tradeshow-edition tourists' map

i said i was waiting for the other shoe to drop and it is dropping.

my final day with mo.

this trip i have

given some and taken some

seen some and hidden some.

i say,

too much to see on one trip but

what is life? --

unfolding and folding a tourists' map

with thumbnail pictures of places i did not see.

a final bar of halvah from the corner store.

astrid sings upstairs.

my bags are packed

laundry is dried

and everything i brought to give to mo i've given.

i am going to

do better in montreal with what i have learned this trip.

i will be braver, stronger, purer

and i promise you, more concise.

that i am evolving

is second hardest lesson i ever have had to learn.

not sure what else to say now.

i still love you. still miss you. who _are you?

but please someday find me.

someday track me down.

teach me to give

a proper goodbye.

"so what would you like for breakfast? a rabbit? or a goat?"

from pammukale, astrid and i took an overnight bus back for one final night in burhaniye. breakfast now includes summer fruit jam and also the lovely thick spreadable cream that i afraid i won't be able to find back home. for dinner, rabbit.

roses to see me off

still waiting for the other shoe to drop re the big farewell. plenty of little things though such as how ruchan pinched my cheek to say goodbye and how mo and i tended to his roses in the sunshine of the afternoon before i left in the early evening, and the little travel backgammon set he and ugur got to see me off, along with a jar of olives and a bottle of olive oil for travelbound picnics. my last day in burhaniye came and went fast, me doing an express load of laundry and not having time to dry it, packing it damp, still working out of mo's small travel duffel bag instead of my big dusty travel backpack, the plan being to come back to mo's within the week as a final stop before istanbul and the out of turkey and on to europe. none of this quite sinking in.

before i knew it i was waiting across the highway from the restaurant waiting for my bus to izmir to come and collect me, watching the sun go down over the aegean for very nearly the last time.

last thing before i went: turgay, mo's number one man around the restaurant, running across the road way to catch me before my bus arrived, something small and delicate in his big hands and his suit jacket flapping in the wind -- rosebuds to see me off. mo has asked me to record: in life he would like to be remembered for his roses. all along i wanted to have some kind of flower in my hands to give to astrid when she arrived. these roses did not quite make it to izmir, wilting in the hot bus. a reminder: not to give my heart away too readily.

<< the more i give to thee / the more i have >>

today, back to mehmetalan and the campsite for a spring time wedding.

i like weddings.

i think the girls will be there. but this time i got nobody to impress.

got to run.

shots of the restaurant

mo has got some new lenses for his camera and ruchan has been using them to take promo shots for the restaurant.

after the love has gone

after the goat roast was done everything packed up we drove home over the bumpy dirt road that jostled all the grease and chunks inside of me and when we were home i quickly hit the hay. when i awoke it was dark and the power was out and i didn't much get up. we were out of fizzy aspirin.

i am everyday learning. now i can say i have eaten a goat (although it was a sheep). and i am better for it.

in my paws, baklava.

it is the day before the goat roast.  

this morning i was up early, before mo, after a night of watching guitar instructional videos that i loaded onto my computer before coming here, knowing it'd be a long time i'd have to spend with no instrument of my own to play, but there is a guitar at the campground where we are spending the night.  today i went into town to get a string for it, and also some baklava from the kipa.

today we drive to the nearby village of mehmetalan which is backwards from mo's house, across a dusty field, through the town with the stone-age olive oil factory, and into a ravine that runs along a creek, then across the creek and down to where the creek joins the river.  there is a forest cemetery on the way in but water from the creek runs over the road to get to the river, so souls can wander only that far and no farther.  

i took my vacation in west edmonton mall

does this wash? the logical end point of thinking that one _shouldn't have to travel half-way around the world to find happiness is that it should be possible to find happiness in the MEH back home -- such as taking a month-long holiday in west edmonton mall: sleep and dream in the hotel, feast in the food courts, bear witness to the movies, fall and fly in fantasyland, struggle and strive at minigolf, be gratified by the massaging armchairs, feel the pain and longing of the glassed-in flamingos, and among the shoe stores find stillness and be touched by ecstatic bliss.

um not too long before i have to leave mo and he and i will carry on with different _phases of our lives. i thought for sure by this time i'd be dancing, jumping singing, crying. but i feel pretty steady and pretty collected. waiting for the other shoe to drop, like.

man does not live by bread alone.

from the Dharma Bums:

<< I wondered why Han Shan was Japhy's hero. "Because," said he, "he was a poet, a mountain man, a Buddhist dedicated to the principle of meditation on the essence of all things, a vegetarian too by the way though I haven't got on that kick from figuring maybe in this modern world to be a vegetarian is to split hairs a little since all sentient beings eat what they can [...] [...with some onions, garlic, a little pepper and salt...] [...]." >>


1. last night moving over the grill to mo's house for lamb chops and kebabs.



2. tonight, again tripes. actually, to be precise these are not tripes, which are the outsides of the small intestines; these are the insides of the small intestines. they get wound up like a rope on a skewer and pressed together into, like, a sausage. mince and cook til crispy.





3. working on a shortlist for this week's goat roast.

...and waking.

astrid kerr has me repeat --

every morning i wake

immaculate --

sometimes with an expletive added for emphasis.

today mo and i went for a further tour of olive groves, heading down a hardpack dirt road and from there through a tiny little passageway between two whitewashed houses, barely wide enough for us to fit, that emptied into the town square with the same grey bricks in the road that i have seen everywhere in turkey, interlocked bricks that make a grid about which the road veers and curves while the grid stays square. we stopped at a tea shop where everyone watched us approach and where mo seemed to know many people and where everyone wore rubber boots but us and one guy my age with a scruffy beard and a ché guevarra shirt, who wore ankleboots tied over his ankles.

there we were joined by a man with a knife clipped to the back of his belt and a cell phone to the front who took us out to look at the trees; but we did not go far, and soon we were turning the truck back around and heading back to the tea shop for round two; this time sage tea. across from where we sat a tile design in the brick wall very interesting, and a mosque with brick and mortar minarets made with decorative bricks too.

back to home with a headache something fierce from the bright sun. went home to nap and recover; mo gave me fizzy aspirin dissolved in water; he tended to ugur too, as she has a fever.

this has been a heldback week, and it is coming up on my last week here with mo. that makes me a little bit sad. but every morning i wake

f___ing immaculate.

and things happen because they need to happen.

astrid arrives may 12.

upstairs now to pack for an overnight trip to denizli and the salt flats of pammukale, and by the time i am back maybe i will have unstuck enough to figure out how to thank my generous host.

faith

there is a song called The Faith.

<< a cross on every hill,
a star, a minaret,
so many graves to fill --
oh love, aren't you tired yet?
_so many graves to fill --
oh love,
aren't you tired yet. >>

i love that if this poet had his way, when you opened up the dictionary to look up faith, this is what the entry would be.

the moon has risen and the dog is howling along to the day's final prayer call.

<< the blood, the soil, the faith >>

pictures by mo:

the harvest (3)

the egyptian blue lotus.



what are we making with _this one?

<< 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.

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.

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.

<< that's no moon... it's a space station. >>

overnight i am going on a bus to sundance campground outside a seaside village called tekirova.

it is far out in nature and there will not be many people around. i will be staying in a treelodge -- a wooden hut out in the forest and elevated.

this mini-trip is coming at just the right time.

it took a lot for me to start to say, i know the kind of person that i am, rather than, i know the kind of person i can be. the image i have is of walking a path and i can either walk straight or i can stumble and trip and generally veer to the left, which over the course of a hundred paces takes me into the bramble.

but i liked saying i know the kind of person i can be, because then i have an excuse for not being that person today.

recall that it is midway through the conflicts of act two that the protagonist faces the bleak moment -- the point from which it seems impossible to pull up. like in star wars when obiwan kenobi dies and luke says, i just don't know how i can go on.

anyways i am looking forward to some quiet time. there will be birds there. and maybe i will go horseback riding and get far far from people. i could get to like horses. very steady.