trip journal 2

8:28PM, Saturday
my head feels tight, my neck tense, slept for an hour or 2 after the beer. only 60 pgs through Erewhon.

12:35AM, Sunday
more sleep- wandered through the whole of the train- got starred at- the food car is a moving cafe- tired of Butler, on to Rorty- deciding that the Turkish educational system is run by Platonists.-

watched the cutest boy get smacked hard across the face by his baba- i just about to take a picture of him- 4 yrs old but he starred at his father- no hint of tears- the boy instead explained calmly to his father what he had been doing- he had a bottle of orange soda and was dancing with it, entertaining the travelers around him- slapped for insubordination and nothing else.

1:50AM
listening to Of Montreal, "he's just a slutty little flirt...," happy after some Philosophy and Social Hope and hot tea- want to dance in the comfortable aisles of this sleeping train.

4:15AM
Kaseri- we've been through the mountains, Erzincan and Sivas, to Ankara now. K got off here, and so did the Gendarme, the rural army, who rode with us for 2 hrs, pulling through bags, recording ID numbers with a microphone, machine guns slung over their shoulders. my first time for this, but i'm not surprised. i see a machine gun a day in Erzurum and slide through random checkpoints and metal detectors, often with pockets full of change, detectors detecting nothing, or beeping and the guard waving us through.

the irrelevant theatre of power. only slightly more clear in Turkey than in america. they checked none of my bags and these ID numbers, i know through the bureaucratic mess of getting my residence permit, will only be lost and forgotten with millions of others.

the purpose is not detection but the appearance of detection, like taking my shoes off in an american airport, or standing in that ridiculous air-puffer room- the purpose is not to find anything, like i would put something in the sole of my shoe i couldn't put in my pocket, but for me to bow to the theatre of power by inconveniencing myself, disrupting my travel, as if i'm admitting in my silence that yes, you should be doing this, you have every right to, sir, for my protection, i bow to you, happily look at my shoe, take my number, disrupt the order of my clothes, anything else? let's make sure we take every precaution.

halfway through my trip.

6:14AM
i wake up to a vivid, alien scenery, but can't turn the god-damned flash off my camera. i will disable it manually if forced to- i hate, passionately, hate flash- didn't Sony imagine a situation in which one wanted to capture a beautiful scene through a window? what the fuck.



9:08AM
the car is the quietest it has been- folks sprawled out, mouths agape, in all sorts of interesting forms- impossible for me to get more than 2 hrs sleep at a time-

7:50PM
sitting in the restaurant car, this moving, mostly empty cafe- sitting alone, reading, Raki, french fries. i think that is the Marmara sea outside my window, bridges lit up. 2 hrs from Istanbul.

3 scenes in Istanbul

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trip journal 1

1:40 pm, Sunday December 6th

i'm headed slowly through the mountains now- the valleys opening up at moments with humbling sights- the plains here in the valleys, the icy brooks running through them and the snow-capped mountains in the distance have me thinking of glaciers and tectonic plates.

-just now we've slid into our first tunnel, cutting through a rocky hill- in these plains I see sheep and lamb and mountain goats and cattle, followed by young boys with long sticks- I want to take a picture of them but i've already revealed myself as a yabanci, helpless in communication if i wasn't, by chance, sitting right behind a highschool english teacher. i am a foreigner, but don't want to reveal myself as a rich foreigner yet- a student of mine told me not to fall asleep cause someone would nab my wallet, an exaggeration from a suburbanite Turk, but i think i'll be careful- anyway the beauty of this orange light on the thin grasses running up hills and my slow crawl through them would be lost in whatever picture I might take.

-on the train some are reading the papers, sleeping, studying for tests, losing themselves in the scenery, and two 30 something men are taking turns in their double seat to pray, kneeling and stretching towards Mecca- i read Samuel Butler's highly pastoral introduction to Erewhon and think of myself in the novel- biding my time as i move slowly through the mountain to a city so large and busy in comparison i can't really believe it.


to be meat and a person from tüpbebek on Vimeo.

4:25pm
humanity, children, beer
an old woman found the only non-Turk on the train to scream at- waking me from my daze- wanting my seat for reasons unknown, practically jumping into my lap. was i in her seat? did she have no seat and so demanded mine? did she have a mental disorder? my new english speaking friend calmed her and offered her his seat. and i soon learned of her bad knees and her sudden need to rest- after a few minutes, she made her way to the back of the car, with another woman, and the help of the high school english teacher and some other young men carrying her bags.

-later two young girls approached him, 10 or 11, trying to read his english essay. i handed them Erewhon and they flipped through it curiously before proclaiming they “do not love english.” i asked their names. they wore long pink and bright green dresses and had matching boots and socks- shy but unafraid to approach foreign strangers. i'm committing myself to learning more Turkish because i want to communicate with children. in these moments- K, my friend taking the women's bags, and the two strangers next to us moving over in their double seat to fit K- i saw the train come alive- smiling, together on our journey and in this moment writing i'm content but not drunk, after K bought me 2 pints of beer and mercimek soup. i'm lucky here, in this seat, in this company, on this grinding train, next to these humbling mountains.

home

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back yesterday, -15F with snow.
gonna break my ass on the ice anytime.
long underwear from a street vendor, 7 lira well-spent.
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the plan

the week of Dec. 8th is Kurban Bayram (Sacrifice Holiday). it follows the story of Abraham, which is about exactly the same in the Qur'an and the Bible. (if you don't know, it happened like this). so for the Bayram they make or find those spiritual meats, and they eat them and give them.

my Bayram means time, travel, and a plan:

• Erzurum to Istanbul by train Dec. 6th and 7th (33hrs and 647 miles- i was asked "what made you decide not to walk?" next time, my friend)
• read Samuel Butler's Erewhon, Buket Uzuner's Istanbullu, Richard Rorty's Philosophy and Social Hope
• take pictures, study Turkish, find someone to play chess with
• find a way to a bed, a floor, a couch
  
• meet C. and see his Istanbul
• find used books, used clothes, and Indian food
  
• film cats in the street and old houses
  
• bus ride to Ankara and then Konya Dec. 11 (8-9hrs 365miles)
• read the Qur'an, study Turkish, listen to DemNow
  
• find my way to a bed, couch, floor, bar, pide
  
• watch the dervishes whirl
• eat dinner with another C's parents
• play chess with M
  
• Sunday morning bus ride to Ankara (2-3hrs 138 miles)
  
• read the Masnavi
• Ankara to Erzurum by train (23hrs 447 miles)
• listen to Bob Dylan
  
• read Howard Zinn's People's History, Jane Mayer's The Dark Side, Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red
• stretch
  
• teach my Monday night class
• tell you what happened
  

be patient, this gets amazing

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in an earlier post, talking about Obama and the appointment of Rham Emanuel, i mentioned how Hamas, a democratically elected government party nonetheless branded a terrorist organization, has a more rational and humane policy than the Bush administration and Obama (if we take the Obama at the AIPAC). and the following article compares another militant supporter of Israel (Hilary Clinton) to the more rational and humane policy ideas of Israel's prime minister (Ehud Olmert). how is that possible? i don't know, and i don't know what else to say. read the article here.

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by the way- when i tag this post and others "fuck" i mean it in almost the exact same way Jon Stewart uses it at the end of this video, talking about the Bush administration refusing to open an email from the EPA. it is a "fuck!" that is frustrated in response to government policy that defies logical thought and basic humanity.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Be Patient This Gets Amazing - EPA E-Mail

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video