Act Two, Scene One

woke this morning to _vivid dreams of kissing this girl i know from yoga, and in my dream she kissed like she does yoga, and she does yoga very well, and in my dream we didn't spend much time doing yoga, and it was very vivid.

after two days of near-impassable mountain roads, we have made it back to mehmet's house in burhaniye.

your protagonist is now in act two. this we can tell both by the calendar -- one month gone now out of three -- and by the story's underlying dramatic structure. the recent trip to instanbul was the protagonist's first challenge. an unexpected event thrust the action in a new direction -- that was the shakedown -- and thus was the protagonist set up for new challenges, to be faced over the course of the second act. after a short period of downward dramatic movement -- that was the blizzard and the thank-g-d-we-can-laugh-about-it drive home -- we return to a point of rest so act two can begin in earnest.

act one is the exposition. act two is the development. over the course of act two the skillful author fleshes out symbols and themes and shows how the protagonist changes in response to the way the plot veered at the end of act one.

the essence of act two is conflict. today we woke with no water and had to struggle to try and thaw frozen pipes. the metal pipes had frozen where the water comes into the house, or so we thought. so we piled burning embers from the stove around and over them til the pipes themselves were hot to the touch. the smooth tile of the front porch was very cold and while using the new set of stove tools -- read on -- to manipulate the hot pieces of charcoal i nearly froze the bottoms of my feet. so i tried to warm them in front of the new infrared heater and i melted my nylon double wick-action socks. and still no water.

the stove tools: today ugur brought us a set of stove tools -- coal shovel, fire poker, cinder broom, and man-fetcher -- and reader, they could not have come at a more perfect time, for they propel us forward into The Stove, Act Two. the story's external conflicts will thus mirror the protagonist's inner conflict. we are going to invent an all-in-one fuel cell bucket for the stove, using layers of olive pits, parrafin-soaked oil pits, and coal gravel. it will consolidate everything we have learned about the stove. it will light with one match, for it will have a fuse. furthermore we now have an ionizing air filter to clean up after smokey misadventures such as we had this morning.

but don't lets get too lighthearted. act two is trial for the protagonist from start to finish. walking through burhaniye today it was mo that first heard the sound of running water from what might have been a burst water main (it was not). until he pointed it out i did not even notice. this is in spite of my line about wanting to learn to listen. furthermore if i were a wild animal, and i want to be much more wild of an animal, the sound of running water is one i could not afford to miss. and it was mo who noticed one single blooming rose on his rosebushes, pink like a ripe berry that the observant omnivore would get as a snack. what is it going to take to get me to play closer attention to the bejewelled world? over the course of act two the protagonist will grow and change in face of unpredictable challenges such as these. only one thing is for sure -- he will have to pass through a moment of utter bleakness before the conflict can be resolved. but what that dark moment will be, only the shadow knows.

the water is back now and coffee is on and mo has brought me a box of turkish delight ("lokum") to go with it -- with one cup of coffee you have one piece. and there are little bananas. mo and i have spent some time planning the sights i will see over the course of the next month, using the maps we got from tourism booths at the trade show. we have food and again we have hot water. and we have finally warmed up the house. act two beckons and the coffee and sweets are waiting downstairs. i have learned a new word, too: lokumgibe -- from lokum -- means delightful. stay tuned.