These days, you forget what day of the week it is. I think it was Thursday a little while ago, before it became June. It doesn’t matter what time you wake up. Agendas are written in pencil. I slug my way out of bed to the nearest cafe and eat borek for breakfast with fanta. It doesn’t matter what time it is. It is when it is. Editing a paper. Listening to a lot of different music. Tumblr distracts. I load a few episodes of Game Of Thrones (for later) and finish the essay about using wikis for collaborative learning. I skype with my girlfriend. I stumble the internet. Galen shows up. Then Katie. My motivation to work on school material fades into the viewing of movie trailers and I realize it’s time for me to go. It doesn’t matter what time it is. In my dorm, I watch an episode of Thrones and I’m helplessly enthralled with this Lord of the Elder Scrolls hybrid (I know, I know, I need to read the books, but I’m reading American Gods first). Then dinner at Katie’s with Kelsey and Galen and the kitten. I don’t like it but I can’t help but recognize my winding down mentality, the recognition of the end that drowns the spirit in me. It feels sometimes like we’re all just dragging out this inevitable sadness, like watching a depressing movie you’ve seen before and wishing the ending could go differently. I want to be present. I want to be here. But, honestly, I want to be in South Korea. I want to be with Jenny again. After dinner, it’s time to “work” at a nearby bakery. Galen joins. I eat a chocolate chip cookie and drink çay and write a few test items for my project. Within an hour or so, Katie and Galen and I buy a couple beers and head to Petek to join the DG’s, and others, for some conversation under the stars. I become less reserved after introducing my pensive mind to alcohol, which is nice because I’ve felt more serious than usual, more private, more withdrawn. I call it a defense mechanism. I’m not looking forward to the goodbyes. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t be putting thousands of miles of distance between us. But we have to. Life goes on. What lasts forever are the memories. Goodnight.
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Trabzon: the first morning, en route to the Black Sea.
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Lift your glass:
Your Efes, your kırmızı şarap,
your rakı, your mixed vodka drinks.
To İstanbul:
You truly are the center of the cosmos.
To Turkey:
I’m in love with your ruins.
I want to say some things to my friends before we go.
Like thank you
and
I’ll miss you
and
I’m glad we met.
There’s still more time to make stories.
One month, to be exact,
but I’m feeling sentimental.
So for all the mid-day breakfasts,
late weekday nights at the bar,
and all-nighters to catch the sunrise…
For all the ferry rides to Asia,
unplanned weekend trips,
and Taksim misadventures…
For the birthday cake,
the borrowed books,
the backgammon games…
For study parties,
(productive or not)
over çay or nargile…
For exploring, climbing,
dancing and laughing
across the country…
Şerefe.
I couldn’t have done it without you.
And we’ve got a month left
to do so much more.
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Petek, which means “honeycomb,” is the aptly named collection of seating areas installed on the edge of the hill about halfway down the curving South Campus entrance road. The non-Turkish just call it The Overlook or The Lookout, but Turkish or otherwise we all use it for the same purpose: the drinks and conversations and the awesome view. Spent a little while there tonight after a vegetarian dinner with M.C. and some young American hipsters, all of whom joined us and other exchange friends to mix and mingle under a full orange moon. I would’ve stayed longer if I didn’t have some procrastinating to do at home.
The Lookout, or whatever you call it, is quickly becoming everyone’s favorite place to be on non-Taksim nights. Sneaking in beers, popping open bottles with the butts of cheap lighters, wrapping up your day in the company of a friend or ten. I wouldn’t be surprised to end a majority of my nights there for the next two months.
Kelsey took this photo last night at The Overlook of me trying to teach Samra some salsa steps. Thought it was a good picture so I stole it.
And this photo is a flashback to my second day in Turkey. Same place, different Chris. I was 24 when this photo was taken:
Anyway, if you’re ever in the area, I recommend checking out the view.
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My brain is spoiled milk, sloshing between ringing ears. It’s too early but it’s one in the afternoon. I missed the invite to breakfast. I’m still in my clothes and I taste alcohol on the back of my unbrushed teeth. I think this means it was a good night. Two painkillers kill any probable headache brewing in the base of my skull, prepping me for a weekend I’ve promised to sacrifice to the gods of good student behavior.
Yesterday I literally lifted two middle fingers to said gods and did everything I wasn’t supposed to do when one has a presentation to prepare for. This included a lunch at the north campus café, joining Shu to help Paula move into a new apartment, tossing the football around on South Quad with Shu and the French guys, attending a Turkish dinner coordinated by Lokman, gathering with friends at the overlook, adventuring in Taksim, and coming back to campus to watch the sunrise half-asleep on a stone wall in the park, looking to Asia like it was about to tell us something special.
(stole this photo from Kelsey)
Anyway, the gods of good student behavior are raging.
The sacrifice of free time must be made and it must be made now.
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Group photos from the first two months. Kinda neat to see them all together. Thanks to those who took the ones that I didn’t take with my own camera. Sorry I stole them, but I’ll cherish them forever.
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To my friends: it’s hard to imagine my study abroad experience with any other group of characters. You’re all fantastic and weird and hilarious and unique. You’re shaping my experience in İstanbul just as much as the weather, the courses, the stray animals and honking taxis. My core group of friends, I’ll never forget you. You’ve broadened my world as I hope I’ve broadened yours. We all happened to fall down this rabbit hole together and none of us knows who we’ll be when we get out and we have no idea what effect all the stumbling and guessing and experimenting will have on our future selves, or what the scary things and fun things and new things will mean to us after we leave this enigmatic metropolis. What will we remember about Taksim? How will we look back upon the Bosphorus? Will I ever forgive myself for choosing to live in the Superdorm? Will I ever get to eat a two lira döner again? Because of the unknown retrospection this experience will leave us with, it’s important for us to simply live in the moment. To wake up every day and look outside and be thankful for sunny days instead of snow. To take walks and pictures and get lost and speak Turkish. To waste nothing and embrace everything. If we don’t do it now, we’ll never do it at all.
All that said, I want to apologize to my friends who were so concerned last night with my late-night endeavors that they got off the shuttle-bus to find me in the 4 AM Taksim come-down and make sure I was making sober decisions. Sober they were, since the tequila shots were relatively ineffective as my tolerance has increased 150% since my comparatively light-drinking days in Sacramento (not what my parents want to hear, but when in Rome…) Plus I was staying at Kaan’s place anyway, a detail I perhaps should have shared with the others before sending them off on the shuttle without me. So I apologize for playing the disappearing man without warning. I appreciate the concern and this is what I love about you people. It’s reassuring to travel abroad and meet people that make you feel at home wherever you are. We’re fresh friends and we’ve got lots to learn about each other and there’s not enough time to do it, which is the tragedy of it all. Also, I didn’t mean to pull the age card so aggressively, but it was kind of silly to feel treated like a kid when I’m about three-to-five years older than most of my friends here.
Anyhow, I just wanted to say that.
Kaan and I meandered Taksim for about an hour, not quite in the mood to go back to the bar/club scene, instead eating mussels and watching the crowd diminish and chatting with vendors while street-cleaners smashed abandoned bottles to make them easier for the street-sweeper to swallow them up. Above, the night sky turned purple and blue and as we walked back to Kaan’s apartment building, the city yawned awake around us, though truthfully İstanbul never fully sleeps. It has no time to sleep.
A word on Kaan’s place, in the words of Kaan: “Goddamn, I say, goddamn.”
It’s a bit startling to see what is basically the nicest apartment/penthouse tower I’ve ever seen situated across the street from ramshackle slums, a titan among the common-folk, the antonym of subtle and the synonym of astounding. This is top-shelf living. This is a cruise-ship on land. In the morning, Kaan gave me a tour of the amenities, which included a high-quality gym and an indoor skiing machine. I bought sandals from the grocery store in the building, from which he could potentially order his groceries and have them delivered to his room. Of course my favorite part was standing at the window and looking at this:
And to the left, this:
What about that shadowy place?
You must never go there, Simba.
But I thought a king can do whatever he wants.
There’s more to being a king than getting your way all the time.
There’s more?
Spent some time in Kaan’s pad with the guys before meeting the girls in Taksim Square to begin our late-night rendezvous with the dance floor. Brought the party to a bar with ‘shots’ in the name where the six of us party-people shared a tray of 35 shots and busted moves and bumped elbows and made brief well-intentioned fools of ourselves. We’re an eclectic bunch and the social dynamics were unintentionally wobbly at times, but I think we all had a good time. I know I did, enough so that I didn’t want to go home and hence that awkward shuttle-bus situation unfolded.
Then the sun came up. On Kaan’s couch, I passed out. The shimmering lights of İstanbul’s pseudo-slumber transitioned to the warm earth-tone glow of another day in the life.
Goddamn, I say. Goddamn.
currently in: sacramento, ca
Paper Stacks, a collaboration by FiftyThree and ALLDAYEVERYDAY.
