There are too many cats in Istanbul. Mangy nappy stray cats with patchy hair and lazy lopes, teeming hoards of licking cats with ringworm and garbage glows. And in souvineer shops there are shirts with Ist(Christian cross)a(Star of David)nbu(Islamic crescent)l written on them, or a silhouette of the European and Asian sides with mosques interspliced with massive crosses and Jewish stars though I'm not sure when the last time I saw a synagogue with a star twice as big as the building resting on top. There is clearly an image the city is aiming to portray and mostly a lot of people don't want to talk about it.
I was sitting at a cafe yesterday, feeling a little tired, dejected, wondering about all the different sides of pursuit and self realization - considering the implications of travel and freedom, the suffocating sensation of loneliness and second guessing one's own intentions, when I was suddenly so overcome by a desire for life that I nearly jumped out of my seat, ready to run off and get a tattoo of a mosque on my arm and spray paint graffiti like Miro's later work all over the walls, and to dance and bask in the Turkish smells, and build wings of glass and gossimer and fly up in the air where I could dive and drink in the skyline and the pounding feelings of an urban center with its dreams and flavors and crooked pasts...and I was shaking with excitement and started writing furiously, so much that I couldn't read a page (I'm reading Independent People by nobel prize winning Icelandic author Halldor Laxness) because I kept dropping the book to return to the pen.
And I kept returning to a phenomenon I've been utterly startled by many times in the past before: the many sides/enthusiasms of an individual that are constantly warring, bursting within him or her. I'm here with roughly 3 weeks before I need make it to Beirut, completely free to pursue in my own way whatever I feel. And I've got this bracelet around my wrist given to me by my friend Radha, monk in the East Village, and I know that I'm here to investigate the great monotheist religions that were born and raised around where I am now. And other times I look down at dirty folded pages of paper and remember I wanted to write, or to read, or to dive headfirst into words and pages and ideas and some such inanities, or else to talk talk talk to strangers and life-lovers, to hear the ways of their worlds and dutifully recall it on pen and paper and megaphone it out to the world abound.
And sometimes I'm a dreamer and believer, and sometimes a stone cold nihilist with polemics about the meaning of culture in the age of mechanical reproduction, sometimes a road following fatalist (hitchhiking is an incredibly powerful force in the way of bringing out the fatalism of an individual). I can be a rainbow, careening over cliffs, effervescent in midair, rocking from this to that design or chaos, never knowing where I stand or what I want. Moving from rapture in the shadow of the blue mosque to fuck this I should just be at home in a comfortable bed in the company of comfortable friends and family members.
You see, this isn't coming from a loneliness or dejection that has sprung up moments after leaving home. It's the everpresent continuation of past experiences and ongoing questions. Last summer, I hitchhiked from Finland to Bosnia with Kate Ray for part of it and alone for the rest. The questions grew and I had miles and miles of roadspace to think about them. And ever since then, being in New York, being at home or in Hawaii or in Canada or Dublin, the questions remain. This thing about place and purpose while working or studying or traveling, it's an easy metaphor for the simple act of living and I drown in it so easily. My own mind is like a swirling primordial pool such to the extend that when asked what I dream about, what I believe in, what I think of value, it is such that I can't give a straight answer, or else I can but it is contradictory to a few moments earlier. It was that terrible inconsistancy that send me academically towards sociology, but it is so incredibly present in the face of ultimate freedom.
So here I am then...On the road with 3 weeks of unsurity spread out upon that road leading to Beirut - safety, obscurity, purpose, structure. Until then, I can meet people, party, study, meditate, chase God, deny It at the bottom of a bottle of Raki, do everything and nothing, complain, feel sorry for myself while on a trip that many people said they envied, feel incredible and dive headfirst into the breathtaking everythingness of it all. Who knows. I want to be a writer, so I shall track how this all goes down, looking mostly forward to the moments when I can type and truly engage in that special kind of way. (Yesterday, at my cafe, paying more for a shot of coffee than a very tall cup in New York costs, I remembered the joy of writing and suddenly I had something to look forwards to -specifically - and my day turned around).
A few final notes. 1. Apparently there is a tick problem here right now - 200 dead by a deadly virus. I mention this only to create suspense. The problem is not in Istanbul...it's in the open country where I'm heading in a few days!!! 2. Absolutely nobody can tell what race I am. Very funny...some think I'm Turkish (until I look at them in confusion when they talk to me), most try speaking to me in Spanish, the guard at the Blue Mosque who was denying entrance to tourists because of prayers, almost let me in thinking I was Arab...all in all, ambiguity can be a very powerful position. I only wish I was a better actor and could play on it instead of getting shy and mumbling some answer in English. 3. Like I said, I'm reading Independent People right now and I've noticed how easily my writing style gets affected by what I happen to be reading.
Here's an excerpt I like:
"You're a liar, a liar, a liar," screamed little Nonni, laying into his brother with clenched fists as a tangible argument for the existence of another and better world."
This is a good example of the style it is written in:
"The men sat down, produced their snuff horns, and proceeded to discuss the weather with the deep gravity, the scientific restraint, and the ponderous firmness of style with which this topic was always hallowed. A general review of the weather during the past winter was succeeded by a more minute analysis of the varying conditions of spring, with a comprehensive survey of the lambing season and the conditions of the sheep and the wool, followed by an examination, week by week, of the summer. One corrected another, so there was no lack of accuracy.
Anyway, I wish you all the best and send my love,
tcm
4 comments:
sounds like your doing good TMoe. use that ambiguity to your advantage, fool the security guards and trick those ticks.
Much Love,
-Patrick
I’d get along very well with said gangster.
That comment on foreigners is laughably true. Though in the absence of foreigners, I think a kid or a pet can work, and even an artist might do in a pinch.
I like that passage with Nonni, a lot. I’ll refrain from commenting too much on the construction of identity because, sadly, this is all I do all day. Complain about concepts, get excited, feel limitless, crash, feel isolated. In a million varied inorganic forms. Sociology can do that, and as a consequence sociologists have nothing to offer each other but sympathy.
I’ve got more to tell you, but it’s too self-centered for commentary, so I’ll send you e-mail.
5 Ways Travis’ Stuff Has Come In Handy
1. To aid in stealing half my home when I visited Massachusetts last week, with your suitcase.
2. To line our roof and encourage trance states at our social gathering tonight.
3. To line our roof during finals, when Lauren, Ana and I tanned on the roof.
4. To help me search for new and accurate words, even while texting.
5. To create a bed for Mike, when he slept over.
cheers,
M
(babywhore.blogspot.com)
My brother, a possible young writer of 22, and I had a discussion when I was las with him, about writing, which applied to life in general. But it was about story telling and how we live for telling and hearing stories.
And based off this and your post, I have two things running through my mind. The first being, i hate people who do things only to get a story from it. The second being, on my road trip around the south, i occasionally found myself convincing myself to do something because I wanted to be able to say to my children, "When I was young, I hid in kenny chesney's hotel room." These two thoughts are a bit contradictory, and I have yet to synthesis the two. But there are my present thoughts on writing, do what you will with them. Except do not get the wrong idea, because I am an avid reader of Mr. Moe.
*the band moe. played in pittsburgh last week.
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