<< i leave the party at 3:00 AM, alone, thank g-d >>

a cricket sings an even song under the windowsill and everyone here sleeps.

every now and then the cricket stutters.

today, because i _looked, i learned that she spins fire now, and that she is planning burning man '09, and that she dances with a troupe that has hired a photographer, and that she quickly had to get over her dislike of posing for _pictures, pictures like the ones that _haunt me still.

my turf, this emptiness in me that is some nights like an empty room, not an empty field. i look, but not quite deep enough.

i wish i knew what to tell you, why you do not feel so loved. perhaps people want to love you but do not quite know how? you are rather extraordinary.

i have never dreamed of you. perhaps i will tonight. i dream these days of being chased, or of holding hands and cooking meals and touching someone's soul from underneath, of the little things i know. someday i will dream of things i cannot fathom, sunwarm prairie grasses and flocks of birds, the moonstruck cricket's chirps.

<< *doesn't need to be a weatherman >>

from U.S. teens earn a : ( in writing [iht.com] :

It is nothing to LOL about: Despite best efforts to keep school writing assignments formal, two-thirds of U.S. teens admit in a survey that emoticons and other informal styles have crept in.

[...]

Half of the teens surveyed say they sometimes fail to use proper capitalization and punctuation in assignments, while 38 percent have carried over the shortcuts typical in instant messaging or e-mail messages, like "LOL" for "laughing out loud." A quarter of teens have used :) and other emoticons.

Over all, 64 percent said they had used at least one of the informal elements in school.

[...]

Teens who consider electronic communications with friends as "writing" are more likely to carry the informal elements into school assignments than those who distinguish between the two.

The chairman of the [National Commission on Writing] advisory board, Richard Sterling, said the rules could possibly change completely within a generation or two: Perhaps the start of sentences would no longer need capitalization, the way the use of commas has decreased over the past few decades. "Language changes," Sterling said. [...]

*quotes jack kerouac :

<< remove literary grammatical syntactic inhibition >>

*also quotes bob dylan

<< come mothers and fathers throughout the land
don't criticize what you can't understand -- 
yr sons and yr daughters are beyond yr command
and yr old road is rapidly aging -- 
so get out of the new one if you can't lend a hand, 
for the times, they are a-changing. >>

*knows which way the wind blows

guess who's back?!

the lolcats.

meanwhile, rick james....

today mo and i stole away for a picnic while inspecting olive trees.

an authentic olive picker's lunch of sausage, tomatoes, peppers, bread, cheese, cooked on a pine needle and twig fire, sausages fried on hot rocks, tomato paste spread on with young white olive branches. nearby the dog slept. it has been cold, nights. it was nice to have a fire and a moment.

<< she once was a true love of mine >>

i hope you will come visit me this year at the north country fair.

the children in bare feet are what do it for me. and the afternoon workshops where the performers team up and fiddle around on stage together and one takes the mike and says, alright, this one's in B, and from there they just wing it. they say, when you get to the bridge, jump! and you can sure squeeze a lot of music out of three chords and twelve bars.

and sitting on the grass at dusk as the opening acts tune up. and how one year it rained the whole weekend and that made it even better, splashy and muddy and the performers in communal rubber boots and how caroline mark therefore sang these boots are made for walkin.

it is my favourite of the summer festivals by far. it takes place on the longest day of the year and it is so far north that the sun hardly sets.

and it will be my birthday.

i am a star child. and i hope you will come visit.

<< if you're travellin' in the north country fair
where the winds hit heavy on the borderline,
remember me to the one who lives there
she once was a true love of mine. >>

stay beautiful, you and me both : )

the harvest (2) : lemonade

remove petals from poppy flowers. finely grind in granulated sugar.



prepare juice of four lemons. add lemon juice to petals and sugar, and mash. allow to stand.



prepare mixture of water and sugar.



strain lemon and petal mixture and add to sugar water. chill.



garnish and serve.

the harvest

today mo sent me out to gather wild poppy flowers that grow everywhere here, along the roads, in the overgrown ditches, lining waterways.


guess what we are making. just guess.

<< it doesn't haunt me like it did before >>

towards the end of act two, something happens to change the fortunes of the protagonist.

for me, if this has happened, it happened more quietly than i expected.

saying to me to sleep off the gin she touched my face, and then i said do you want to sleep in my bed with me, there being two of us in a room for five, and so she climbed into my gritty bed and we slept.

in the morning when she said, where did you come from, i said: some nowhere town.

in the evening she walked me to the goreme bus station.

as the bus pulled away under april rain, i wished i'd told the truth: i wished i'd said i'd fallen from heaven. i wished i'd said i was made of stardust. because i can speak so down about myself, little things that creep in and that i don't notice until it is too late, like that i am from some nowhere town. and i speak about my heart prosaically.

but my story is my own to tell, and i am what i make of me. and when i tell this story now, i say that i did not miss a beat to answer: where did i come from? i am just like that bird.

i feel lighter and more fearless.

act two, scene four: back in burhaniye. from here, downward motion til the start of act three. back home, my burning man ticket has arrived and i am making the plans i need to be able to ride my bike down to black rock city. i have found someone to transport my gear for me and all i had to do was ask. i am going to get there alone, under my own power, and what's more, strong and free. has omething in my fortune changed?

Act Two, Scene Four : Back in Burhaniye

from istanbul it was a half-day's drive in to burhaniye, though we had car trouble, as we are wont to do. the rev counter in the little alfa's engine gave out just as we were about to hit 200 on a straightaway. so we had to be towed, limping, into nearby balikesir, and from there picked up and brought home.

spring is kissing even cool burhaniye. today they winds blew and blew, tearing leaves from the trees, but it was warm in the sun. the flowers are in. the olive trees are reaching, not shrinking. wheat growing in the front yard of the restaurant, red poppies pushing up from surprising places, silvery lavendar in the herb gardens. behind the restaurant you can hear the scratchy meowing of two kittens beneath the woodpile, tucked into a corner beside the cement woodfire stove. the stove is made of cement that heats up every morning for baking bread. smart cat, that mama cat. the kittens are tiny. i gave them cream in a little saucer. they are too small to know what to do with it.

tonight we are at mehmet's restaurant listening to chamber music by mozart and dining on tripes. the tinkling harpsichord plays off the silkysmooth minced texture on the tongue, and raw baby garlic. it is good to be back.

black tulips

after the mevlana museum i rode the tram car to the bus station for a night bus to istanbul. an old man helped me on when my big backpack got stuck in the tram doors and everybody watched.

the bus to istanbul was stewarded by a man in an orange clip-on bow tie and a white undershirt showing through his white dress shirt, and a gold ring. he walked up and down the aisle bringing water in plastic cups with peelback lids like puddings, and instant coffee also served out of plastic cups.

whenever we stopped an attendent in yellow rubber boots would wipe down each stopped bus with a hose attached to the end of a long-handled broom. the hose ran and ran, leaving the asphalt wet and shiny. at the far side of the parking lot a tiny storebought playground with swings.

the bus had a 'fasten seatbelts' sign but no seatbelts. the steward walked up and down the aisle with a bottle of citronella perfume, dousing out perfume wearing a clear plastic glove. the PA made played annoucements that used Unchained Melody as background music.

morning came and an eight lane bridge took us into the european half of istanbul, over a bridge labelled No Bikes, No Pedestrians, No Horses, No Tractors.

to the bus station and from there in to the city on the #830. a short man with no hips rode part of the way: black pants, black tight t-shirt, black cap, black sunglasses, a silver ring. a gun: a security guard. wore a fancy futuristic wraparound watch of black leather and silver, to go with the gun.

i started to recognize where i was as the bus drew close to taksim square, near the hostel i stayed at last time. after a short period of waiting, grimey and hot, mo picked me up in the little alfa which has had a new paint job, and my time alone in turkey was over after nearly six weeks.

it was half a day's drive back to burhaniye. i will be back in the big city in two weeks. in istanbul the tulips are black.

worshipper of fire: in the mevlana museum

in the dim museum the music of the ney drips thick like honey. the wood floors creak.

the first thing you see is calligraphy on the back walls, the whole number ratios in the broad brush strokes, black writing above the heads of people. below, smaller pieces in evenly spaced frames.

the crowds come through in waves. some moments it is packed, other moments less so. in one of the quieter moments a woman unzips a prayer book and reads from it. a man softly chants. men and women hold their palms up and rub their faces.

there are stone coffins marked with stone turbans. melvana's tomb is the most decorated, with gold paint thickly applied over green and blue. i recognize the style from the plates in the ceramic workshop. there is a geometric basis to the pattern but the geometry comes from flowers and and leaves. so they are not perfect lines and shapes: and there is a wobble in the black outlines. this is the kind of wobble that would make me toss such a drawing of my own and not try it again. it is bright gold on dark, all up and down the arches and inside the dome.

there is a huge copper bowl, with patterns in bright and dark silver, used to collect april rain. there is a chandelier of glass with a single green stone in its centre.

there are flutes, stringed instruments with long thin necks and tinny strings, little drums, a twelve-stringed violin. under glass, rumi's cloak and his camelhair hat, its shape gone now. there are carpets and prayer mats, and a rosary with nine hundred and ninety beads of black wood on a rope.

glass vessels hang low from copper rods, chains, wires.

there are books. there is a huge, stark, imposing koran done in black ink, decorated with blue and gold lines, mostly empty space.

there an original volume of rumi's couplets, script on decorated pages.

there are the lines:

come and come again.
whoever or whatever you are,
heathen, worshipper of fire,
sinful of idolatry, come,
even if you have broken your penitence a hundred times.
ours is not the portal of despair and misery: come.

many people praying inside including one my age in a white hat and beard seen to pray longest and closest to the front: made me uncomfortable. i wonder if he blogs.

the last thing before you leave is a small globe under glass depicting what looks like the movements of celestial bodies. circles, ellipses, azimuths, ascensions traced in thin black lines on a polished orange wood sphere. then out into the sun where it is bright.

flavours of tulip

one day in konya

there are tulips everywhere in konya and their petals were still wet with dew when i started exploring the morning of the day i spent there.

konya is pretty and made me say wow for being so pretty. part of me wishes i'd stayed more than one day but part of me is glad i had to be quick and careful with my time there. i got up early. i got out early. i packed light, leaving what i could in the hotel reception to be picked up later.

the main street of downtown konya is called mevlana -- for mevlana celaleddin rumi, the mystic poet and dervish who made his home here. at one end of this street is the mevlana museum. at the other is the alledin park, a hill with a simple brick mosque at the top and ringed by tea gardens. along the main street there are men seated with brass and bristle brushes and all colours of shoe polish. vendors sell strawberries from carts, and these bruised yellow fruits that look like pears but weren't.

everyone is well dressed. most of the women cover their hair with scarves. some wear black from head to toe and cover their faces. the men wear wool suits, often with sweaters underneath, sometimes with wool hats.

it was the day of a tulip festival in a grassy park with many flowerbeds. to celebrate, courtly music by an ensemble of musicians in satin robes of green or red with gold and upholstered hats. the conductor made sweeping movements with a crescent-moon sceptre, ONE, two, three (and) ONE, two, three (and). a drummer used a padded drum stick on one face of the bass drum and a wooden drumstick on the other, to give one deep thumpy sound and the clickier rhythms on top. another played kettledrums with big movements. the winds played in unison -- two trumpets, two clarients and an oboe, all playing melody, with no harmony. harmony instead of colour: tulips and the green grass.

the mevlana museum -- all about Rumi -- was packed. a second, with a "clearly" compulsive patron, was closed for upkeep: unfortunate, though the electricians working there gave me tea. there was a very neat side museum that was a re-creation of a turn of the century upperclass house: portraits of scholars in libraries and men arm in arm in black and white; exposed rafters of dark wood, kilim upon kilim on the floor, with tread marks; low coarse cushions, machines with iron gears, a film projector, iron bells over the doorways; a musket crossed over a rabbit pelt tacked to an embroidered panel. dark colours and creaky stairs.

the mosque at the other end of mevlana street was simple -- four-way arches in the brick roof with evenly spaced columns going in four directions. when i went back outside it was picnic time in the park: everywhere people crunching seeds as they walked. men circulated with magazines of cotton candy hung from tall sticks, floating pink clouds over peoples' heads, and the sharp ripe snap of tulip stems as children gathered flowers into stubby bouquets. the bell and the clackclack of the tramcar that would take me that night to the bus station: one day in konya.

night before a day in konya

from goreme to konya, last seat on the bus, going up the step as it was pulling away. i caught an evening bus to get me into konya at night -- it is about a three-hour trip.

arrived in konya under a full moon. after weeks of touring tiny villages of a few hundred people at a time i did not expect konya to be so _big, especially since i'd read about how it is so religiously conservative. but it is big. took a minibus from the bus station to the city's main street: after a long time exploring dark avenues lined with shuttered shops a security guard walked my right to the front door of the hotel ulusan from where four of them were sitting outside the front door of their protectorate, flitting worry beads and drinking tea.

the thick-handed hotel doorman came down to meet me -- he was expecting me, i'd phoned from the minibus -- and carried my bag squeezing up the tightly winding staircase. there was a little cot tucked in behind the main desk which was done in laminate and rolled on wheels. he gave me my key, led me to my room, indicated the blue-tiled showers down the hall, made the sign for bed, and returned to the front desk without saying too much more. it was after midnight.

my room had shiny square floortiles that went right to the edge of the walls and were solidly gritted in and sealed with sealant -- a serious relief after two weeks of living in a porous stone building in cappadocia where i had to hang my food from the curtain rod because of ants. pale rose coloured walls and a polished wood dresser, and a little peach-painted lavabo with a marble top and the sink cut right in, with a plastic cup upside-down on a shelf. a chair for two, two pairs of slippers beneath, and on a table at arm's length was a plaster ashtray done up to be a chick dreamy in a rowboat, round bum but nothing more covered with a flowing cloth: doubtless drifting out over the aegean to lesbos to see for herself what goes on there.

breakfast was a cripsy pancake, a chocolate pudding and a nice big cup of tea, all of which was brought to me without me having to ask. among the thumbed paperbacks on the common-area bookshelf, no english books except an agatha christie. the light fixtures were all bright, low-watt fluorescents. one night in a lovely little hotel.

<< deafening noise; transient joys >>

i am in a _cute little hotel room in konya (more to follow) having an after-midnight dinner. the spicy red tomato spread i bought in ugrup is like the peppered walnut spread i tried at sundance, and after days and days of bread and tomatoes it is making my tongue positively sparkle. as well i have olives and green beans and fruit and even: chocolate covered apricots. i wish i had shared them in goreme. i do. all i can do now though is to enjoy them doubly.

today was my last day in cappadocia, which i have learned means land of the beautiful horses. i spent two weeks there. when i arrived it was still cold at nights -- we needed an infrared heater in the dorm -- and there was hardly anyone there. now it is hot and clear, days, and the tulips have bloomed. i was there for the very start of the summer tourist season. on my first night the town pub had neither gin nor tonic. when i went back on my last night they had gone to the city for both (oh dear).

i have learned much about backgammon, a few things about turkish too (like how to ask if a store sells cheese -- peynir varme?), and about exploring, and of course a few things about myself and my perhaps splendid silvery wings.

i am sad to go. today for my final day i went and visited with the artists at the ceramic workshop where they make beautiful things. when i arrived the owner of the shop was using a steel compass to scratch white circles into a painted blue plate. we drank tea. they fed me green bean soup. when it was time to go they gave me a tiny two handed wine jug to see me off.

from there back to the hostel to say goodbye to the people i met and to kate (who breathes more slowly than i do when she is sleeping and i am not, and who plays a mean game of backgammon, and who asked me "where did you come from?" and i said in earnest, "i am just like that bird") and also to jade, the burner who brought me here. from there to the bus station where i got the last seat on the bus, to leave under desert rain.

look what they made me at the ceramic workshop, black paint on a white clay tile. for no reason at all except that cappadocia is a magical part of the world. and the raisins and mulberries are excellent.

craft in goreme

pictures from a morning walk:

how was it for you? (2)

in an effort to put my finger on whatever nutrients i am missing, whatever it is that is making me so endlessly peckish, today in Urgup i picked up a big tub of yoghurt, for calcium, and spicy tomato spread to have on bread, in case it is complex flavours that i am missing. i will have it tomorrow on a crusty loaf with soft cheese from the market, the kind with the imprint of a screen on one side, where it's been pressed and drained in a sieve.

on the way back, ali, restauranteur who speaks french and wants to give his restaurant a french name, served me tea and kemalpasa sweets to thank me for my suggestion of Notre Dame de Cappadoce.

tonight i am being given a proper hot supper since it is my last night here: potatos, rice, soup, salad. i have found chocolate covered dried apricots.

mustafapasa for two

today an easy day trip with kate, my backgammon partner roommate, to a little town called mustafapasa. the garbage trucks were coming through on the wide brick streets and announced their presence with a loudspeaker on the truck.

there are three churches to see outside mustafapasa and we managed to find two. then we wandered the town looking at the houses with courtyards behind high stone walls, and under arches wood doors with iron fasteners to pull together and lock, and loose piles of thorny firewood.

twice hearing I Just Called To Say I Love You, once from a radio playing in a restaurant, once from a radio playing in a car.

it was fun to have someone to explore with for a change and it definitely took a load off because the truth of each scene didn't escape me, it was just kind of there in the words between us, in a way that i haven't known in a long time, travelling alone.

near the bus stop is a mosque with a gazebo outside with faucets and marble benches and shower slippers, and in the garden nearby a few hyacinths and a handful of dandelions. a restaurant with salt and pepper shakers done up to be tomatoes, and a cup of tea that our waiter insisted we have for free.

then from mustafapasa to urgup which is a city like goreme but bigger, with fancier hedges lining the sidewalks and a bronze statue of a man and a woman holding out grapes from a basket. the men in the tourism office wear suits. there is a levi's store but there is a little antique copper jewelry store playing opera from a reel-to-reel. in the copper shop, each ornate necklace and bracelet jingles when you touch.

today and tomorrow

today in goreme the sky is so blue the green leaves of the budding trees seem translucent against it, and sheets and pillowcases gleam white on the line between the two biggest trees in the hostel garden.

there is a breeze.

this will be my last full day in goreme. next to istanbul to meet up again with mo, then from there back to burhaniye. that will be just about my last stint in turkey. from there into the unknown.

herded through the underground city

it was burning hot by the time we stopped in a little town called Derinkuyu to visit the underground city there, but as as soon as we got underground i wished i'd brought another layer. the rock was hard and cold to touch, the air cool and damp. there were evenly spaced electric lights with signs warning not to touch the wiring.

again, fast. this was a thousand year old sanctuary cut two hundred feet down into the rock and we spent perhaps twenty minutes moving through it. the passageways were tiny and close. you had to hunch and when you did your back would scrape the roof if you were not careful. sometimes the stairways were so narrow you could not turn around. there was a kitchen with an oven cut into the ground and a chimney about, storerooms with stone troughs, a winery with stone trays with drains to use for crushing grapes.

at the very bottom was the church, with a pitch dark passageway that led out into the stone and doubled back: the confessional, the voice in the dark.

the air had a smell i couldn't put my finger on. damp. near the ventilation shafts warm dry air spilled in and moved the dust on the ground.

i wish i'd had more time to sit and picture what life would have been like there. the city was a sanctuary for early christians to use to hide from roman persecutors. you could see the alcoves cut in for lanterns; you could see the rough crosses scratched in the walls. the city could accomodate thousands of people; it had its own wells, covered now with iron grates. persecutors would poison these wells to drive out those in hiding.



the truth of this scene: trust thyself. the tour just just barely worth it, but it was definitely not my style. i could have gotten myself to this cave city on my own and spent as much time as i liked here: it was the most interesting part of the tour and it was over altogether too soon. before any time at all we were herded back up to the third level past the school, past the stables nearest the entrance, and from there back up above ground where the light was blisteringly bright and the sun was hot.

how was it for you?

today i could feel i needed some green vegetables, not just bread and tomatoes and cheese. there was a little farmer's market in town, so, green beans.

the little green things in the picture that look like grapes are called chala. they are a relative of the peach. they are hard and sour.

everything shown for four lira (about three dollars) and half of that was for the apricots.

also, _it happened. about once a year i get a _craving for a banana. yesterday it happened. i do not normally like bananas but these cravings overpower me. one banana. it did not live long enough to make it into this picture. it was chock full of potassium. it was just right. the earth moved.

artzy shotz

this is one of the churches they took us to on the whirlwind tour. nice, and shady inside, but the waterbottles and the vandalism really do detract. also, being led around on a tour takes away most of the potential to poke your head into unexpected places and say wow.

places such as these:



an oil press and a dusty millstone with cracked grains on the ground beneath. how cool is that? but we just sort of went in and moved on. everyone took a picture. notice that mine are arty.

<< your eyes don't look into mine >>

yesterday i went on a rather rushed tour through and underground city at Selime, from there to the Ihlara valley which is left over from the eruption of mount Hasan, and back, on a hot hazy dusty afternoon. definitely rushed though and our guide, who had a little punk black leather and chrome studs thing goin on, did not give any information that i could not have figured out myself -- except that they call it the pigeon valley because the people who lived there would cut little bird houses into the clay for birds to use. then they would collect the droppings for use as fertilizer.

i figured it was useful to get me out of the hostel and also to introduce me to some new people. and they got us lunch, lentil soup in tin bowls and sizzling entrees cooked over coals in clay plates, and oranges for desert. we ate down by the windy river that runs through the ash brown soil and the volcanic rock, the tall narrow trees that are the ihlara valley.  

then from there a siesta for the hot hour-long drive back through little villages with mosques at either end, houses with garden walls piled out of loose stones, school children doing drills with umbrellas on the asphalt in front of their schools. sometimes only one house on each of the four horizons, the turned over soil rich and dry, and ashen plants, but also the impression of rust: rusting street signs, rusting gates, rusting farm equipment idle in the fields.

then when we arrived back at the hostel i was anxious to get off and out of the hot bus. i forgot to say goodbye to my passing acquaintances on the bus. so, not quite a social experience. not quite an anything.