last day in istanbul (4) : finally!

<< baby i been waiting,
i been waiting night and day.
i didn't see the time,
now i waited half my life away --
there were lots of invitations,
i know you sent me some --


but i was waiting for the miracle to come >>

last day in istanbul : << i'm standing on a ledge / your fine spiderweb >>

last morning in istanbul, last morning in turkey.

this morning a blasting loud mambo gave tearing in through the hostel window from the apartment next door, played for five songs, lifting trumpet triplets, bells and drums, then stopped as quickly as it began.

a little anxious to be leaving turkey and to start making my way back home. two weeks left. dreamed last night of cat.

more to follow.

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:

<< i loved you for your body >>

i have seized control of the hostel sound system and we are listening to leonard cohen with a vengeance.



this feeling, it hides in the dusty rafters.

today to help defray some of the cost of my extended stay in goreme i helped the hostel owner put insulation up on the inside of hostel roof. pink styrofoam insulation now covers the inside of the dining area. the TV was on while we worked, turkish MTV : video after video of kids dancing in clubs and spinning and singing -- it's all dance music nowadays and sped up vocals, quick -- and often it was a disco floor that they were dancing on, blinking squares; and silver lights and booty shorts and spikey hair and big black eyes -- and what i loved in my old life / i have not forgotten.

sweet smokey nostalgia. but i have started to connect: that nothing to hide from, maybe that means nothing to run from. and now someone has put on All you need is love. this is exactly how it happened.

<< i thought i saw an eagle / but it might have been a vulture >>

skull bleached in the sun, jaws nearby, spine bones scattered, ribs and limbs nowhere to be seen.

just the facts, ma'am (3a) : the building with mosaics

the most impressive building in the ruins of olympos is forgotten, now, dug out and restored only in 1992 and known simply as the "building with mosaics." the building with mosaics is deep in the forest. you get to it by walking down a long stone walkway.

who can trace the canyoned paths
cattle have carved into time,
wandering from meadowlands to feasts?
layer upon layer upon layer
of autumn leaves are swept away --
something forgets us perfectly.

it used to be a two-storey building with a courtyard. now it is rubble. the tile mosaics all lie smashed and broken on the ground. the domes and arches that held up the second level are broken too.

the mosaics are done with very small square tiles, fitted into swirling or angular geometric patterns, gummed onto big slabs of stone. they are caked with a thousand years of dust and dirt, and grown over with grasses.









very neat.

that is what i tell myself. truth is i walked right over something important, didn't even notice. i would have missed it if i had not read the informational plaque on the building's other side. it said: the floors of the building with mosaics once were decorated with motifs of vines, as well as birds. i had not seen any birds in the tiles. so i went back and looked more closely and there they were.

living is easy with eyes closed -- a theme of my time here at sundance.

the stone walkway carries you out beyond the building with mosaics, taking you past a creek where reeds grow tall and where frogs sing as the sun goes down, back to the main site.

<< the only window of that miserable apartment faced into the ventilation shaft >>

three quick notes on strength and fear.

1 - this morning i am sitting here typing instead of going out and living.

2 - yesterday i hoped for rain so i could stay in at sundance instead of going to see a town called Demre.

3 - the day before i walked and slugged and traipsed my way up long, HOT, thankless mount olympus (more to follow) instead of thumbing a ride with passing cars. because i am strong and can climb any mountain, right? even mount olympus where the old gods live. but also because i was afraid to hitchhike.

i have been getting late starts these days. that is another story, but let me tell you this: when i worked at a job i didn't like, i would find any excuse to put off going out in the morning -- fold laundry, do dishes, take down recycling, anything -- which i attributed to the fact i did not much like my work then. so i quit -- strong, right? -- and travelled and came to turkey but i still find myself getting late starts and i am not sure what i am hiding from now.

it might rain today too. i spent five minutes only on this entry.

<< things and their images and things which cast no shadow >>

<< i tried to leave you, i don't deny / i closed the book on us at least a hundred times >>

the stove is giving us problems.

black tar has started to leak from the chimney pipe that runs along the wall above the cabinets in the living room.

as well, damned if you can get the thing to light. last night the stove was puffing smoke out forever. you'd speak to it in stern tones. then.... *puff.

tomorrow we will perform surgery. some part of the chimney is plugged. angioplasty.

T minus 6

leonard cohen is touring this summer and the list of venues goes up midnight march 11....


i'm _so there.

<< and who shall i say is calling? >>

mo and i used the flight back from ankara to make a first high-level blueprint of our stove fuel cell. this design calls for olive pits, parrafin-soaked olive pits, and coal, all of which we have experience working with.



next week, design and prototyping.

the power of pink

i have a pink cell phone which i like to use because motorola's marketing department doubtless says my demographic's colour is gun-metal grey, not bubblegum pink, which makes me very subversive.



they sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
for trying to change the system from within

but my phone's SIM card has self-destructed. cell phones here have to be registered at the central agency and mine was not so it turned itself off, and i had to go and put my name on the list.

we had to go all the way to the turkcell central office to do this. mo's driver took me. he was buffing the car when i went down.

thirty minutes out on an eight lane expressway.

the turkcell head office has a big steel gate crowned with razor wire, and a metal barricade in front also wrapped with wire. we drew up to the bar and stopped. two guards in black uniforms, sunglasses and crewcuts came out. the driver spoke to one. the other took down our license plate number and wrote it on a clipboard. the driver and one guard talked while the other guard ran a sniffer wand around the undercarriage of the car, listening to its output through headphones. a third swabbed the door handles with a cotton ball which he took into guard's booth while we waited. the car radio played turkish pop.

after an interminable wait the guards waved us through. two of them lifted the barricade out of the way.

we drove into a huge and mostly empty parking lot that cameras panned. we parked close and got out. then up the four steps, down a long cement walkway past two huge statues of men done in bronze, and under long banners that said turkcell.

in through the heavy metal and glass front doors, into the grey concrete structure with almost no windows.

inside it was dim. fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. i followed the driver's lead, placing my wallet, passport case and phone in a plastic tray to go through the x-ray machine. i removed my shoes and sent them through as well, and stepped through the metal detector. on the other side two guards in body armour and submachine guns stood stiffly. one held the leash of a dog that sat at his feet. the x-ray technician was a woman with her hair in a bun. my plastic tray came out the other side. the two guards looked disapprovingly at my pink cell phone, hands on their weapons. it looked more pink than ever.

i reached for my wallet and phone. the guard stopped my hand.

"dur," he said, and i knew what he meant: stop.

then he indicated the viewfinder on my phone and said: "kamera?"

i looked at him.

"ka-me-ra?" he repeated, one syllable at a time.

i nodded.

he said, heavily: "kamera yok." camera, no way.

the driver spoke to him. the one guard talked to the other who held the dog. the dog did not move. the first guard, my little pink phone in his huge fist, picked up a phone, pressed a button on his radio, and said two short sentences. then a moment's wait, a response, and two more curt words. then he said to us:

"ok."

they sent us over to the glassed-in reception desk where the driver explained what we were there for. the woman behind it talked through an intercom with an impassive voice. we signed for visitor badges. a man came and escorted us up, through the electronically locked turnstiles.

they took us into an office with crystal trophies etched with cyrillic lettering, a portrait of mustafa kemal, and an orange hardhat with a headlight on top of a plain grey filling cabinet. a plodding clerk in a turtleneck took my information down, crosschecked my passport and typed everything into a ToughBook like they use in afghanistan. she printed some forms. i signed, initialed, signed again. she explained the terms of service to the driver. finally we were done. she handed me my phone which gleamed metallic pink under the lights.

back down the stairs under escort, cell phone in hand and pink. past the reception desk where we gave back our badges. past the two guards who this time were expressionless. the dog growled and made for me, but the one guard yanked him back remorselessly. the black dog eyed me and did not look away.

the driver led me out and back to the car, stealing two drags from a cigarette on the way. he tossed it mostly untouched onto the brown grass. then back out through the fortress walls. again they lifted away the metal barricade and crossed our license number off their clipboard. then onto the expressway. grey sooty cedar plants in the median.

we were so far out of the city that the driver took me along for two of his deliveries, one to a hospital, one to a non-descript warehouse. from there back into the city centre through the tunnel so hazy you can't see the end of it.

luckily i had the foresight to save my cell phone welcome message to the phone, not the SIM card, so that when i powered it up again after being dropped off at my destination i was reminded: that marianne loves you. it was after one by the time my day got going. all i wanted was to be out in the sun and the cool air. turkcell pretty much sums up my experience in ankara.

<< baby i'm still hurting -- i can't turn the other cheek >>

at the moment we are in a city called Bursa, first capital of the ottoman empire. now it is the carpart capital of asia minor, which is lucky because we have had trouble with the alfa romeo and have to get it fixed. last night the emergency brake froze or broke in place and we could not get going again after stopping for dinner. we spent the night in a thermal spa hotel where the water is very hot but the bathtubs are very small. played backgammon over dinner -- durem, which are like meatballs rolled in heavy pita bread, and spicy tomato paste and spicy peppers. my room is small and has a slanted roof. there is a double bed and a single bed. the bedclothes are rose. the patterened wall paper is mauve. there are sliver and glass light fixtures. furniture is again dark wood, and a tiny table and a mirror, and a wardrobe. the floors are new laminate. i see blue sky but also some cloud. it is cold, always cold here.

today we will try again to make it to burhaniye. this whole trip has been an adventure. adventures are about character and character is about change.

often i say i wish i was more sparkling, or more irresistable, or purer of heart, or more upstanding. or more aware, unable to be played, like Sam Spade when he said, "oh right, your story. that's ok, we didn't really believe your story, we believed your two hundred dollars."

the reason i like the experiment with the cards and the numbers and the pairing off is because that is almost what love is. the people who hold high cards are swarmed. the people who hold low cards are brushed off.

in love, if you discover you get attention, you either aim high because you realize you have your pick, or you aim low because you realize you hold a high card and good love is scary. if you get no attention, you learn to aim lower and lower til someone will take you.

i have buzzed with the rest of them around the pretty and the easy and the stretchy, but i am not sure anymore that those things are what the number represents.

i wish people couldn't get enough of me and my unique and beautiful pain. i wish i felt like i held the high card. or that my number was a nice-looking number like 96, or traced out something geometric like 95 which is almost the golden ratio. or something musical like 92, intervals adjacent to the octave. or a square number like 81, or something lucky like 77, or something mathematical like 60.

i like love songs that hold together when you substitute the woman in the song for the divine, like you can in this one: i look for you in everyone, and they called me on that too -- i lived alone, but i was only coming back to you. so play this number game with the divine. in this game only you know your number and no one else will ever see it. and you can make your number whatever you want. what is the most delightful, fragrant, lyrical, gentle, loving way you can imagine your divine self to be? lift up your eyes and love in the most pure way you can. where did i learn to aim my heart so low?

self-portrait at the trade show

i rather dislike tradeshows. they are dishonest. what is important to me? not wasting and not taking things you don't need. not using people. not talking crap for the sake of a free cookie. therefore a trade show is a bunch of distractions.

mehmet has brought me along with him to the 2008 Tourism Affairs Bureau trade show because he doesn't want me in istanbul alone after what has happened, and though i think that's a little over-reacting, i have decided to stay with him. part of me wants to be here. it is two days of easy living, eating other people's food and drinking their tea, coffee and also alcohol, and all you have to do is smile and look interested in their pamphlets. it's crossed my mind too, although i hate to think this way but then why do i do it, that i will be able to waste and gorge myself and drink too much and basically pillage to get back at the universe for having been pushed around in the basement of a lousy bar in istanbul. like that time i made out at the dark back of the club with the girl i _knew was married, and downstairs as i was leaving i saw her fighting with some guy viciously -- this in general retribution for what was done to me in love. i sometimes say: every creep for himself.

so. at the trade show.

the organizers have covered up dust, bits of tape, loose nails with rolls of red carpet that probably won't be re-used.

women in black suits that mean they have power and money, and long tall boots also black.

two girls circulate in bikinis handing out pamphlets and i notice their imperfections.

two dogs on display but i don't know what they are being used to sell. one is a huge great dane. it looks drugged.

there are four skylights per hall that let in blinding sunlight. you can see the thick cigarette smoke.

rubbish bins overflow with plastic, and you can't stop progress.

every picture of spa services looks the same. it is always a woman being massaged. it is always painted manicured nails doing the massaging. the face-down woman is always blissful, eyes closed, and always topless.

two women touch each other in a picture of a turkish mudbath.

booths selling fitness equipment have pictures of girls in a-cup sports bras or knotted t-shirts. they are using the exercise machines and they have not broken a sweat. you can see the lines in their tummies. but those lines are doubtless photoshopped in and even if they are not, that just means they hold their tension in their bellies, instead of, or as well as, in hips and shoulders. there are cookies on the tables below the pictures, white shortbread made with butter.

badly adjusted EQ through too-loud speakers. blahness of DJs. "dance music." promotional videos endlessly on repeat. an accordion player sits hapless across from a car stereo display.

the persian tourism booth has pamphlets with sparkling blue beads on strings and i take one, then sidle my way around for a second which i take leaving the pamphlet behind as if that makes it better.

i trade the souls of trees for a truffle.

people walk around in national costumes because they are paid to.

poorly translated english abounds, and tired prose.

people crush forward to reach the booth that is giving away free ice cream. long line ups at a donair booth waiting for a free lunch. i go right on by saying: there is no such thing as a free lunch. i say this knowing that today i am not on the spiritual path i want to be on but i still expect to get off easy, free karmic lunch.

i take several little boxes of turkish delight.

there is a booth that has beer. there is a wine tasting booth. people make long line ups blocking from view the silver jewelry on display in the neighbouring booth.

at the georgian tent they have me try four of their favourite kinds of vodka though i have no real intention of going to georgia. here are genuinely wanting to share. the first kind was the best. after i'd tried three kinds more they gave me more of the first. when i brought mehmet to "meet" them too he enjoyed it, genuinely enjoyed it and asked them questions, and inquired if anyone could help him with his grapevines. different than my motivations.

at a bar that drew my eye for having bartender girls in swimsuits but IN FACT they were dresses made from that nylon-y material -- i take an uneeded napkin with my raki.

later i see the bikini girls posing for pictures with the opiated great dane, as if to say, i want a man _this big.

at the day's end i park myself at a purple-velvet tango bar in full view of other companies' brands, and near the chocolates. i deign to talk to people standing near the appetizer trays. the waitresses wear fishnet stockings, lipstick and eye shadow. they pour me more south american wine, unasked though i give them clear signals that i want them to, putting my glass a half inch too far from my hand, out of my orbit and into theirs. each of the chocolates comes on a plastic sword and it bothers me not when i accumulate four, five, six of them. ornamental plastic swords that will go from the box to my hand to my mouth to the counter to the garbage and from there someone will basically dump them into the river that sustains us. oh, but it's dark chocolate.

so this was the trade show. more precisely, this was me at the trade show.

<< and you want to travel with her >> (for real this time)

today has been fun so far... i am now in istanbul. very comfortably settled at a nice hostel that is very clean and close to the action and wow there is a lot of action.

heard Suzanne on the drive here, how perfect and circular is that.

my hostel is very nice, clean, and with tea always on and boiling water, and they have a deal with the restaurant next door for cheap fish and chips.

won't dwell too long writing here. have to deal with the uncomfortable fact that the whole world is just outside my door waiting to be discovered...

<< and you want to travel with her >>

it is 5:00 pm in Burhaniye Turkey, the sun is setting and tonight i am going to Istanbul on an overnight bus.


goodbye little town! i am going someplace very different.

after the flood

on friday mehmet showed me more about olive oil production -- an old art, as old as civilization. when g-d destroyed the world in a flood, noah knew the waters were receding and that a new chance awaited when he sent out a dove that returned with an olive branch. this is how important olives are here.

we saw the very large and the very small of the olive oil world. we saw a factory that dwarfs mehmet's -- it is the size of a costco, big conveyor belts drawing crateloads of olives into grinders, pulverizers, shakers, clear plastic piping leading through separators and from there into stainless steel silos of oil the size of a tanker truck -- outside, one lonely garbage bin spewing white smoke.


then a factory in a tiny little village up a hillside where donkeys still drew carts through the streets, where they ground the olives up in a huge stone grinder such as you could toss a villain into, James Bond style, and from there the olive pulp got scooped by hand into big sacks stacked under a hydraulic press which squished them and let the oil run out the sides, where it was collected in stone troughs and carried into basins. spigots allowed leftover water to be drained out from under the oil which floated on top. after the bags were pressed, a boy my age removed the crushed olive gunk -- again by hand -- into a wheel barrow and, getting a running start, he pushed it up onto a huge olive compost pile outside, bigger than he was -- they used wood planks to let him climb up on top of the heap to. then he'd dump out the waste and go back for more.

it was a team of perhaps five -- their shirts, boots, fingernails, all encrusted with the stuff -- they wore army surplus pants. a white dog slept in the sun beside a chair, a bag of oranges, a knife and an ashtray.

we stopped as well at a third plant where there was also a museum of olive oil production machinery. big nineteenth century machines powered by steam.

today we used the factory kitchen to make breakfast -- poached eggs with sautéed dried red peppers, yoghourt sauce with garlic, and pizza toasts on bread that was hot when we picked it up at the store. i ground the garlic in a copper mortar and pestle. cheese, too, and rakis -- lion's milk. we used the industrial dishwasher to clean up. three minutes and we were done.

<< from the eye up on the pyramid >>

around me people are preparing for the olive oil festival, but with mehmet off attending to guests and his uncle not arrived yet, i am really at a loss to communicate and it is hard to offer to help, harder still to understand what they are saying back. so i am hidden in mehmet's office. i am starting to understand a bit more and yesterday i had written out for me the verbs to be and to have, to come and to go, to give and to take, to find and to want.

Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.

on the restaurant wall is a painting done on tile. everywhere here there is art done with tile -- checkerboard patterns in the floors here, patterned tile woven into more intricate designs, bands of colour divinding the room. this art though is too intricate to be done with a pattern. it is painted by hand in mintey greens and burgundy reds, and blue. it is a representation of an olive tree, five tiles across by twelve high. the tree starts as a single trunk, blue flowers at its base and red blossoms. moving upwards it quickly breaks into four branches trailing. the branches wrap around each other and up giving the impression of a figure eight. one of the branches terminates low. others fork again, wrapping down as well as up. the feeling of circularity. there are leaves and fruits along each branch, olives done in purpley burgundy. mehmet tells me the difference between green and black olives is their ripeness. that makes these the ripest.

at the top of the picture the branches have forked, finished and reforked to give seven shoots, seven sprigs of leaves. red motifs fill the space up to the top of the topmost tile.

a bus of tourists has just arrived; the staff here carry around trays of glass cups of tea on saucers with sugar cubes. the smell of roasting meat for this afternoon, the indistinct sound of conversation in two languages, neither of them english, and sighting american money.