morning grass,
what is ours floats into the air, like steam from a dish
of hot food. O smile, where are you going? O upturned glance:
new warm receding wave on the sea of the heart...
alas, but that is what we are. Does the infinite space
we dissolve into, taste of us then?
We Talked About It Late Last Night...
It's Thanksgiving and I'm skipping classes and here's what Istanbul's melancholy (it's essence, according to Orhan Pamuk, it's nobel prize winning author) had friends share in the kitchen last night...
And when the wheat you've known
forever sours in the wrong wind and you smell it
dying in those acres where you played, please know
old towns we loved in matter, lovers matter, playmates, toys,
and we take from our lives those days when everything moved,
tree, cloud, water, sun, blue betwen two clouds, and moon,
days taht danced, vibrating days, chance poem. -- Victor Hugo, Letter to Kathy from Wisdom
You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you. -- John O'Donohue, from A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. -- W.B. Yeats, I Have Spread My Dreams
And when the wheat you've known
forever sours in the wrong wind and you smell it
dying in those acres where you played, please know
old towns we loved in matter, lovers matter, playmates, toys,
and we take from our lives those days when everything moved,
tree, cloud, water, sun, blue betwen two clouds, and moon,
days taht danced, vibrating days, chance poem. -- Victor Hugo, Letter to Kathy from Wisdom
You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you. -- John O'Donohue, from A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. -- W.B. Yeats, I Have Spread My Dreams
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
No, Really, back in Iraq...
Just back from a Wednesday night excursion to Bulgaria (the ol' cross the border, wrestle, and come back, just to say you did it routine), and feeling the need to splay out the cards that I was dealt in Iraq; there are a few things that need to be spoken plainly...
I knew practically nothing about Northern Iraq (aka Iraqi Kurdistan, as opposed to Turkish or Syrian Kurdistan -- it's all a rather ill-defined geo-ethni-political region) until right about the moment that Savage and I hitched across the border via the perfect storm of a ride from a paper-delivery man who said absolutely nothing to us other than when and where to hand passports in order to secure visas. Once in Iraq (weeee!), we stuck out our hands to continue our hitching-odyssey, and...
no rides.
You can't really hitch in Iraq. We did manage to attract a glut of taxi-driver attention though, and finally figured out that taking a shared taxi to our final destination of Erbil (the capital of Kurdistan) was our only option, as there isn't really a bus system in Iraq. So we chummed it up with our fellow passenger, an english-speaking student, en route, all to the chime, wail, and rattle of traditional Kurdish music through blown out speakers.
The socio-political situation began to crystallize a bit as we waited for two hours at a check point in order to enter the outskirts of Erbil while police searched vehicles for bombs, etc.; these shake-downs are recent developments, and our student friend made this, via painstaking effort, very, very clear. He made sure we understood that they -- I can't figure out how to say this any other way -- hate the Arabs. There's a serious distrust and loathing toward what they consider to be the cause of their ruined reputation as Iraqi's. While Kurdistan possesses separate control over its visas from Southern Iraq (they also have a separate parliament -- their pretty much a state of Iraq), Kurdistanites (that can't be the right term) bemoan their inability to travel almost anywhere because all Iraqi's still have the same passport.
Clearly, there are some cultural tensions. Probably in part because the place is downright culturally confused. After spending a day there, we still couldn't figure out what language people were speaking to us -- all the signs were in Arabic, Kurdish, and English, yet people spoke German and Turkish to us as well. And it's not as if the signs really matter in Erbil, as there is no functioning bus system, which led to an eery sensation of place-lessness. It's very difficult to develop a spatial relationship with anywhere that lacks rooted axis', routes, and schedules. As a result, pretty much no one knew where anything was, and more often than not, referred us to their cousins taxi driver when we asked for directions. For clarity, we spent half of our time in Erbil trying to find the bus station in order to get back to Turkey -- no one knew where it was, and we saw it randomly on the side of a road while taking a tax in a part of the city that we hadn't even heard of before.
In stride, ask me what we actually did in Iraq, and, well, I don't have much to say. There's nothing in particular 'to do' in Erbil -- basically, one can visit the old Citadel, hit the bazaar, or get lost in massive shopping mall. We ended up hanging out with our student friend again, but, unfortunately, that meant being subjected to his ardent attempts to impress upon us how western Erbil really is. The city, which is experiencing some serious foreign investment as well as sitting on oodles of cash from the regions oil reserves, is expanding at an alarming rate -- high-rises are shooting up all over and there's a distinct ritz-n-glitz vibe poking through the tangled, exposed electrical wires which dangle above each street. Regardless, pretty much all we managed to do was smoke shisha in massive Arabic robes (which we unfortunately couldn't sneak out with), pee in an alley, get haircuts (I got my cheeks floss-waxed!)(oh man that sounded much better in my head), take pictures with some police officers, eat too much falafel, and peace out.
That sounds pretty lame, and yet, per usual, there remains one preeminent, singular, saving grace: CAY, BABY! Iraqi cay is amazing -- for a helpless addict to Turkey's tea culture (didn't take but one cup), Iraq's brew straight blows it out the water. They spice it up, and, wait, you think you can choose whether or not you're going to be three spoonfuls of sugar deep on this one? Yeah, right, pal.
Jokes aside, I understand why the student was so keen on winning us over -- trust can feel as fragile as a new-born in your hands at times, and nowhere was this more palpable than Iraq; our pre-conceived notions were so deeply embedded in us that we felt like we were constantly getting ripped off, which resulted in some retrospective feelings of ass-holeness for giving people a hard time when they were charging us the normal price.
A lot of wariness also resulted from the stark contrasts to Turkey, where most people smile and talk to you (and shake your hand, and buy you cay; although getting free stuff has nothing to do with this... uhhh). It's not as though people were necessarily friendly in Iraq, but they weren't too cold either -- they just didn't really react to our presence at all (but they want us there, says the free ten-day tourist visa). Yet there was a very distinct, somber tone to the whole place, that of spirit withdrawn. Given the war, this comes as no surprise, and yet, it weighed on me more than I was willing to initially admit.
That being said, the majority of our interactions were positive, although in a much different manner from those that we've experienced in Turkey. After breaking down our encounters with locals, the only time we were slightly ripped off was by the barber -- even so, would I pay that much and more for a face-floss-wax again? HELL YES! Lesson learned: just because people aren't exceedingly expressive doesn't mean that they aren't good human beings.
It has been asked, why would one go to Iraq? Well, the prevailing credo that's emerge from all adventures here is, as my best Turkish friend, Vahid, puts it: Why NOT?
More obvious / important: don't judge until you've seen a country, its people, and drank the cay. There are good folk everywhere, no matter what fear-based media might show and tell.
Less obvious: queue this little poem that's been roaming about my mind over the last few days -- it's been keeping me loose when big bad rationality starts buzzing a bit too loudly (and little birds can be people too, you know)...
may my heart always be open
may my heart always be open to the little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old
may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if its sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young
and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never quite been such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile
-- ee cummings
I knew practically nothing about Northern Iraq (aka Iraqi Kurdistan, as opposed to Turkish or Syrian Kurdistan -- it's all a rather ill-defined geo-ethni-political region) until right about the moment that Savage and I hitched across the border via the perfect storm of a ride from a paper-delivery man who said absolutely nothing to us other than when and where to hand passports in order to secure visas. Once in Iraq (weeee!), we stuck out our hands to continue our hitching-odyssey, and...
no rides.
You can't really hitch in Iraq. We did manage to attract a glut of taxi-driver attention though, and finally figured out that taking a shared taxi to our final destination of Erbil (the capital of Kurdistan) was our only option, as there isn't really a bus system in Iraq. So we chummed it up with our fellow passenger, an english-speaking student, en route, all to the chime, wail, and rattle of traditional Kurdish music through blown out speakers.
The socio-political situation began to crystallize a bit as we waited for two hours at a check point in order to enter the outskirts of Erbil while police searched vehicles for bombs, etc.; these shake-downs are recent developments, and our student friend made this, via painstaking effort, very, very clear. He made sure we understood that they -- I can't figure out how to say this any other way -- hate the Arabs. There's a serious distrust and loathing toward what they consider to be the cause of their ruined reputation as Iraqi's. While Kurdistan possesses separate control over its visas from Southern Iraq (they also have a separate parliament -- their pretty much a state of Iraq), Kurdistanites (that can't be the right term) bemoan their inability to travel almost anywhere because all Iraqi's still have the same passport.
Clearly, there are some cultural tensions. Probably in part because the place is downright culturally confused. After spending a day there, we still couldn't figure out what language people were speaking to us -- all the signs were in Arabic, Kurdish, and English, yet people spoke German and Turkish to us as well. And it's not as if the signs really matter in Erbil, as there is no functioning bus system, which led to an eery sensation of place-lessness. It's very difficult to develop a spatial relationship with anywhere that lacks rooted axis', routes, and schedules. As a result, pretty much no one knew where anything was, and more often than not, referred us to their cousins taxi driver when we asked for directions. For clarity, we spent half of our time in Erbil trying to find the bus station in order to get back to Turkey -- no one knew where it was, and we saw it randomly on the side of a road while taking a tax in a part of the city that we hadn't even heard of before.
In stride, ask me what we actually did in Iraq, and, well, I don't have much to say. There's nothing in particular 'to do' in Erbil -- basically, one can visit the old Citadel, hit the bazaar, or get lost in massive shopping mall. We ended up hanging out with our student friend again, but, unfortunately, that meant being subjected to his ardent attempts to impress upon us how western Erbil really is. The city, which is experiencing some serious foreign investment as well as sitting on oodles of cash from the regions oil reserves, is expanding at an alarming rate -- high-rises are shooting up all over and there's a distinct ritz-n-glitz vibe poking through the tangled, exposed electrical wires which dangle above each street. Regardless, pretty much all we managed to do was smoke shisha in massive Arabic robes (which we unfortunately couldn't sneak out with), pee in an alley, get haircuts (I got my cheeks floss-waxed!)(oh man that sounded much better in my head), take pictures with some police officers, eat too much falafel, and peace out.
That sounds pretty lame, and yet, per usual, there remains one preeminent, singular, saving grace: CAY, BABY! Iraqi cay is amazing -- for a helpless addict to Turkey's tea culture (didn't take but one cup), Iraq's brew straight blows it out the water. They spice it up, and, wait, you think you can choose whether or not you're going to be three spoonfuls of sugar deep on this one? Yeah, right, pal.
Jokes aside, I understand why the student was so keen on winning us over -- trust can feel as fragile as a new-born in your hands at times, and nowhere was this more palpable than Iraq; our pre-conceived notions were so deeply embedded in us that we felt like we were constantly getting ripped off, which resulted in some retrospective feelings of ass-holeness for giving people a hard time when they were charging us the normal price.
A lot of wariness also resulted from the stark contrasts to Turkey, where most people smile and talk to you (and shake your hand, and buy you cay; although getting free stuff has nothing to do with this... uhhh). It's not as though people were necessarily friendly in Iraq, but they weren't too cold either -- they just didn't really react to our presence at all (but they want us there, says the free ten-day tourist visa). Yet there was a very distinct, somber tone to the whole place, that of spirit withdrawn. Given the war, this comes as no surprise, and yet, it weighed on me more than I was willing to initially admit.
That being said, the majority of our interactions were positive, although in a much different manner from those that we've experienced in Turkey. After breaking down our encounters with locals, the only time we were slightly ripped off was by the barber -- even so, would I pay that much and more for a face-floss-wax again? HELL YES! Lesson learned: just because people aren't exceedingly expressive doesn't mean that they aren't good human beings.
It has been asked, why would one go to Iraq? Well, the prevailing credo that's emerge from all adventures here is, as my best Turkish friend, Vahid, puts it: Why NOT?
More obvious / important: don't judge until you've seen a country, its people, and drank the cay. There are good folk everywhere, no matter what fear-based media might show and tell.
Less obvious: queue this little poem that's been roaming about my mind over the last few days -- it's been keeping me loose when big bad rationality starts buzzing a bit too loudly (and little birds can be people too, you know)...
may my heart always be open
may my heart always be open to the little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old
may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if its sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young
and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never quite been such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile
-- ee cummings
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Lost frames from around the Way
 |
| Students get down on some traditional dances during the first few days on campus. Uh! |
 |
| View from Petek, prime campus hang-spot where students gather for breeze-shooting, beers, good cheer |
 |
| Mosque spires tear the horizon; god rays for drama |
 |
| CATS FOR DAYS, especially on campus |
 |
| mmm |
 |
| faded |
 |
| in your grill |
 |
| Savage, working it |
 |
| Museum in Antalya, filled to the brim with excavated statues of Greek gods -- best museum I've been to in recent memory; stunning detail, proportion, scale, and your standard Greek bulge |
 |
| Hike day |
 |
| before sunset |
 |
| Shady brings the noise |
 |
| Shady brings the noise |
 |
| Wake-up call |
 |
| Aya Sofia |
 |
| Awe |
 |
| Awesome |
 |
| Basilica Cisterns -- underground water supply for the royal fam #TOURISM |
Friday, October 25, 2013
"Welp, back in Iraq..."
Savage threw together this little masterpiece for you to look-see. I also highly recommend taking a second to peruse his breakdown of our trip, as I am completely incapable of writing anything nearly as accessible...
[Editors note: can you imagine a police officer in the states flagging you down out of traffic, then asking where you're going, and if you happen to say the place he's thinking of, requiring you to take two American's who speak close to none of your language, and who have managed to brew up the penultimate dudesweat scent, along with you?]
After breaking bread with the two laconic Turkish truck drivers (they insisted, and paid), we returned to the truck bed, where we belonged. Prime, and curled up like sacks in the flatbed of the truck, I began to consider our collective journeys.
We offer our stories as currency on the road -- where we're from, what we're doing, and where we're going -- and while these stories say close to nothing about who we really are, they allow us to open to the stories that life might tell us if only we allow it. These stories grow us.
After this trip, I've got a whole new set of stories to tell, and most all of them revolve around the generosity of others. While I brew some word sketches of our experiences (I've been shooting with my film camera, so who knows when those images will surface), it's overwhelming, despite the relative brevity of our trip (10 days), to consider the amount of information and experience we've absorbed. There was laughter, awe, and a thousand moments of being extraordinarily lost in translation. It is safe to say that we managed to strike a rather precarious balance between the downright zaniness of hitch-hiking/traveling in general (should we have accepted the invitation to stay with the transvestite and gigolo for the nightwhat), and the fulfilling lessons/edifications imparted by those who drove and fed us all the way across Turkey. The latter's hospitality knew no boundaries -- we were comped the umpteenth cup of cay, given the living room heated by the wood stove, you name it -- which reminds me that, despite the distance our languages might create, we are all far closer than we think.
[Editors note: can you imagine a police officer in the states flagging you down out of traffic, then asking where you're going, and if you happen to say the place he's thinking of, requiring you to take two American's who speak close to none of your language, and who have managed to brew up the penultimate dudesweat scent, along with you?]
After breaking bread with the two laconic Turkish truck drivers (they insisted, and paid), we returned to the truck bed, where we belonged. Prime, and curled up like sacks in the flatbed of the truck, I began to consider our collective journeys.
We offer our stories as currency on the road -- where we're from, what we're doing, and where we're going -- and while these stories say close to nothing about who we really are, they allow us to open to the stories that life might tell us if only we allow it. These stories grow us.
After this trip, I've got a whole new set of stories to tell, and most all of them revolve around the generosity of others. While I brew some word sketches of our experiences (I've been shooting with my film camera, so who knows when those images will surface), it's overwhelming, despite the relative brevity of our trip (10 days), to consider the amount of information and experience we've absorbed. There was laughter, awe, and a thousand moments of being extraordinarily lost in translation. It is safe to say that we managed to strike a rather precarious balance between the downright zaniness of hitch-hiking/traveling in general (should we have accepted the invitation to stay with the transvestite and gigolo for the nightwhat), and the fulfilling lessons/edifications imparted by those who drove and fed us all the way across Turkey. The latter's hospitality knew no boundaries -- we were comped the umpteenth cup of cay, given the living room heated by the wood stove, you name it -- which reminds me that, despite the distance our languages might create, we are all far closer than we think.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Collective Effervescence
Thoreau preaches that our company is too often cheap, that we 'meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other.' Probably true, but Turkish culture says otherwise. And this weekend, spent down south in Antalya and Olympos with a rambling posse, was meant for straight bringing the action.
There's beach sleep and mountaintop song and pealing laughter for youths sake, and these, these are a few of my favorites things...
Sunday, September 29, 2013
12 Hours: A Moving Portrait, Syllabus Week
Savage and I went aerial from campus the other day -- sunset has it's own reading list for our eternal semester, and this assignment feels straight forward: watch ("dude"s and "oh baby!"s hopefully excused)
When space feels hard to come by (most of the time), the Bosphorus, and now tower, call. The river feels integral to the city's identity in a way that I'm happy not quite placing my finger on; it's good enough to just sit and watch old fisherman cast their metal weights with longs rods, gaze into distance, or laugh with one another and share cigarettes. If you watch long enough, there's even the off-hand chance that the breeze will blow fresh, clean air into your lungs.
It's easier to catch such drifts from the top of the hill, where I returned the morning after our little kletter for round two... (Sorry for the shakes)
I just met some gung-ho Turkish fellas who told me that it's good fun to climb all the way to the top and shake the entire tower. Don't worry Mom, that's a metaphor. Well, kind of; I mean, a country boy gotta breathe somehow.
When space feels hard to come by (most of the time), the Bosphorus, and now tower, call. The river feels integral to the city's identity in a way that I'm happy not quite placing my finger on; it's good enough to just sit and watch old fisherman cast their metal weights with longs rods, gaze into distance, or laugh with one another and share cigarettes. If you watch long enough, there's even the off-hand chance that the breeze will blow fresh, clean air into your lungs.
It's easier to catch such drifts from the top of the hill, where I returned the morning after our little kletter for round two... (Sorry for the shakes)
I just met some gung-ho Turkish fellas who told me that it's good fun to climb all the way to the top and shake the entire tower. Don't worry Mom, that's a metaphor. Well, kind of; I mean, a country boy gotta breathe somehow.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Offsides; what about it?
I now live in a world where Futbal (er, soccer?) definitely sits
alongside politics as a terribly flammable subject; the religious similarities
are eery as well – ritual (chants), devotion (without a jersey, I stand aside,
shunned, an outcast), fervency (the ‘seats’ act as boosters, and no one sits –
ever), and extremism (this
happened at the match the night after). And while Turkish fans aren’t quite
as obsessed
and compulsive as this, they're damn close. All that being said, when
local teams Fenerbahçe and S.B. Elazigspor were set to square off this weekend, I
figured it would easily fit under the category of ‘cultural experience.’ A few
beers with the fellas and we hit the ferry for the Asian side where the match was
to be held. Game on.
In the states, quite honestly, we suck at cheering for
sports (American football might be the exception). Maybe the booze starts
having the adverse effect by halftime, or maybe we’re not organized enough –
either way, we don’t have fans who, I shit you not, don’t watch a single moment
of the game in order to stand as hype men for different sections. My man in H18
belted out song after song from an endless bag, all while standing on a the
concrete wall keeping him from falling into oblivion, and using the head of
another man (voluntary or not, I wasn’t able to deduce) for a support for the entire match. It must have worked – I
stood in complete awe at the sea of pumping arms, as droves of deafening cheer
galloped around the stadium. To boot, whereas we might use whistles for
applause, they use them here whenever they’re royally ticked off at something
(referees, etc), and with thousands of people going shrill at once, the entire
stadiums sounds like a hissing nest.
Despite the relative enthusiasm (the fans maintained their
ne plus ultra decibel level until the very end), the match was hardly a
thriller – home team Fenerbahçe went up two nill in the first ten
minutes, and ultimately schooled S.B. 4-0. When the outcome became rather
obvious, the crowd began to engage in a little ‘Futbal 101’ (as one friend put
it): fighting. With each other, that is. Out of nowhere, men from my right,
incensed and with rage in their eyes, began streaming toward the section to our
left, pushing over one another in order to whip their fists and throw shouts
into the expanse between the section on the left. We were informed the fight was
political, and I only managed to snag a few seconds being urged to lower my
camera phone…
While riot police kept the halftime bathroom melee in check,
it was still nothing short of bizarre to witness fans who were in complete
cheerleader sync (for the same team) with one another at one moment be viciously at each others throats the
next.
The incident stands as a testament to the current political climate – all it
takes is a few of the wrong words to trip mayhem’s hair trigger, igniting
genuine anger. And yet, considering that the next night’s match (Besiktas vs. Galatasaray,
see link at top) ended early due to fans rushing the field and straight up
brawling with one another, my previously looming ‘cultural
experience’ feels rather quaint and tame after all.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Baby Steps
When informing others that I was headed to Istanbul to study
for my last semester, I received a couple of uneasy reactions from the current
event buffs – “yikes,” “be safe (awkward
smile),” and “you know what’s happened, don’t you?”
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| Clouds over Frankfurt |
Sure, I knew a bit about the recent political upheaval, but
there’s nothing quite like some generally reckless firsthand exploration. So, sitting
in Taksim Square upon arrival (where the majority of protesting has been taking
place – don’t worry Mom, I’m obviously still alive), I sipped on my first Turkish
cay – black tea, spoonfuls of sugar pending – and began to wheel and deal with
the glut of attention that generally vacuums toward a young male backpacker. After
slapping backs with a teenager over mutual interests, fending off various
vending hagglers, and sitting in bewilderment as two girls tugged on my beard
and giggled (why this doesn’t happen at home?), I managed to prove my
incredible knack for being completely logistically
inept by getting lost as all get out on the way to meet my CouchSurfing host,
Ridvan. Standard. The city fabric, punctuated by stained mosques and glittering
skyscrapers, whizzed past whatever wrong by I had taken, only furthering my
enthralled state.
After meeting with Ridvan, we walked along the Bosphours’
west bank (European), as the soft lights from the Asian side shimmered and
danced toward us like some dream. I took a deep breath – Istanbul, the gateway
to the Orient, is everything that everyone that’s actually been there has told me it is: amazing.
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| View of the Bosphorus from Bogazici University (my school) |
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| The Black Sea |
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| Clownin' |
As in every city that I’ve been to, there are a fair share
of hardened hands and distant gazes, but people here generally seem to have
warm hearts, and treat each other with care and a sincere, traditional respect
(old man enters bus, young man immediately gets out of seat, old man sits down;
mentally handicapped girl enters bus, middle aged woman gets up and lets her
sit down). In stride, there’s a distinct tenderness that I’ve encountered –
each Turkish handshake has been like the soft crinkling eyes that accompany a
smile of understanding. Their grip gently caresses rather than firmly clasping,
which imparts an unexpectedly reassuring sense of vulnerability.
While ‘East meets West’ sounds cliché, it stands as
mystifyingly true: the call to prayer and hip-hop music blast at the same time,
burkas sit next to bare legs on the bus, and Mercedes and BMW’s blitz through
the downright bedlam that is traffic (per most Asian cities). This cultural
interplay makes for downright dizzying and enchanting times, and, even though I
haven’t run the tourist gauntlet yet (from mosque-hopping to haggling for
spices), a new friend silver-tongued it – “It’s magical here.”
Yet the tension between the modernity of urban youth and the
piety of ages doesn’t feel out of place; so far, it hasn’t been too difficult to
accept a place that either accepts itself or makes things work regardless. Or,
as Michael Singer puts it, maybe “We
define the entire scope of our outer experience based upon our inner problems.”
It all reminds me an interaction with a hostess on the
flight here – I gave her a good ol’ fashioned smile (courtesy of Hermann
genetics, patent pending); she smiled back, and said, “you look happy.” I
confirmed her remark. After the flight, we exchanged goodbyes, and her final
parting trailed faintly after me, as if from a distant place – “there goes the
happy one…” I think of this connection while grasping the railing in a
bus for support; looking down, I realize how tightly I am holding on, as if my
hands could somehow control the vehicle as it jerks and leaps through the
pulsing traffic. I let go. I’m better off with my feet planted firmly, standing
free, and swaying in balance with this careening vessel, whatever path it may
follow.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Wist-full
If the west is cracked dirt and endless horizons, longing, and not knowing, then the beach feels like closure (even a shitty one like Myrtle). Here, sea gulls herald a respite to frontier, and the coast sends me curling back into myself in breakers both nostalgic and insightful. Lying on the strand, at the end of some world, there's sheer release in not remembering dreams. There's release in finding a momentary home within laughter, sunburn; others (ever the Matthiesson enthusiast, now's the time to point toward "To glimpse one's own true nature is a kind of homegoing, to -- a place east of the sun, west of the moon -- the homegoing that needs no home"). But maybe that's it -- limits return us to what matters: beautiful people (whom I totally don't have pictures of #iswearihavefriends).
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| faded |
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| Chucktown tucks it in |
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| ShayButtuh goes Native
Back and cruisin' with Buttuh on the Blue Ridge, Hass's "a word is elegy to what it signifies" shoots a new furrow in my mind, counter to the way it has always run; this time, I like the ritual of losing myself in the naming of things.
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