twelve : in the Tokali church

right outside goreme there is a spectacular church cut into a rock. this is like nothing i've ever seen before. the blue and the orange. the cavernousness. the echo of footsteps on the wooden walkways and of cameras beeping into autofocus.

the legend explaining the frescos is in the entrance to the church. forty-seven scenes are listed, numbered and mapped onto a pictoral representation of the church's interior. you have to mentally flip and project the number scheme to connect it to the pictures on the underside of the domed roof. it took me a few tries to find the picture representing the temptation of christ, which is a story that i want to learn more about. it happened in the desert, after all. it is third in, on the bottom row on the left.

all the holy figures have halos, radiant light. only christ has a halo with a cross. count the crossed halos, in from the left, one, two, three, and that is the scene.

on the left there is a short greeney black figure. on the right is the tall halo'd figure. he looks over his shoulder, back at his tempter. his body faces right. you can tell by his feet that he is turning: one foot faces out, half turned. his other foot is turned right as if to lead the step away. christ has his finger raised in scorn. his other hand holds a scroll. he wears a blue tunic and sandals. nearby are what look like loaves of bread, and two-handed vases.

he is turning, not turned.

but the scene that moved me unexpectedly: when i turned to leave, over the vaulted passageway behind me: a picture of the risen christ, arms outstretched, angels above, his twelve disciples folded before him, on the night when he appeared to them and took his seat among them saying, peace be with you.

i am pretty sure jesus, whoever he was, did not rise from the dead. like, come on. but these men felt something. they must have.

it would have come to them like this: twelve of them around a table for thirteen. in their minds the picture of their friend nailed to a cross, set against the burning sunset atop a hill outside the city. that much probably did happen: the pointing fingers and the jeering crowd. and now, twelve around a table for thirteen, sitting hands folded hearts heavy and wondering who will be the first to speak. and after all what do you say? then out of the heavy quiet, out of the uncertainty comes a feeling, not even a voice: peace be with you, and the quiet carries on, but different.

that feeling. it came to them then. it can come again. nothing in my belief system makes me think there can be no such feeling.

Uchisar : on top of cappadocia (and from there under the ground)

in cappadocia there are the valleys, the flats above, and there is Uchisar.

uchisar rises up over the flat lands and was once a defensive fortification. you can see it from everywhere in cappadocia except the deepest valleys. the wordless rain and wind have ground this fortress down until it had to be abandoned. the streets of the town stretch out below, up to the bottom of the rock castle. you can climb up through the inside of the castle, looking over the city: and on the top of cappadocia there are graves.

all of the cave churches you go to here have graves in the entrance, and there are always big graves and small graves, their coffin shape made imprecise from erosion, and often pistachio shells in them now.

from on top of cappadocia you can see the surrounding farmland divided into plots, with rows and rows of trees and low dark plants and ashbrown soil. you can see all the drip-shaped valleys, and one deep one cut with layers and layers of sediment. that is the pigeon valley where birds fly in formation. in the vista there is not a lot of green: there is some, but mostly it is the uniform low brownscraggle left after the goats move through. in one part the soil is yellower; elsewhere whiter. behind, the red tile rooftops of uchisar and a man chips at a stone block to make it fit in a wall he is working to repair. on the land you can see the shadows of the moving clouds, and the patterns of weather that the birds float on. people live under precariously balanced rocks as i play forward the rest of my time here.

<< in praise of Character in bleak inhuman loneliness >>

<< 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.

forward motion

three things.

one. submitted the final homework assignment for the class i am taking online while on the road. not only is this the final requirement for this class, this class is the final requirement for my degree with the exception of my thesis (see picture of albatross, right).

two. decided on a return date.

three. cleaned up at backgammon this morning.

<< 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.

<< be in love with yr life >> -- i insist

she was a girl of about seven in black leather sandals that wrapped around the ankles.

"'ello," she said -- british accent. she was standing on the step in front of a little hostel, eating from a package of chocolate raisins. i was coming back with muddy shoes from a day of walking in the valleys around goreme.

"do you want some candies?"

i took a step towards her. she was higher up than me, on the steps.

"you can play if you have some candies."

so i had some candies. "what are we going to play?" i asked.

"football."

she gave me one raisin. then she gave me two, then a handful.

"wait," she said. then she went and got a red plasticky ball.

"what's your name?" i said.

"elif."

"skylarl. say it again?"

"elif." she pointed to the sign in front of the hostel. she pointed to a sign on the hostel's wall that said: Elif Star Caves. "see that sign? that means my name."

which was very sweet.

so we started playing soccer on the brick street where horses went (you could tell by the, um, ...).

shortly she went to get sturdier shoes, then she came back. she wore white tights and a pink dress and had her black hair in a long braid. and now she had pink shoes as well. her father, who called her eli, came to play with us.

i feel strange even writing that verb.

but play we did: and when a car full of people staying at the hostel next door arrived, she chased after them and drew them one by one by the hand til there were seven of us playing. and she ordered us around. you stand there! now pass the ball to me! no, my turn! and when the ball got stuck under her dad's car she grabbed a big stick and whacked it (and some of the undercarriage) free.

she definitely liked the attention, like she was used to having hostels named after her. sometimes she would punt the ball and make her father run for it.

when two backpacker girls appeared on the scene walking down the other side of the waterway, she jumped on her bike and headed off to get them to come play too, leaving her father, me, and five american tourists tending the red plastic ball. but it was getting dark then and her dad said it was dinner time and it was time for the others to go too, and time for me to go. it was getting cold. i picked up my backpack and headed home walking down the road where she was riding back.

"i have something for you," i told her, and she stopped and put her feet down.

since burning man last year i have carried with me a little plastic case of business cards, those perforated cards that you can get and run through your laser printer, then tear out to make into individual cards, ten to a sheet. only i used them in my typewriter and wrote out fortunes and used them to tip at playa bars and to give to interesting people i met, such as the girl in the temple who was crying and who caught my eye for reasons that i wish i could go back and change. but anyways i have a few handfuls of these cards left for people here and i figured i would give one to elif, who would keep it forever. right? because i am so sweet and smart and sensitive.

"do you know what this says?" i said. "it says, be in love with yr life. you know what be in love means, right?"

she held the card in her hands and stood straddling her bike. then she held the little typewritten card out and tore it in half, then in half again, and again. then she dumped her bike down and ran over to the waterway and threw the fluttering pieces in.

"you shouldn't litter," i told her.

then she picked her bike back up and pedaled off. "come back tomorrow," she called back to me -- british accent.

hello from goreme

in the ceramic workshop

the owner of Göreme Seramik doodles on the faded vinyl tablecloth as we chat. he draws a careful circle as he tells me about the craft of ceramic painting in cappadocia. he fills the circle with six quick arcs as he tells me how his father was a painter, and his brothers. he ornaments the arcs with evenly-spaced dots as he tells me there are fewer and fewer people to carry on the tradition. he draws a carnation in the centre.

then he rises to attend to customers, leaving me at the table with his student and his brother.

there are no fewer than five compases on the square table. one, with a special arm for use on ceramic, rests on a pink sponge covered with drips of white clay. there is a plastic tub of sugarcubes and a packet of french cigarettes under a lighter decorated with turkish eyes. there is a turkish-english dictionary, and a box of tea glasses that maybe holds pencils and pens, the cardboard scribbled on endlessly. squares of tissue paper, gray with graphite, crinkle in the breeze that comes through the open door.

the student, to my left, wields a blue brush against a white plate. the plate is very white. it is a special kind of white clay, imported from Kütayha, which is where the owner and his brother are from. the white plate has a double border of two blue circles pained on, even and round and smoothly done. within the circles is a slightly smudged grid of tiny pencilled-in dots. nearby is a glass teacup that holds blue paint. the painter dips a chisel brush in and spreads dark wet paint onto a white tile, over lighter, drier blue paint from before. then he picks up a tiny fine brush, dips it, pauses, and begins.

he holds the plate in his left hand, anchors the pinkie of his right on its surface, and draws the first stroke. then he turns one fifth of the way at a time and makes four identical strokes to make the first lines of a star-shaped flower at the centre of the pattern. this is a design based on five.

he does the broad lines first. from each of the five petals springs the stem of another flower. five more flowers curl in from the outer border.

he uses his brush like a calligrapher, going from thin to wide using angle, rather than pressure. he paints without thinking. he angles in the stamens of the flowers, steering the brush sometimes over the guide-dots, sometimes between. he sees me watching and when my eyes widen he makes a gesture to say, so-so.

to my right, the brother works on a plate painted with an undercoat of flat gray. he works with his eyes close to the point of his instrument, which is a squeeze bottle so fine it uses a stick pin for a cap. he is doing a pattern based on woven lace from the women's craft bazaar up the way. it is a pattern based on six, eight and sixteen. there are six white circles around one in the centre, making a six-way set of arcs inside a hexagon; then eight leaves in a wider circle beyond. then there are sixteen curving triangles.

the brother works one segment at a time, unlike the student who works arc by arc, round and round. the brother draws in the thick, wide curves first, then ornaments them with spirals, then puts down hundreds of dots to fill the space, so that there is as much white paint overtop as there is gray underneath. every few points he cleans the tip of his instrument on the sponge, leaving white drips. when a segment is done he looks up, blinks, and reaches for his tea glass. after two segments of sixteen, his tea glass is empty and he refills it. he fills mine.

by this time the student has finished and it is time for his plate to dry so that more detail can be added in later. he carries it over to a stack of half finished plates, with bubblewrap between them. he gets tea, refills mine too. then he rubs his hands, and starts on the next piece. there is a stack of three more on the table, a dozen more by the door. he bangs the table as he sits down again: tea sploshes.

the desk behind the stove has a jar of pencils, a calculator and a ledger book. there are a dozen unfinished pieces waiting there, candlesticks and waterjugs, done in blue unglazed and unfired, with preliminary circles put down in white, more perfect than perfect. when the store owner returns he takes a book from behind his desk and hands it to me. it is a huge book navy blue book with no title on the front cover. the title page inside states: the pottery of ottoman turkey. it is an inch thick, pages glossy.

the student finishes all three of the white plates on the table before i am done turning the book's pages.

plates hang everywhere on the walls of the store. the biggest ones hang highest up, the smaller ones lower. they are organized by style. one wall is all white and blue and geometric. there are all kinds of variations on the tree of life. there are tulips, carnations, roses. there are brighter, more colourful, smaller plates nearest the door -- "for business," brought in from kütahya. also near the door are clocks, and fish and butterflies in orange.

from the crosspieces that divide the room into four hand spherical ornaments on knotted cords. there are shelves of vases, ashtrays, ceramic birds, turtledoves, ladybugs, slippers, cats. there is exactly one cat that has a paw raised to bat in playfulness. the shelves fit precisely in the arched windows. there is one shelf of doublehanded wine jugs like i recognize from the anatolian museum, terracotta with animals and lines in black and dots of red. there are open shelves in the centre with tea and coffee cups, bowls and saucers in pastel colours. there are urns. there are birdbaths.

the turquoise pieces get a room almost to themselves. there are greens and browns as well. looking at the array of them it is clear how green and brown are related colours of blue -- you can see it, you can almost taste the sweetsavoury glaze. many of the pieces have brushstroke calligraphy with geometric designs around.

my favourite by far is a plate with six circles woven around one central spiral. the spirals are vines and there are tiny, even leaves. it is blue on china white.

there are thousands of hours of work represented in this shop. the owner tells me that at night he does not bother to bring in his display pieces from out front.

satori in paris ; karoshi in turkey

to my loyal fans. saw this today on iht.com:

They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop [...]

A growing work force of home-office laborers, and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment. [Bloggers] are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have DIED suddenly.

[...] Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging [...] BUT friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

The pressure even gets to those who work for themselves — and are being well-compensated for it.

[...] "At some point," [said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog,] "I'll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen."

oh dear. someone please tell my baby that i love her.

goreme : a sketch

goreme has two poles: the bus station at one end and the mosque at the other. separating the two is about a five minute walk.

there are three lanes that run between the two ends. on the one side is the roadway with a median painted with flaking yellow paint. in the middle is a sitting area with picnic tables and wrought iron lamp posts, trees that aren't yet in bloom, and torn branches on the cobblestones, a sign perhaps of a difficult winter. the picnic area is flanked by pines and cedars. beyond, on the other side, is the brick walkway, with shops and carpet boutiques.

out either end of the main street you can see the desert badlands. the traffic lights at the bus station end flash yellow except during morning and evening rush hour when then cycle. little metal signs point the way to small hotels.

the buildings here are mostly stone, white stone with dust that sticks to my dark clothes, and pink granite for ornamentation, like in arches over doors. the stone bricks have quarrymarks that look like they were make with a fork, like on the top of a peanut butter cookie. on every roof is a satellite dish and a solar water heater. the power lines run low.

tourists walk with plastic bags of bread and fruits. i recognize the lithuanian girls from my hostel, wearing sunglasses now. an old man and woman walk hand in hand. a man rides by on a horse. the sound of rusty bells from a carriage running on wood wheels behind a donkey.

it is a tourist town. the cafes and restaurants have placards in front in english. one states, in caps, if you don't like, you don't <pay>. many restaurants with clay pots on display out front, for baking turkish dishes; the pots blackened and sometimes cracked.

each store has a bright plastic sign above the entrance, and often posters in the windows. camera shops will transfer memory cards to cd. drugstores advertise batteries. many shops sell inflatable neck pillows. most stores have postcards on racks out front. the deals get better further from the bus station; five postcards for one lira, then ten; further up, eleven. restaurants have shaded patios, tables with tablecloths, wicker chairs, potted plants. music coming from one.

outside the little food markets, coolers with bottled water, cartons of juice, bottles of Efes, tubs of ayran. blue plastic bins stacked with fruits and vegetables. 6's of 2L coke bottles in shrinkwrapped plastic. in the windows there are glass cases holding loaves of goldcrust bread. iceboxes hold ice cream treats under sliding glass tops; milk and chocolate pictured on the front. inside the markets, shelves of chocolate bars, cookies, tea, dish soap; deli counters with cheese and sausage.

construction: stacks of marble slabs, piles of broken brick. sometimes, the sound of rock pieces dumped down a chute into a dumpster below. the sound of hammers. a pile of mismatched granite blocks with paint on mismatched sides.

there are a few cars parked in both directions along one side of the main street. further up, the picnic area ends and a parking lot begins, mostly filled with white tourbuses. the sound of motorbikes and tractors.

at the edge of the town is the cemetary. trees grow out of sand. i hear a bird i have never heard before: fast chatterclucking.

often in the mornings it is rainey; often in the afternoons, sunny. today is such a day. i am in the hostel common area. the wind comes down the chimeny of the common area and bafs the styrofoam that has been cut and fitted to keep out the draft. from the kitchen i smell them cooking eggplants and sweet vegetables.

in the caves

today while exploring the rose valley -- where the soil is pink -- i climbed up into the caves, people's homes from back when life was different.

strange! nothing left behind at all from the people that lived there, except for broken down straw on the dusty ground. there were however plastic bottles and beer bottle caps from people who climb up to watch the sunsets and put the moves on their girls; in one of the caves, an entire rusting hibachi.

bits of the floor scuff free under your feet and there are loose pebbles in the walls, but i could not crumble the caves where they did not themselves want to be crumbled.

most of the caves i looked at had one only room. some of the more complex ones had low walls, platforms for sitting or some that looked big enough for sleeping. one had a second room you got to down a long narrow hallway, and steps to take you up to one of the higher levels, and a hole cut through to let light in from above.

the caves all had alcoves cut into the walls where the inhabitants would place candles or oil lamps. one cave had a hearth with a sooty fire scar and clay blocks where you could place meat to cook it.

i climbed up into one cave, pulled myself up into it: but it was no ordinary cave. right away you could see it had an interior door with a cross painted over it in red, and caverns cut into the ground that you could see were once covered with wooden planks. through the entrance under the cross and you were in a cave church, with a high vaulted ceiling carved, painted, and four pillars, cut into the rock like those chinese lions with freerolling spheres in the teeth, the whole thing cut from one piece. at the front was the altar and there was a little soot mark on the wall like the ghost of a candle, and yellow wax dripped onto the rock beneath like its earthly remains. red painted triangles and crosses on the walls.

to live in a cave. very possible for life to be different.

<< in and out of our argument, a butterfly >>

wild things live in the valley around goreme. there are these tiny little lizards that you never see -- you just see hear the flit of their tails as they disappear from your sight. there are wild pigeons that fly in formation. there are burrows everywhere. along the side of the trail i saw a cluster of downwhite feathers on the ground where a fat bird had been eaten. on the horizon i saw a dog with light fur but a dark nose and paws -- like you'd imagine a fox to be, dark tail. and deep clawmark tracks cut into the sand, footprints pressed in deeper than mine.

the whole area around goreme is a national park with hiking trails marked, and many more that are not. you can walk as far as you please, which i like. the only people i saw in the valley were turkish women in flowing clothes gathering herbs and pruning trees with white petals, same white petals as i saw at sundance and that get _everywhere, and one man leaning on a pitchfork.

there are two kinds of soil in the valley, soft sandy stuff that moves under your feet with each step and rises up behind you in tufts, and harder chalky stuff. every year the rain washes away more of the sand, exposing more and more of the hard rock that now rises up in towers that drip down at the top, rolling and flowing like magic mushrooms
in the valley, up and down, floop, your eye tracing up and down, never resting.

everywhere you look you can see doors and windows and steps and walls from where people have dug houses into the mushroom formations.

there are houses impossibly high up the rock chimneys, sometimes a hundred feet up. these have had to be abandoned. the valley erodes every year: gradually it lowers so much that it becomes impossible to climb up into existing houses, so people move their houses lower down. you can see doors and windows left behind all the way up the rock spires.

there is a lot of dust in the air here. the valley seems to say: that nothing lasts. there are white and yellow butterflies.

for supper i had guiltless raw honeycomb from the farmer's market, where men run their fingers right through big tubs of dried beans to check their texture -- a little booth selling soldered copper pots for boiling coffee, another selling bananas and tomatoes, another pistachios and salty nuts, another packages of tea from the supermarket.

at present sitting in the common area of the Rock Valley Pension where i am staying in goreme. in the air is the smokey apple smell of a nargileh. two lithuanian girls are sharing it as they work their way through a bottle of wine. there is an empty foil chocolate wrapper on the table in front of them. it is me and another boy who poke at laptops. the girls talk quickly. bubbles sound through their waterpipe. they are getting more and more emphatic with their gestures and they are talking with more and more energy. they look each other directly in the eye. none of the boys makes that kind of eye contact with them. they toss in not a word of turkish, nor english.

the TV over the clock is tuned to turkish MTV. they are playing Moby.

why does my heart feel so bad?
why does my soul feel so bad?

yesterday i felt down for sure. today, less so. now playing: paris hilton's latest single.

Act Two, Scene Three : into goreme

in goreme the single mosque's prayer call echoes, then echoes again in the eroded valley. you can see how water has dripped and flowed for a thousand years.

arrived this morning after an easy midnight bus ride, though nothing guaranteed it to be easy.

from sundance they saw me off with brown bread, not white, and a mouth-watering spreadpaste made from walnuts, red pepper, hot pepper, black pepper, like, twelve cloves of garlic, and juice of a half lemon, blended til smooth, _so delicious. i been to the river, i been baptized -- you can take me to my hangin' ground.

left sundance later than i intended. luckily antalya was closer than i thought. found a ticket in the bus station where tour companies with their banner signs clamour for attention like flowers in the bee-keeper's field: departed from platform three. chided for putting my feet on the seat, meant i had to stay sitting straight forward and upright with no way to curl up and rest; still, slept most of the way. used halvah as a sleeping drug: so creamy and rich and heavy in the blood; ate it from the blade of my camping knife. woke to the crunchy plastic-on-plastic sound of the bus hitting something on the road and gasps from the people in the front seats. the driver and another man going down and out in front while the four-way flashers clicked; soon back on our way.

then into nevsehir, chilly and scrubby, as the sun rose. onto a smaller bus, stewarded there by travel agents with plenty to sell. hot air balloons over the valley.

arrived in goreme around 8:00 am. from there walked down the main street to Hard Rock Travel, next to Café Turca, to meet with jade, who will see me square; friend of a friend from burning man. potential today to leave many things behind. flocks of birds: I'll Fly Away.

goreme is alien landscape, turkish badlands. many of the hostels here make the promise of hot water, guaranteed. the signs done in capital lettering have capital i's with a dot overtop, a quirk of turkish alphabet (there are two variants of i, with and without the dot). there is a square where twice a week is a farmer's market. there is a music shop with guitars.

got set up in a hostel, the second in a room for five. my bags in one corner next to a red hard plastic suitcase tagged from air france. when i arrived: on a chair an open cosmetic bag with eyeliner pencils and a bottle of perfume; on the radiator an open make-up compact with severe colours, reds and blues and purples; a tube of "dentifrice blancheur" in the bathroom.

the room itself: stone brick walls; a wooden door with an iron latch; thin scuffed carpet, feels like stone underneath; translucent curtains; someone's watercolour riverscape hanging in an alcove cut into the wall. an infrared heater on a stand pointed down onto bed number four where la francaise's clothes lay folded. the walls, carpet grey; the wood of the door and windowframe crimson and peeling.

went for a wander to get food, first meal i will have to make for myself in i don't remember how long: bread, cheese, tomatoes, chocolate, apricots, squishy candy. the shopkeeper gave me a sweet carrot bar with nuts for desert. back at the hostel, coffee made in my travel mug with boiled water.

the sound of children outside my window, looks onto a road, a ditch, a stoneblock wall, a driveway with soccer, houses with solar water heaters. as i leave, the door frame low: i bonk my head.

tea and toast

final breakfast in sundance. a day for them like any other: wiping, humming, the cats sleeping.

they have brought me a cup of tea made with herbs that grow on the hillside. i offer a toast :

to a hard life
and a glorious death.

tonight a midnight bus. onward to scene three: göreme.

<< i came so far for beauty >>

i cannot stay forever in turkey and at some point i have to be moving on. i am considering my options, unexpected options, as to where i could go next.

in my life most of what i want is to be beautiful, sparkling, radiant.

look at these pictures of people from burning man, what do you see?



i'll tell you what i see: i see beautiful souls behind beautiful eyes.

the eyes have it. that is why i have always wanted to be able to use pigment, paint, gold and red, to make my eyes more beautiful, and my soul too. but that is impossible to do with glasses. and contact lenses are damn near impossible on the playa with the dust and the howling wind. and so i was never able to be as beautiful at burning man as my soul felt.

while at the trade show with mehmet i took a brochure for an eye clinic in calcutta and have been toying with the idea, while i am over here, of going to a clinic in india to have my eyes done. today i made the appointment -- seventeen days from today.

their facility is state of the art and the equipment is exactly the same as that found in western clinics. indeed, many of their doctors trained in the west. they offer pre- and post-op yoga. they can adjust your eyes down to within 2% of normal vision and i will be healed in time for burning man.

and the price is right -- 30,000 rupees -- about $400 per eye. although it's not for the price, it's for beauty and self and furthermore for the true meaning of airline peanuts, all these things i came here to find.

and i will burn so bright.

<< aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper? >>

it is coming to the end of my time at sundance.

my time abroad has been extended by one month which puts us square in the middle of this story. it is ten weeks now that i have been gone, and as of today i have been away for longer than i have ever been away before (again).

this has been an amazing, and an unexpected stay at sundance where the sounds of nature just about drown out the sound of the prayer call from the nearby town. it is pretty here and still, and everything waiting there for me to just discover it, and a lot of it i did. many days i prayed for rain so i could stay in the dining hall, MSN'ing or putzing, instead of being out in the world trying sometimes too hard to "discover" it. i stood ambivalent on top of turkey and was very pleasantly surprised in dug-out little churches with faded paintings. some days i overnapped. i hiked. i walked. i trudged. i chased the chickens.

i learned the words: honesty, hope, faith, courage, integrity, willingness, humility, love, justice, perseverance, vision, service. daily i fed the black cat a bit of cheese even though i know i probably should have not.

i had the hugpounce emoticon sent to me -- these two yellow smiley faces, and one creeps up behind the other, pounces and hugs. crazy kids these days and their fancypants animated smileys, but i did appreciate it. i am far from home.

i did little things that are good for my soul and my karma, i really did, but i feel i deserved to be bitten by that dog. leave it at that.

and i have healed. and although i was so swollen that for a while i had no lefthand knuckles, i have healed now and i have learned a new song on the little blue guitar and it is very much fun.

and littler things. like being able to ride the highway buses, and when it it time to move on i will be able to buy my own ticket, orient myself, and make my way to the cave cities of cappadocia.

i have acquired a taste for creamyrich halvah, but you still can see my bottommost ribs. that is how i like it.

the flowerbeds have been upturned by hand and shovel now and the earth is wet. today you can see the water running off the land, through the tall grasses and over the feet of the contented ducks, into the creek that flows to the sea but runs backwards when the moon is rising. it is close to nature here: you can see the actual cycles. i am a little sad to be leaving.

yesterday a bird flew smack into the window of my cabin and was stiff and motionless on the ground when i went out to see what had happened. she was tiny and very fine, soft feathers, on her back in the wet leaves. i sat over her for a long time wanting to do something but of course there was nothing to be done. this morning her body was gone when i checked again. maybe she was just severely stunned. maybe the cats got to her. anyways time for me to leave sundance now, and what i have done here i have done.

a hemingway's breakfast

this morning Edith Piaf came singing through the glass windows of the kitchen into the dining room as i ate breakfast with the cats.

sounds

ruchan's girlfriend produced and shared a big bag of sunflower seeds and for half an hour you could hear people crunching them.

now the sound of rain.

jigs, double jigs, hornpipes, reels and airs.

be reminded

efandim: a tale of rescue and pepperoni

here is everything i know about the man -- his name was fatih -- who rescued me last week from olympos after i missed the last shuttle bus out of the fardown valley and tried to walk out up a dark forest road under a full moon, with bats flying around my head, screeching birds and howling dogs echoing, and the sound of power saws tearing through firewood or maybe tearing through the arms and legs of victims like me, found lost and wandering and taken back to dark, wooded cabins with dirt floor basements.

fatih did rescue me. i wouldn't have made it out otherwise, though i intended to try.

he had to be rescued himself.

he drove a little honda motorbike whose headlight went brighter or dimmer depending on the engine speed. he would drive me up to the highway provided we could stop for him to get warmer clothing first.

zooming back down the gravel road we hit one pothole straight on and the bike shuddered. then we went around a tight corner and the back wheel gave a little bit and the bike chain came off and became caught in the metal frame and bent the gears of his bike and mangled everything. the chain was totally jammed, and two of its links had split, and the little tools fatih carried in his saddlebags could do nothing.

he phoned for a friend to bring other tools and we waited. luckily i'd brought more layers because i could feel the cold air pouring into the valley, moving past me and down, as the night settled in.

we moved the bike off the deserted road. every car that passed -- about one per ten minutes -- slowed down to see if we were alright. we waited about an hour for fatih's friends to arrive, another hour and a half for them to effect the repairs.

one old man with glasses on a string around his neck and a tiny little cell phone parked his car in the shoulder and waited with us the whole time. he let us wait in his car that had plywood seats with thin ratty cushions overtop. when fatih's friends arrived he produced a ratty set of rusted iron tools from his car and offered advice. only when he saw that fatih could start the bike and that it worked was the man satisfied that we were set to go.

by this time it was nearing midnight. by this time i'd long missed the last highway bus to get me back to sundance. luckily mehmet was just an hour from where i was and was heading to sundance the next day, so he came and got me and we went together that night. fatih gave him directions. in the meantime he took me to his house. he would have let me stay there overnight if i needed to.

"do you like eggs?" he asked once we'd gotten his kitchen warmed up. "and pepperoni?" they were organic eggs, the yolks very yellow, given to him by a neighbour, and that hard dry sausage that stays out on the counter.

his house was tiny but it sat on a big stone patio and overlooked six thousand square metres of fruit trees and vegetable gardens stretching down the hillside. he used to work for a pharmaceutical company, he told me, but he'd had it with city life and he moved out to the country. hard to give up many things but he said he'd gotten used to it. the only thing, he said, was that he missed his son, who stayed in ankara for university. but when we got to his house there was no one waiting for him and you could tell no woman lived there.

the stove was in the centre of the room. the tv was off to one side. there was a radio. there was a backgammon board. no oven, just a gas range on top of his washing machine. his laundry was spread out on the sofa and the desk to dry. there were bottles of cleaning supplies behind the sink. on top of the microwave, there was a plastic container of perfume.

his bedroom door stayed closed. the floor was tile. he offered me his own slippers.

we ate on a plastic table he brought in from outside and covered with a cloth -- omelet with pepperoni and lots of butter, yoghourt, a salad made with red peppers and hot peppers, bread which he toasted whole loaf on an electric griddle, honey.

he drinks a turkish kind of tea with bergamot. mo had a cup too when he came to get me. then it was off to sundance and safety.

this is all i know about the man who rescued me -- that, and that he rescued me.

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.