newest and possibly last zaman article

here

i haven't really liked the travel writing, but it's an excuse to get into the newspaper.

bank robbery

my savings are 0's and 1's on a computer server somewhere in New York at JP Morgan Chase.

i have a few thousand dollars in Iş Bank of Turkey, paid to me by the U.S. State Department for my work as a teacher. some of it reimbursement for the two months i financed on my own while attempting to set up a bank account in Turkey for the US govt. to transfer money to.

to transfer that money back to the United States, where it started, i just paid 188 lira ($122). a few sheets of paper, 15 minutes of labor time, numbers rolling on servers in Istanbul and NYC.

"fee" is a self justifying linguistic nugget.

what are you going to do?

this was my third time in the bank, my third attempt to provide the right stream of numbers for the transfer to take place and only just before the transfer did that self justifying nugget appear.

the bank has the power in the situation. i'm given a few seconds to decide, customers rubbing close behind me, my gracious translator's time ticking away, the rolling eyes and exhalations of a frustrated bank clerk for whom "fee" is a magic and efficient explanation. don't hold up the teller. next customer.

what exactly am i buying with that $122? i would like someone to answer. the security of not having to transfer my bills physically. the ability to keep them in 0's and 1's, transferring through space-time as bits of heat precisely contained. how that is more comforting, i don't know.

what else are you going to do? that's all the bank has to count on when determining the fee of any transfer, hidden or otherwise. are you going to deal with customer service for an hour over a 5 dollar hidden fee? are you going to decide to take your wad of hundred dollar bills through 4 international airports with no insurance if something happens?

when the bank robs me my frustration is a crack in an otherwise seamless reality. on the other side are options full of creative justice.


no wonder we're so depressed.
no wonder we want to unleash by tossing bricks.

Today's Zaman

New Article here

georgia trip journal June 2-7

i am in Hopa, Turkey. out the window is the Black Sea. before that a row of semi-trucks. in the bathroom is Amca (uncle) T. i wonder if there are blood stains on my mattress from bed bugs.

the hotel lobby is painted pink. the hotel restaurant, just down the hall, plays Turkish rhythms on a keyboard, a man in a purple tie singing the notes, his adam's apple vibrating. a Turkish friend told me it would be difficult to find a hotel in Hopa without prostitutes.

in the restaurant there is a 200 gallon fish tank with nine fish. next to it, front and center, shining in the pale yellow walls and burgundy carpet are six women smoking and eating fruit. they look asian, georgian, russian, armenian, and turkish.

at tables next to the surrounding walls sit Turkish truck drivers. drinking enough so they can flirt or ask to dance or buy a drink.

i'm guessing the waiter serves as a pimp. I ask for a menu but there isn't one. i ask for a beer. Amca wants tea. we laugh at the situation, at the women, at the men, at the fish dying slowly with everything around it. some of the women get up to sit with the men who call them over or buy them a drink. one woman walks around the room shaking hands with everyone. i look at my hand and then at Amca, wondering if it will fall off before morning.

Amca and i drink without making eye contact and go back to our room. the bed sheet looks clean. i'll sleep well with the sound of trucks and engines turning, the smell of the Black Sea, the bass bumping from the restaurant.

----

in the morning we eat breakfast next to where the whores sat. talking on the phone to S while looking out on the Sea. internet cafe to finish my article. no woman no cry jamming from another computer. mildew smell in the cafe just like in the hotel, just like in the basement of my Grandpa's house when i was growing up. Marley can make you forget about anything. i'll get killed for one of these articles someday.

bus to Sarp. border town split with the formation of the Turkish Republic. the iron curtain/Kemalism. first taste of Georgian beer. first thing I notice is that the children are what i think of children here. 11 and 12, shaggy hair, long shorts and big colorful t-shirts. laughing and eating ice cream with friends. no parents in sight. turkish kids of the same age are working on the bus, selling something on the street, or in their school uniform smoking a cigarette, sitting under a tree in a circle, or being dragged around by their mothers.

our biggest problem will be finding a good exchange rate for our Turkish Lira. read Debord on the ride. a bus to Batumi. a mini van to Tiblisi. drunk 30 yr old next to me, sleeping face stuck between the seats in front of him, waking up and hollering at the driver to pull over so he can piss or puke (i wasn't watching). cracking open beers at our bus stops.

a woman who spoke Turkish helped us find a cab driver who helped us find a cheap hotel. i'm here after a cheap dinner from the supermarket: bread, cheese, salami. this is a hotel for boxers. there are two full-size rings in the middle of the hotel. georgian men look pretty built. i think the woman at the front desk could take me down in 3 rounds if she wanted. i'm keeping the gloves off.

----

Georgia is a poorer country than Turkey but it wears it's poverty w/out shame or self-consciousness. the dilapidated buildings are lit up and thriving. on streets in the poorest areas of town, where our boxing hotel is, women walk the streets alone at night. the streets are relatively clean. the people are friendly and we found someone to speak our language whenever we needed it. taxi drivers wear t-shirts.

the place falls apart beautifully. I want to live in that dilapidated apartment to prove that appearances are nothing. save on rent, buy more paint. they do stencil graffiti. they tie shreds of clothes and trash to the trees as decorations. in the side streets we hear opera singers and pianos. poking my head in windows i see easels and students with sketch pads.

----

we walked the street and found a bakery for breakfast. I accidentally deleted Amca's pictures trying to capture the art and feel of the street. an errant touch and those moments are gone. you didn't remember them because you had a picture. i literally erased his memory. he'll never forget it in that cafe when i told him i deleted his pictures though. just after he finished his coffee and that fried stuffed potato thing. better to break the news after he ate.

at the Marriott we took maps. found the old city and the bath houses, lots of churches, an Irish pub with a waitress who spoke English and explained the alphabet to us. she picked us a place to eat a real Georgian dinner. at the pub I had a bacon cheeseburger and a beer. pork on a menu again. I don't care that i'm eating at an Irish pub in Georgia.

more churches. they cross themselves when they walk by. I like the smell of incense. some of them chant. women drape a veil over their heads before entering. everyone lights candles.

we drank a beer and a coffee in the park. people watching. found the Georgian restaurant suggested to us. the sign and menu in Georgian letters. three university students helped us order, we asked them to sit down and eat with us. they told us the fear and uncertainty in Georgia last summer when Russia invaded. we ate fat dumplings and i finished half a bottle of wine.

----

i'm in a train car, in a sleeper room with Amca and two forty-year-old women, both teachers.

we are on a train from Gori, a town occupied by the Russian army in August '08. the machine gun spray still visible on all the buildings downtown. all the windows look new. they're rebuilding a destroyed bridge. they're removing mines from the surrounding areas.

Gori is the home town of Stalin. in the main square there is a twenty foot statue. outside the boarded up library is Stalin reading a book. in the main park you come out of the trees and see a reconstruction of his house. behind that is the Stalin museum (closed by the time we found it) and another statue. in the train station there is a Stalin statue too. if we looked harder we might have found more.

we are headed eight hours to Batumi. it is just past midnight. our train looks like it's from the 1940's. chugging slow and rough down the countryside.

in Turkey they would separate the men and women. no doubt. but here we're tossed in with two women in a sleeper car. there is a great trust of people in this culture. one of the women is listening to My Morning Jacket at the moment. she wasn't a fan of Dylan. she does like Stalin. Putin and Bush and Saakashvili are dogs, she says. she likes Obama.

they lifted their crosses and kissed them. they asked us if we were Christians. i don't like this topic. Amca said he was baptized and they think we're Baptists. i'm fine with that. the university students mentioned national polls showing religion as the most important thing in Georgian's lives.

----

awake, hungry, sweaty, stinking. i'm as far east as eastern Europe goes. i'd snap a picture out the window if i could. fog, rain, lightning, trees, the rushing water out a drainage canal under the tracks. early sunlight coming through it all.

it takes an acrobat to get up and down from the bunk, a miracle to open the door w/out waking anyone. the Georgian woman helped unlock the door, mumbling half asleep. I closed it behind me and found the toilet. i stood in the hall and watched the sky before the sun, the rain in the headlights of a vehicle that seemed always approaching, it's speed so close to ours. i determined i'd watch the sky light so slowly i wouldn't realize it. a romantic thought. interrupted by the train slamming to a stop, the cracked door sliding open hard and the Georgian woman cursing me out. i came back, closed the door, took my socks off and woke up an hour later. now. in the light. i think those are cornfields out the window.

----

i just boarded a bus from Trabzon to Erzurum. Society of the Spectacle and Snow in front of me. listening to The Sea and Cake. plenty of leg room. the women don't sit next to men in Turkey and certainly not the ones wearing scarves and long trench coats.

a boy behind me wears a “smoke it” shirt- on it a white boy w/ Jamaican cap on, joint hanging out his mouth. drug culture in Turkey is so hidden that I wonder if he thinks it's a cigarette.

the boy just sat down next to me. doesn't smell much like smoke of any kind.

coming back after a long trip, looking forward to a stretch and a shower. today breakfast at Hagia Sofia. a walk by the karadeniz. speed scrabble (pimple, laymen).

100 lira at the bar. 5 drinks. when is it okay to throw a brick? i asked a Spanish anarchist on the walk back.

i don't think i'll ever wear a man purse, no matter how much they look like holsters. i like pockets though. how much do i want a family to wave to me as i leave?

thought about death for the last half of this trip. in churches i didn't feel anything heavenly. i felt the work of dedicated communities focusing on immaculate construction. the purpose of life is to make something that doesn't die. the only just death is whatever you dream it to be. mine has always been warm and dark, w/out sadness or time.

i want to be a bud flowering a thousand years later without consciousness. i want to be trampled on by a tank and come back as particles in a potato. cooked and eaten by a refugee. a nutritious life force. we should eat only from the lands of the most egalitarian societies.

(footnote: i didn't take any of these pictures. in a half an hour i found stencil graffiti in Tbilisi, Stalin's statue in Gori, a train leaving Gori, a "wishing tree," hundreds of shots of the old town in Tbilisi, a Tbilisi church i think i was in, a shot of the border and sea in Sarp, and the website for the boxing hotel complete with pictoral evidence. Amca's memories are maybe not so important with this wealth of replacement memories online.)

new zaman article

just got back from Georgia. more on that later.

for now, an article published yesterday in Today's Zaman: here.

i got a deal to publish one a week for 4 straight.