Uselyssely Unreadable Blue Book of Echoes

I haven't left yet.
It's sneaking up on noon and I'm sitting on Katie's bed tapping into this laptop, sipping Turkish coffee instead. I told her I was leaving at dawn and woke up at 11. At least I feel rested. Before I go, I want to describe a few things, make them as clear as I can as much for the world as for myself.

I am afraid.

See, part of me is wholly aware that I can stay here in Istanbul in comfort until June 16th, and then I can take a bus straight to Beirut, check in to school, avoid all danger, all cold, sickness, disease, fear, etc...and also the whole journey of discovery and growth. I realize at this point that I have epic-ified a little 2 week trip that plenty of others have taken with far more dignity over the centuries ahead of me. But each passing year brings an entirely new environment and so space changes with time in the same way time changes with space. This is no longer the enchanted beginning of the Silk Road that fables of magic lamps and Forty Thieves float like smoke from a hookah across and red fezes or three-foot onion hats ride up over crowd sights and fields of cafes. This is now the EU applicant, the heir to Ataturk, where Kurds and Armenians are second-class citizens and Taksim Square, a few blocks away was, a few months ago, 5 minutes from a PKK terrorist attack that would level it with thousands of people (Katie being one of them). This is a time air-conditioned buses take foreigners with Japanese-speaking, German-speaking, French, Italian, English, Spanish, Chinese, and Russian-speaking guides from spot to spot and food, lodging, transportation, and even some entertainment is all included. When I tell people I want to visit a Sufi monastery, they laugh and point to a museum with a 30 lira nightly performance. Dervishes are an attraction, not a spiritual necessity.

This is the age of mechanical production. The bazaars all carry the exact same mass-produced souvineers, in varying sizes and colors with price tags and English-speaking merchants ready to haggle for the nostalgia of it all.

This is a different world than the one that stood in this exact place 10 years ago, 20, 100, 1000, 2000 years ago - before Constantinople was known as the New Rome.

But I'm scared. I've bounced back and forth between confidence, excitement, daring, a supreme joy at the possibilities of discovery. Utter depression for the changes the place has undergone (from what, I can only romanticize and invent) and the blase blase nature of the globalized world. If something is comfortable and convenient, it reminds me of America and makes me sad. If it's less so, then it's just uncomfortable but not better. Only if it is the stuff we dream about when we think of foreign lands is it any good and even then it is all a weak illusion. The question is: can we defeat illusions and expectations, destroy disappointments at finding the world exactly as it is (all in all not to different from any other capitalist country "West" of here), and open ourselves to a true experience that gives us want we need, alters what we think we want, and leaves us...Satisfied.

Here's a story.
Katie was brought here to teach English to a rich man's kids. She lived in his house and he was an awful tyrant. She couldn't step outside his walls without telling him where she was going, with whom (contact information), what route she would take and when she would be back. Then he forced her to be a nanny as well and she had enough. She confronted him and he became furious, firing her, forcing her out of the house in the middle of the night, witholding payment for her month of service until he knew she was out of Turkey, and threatening her with the mafia and violent repercussions. She was homeless with one friend to run to (whose number she luckily had on a piece of paper because he revoked her cell phone and all the numbers in it on the spot), scared and depressed. She spent the next few days from morning til night in Internet cafes, crying, telling her parents to please buy her a ticket home.
While in the cafe, she went on x-pat.com and found a girl looking for a foreign roommate to work on her English, on a whim met her, liked her, and decided to stick it out for a month and see what happened. 7 months later she's still here. She said she was terrified and alone, but if she went home she would feel she was turning her back on an incredible opportunity for growth.

My mind:
I've been corrupted by travel, disillusioned by mass production, rising prices, loneliness with my own mind and frequent bouts of complete hopelessness. In the last week, I've been dwelling on the dangers of the road, the complete lack of benefits (rural areas are conservative, they don't speak English, it will just be people drinking tea and playing backgammon, not talking to me, and all spiritual growth is just empty faith - illusions), and the painful sameness of all modern large cities: old buildings are surrounded by hecklers and souvineer stands, new parts have malls and fashionable youngsters, cafes are more and more expensive (and only fun with a book or a friend - and books can be read at home), most of which is a weak imitation of the Western lifestyle...etc, etc. Prejudices all, but sometimes sad realities.

So I've been afraid. I don't know if it's the actual dangers of the road or else the painful possibility that I will get out there, be bored and uncomfortable for awhile, start to want to go home and the best opportunities of life will slowly pass me by while I'm too busy doing nothing with myself. Yes, that's my real fear. "If you're bored you're boring." I'm terrified that all my loneliness, unhappiness, and failures to keep myself entertained are all the symptoms of my own utter and complete boringness as a human being. I'm so much better at dreaming up cool ideas than carpe diem-ing and I know it all too well.

My Tarot Reading Last Night:
Tarot, like runestones, astrological charts, palmistry, and fortunes of any kind belongs to a realm of mysticism that I know very very few people who actually believe in at all anymore. On the other hand, everyone I know who has experienced them get annoyed (like me) at how painfully accurate they seem to be. Kate Ray, the psychologist would say that it's because our minds look for patterns, invent them when need be, and do everything in their power to fit themselves into matrices of meaning and truth. Every reading works for every person because every person's mind knows exactly how to listen to the reading and flatter oneself with it.
That said, my reading began with an upside-down king of pentacles (it's amazing how quickly we gain the necessary faith when the first card is describe in a way that the mind flatters itself to think perfectly describes you) which is a very negative beginning. So much so, in fact, that Katie gave me the option of not continuing because my mind was probably not ready to hear the sad truth of what followed. The card was supposed to describe my current state of mind - absorbed in material concerns, dominating, self-interested, and momentarily feeling helpless.

The next card explained why: the Ace of Cups - the card that signifies the most prosperity in social and spiritual abundance. High hopes that have never been lived up to. And then it became perfect in a way.

My immediate future: Death.
Interesting card to draw. A little nerve wracking considering the journey I was planning on beginning the next day. But Katie assured me that in the world of Tarot, the death card means rebirth. My immediate future is the shedding of something in exchange for a new beginning in something great and fresh. But the shedding does have to take place first.

Then we covered the past and why I am currently an upside down king of pentacles. Ancient past was extreme material prosperity. Recent past was pain and jealousy with regards to female powers in my life. Either girlfriends or mother figures.
Future influence: "A pilgrim flees into the night under the watchful gaze of the moon (a card I was soon to draw). Don't walk away from a situation just before its completion...Projects are completed. You will reap the rewards of your diligence.

Then the story about to unfold:
A current state of confusion, too many paths, potentials, with no focus (a perfect description of my state - I don't even have a hitchhiking route figured out yet). Environmental factors - Justice. The influences around me will guide be according to the laws of justice. Inner emotions - The Moon, reversed. Deceptions are unmasked, small mistakes can be corrected. Unusual, supernatural events may occur.

All of this with regards to the question, will this trip be productive for me?
At this point, far removed from the critical eye of the society of my birth, I can admit that mostly this is a spiritual trip for me. Yes, I will get Arabic and stories out of it. But fleeing from capitalism and competition into the arms of....? A faithless world where 'modern' almost always means rotted away spirituality, an embrace of the material world. Which is fine, I can totally dig the material world, only...all the good fortune I've had in life, and I'll be the first to admit I've had more than my fair share has only left me in the state I'm currently in. So what then? That's what a journey into the hottest desert, land of terrorist, in the summertime with no supplies, and only a Hare Krishna bracelet and the good wishes of those I love to support me is all about. Yes it's about academia, learning, cross-cultural ties. But what good are all those if the heart is dying on the inside? I'm a student pilgrim on my way to the New Jerusalem (Bloomusalem for you fans of Ulysses) to see what faith in the 21st century really means. What is important? What is life? This is a new environment, no more Silk Road. Faith, too, must be found in a new way, on its own terms, according to a brand-name-new standard.

My final Card (The Ultimate end result of this trip according to a pack of inanimate playing cards):
The Lovers. Right-side up. Some sort of perfect union with a person, idea, feeling, abstraction...who knows what. But the cards say the materialism of pentacles will be killed off for a rebirth and it will look something like a soul marriage.

Now it's a question of belief. I'm sure everyone reading this has a different take on what can be believed in and why - that very fact is why I study sociology to be honest. Interpretation is perspective is the closest thing to selfhood we have. Some days I don't believe in the soul in any capacity. Some days I have experiences so serendipitous that I cease to believe in free will. Astrologically I was born pretty close to the exact moment Taurus switches to Gemini - triple personality disorder. Not to say that I believe in that either...
Ha!

I'm shaking right now in this basement apartment in Istanbul. Too much coffee I guess. I'm thinking of the last page of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Something's coming and I, in all of my callous egoism, need to relax, banish my mind and let the justice of the world, the Tao of the Road take over. And perhaps, then I'll be able to write about those around me instead of myself. Youth I suppose. I finished Independent People and am beginning, now, on the Arabian Nights. Leave behind material poverty in pre-war Iceland for the magical land of dreams and possibilities (Ha! Once more the expectations and illusions sprout like thorny weeds)...Everything is a metaphor for everything else. I have no idea what I'm talking about anymore. I'm lost and giggly, dejected and smiley, or in other worlds...amped up.

We shall see.

All of my love,
tcm

ps. I've decided to stay an extra day in Istanbul and will leave tomorrow morning