missing

this blog has been slowly bleeding to death since i've left Turkey, and i'd be happy to let it except for the fact that modern narratives tick-tock, and that means i have to write some sort of closing. my sparring with the concept of social entrepreneurs and Bono's cronies isn't a satisfying enough ending because this blog was never about such things.

in extension, i have a few things to share. first, new (new to you, a few months old to me) pictures are forthcoming here. second, i've started this thing as a more suitable place for the stuff i want digitally published, which, for the moment, is a collection of quotes from books that i'm reading. in the future, it might be pictures, my own writing, or sublime and flaming computer monitors.

nearly six months removed from my life in Turkey, i miss the ease and availability of non-prepackaged adventure. i also miss being struck by a daily strangeness that forced me to ask questions and justify my way of living. it was those constants that allowed me to write here. perhaps when/if i get back to Turkey or abroad, i'll start up a sequel to this blog. for now, farewell.

-tb

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

when speaking english turns you into a celebrity/freak

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where are you from?
what is your name?
where are you from?


Diyarbakır, April 11th

flickr

pics are easier to load and handle on flickr, and while i'll keep posting some here, i'm going to add more there. right now i have some edited pics from Van and some new pics from Diyarbakır should be there soon.

here

in the life: bottles

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so i've got bottles up the wazoo. i'm socialized, like most of us, to never throw a plastic bottle away. where i come from you learn the recycle rap in 4th grade and you can't get it out of your head anymore than you can stop the reoccurring nightmare where your music teacher grins her butter-yellow teeth at you, pounding on a piano with her fists, and you wake up screaming in horror in a cold sweat and complete darkness, turning on the light to brush your teeth once more and vowing to stop drinking so much tea and coffee.

strange. here are some pics of what this has become, seven months of bottled water because the tap water here makes me sick. come on green Erzurum, give these bottles another chance at life. how bout some recycling?

obstructing a pretty view (or improving, depending on your style):



in the office, stashed in a once empty cabinet:



neatly stacked next to the window behind my bed:



crowding my living room windowsill:



overflowing from behind the refrigerator:





footnote: i didn't buy the coke. it was given to me by a friend after a party where no one could finish such a large bottle and it was going to go flat. yes i had some of it. yes i felt guilty. coke kills, we know.

Trabzon- January Trip- Sümela Monastery

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posting something from January in March is just one of many signs that this blog is behind, struggling to catch up, stay relevant, stay interesting. well, here goes:

wandering in the deep wilderness of North-Eastern Anatolia sometime in the late 4th century two Athenian priests thought they saw the Virgin Mary in a cave. that cave happened to stand on a cliff looking over the Altındere Valley. through conquests, emperors, and sultans, Sümela monastery grew and was abandoned, and now it stands as an inspiring historical site. after 40 minutes of driving uphill alongside pine trees and mountains, this greets you on the road:


in the falling snow, we climbed from the summit up a slick path and the monastery appeared out of the snow and fog:



climbing further still, we reached the top and had a look inside. i began thinking about what life was like here, in the 4th century, and in the 5th, in the 12th and the 19th, each year of life here building or destroying the monastery, painting biblical frescos after one re-conquest and ripping the figures eyes out with the next. like most sites in Turkey, Sümela monastery is physical proof of the tradition and perseverance of mystic struggle.

...

3 scenes in Istanbul

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walking to the office

Çatalhöyük

reconstruction of a home

picture from on top of a mound looking a one of the dig sites

inside the bigger of 2 dig sites, visible are the many levels of the city

a home

in 7500 B.C., in south-central Anatolia this was the site of one of the first cities on earth. archeologists have found no evidence of official leaders or a class system, no evidence of violence or the need for weapons, and think that women at least held equal power in the society. (see more here, here, and here.)

driving through villages and melon fields, i tried to think of the land 10,000 years earlier. at the entrance, we waited for a guard to take us to the dig sites. walking up the mound, knowing that below me had been such a successfully egalitarian society was a great feeling.

thanks to Onur Ekdik for supplying the pictures since i forgot to take my camera.

Erzurum pics

View from the clock tower

Looking up at Yakutiye Madrassah, Mongol Empire, 1310 AD

Erzurum's Inner Fortress and Clock Tower, Roman Empire, 5th Century

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Erzurum is gorgeous! that's where you get to spend yr every day? you've been holding out on me/us.

yes, face, these pictures maybe. they are beautiful pictures, but as you wrote this i think they don't represent my experience or the experience of viewing the city in full. i haven't really figured out what a picture of erzurum is like.
i wanted to take some pictures of the university in fall, and that is really beautiful too, and quite different from these views of the city. the university is different from the city, the historical sites here are different than the commercial streets, the outskirts of both the university campus and the city are different than their more manicured centers...
even on my same walk to the office everyday, i can choose between either beautiful or sad or confused scenery (i'll stick to this position- i'm not confused, the scenery is). i hope to put up more pics soon of different parts of town, shepherds and sheep and their dogs, horse drawn carts, BMWs in unruly traffic, the dirt paths leading to my apartment, the advanced sprinkler system of Atatürk University, the men with their wild suits and the boys and elderly shinning their shoes