Burning Bridges

Even as a kid, I was aware of my over-sensitivity. I held people to unrealistic standards which, unfortunately, they often couldn't meet, (could I? I don't know.) resulting in my great disappointment. For example, when I was in early primary school, I can't remember exactly how old I was, Francisco visited Bloomer with family members from Venezuela. I loved him. Of course, anyone from another country who could speak another language was an exotic human being in my book. I loved him because he was an adult who actually paid attention to me, to us kids. We were special to him, and I especially appreciated it as the middle child lost amongst many. We weren't shooed out from under his feet in the kitchen. He actually listened to what we had to say and played a mean game of King of the Hill.

One day I stopped talking to Francisco altogether. We were going on one of our family day trips to somewhere in the car. While I enjoyed these trips, I always hated the pre-trip tension, the I-can't-find-my-shoes, do-you-have-the-fill in the blank... On this day, I couldn't find the pair of shorts I was supposed to wear. In a panic, I grabbed someone else's elastic waist-banded ones from the clean laundry basket, not realising they were my brother's, and somehow managed to pull them on backwards. When Mom informed me of both, Francisco laughed. He could have been responding to something else, but I was certain he was laughing at me. My buddy Francisco laughed at me. I was so hurt and disappointed that I never spoke to him again until he eventually asked me, down at my level, directly in my eyes, why I was ignoring him. I squirmed, and couldn't answer. I don't think I had the words, and I certainly didn't know how to deal with my hurt pride and embarrassment. At the same time, I think I was kind of ashamed because good little Catholic girls are supposed to be forgiving and forgetting.

Apparently, I am now an adult, though I sometimes have my doubts about that. I’m still too sensitive. Friends tell me not to be bothered by things I can’t change, yet I remain bothered when I think people are being mistreated. Unlike my younger self, however, I can at least distinguish if the mistreatment is intentional, or at least done by someone who should know better. And sometimes I still burn bridges, though now I have language to express my anger and disappointment.

There is a bridge I want to burn. The bridge I want to burn is attached to an institution, not one person, but then again, institutions are made of people. I don’t appreciate liars. I don’t appreciate the misogynist boss who makes inappropriate jokes, who revels in the humiliation and discomfort of others, knowing that his underlings cannot speak out for fear of losing their jobs. I have no respect for the immediate superior who feigns innocence when confronted with a, to her, difficult question, who ties my hands and forces me to be a page-turner rather than a teacher. I have less respect for an institution that plays loose with labor laws, who treats its employees with disrespect, unprofessionalism and an utter lack of compassion, a group that allegedly promotes education while fixing the grades of its “best” students for the sake of appearance, thus undermining its teachers and those students who are not the "best." An institution that sees fit to wait until the last day of classes to clear out its foreign language department by firing teachers who were still hard at work when they got the call to the principal’s office. Although it is still possible for native speakers to find decent jobs for the fall, it is nearly impossible for the Turkish ones to do so.

I want to burn this bridge and scatter its ashes. I want to scald the ground on which the bridge was built, make it unliveable, destroy all its plants to their roots and curse it a thousand times.

Stuff I Made

Today I went to the Pera Museum to see the exhibition Masterpieces of World Ceramics from the Victoria and Albert Museum. The V&A is one of my favorite museums. I often consider going back to London just to visit it and the British Museum. I often find ceramics to be equally, though differently, as moving as paintings or sculptures. They’re tactile. I’m drawn to simple, rough pieces that have no interest in hiding their dirtness, pieces with earthy glazes and odd or even sophisticated shapes. When I’m in the Louvre, I usually skip the painting rooms (too much drama, too much flesh) and head to the ancient Near Eastern archaeology sections. Today, I probably embarrassed myself by doing more than one little happy dance before more than one exhibition case.

I know I really like a piece of art or craft when it makes me want to paint or make something, and I’ve wanted to paint or make since this afternoon. Although I spend large portions of my free time making silver and semi-precious stone jewelry, I miss getting my hands dirty. I miss the texture and mass of wet clay, rolling a flat piece in the slab roller, stamping and incising, coiling and joining, cutting tiles, not to mention obsessive compulsive glazing. I miss flipping open my idea book, taking stamps and needle tools out of my art box. Since I don’t have available studio space, I’m going to pat myself on the back and show you pictures of things I made a few years ago, inspired by pieces in museums and pictures from the archaeology section of the Bryn Mawr College library. The actual things are in shoeboxes, stored in a friend’s attic, waiting for me to figure out how to get them to Turkey without breaking them.

I call this group the cavalry.

This is my version of a Boetian bell idol. Her legs are clappers. She makes a pleasant, musical little sound when shook. She sounds nothing like she looks.

These are my little boat people. This is my least favorite of my versions of the subject, but the only one of which I have a picture. My favorite one is on loan (probably permanent) to an archaeologist friend. It would be nearly impossible to get it acrosss the ocean without mishap unless I called on the V&A packing crew.

I am most attached to this one. He's an abbreviated version of an ancient one with four horses. His little hat is separate and has holes in it for string intended to attach to his head. His hands and the horses muzzles have holes for reins, though I never got around to putting the string through the holes. I never got around to fixing the axles with string either.

I call him Ben Hur. I didn't quite understand how to structure the chariot to hook up to the cart correctly. Next time.

I don't think of myself as an artist. Instead, I'm more of an amateur. It seems to me that many real artists and craftspeople don't get emotionally attached to what they produce, maybe because they produce so much, or accept that what they make will (hopefully) leave their hands for someone else's. I'm highly attached to my little guys, even if I can't get at them.

Wisteria Lanes

Spring has gone, flowers have been replaced by summer fruits. In either season, my neighborhood is a colorful one. These are some of the flowers that are gone.



I walk up this street every workday morning to the bus station. The doorman at the apartment building just beyond the bend is forever sweeping and clipping.

Like thickly clustered, fragrant grapes, wisteria creep up and cascade down the wall below the blue house. A sign says "Beware of the dog." I've never seen the dog.

Along the Bosphorus, the hills are covered with Judas trees. I don't know whom they betrayed. New leaf greens and reds stand out against evergreens and trees not yet awakened.

Privacy Interrupted

Recently, as I was watching the cats play in the trees outside my kitchen window, I caught a movement on a neighbor’s balcony out of the corner of my eye. I had never noticed anyone on that balcony before. An elderly woman in a long printed skirt, nondescript sweater and dark headscarf sat down on a chair. She had the deep-set, darkly rimmed eyes and etched wrinkles of a dried apple doll. Although I felt guilty for watching her, I couldn’t help myself. She leaned her head forward and covered her face with weather worn, swollen hands. She sighed. She looked up then down, then covered her eyes in a gesture that could have been despair. She sighed again. After five minutes, she stood and slowly entered the apartment.

I wondered what her story is, with whom she lives, whether she suffers or is in good health. I thought about the stories she could tell and hoped that someone takes the time to listen to them.

Decisions, Decisions

It is once again Sunday, sunny and hot. Normally I clean on Sundays, with or without the aforementioned Attention Deficit Housecleaning Disorder. This fine day, I’m not frantically moving from mess to mess, but slowly shifting and organizing. I shift and reorganize far too often, never quite finishing, fully aware that doing so is a reaction to no small amount of displeasure at being unsettled, of unhappiness with the immediate surroundings of my room, of not living in that ambiguous picture of my perfect space but instead amidst strangely arranged but wonderful objects collected between here and there. Enough.

At the root of this disorganization is, I think, an unsettling feeling of always being in transition, not quite where I want to be personally and professionally. Enough.

I used to think that at about the age of 27, life would automatically be sorted. Career, home, marriage, kids… I also used to be disappointed that random people don’t actually break out in song as they do in television commercials. OK, maybe I’m still a little disappointed in the lack of spontaneous singing and dancing, which may be the reason why I do both while walking the hallowed halls of school.

Recently, I made a career decision, one that will hopefully ground me in other areas of my life. I had hoped to go back to teaching at a university, English instead of art history, either preparatory or academic writing courses. Get a little critical thinking back into my teaching, sink my teeth into something meatier than the ridiculous and soulless ESL books we force on kids who hate them. Such a switch might or might not have involved moving house once again, possibly to Ankara, and possibly to my own place. Without a signed contract, I can’t make decisions about where to live or even what to do for the summer.

To make a long story short, I am going to sign a contract next week to teach middle school English at a bit of a distance from where I live. There is a service bus for teachers that will pick me up near the bus stop and drop me off at school. I will stay in my apartment. It’s not an ideal space, but I love my neighborhood. Because I will take a cut in pay, I can’t afford to live by myself, especially not in Rumeli Hisarı. Although I’m very happy to live alone, I’m also quite happy with my current housemate. So we can’t have the beautiful furniture I would love to have because the cats sharpen their claws on the chair and couch. We have, however, decided to make the improvements we can, to paint the walls and get the kitchen in more practical working order and somehow insulate the rooms better so they’re not quite so clammy in the winter. Eventually, I will have my own space, but for now, I’m fine with sharing.

What is most sobering is accepting that I will continue to teach adolescents instead of university age, young adults. An acquaintance who taught at one of the private universities made me aware of the reality of teaching prep courses. Often, those students in prep are spoiled rich kids who have studied English for at least 8 years but can't pass a proficiency exam. They can be very difficult to teach.

My decision to sign was influenced by several factors. First, unlike at my current place of employment, there is a curriculum. I will be able to teach literature, real books, unwatered down by editors who suck all meaning out of a text. I will be the only teacher for my students. Most importantly, the teachers whom I met are happy with their work (staying in one school for 5 and 8 years is telling) and by their honesty. So the administration doesn’t really take great care of their foreign teachers, at least I know this up front. In other words, they weren’t blowing any smoke up my backside. I appreciate that much more than the empty promises and superficially warm greetings I have received. Hopefully, with this new job I can begin with a clean slate and a more accepting attitude towards ridiculous decisions I did not make and cannot unmake.

Enough. I’m going back to shifting and organizing. Hopefully, I will actually finish.

Bubble Burst

I think my most joyful moments are those with little significance. Ephemeral. Soon forgotten. Making faces at little kids on the bus. Singing the Friday song. (This song has only one word and means “Friday” in Turkish. It is sung, obviously, on Fridays.) Eating a Magnum ice cream bar while walking home without dropping a bit of chocolate coating on the ground.

My recent favorite moments have to do with soap bubbles, the ones that make my hands between sticky and slimy. I blow them on the sometimes empty playground and watch them, shiny and reflective, between the ugly concrete buildings. When there is a little wind, they are picked up and swirled in circles towards open windows and above the top floor. Surprisingly, the high school boys, who spend an inordinate amount of energy being cool, fight, almost giggling, to take the bubble bottle from my hands. The football (“soccer” no longer sounds right) playing 7th graders chase them. One very observant boy asked me why they’re different colors. They all think I’m a bit crazy, and that’s fine. I have a reputation as the nutty teacher with funny glasses who sings to herself and dances down the halls to uphold.

Last week, I blew bubbles all the way home. Random taxi drivers smiled and said something incomprehensible, macho boys, their shirts unbuttoned one too many, laughed. Some women looked at me disapprovingly. That too is fine, as I have provided them with a moment in which they can feel superior to another human being.

I like to watch as the bubbles get caught in the turbulence of passing cars. Some brave ones manage to cross the street and float in front of those who are indifferent. Some are much longer lasting than others, slowly fading in shininess, no longer oil-slickly reflecting, barely an outline between themselves and nothingness, until they disappear. I try to pinpoint that split-second between something and nothing, yet never succeed.

The other day, I saw that the lower primary kids were having a picnic on a small patch of grass, all gathered around their plates. I blew a stream of bubbles over their heads to their great amusement. Several jumped to their feet to chase and squeal. One of the teachers snapped pictures. I was pleased with myself. Shortly thereafter, a woman came up to me and verified my name. She told me she didn’t think what I was doing was a good idea. Just look at the teachers’ faces. And the kids had been sitting so nice and quietly. I had to respect her for approaching me. I don’t remember if I said anything, but quickly made my exit. I thought about it for probably too long, about how I would feel if I was a teacher in charge of the kids and a random school employee imposed herself on my picnic in such a way. I guess I understood. It took the wind out of my sails, and I didn’t blow any more bubbles that day.

Happiness: a definition

Recently, I became obsessed with buying a hammock, the kind with its own metal support. It’s easy to find those you can hang between trees, but you need trees sufficiently large and properly spaced to hang one. After several frustrating shopping trips, I found a rope hammock to my liking and a support for it. Unfortunately, one wasn’t made for the other. Thankfully, my housemate is more gifted than I at making do with what one has, and the hammock is now installed on the lower level of the small front garden, in a spot almost tailor made for it.

I like a good rope hammock, the kind that conforms itself to my form and the effects that gravity has on it, suspended, but not so low that my backside touches the ground and not so high that I have to do gymnastics to get myself in it. I like to lay almost still, hands behind my head, thinking of nothing and everything. For some reason, I can’t be anxious about the recent decisions I’ve made about my job, home, future… I look at my feet and am happy that I am still pleased with my tattoos. That’s a good thing because they’re going to be with me for a very long time. To my right, I can still see a sliver of the Bosphorus and between houses and trees, the moon as it rises. The plum tree sometimes drops a fruit. The neighbors’ dog might stop by for a short visit and a pat on the head, disappointed that there’s no game of fetch.

My happiness is marred by one thing. On the slope of the hill below the garden is one of the biggest fig trees I have ever seen. Countless figs are growing large and heavy on its many branches. Due to the steepness of the slope and the height of the tree branches, I will be able to reach very few of them; my definition of frustration.