the death of the author

i hope not, but the death of this blog? probably!
i have not updated for over a week, and the last post i did put up was already falling behind, i mean, i went to alacati like two fucking weeks ago. and, i happen to be going there again tomorrow, to eat more gozleme one last time. i don't know man, if it's worth it, to recount my action packed vacation into one mammoth post, i just don't have it in me, at least not tonight. this here blog is a pretty true to form, i mean, i think i start things off filled with enthusiasm only to have it wane after a few weeks, or even days. every few months i say to myself, fuck yeah, i'm going to go grocery shopping, and meal plan, do it right, feed myself nutritiously and consistently! and for a while, i'll go grocery shopping, make myself a few good sandwiches, but then, and it never fails, a few weeks later i find myself in a depanneur or at the couchetard buying a jumbo family size bag of ketchup chips for dinner, only to take the remains of the bag to school the next day for lunch. like this blog, you see. also, i buy a lot of notebooks, i have stacks and stacks of empty notebooks, i buy them with the intention of documenting all of my academic obligations, but then fast forward a month, and i'm writing my critique dates on the back of a greasy paper bag i just ate a zaatar out of. come into my house, come see the empty notebooks, maybe the first few pages will have some neat print, then it will turn to illegible scrawl, until there is only blank pages. like this blog, you see! at the beginning of my holiday, i was always saying to myself, aw man, that will be so perfect for the blog! until eventually, i would roll on my side, or try to, rolling is hard when you are suspended in a hammock, i would roll on my side and a voice inside would say, blog! like the sweet kawing of a gull, but instead, i would roll back over and let the cicadas lull me back into nap-state, the best state there is. how's that for poetry? it was good while it lasted. maybe i'll put some pictures up later, with a couple explanations, but as for cultural anecdotes and all that hoo-haa, i'm done. i'm going back to montreal in, i think, two days, and i'm pretty staunch about not normally blogging, so it's time to lay this sweet babe to rest.
encore, you say? why thank you, but no, i mustn't.
iyi geceler!

gozleme, etc

continuing on from where the last post left off, i was finally able to eat gozleme, it's probably my favorite turkish food, i forget about it when i'm not here, because it's not the type of thing you make at home. it requires a special large, rounded hotplate, along with a lot of skill and patience, i definitely don't have a large, rounded hotplate, and obviously, lack the "skill and patience" part of the equation. i remember, for talia's birthday, i had made her a cake (box cake, of course, at that time i didn't try to bake from scratch, now i'm interested in recipes and baking, but this was before that), and instead of slowly removing the cake out of the pan, i just turned it over and smacked it, it hadn't even set yet, so there were loose cake bits everywhere. i had to shape the "cake" into a log, which i then covered with icing. anyway, we went to this small restaurant, it was just a nice place in someone's garden, there i got to eat gozleme. a giant flat bread, about two or three feet in diameter, is made on this hot plate, and then a layer of filling is spread along the bread, after which it is folded a number of times into a square, sort of. you get it with potato, or cheese, or spinach, or dead animal, and the bread is very similar to jardin du carri roti bread, albeit a bit thinner. it's great! here is a picture of our lunch, the one in the photo is cheese and tomato, i had the potato one, but had to take a picture of someone else's because i had eaten mine already. it was so delicious but also made me sad because it's the type of thing you know you can't make at home, unless you're katie jung, who would ambitiously give it a shot and most probably succeed.


the guys who were serving us, it was their house, i guess, were really young, as in my age, maybe younger, and were totally surfer duuuudes, after the meal they clipped grapes fresh off the vine and served it to us. it was fucking rad, these grapes, man, were neither green nor red, but green and pink. they offered to give us a whole bag of them, i was all like, fuck yeah!, but my folks, being all polite, were like, oh no, thank you for your trouble, we are fine, thank you. turkish over-politeness is starting to fucking irritate me, i couldn't fair well here for a long period of time, that's for damn sure. also, the nation's inability to dispose of garbage correctly, if at all. i'll spare you, for the topic makes me livid. here are the grapes, yes, i'm aware that the pictures this post are incredibly interesting, you don't have to tell me twice:


but, i originally found this really perplexing, because as i just mentioned, the regard here for the environment is nonexistent, there are alternative energy methods nationally, like these here windmills. it's because it is cheaper, i mean, i'm aware that setting up such energy methods nationwide is said to be expensive, but once you've got it going, it is cheaper, the notion that it is expensive is just sick fucking corporate rhetoric, turkey is proof that it is cheaper, turkey likes things that are cheap. their hearts are in the wrong place, but who cares, they're doing the right thing!


cat update: well, there are a lot of territory disputes right now, very dramatic, really, the whole thing makes me sad, why can't we all just live together in harmony? THE CATS IN THE GARDEN ARE BECOMING METAPHORICAL TO OUR EXISTENCE AS HUMANS, CAN'T YOU SEE?

allah hallah

geez, it's been a busy few days, and for the first time i was avoiding my evening blog-time, there's just been too much going on, but here i am, finally, after days.

my mum's friends, evelyn and alexander, have finally left. they were staying in our house, so we were sleeping in my aunt's house, for some reason we gave them the whole house, not just one bedroom, alexander seems like the type that would snore, so i'm glad, i also have really warm memories of my aunt's house, i would usually skip over here to sleep in the top bunk with my cousin. they were getting on my nerves, man. fucking high maintenance, evelyn would ask for tonic at every restaurant, i know, it doesn't seem that weird, but if you SAW where we live, you would understand, no one even understood what tonic was. this one time, she ordered soda water because, what a fucking surprise, a village restaurant didn't have tonic, and then she started smacking her lips, over and over, without saying a thing, finally when my mother looked at her she said her drink tasted like mothball chemicals, and my mum tasted it and didn't agree, evelyn just kept smacking her lips, smack smack smack, smack, smack smack, i just about reached over to smack smack smack her. she also dressed up wherever we went, i hate tourists like that, i mean, i hate most scruffy backpackers equally, but she walked around with giant aristocratic hats on and shit, she may as well have been carrying a whip to whip poor people with. they bought a lot of crap here, and talked about all the deals they got, and how the shopkeeper let them in on little secrets ("the merchant told me that it was highest quality!"), and we all just smiled and nodded, because, well, even the most naive in the country know that the shopkeepers of turkey lie more than, well, i don't know, politicians? i felt sort of bad, but then i remembered they inherited millions of dollars and rejoiced, rejoiced for the turkish shopkeepers who are rolling in relatively small piles of money. on an interesting note, their son, who had converted to islam a few years ago (what a good time), is going to saudi arabia for a koran scholarship! i'm sure his travels will go very smoothly! my family here is incredibly intolerant towards muslims, i mean that sounds awful, but i live in north america with the same intolerance towards christians, so it's the exact same thing, they hate religion and islam is the religion here, so they hate it, it's partly reactionary to battle the association of turks to arabs, turks hate being compared to arabs, they think they are separate from and better than arabs, and arabs are muslims so muslims are lame. it's complicated, but to shorten the story, they were appalled with the news of evelyn's son, all i've got to say about it is that he's picked the weirdest time to love allah, and i'm glad he birthed a son and not a daughter.

i'm really stressed out, as we speak my cousin derya is in boston, trying to get on her flight to turkey, and since she's flying through britain her flights have been cancelled over and over. ah, "terror." she's been trying for days, i really want to see her, she's stuck at the airport, it's so surreal that the globe has gone fucking topsy turvy, being stranded in america is the weirdest concept. it makes me a little nervous, the whole flying thing, when i was wee i saw one too many movies about hijacked airplanes so it was enemy number one for me, i was terrified, now i'm not so terrified, but there is this strange nostalgia i'm feeling, for being slightly weary of something that i was horrified by as a child, once more. it's like if monsters under the bed were suddenly scary again, or something. it's not so much "terrorism" that worries me, but that millions of people in airports are going to be waiting for their flights clutching government issued plastic bags, clear bags containing only a wallet, passport and ticket. i bet you weren't expecting that, orwell, WERE YOU? i encourage all of you, friends, to have your tubes tied, immediately.

on a happier note, i think, i went to cesme a few days ago. cesme is a resort town, a place where all the celebrity scum spend their summers, throwing foam parties, and being generally disgusting. rich people here are funny, because they are definitely nouveau riche (i'm sorry, i'm not familiar with the spelling, even though i live in montreal, for shame), most young heirs are heirs to vacuum cleaner manufacturing companies, started by their father in the seventies, or something like that. the one thing about cesme, well, the natural landscape is beautiful, when it's not being raped by thong-wearing rich pricks. my uncle drove us in his VW 'TRANSPORTER', this sweet fucking van, where he blasts the air conditioner (i usually oppose, but in a car, in turkey, i'm easily won over), the windows even have curtains, as you can see below:


immediately, we wandered through the market, it's a shitty market, filled with shitty things for shitty tourists, and it's expensive, like offensively so, but you must understand, this is entertaining in it's own way. my cousin and i used to take road trips to such places, pretend to be tourists from the states, she has no accent, you see, and amuse ourselves by seeing how far the act could go before the shopkeeper caught on, sometimes they wouldn't even, at all. evelyn bought a 500 dollar fake chanel purse, she explained this to us like it was a good deal, again, what the fuck. fake purses are big here, i remember the time when fake purses were actually cheap, but now the merchants have caught on, and good for them, that stupid fucking europeans are willing to pay retarded prices, even for FAKE name brands! her purchase made me have nihilistic thoughs, like "fuck the world," "i hate everyone," "what is wrong with people and their measly existence," "fuck life," and so on. i know, i know, a bit extreme, but watching someone spend 500 dollars for a piece of shit, ugly bag, and then talking for hours about what a "good deal" it was, makes you think crazy thoughts. i know, you are probably angry now as well, so please, distract yourself with the following photos from cesme, a place that no longer seems worth going to ever again:



the dog above has a tagged ear, non-tagged dogs are killed, because, well, they do not have a licence, what kind of licence, you say? a licence to live, ah, yes, we are a very modern people. i restraine the urge to discuss turkish animal rights, or rather, lack there of. you're welcome.

nuts!


one thing that is rad, about this here country, is all of the public ataturk propaganda sculptures, also the sculptures of ottomans, like this one:

after cesme, we drove to alacati, a nearby town, a place that is being slowly inflitrated by the cesme scum. it's internationally famous for it's windsurfing, my cousin and i used to sneak there with the car, we claimed it was to look for a windsurf part for our broken board, but it was mostly to gawk at the european surfers. here is a picture of delicious pastries, seen in the window of a bakery in alacati:



here is a picture i took for botany enthusiasts, the small green plants on the foreground and along the sill are turkish basil, i have some seeds i'm going to try to sneak into canada, it's a strange and resliant breed of basil:


also, there were these kids with a pickle trolley, selling pickled things, very strange, but very awesome, they look sweet, because they are trying to look hardcore, in manner of dress and everything, but are doomed to sell pickled goods from a cart, thereby diminishing any sort of thuggish image they could wish and hope to portray (also, young turkish boys' vision of a "thuggish image" is pretty much just bart simpson from the "eat my shorts" era):


the alacati trip is not yet fully discussed, nor is my day with babanne (my grandmother) and my dad's side of the family, but i'm going to have to continue the post later! it's nearly one AM and i'm going to kemeralti, a district of izmir, tomorrow, with efe and my mum, my mum is taking me to the yarn district of the kemeralti district, izmir is funny because it's districts within districts within districts, anyway, i'm excited, and need rest, tomorrow is a big day of, well, pretty much going insane because i'm going to be surrounded, surrounded by amazing wool and beads and things of that sort, things i love, i pretty much wait all year for the day that my mother takes me to kemeralti. I MUST REST! but, i still have the energy to leave you with a cat update.

the kittens, and their mother cat, disappeared, we were very sad, thinking they had abandoned us. in the middle of the night, my mother screamed from the garden, another female adult cat, now this gets complicated, that is actually the mother of the mother cat (grandmother cat!) was carrying newborn baby kittens one by one in her mouth, and lo and behold, a new family of kittens is in the garden. we were very stoked, but still sad that the others had left, wonderfully though, they came back the next day! it was as if they had left for the night so grandmother cat could bring her new babies in peace and quiet. yes, i know, i should write for reader's digest, you could read my articles in the waiting room before you get your teeth drilled, or that enema you've always wanted. anyway, there are now 8 fucking sweet little cats in the garden, three newborns that live, for now, under a pile of two by fours and scrap wood. behold, they are so young they look like gremlins, and one of them is reverse-crosseyed:



i love them.

i don't even know what to say, it's all so cute, i'm sure you are also speechless.

so there you are, goodnight, i still have shitloads to write about, if you want a sneakpeak of the subject matter look at my flickr account. bye!

aaaaave maaariaaa

praise jesus, supposedly all our neighbors think i'm catholic now. my mother noticed that i stopped shaving my armpits, body hair has been a point of contension lately, she's very supportive of my "lifestyle choices" so far, even veganism (shock and horror), but for some reason, body hair removal is a more pressing issue than my nutrition, i mean i don't think she cares much about leg hair stubble, but dear lord, the armpit hair issue is out of control. my family regards me as a "hippy," their knowledge of countercultures and stereotypes is limited, so i don't blame them, i think my mum has always thanked her lucky stars that i have an interest in say, i don't know, cleanliness (fake cleanliness, somehow i appear clean, even though i bath infrequently enough to not want to discuss it) and lace and other things associated with the feminine realm, not cargo pants and beaded dreadlocks. i think she regards me as an anomaly. anyway, so, she started by telling me that, although ok in canada (is it even? i was under the impression that most normo people still think it's gross if girls are hairy, if you step outside of mile end), that shit would not fly here in turkey, but i remained adament, so she blurted out: "in turkey, if you stop shaving your armpits, it means you've converted to catholicism!" she watched my face sort of freeze, to digest the information, i mean, fuck, i don't want to be mistaken for a born again catholic, do i? all the people here do is gossip, leaning over their walls and fences to talk shit about each other, i mean of all the reputations i could have in the neighborhood, it doesn't seem that appealing, although, it seems like a pretty good story, hulya's daughter became a religious fanatic, she should have known never to immigrate to canada, etc, it's also viable that it's a clever lie to get me to razor. so after a moment of pondering, i smirked, stood my ground, now it's sort of a non-issue, i can't wait for someone to ask me if i'm catholic.

also, most strangers think i have an eating disorder, while my family orders shredded lamb and intestine sandwiches i order salad and beans on rice, vegetarianism is probably a known concept in the metropolis cities, but here no one can fathom what the fuck is wrong with me, and anorexia is a common theme in soap operas so it seems a likely explanation for my dining behaviour. whatever, man, i get to pretend to be an anorexic catholic for a month, better live it up before i return to canada.

today i copped out of going to ephesus. yes, i know what you are all thinking, you fool, you could have mingled with the ancient gods, i'm just very tired, and lazy, luckily i've been there five times in the last six years. i didn't feel like sitting in a minibus for hours, it's quite the ride there, you see, and my mum's friends are visiting, i didn't feel like sitting in a minibus for hours with them, i think they are annoying, instead i'm sitting with my aunt, we are both altenating between reading, crocheting, and patchworking, so i'm fine, thank you very much. my mother's friends are evelyn and alexander, i go to their house for christmas and thanksgiving dinner every year, so obviously i like them somewhat, but once evelyn saw me smoking (i was 14) and told my mum, and alexander likes to kill things with guns, so naturally i hope he gets dick-cheneyed one day, the bastard. he's dutch, so at least listening to him talk is amusing.
the patchwork blocks are coming along quite well, working with complex patterns is good, deciding what color goes where, time passes wonderfully and i'm enjoying myself. i'm looking to make a quilt, single bed sized, functional, so erik will officially not be allowed to drink coffeee in bed, at least not under the quilt, washing handsewn quilts is tricky business. i need to make 24 blocks, it'll take me the rest of my time here, maybe more. here is a preview, two of the squares, the pieces are not whipstitched together yet, you get the idea:



my aunt is working on a quilt with the same motif, double bed instead, the colors are more muted and harmonious, she's way further along though, she started hers months ago, already done piecing and onto the actual quilting. she's the one who introduced me to patchwork, i think i was about 10, and beadwork, which i've sort of lost interest in at the moment, i got pretty skilled at it, though, i'm sure i'll pick it up again. here is a rad mural she painted in the basement of the house when she was 16:


i like to tell myself, the one on the left resembles yours truly.

the other day our neighbor gave us a bunch of little fish he caught, they were lying morbidly in a little tupperware. my uncle thought it best we feed them to the kitties, thinking they would probably appreciate it most.


i was delegated to feed them the fish, i think everyone thought it was funny for me to do it, i didn't really care, but had to humor them a little, of course, so i said a few "ews." explaining my veganism, vegetarianism, is futile, most of my folks here think it's hilarious and novel to offer me meat at dinner-time, and ask me totally retarded and humilating questions about it, it's basically a direct replica of the nightmare situations carol j adams describes regarding sitting down at the table with a gaggle of flesh-eaters. back on track now, karafatma, one of the little black and white ones, staked the fish out first. he's become the family favorite, he's most approachable, still can't touch him though, and is the most mischevious. he is the only one still suckling, if you were to equate it into human terms he'd be like one of those ten year olds breastfeeding off his dreadlocked mom at the sunday tam tams (i've never seen this, but i can imagine it easily, can you?)...here he is with the fish:


this led to a rift in brotherly love, as the tabby tried to close in:



so there you have it. i've got to go, i can't let down the neighbors, i'm off to say three hail marys while i barf up breakfast.

delikanli

today my mother referred to a boy as delikanli (dehleekahnluh) as she tipped him, he carried her fruits and vegetables, you see, and i forgot how much i fucking love that word, it translates directly to "wild-blooded" or "crazy-blooded," used when talking to youngsters. also, how everyone refers to each other as brother, or sister, is pretty rad! "how much is this, brother?"

i started a patchwork quilt today, i've decided i'm sick and tired of working with squares and hexagons, so i've opted for a pattern that i cannot really describe, i'll take a picture later, it involves many rectangles and little squares, yesterday it took me 4 hours to cut out the shapes i needed, over 500 pieces! man, my hands are in sad shape, my pinky finger is constantly locked, i can click and unclick it closed, and now my thumbs getting a little bit fucked up too, i'm okay with it though, milton wrote paradise lost even though he was BLIND, man! i'm ready, at age 21, to be a martyr in the quilting world. i brought a lot of books with me, some theory-type stuff, also some light reading, but i haven't cracked a single one open yet, i think this will be a summer of illiteracy and craft productivity, not a summer of beard-stroking by any means. i started crocheting with a teeny hook, i might start a filet-crochet piece soon, since i feel pretty comfortable, i mean crocheting is way more enveloping than knitting ever was to me, although i could knit without looking (watch movies and stuff) but i can't crochet that way. i started making these crocheted carnations that my grandmother used to make, you slip a little penny in, it adds a little weight, makes in a lucky charm of sorts, my aunt keeps one tied to her scissors, here's one:


moving on, as matt shane aptly observed, we turks are very interested in constantly discussing how we are a "modern" people, and what better way to publicly display this than to put an eight year old on the back of a flatbed truck, surrounded by traditional musicians playing weirdo-clarinet (think sexy and smooth clarinet's nasal and whiney cousin) and giant drum, parade around madly in a convoy of honking cars, and then cut off the boy's foreskin in front of everyone, no anaesthetics! wow, fuck man, we ARE modern! i would describe it more, but there's not much more to describe, i saw three circumsition processions yesterday! to add insult to injury, the poor fuck has to wear a crown made of tinfoil and tinsle and a shiny silver suit, the type that annoying people wear ironically to weddings and proms! when tom was alive (my uncle's dog), he would lose his shit, barking viciously, and we would all run to the front to see, the little kid is always happy and waving, due in part to the fact that he has been promised a party, a party in exchange for his foreskin, which will probably get infected because he is EIGHT! modern, modern people.

also, household toilets are not built to handle toilet paper, it blows my mind, really, i mean what the fuck where they thinking, i've accidently, and quite innocently, clogged the toilet a number of times, at the beginning of every year that i return to turkey, i clog the toilets left and right. seriously, you can't even throw a kleenex down there man. it's absurd, but i've embraced it as one of those national quirks, much like the circumcision convoys, so i've gotten over my western-bred abhorration of such things.

today i went swimming at 8 am! it was pretty great, but i always let childish thoughts ruin the swim (ohmygodwhatifthereisadeadbodytrappedintheseaweedit'ssolongandthereareprobably deadthingscaughtinitandwhatwouldidoifisawsomethingreallyscaryahhhhhhhh "uh, i think i'm going to go get the tea ready and have a shower..."), that's something i should probably try to overcome, i mean i used to swim far out by myself when i was younger, i used to also enjoy plane rides immensely when i was younger, and not be frightened by scary movies, the list goes on and on, i guess, lakes do me fine, but the sea has recently started to scare the shit out of me, i mean to put it basely, it's so fucking BIG and filled with scary things, like spider crabs, fuck have you ever SEEN one of those things? neither have i, but i've seen pictures.

cat update: today they somehow wrangled their way up a trellis and into the grape vines, they hung out there all day, i swear to god, each day they seem to be trying to out-cute the day before.

mama cat, standing guard:

the wee'ones:


they are relentless creatures, they never give her a break:

alasmaldik!

dear lord, make the itching stop

at present i have, from one night's sleep, twenty-seven mosquito bits accounted for on my body, which i've scratched to all hell, causing them to inflame and bruise like you couldn't imagine, and my mother and aunt keep slathering on this anti-itch lotion, and i keep telling them to stop because, well, it's this creepy transluscent chemical shit, but they won't take 'no' for an answer. it's not so bad, but my fingers are cramping up from constantly itching my devoured flesh.
on a related note, here is where i sleep, or where i try to sleep while being eaten alive:


i love this room, it's stayed the same for for the last twenty one years, except that the shutters used to be pink, and i make no attempts to personalize it, which is a refreshing break from what i've been thinking about lately, that even when i try to consciously make a room lack kitsch, it's still chock full of kitsch, without knowing it i've dug myself into a kitsch-hole, a hole of kitsch, and this room is nicely stark. i'm sure i'll start missing my kitsch-hole soon, though.

so, now that i've set aside some web-logging time today, let me start by talking about yesterday's news, the arrival of my brother, efe, who i haven't seen for a year and a half.


it's pretty great to see one another again, although i must say, the poor guy has got to get the fuck out of south korea, he's obviously pretty miserable and bitter, has sort of lost the ability to be light-hearted or friendly, i mean, it's pretty alienating to be over there, away from the things you enjoy, making friends with people due to circumstance and not really choice and dealing with what he refers to as "infernal demons," or rather rich and spoilt three year old korean children. maybe he'll warm up over time, we'll see. i think he's also a little bit soar with me for not emailing him or calling very often. wait until i unleash my sisterly charms!!

christ on a cross, tracy, the food here is incredible. our garden, although smaller than it once was, is a fucking bounty, i mean, it's a pretty sweet thing to make a salad entirely from your backyard, you know what the fuck you're eating, you don't even have to wash anything (not that any of you filthy cretins would bother anyway). also, i'm used to eating once a day or so, due in part to my brokeness/laziness, but here, someone says they are hungry almost every two hours, i mean in montreal i'm always saying i'm hungry too, and erik and i try to do our best, but here food is brought out of the fridge immediately upon request! there is always something to eat in the fridge! man alive, i have forgotten how to live!

here i stand in the tomato patch, most have yet to ripen but there's always a couple ready to go at dinner time:


we've got five orange trees, but it's not orange time right now, but look, our two lemon trees seem to be fruiting and ripening:


and there are these peppers, they are sweet green peppers, but they're not bell peppers because they are long and thin, obviously, i have no idea what they are name-wise, so let's just refer to them as delicious. there are tons and tons of them, more than any other vegetable in the garden. unfortunately they look exactly the same as the incredibly hot peppers, these peppers, my friends, are far hotter than any other pepper i have ever eaten, when you bite into one it's actually upsetting, you kind of feel like sitting down somewhere and weeping a little, i don't know what they're good for they are that spicy. yesterday my uncle bit two inches off what he thought was a sweet pepper, and then he just went sort of silent for a while, a few minutes later started cursing and yelling, he said the roof of his mouth throbbed for hours. once i diced some up for a salad, i don't know, i think i was maybe 14, and then i picked my nose (afterwards, thank you very much) and then my entire nostril turned bright red and swelled up. they are what the wee'one would refer to as "devil's fruit":


by far my favorite thing we've got growing, not necessarily because it's my favorite vegetable, but more so because i think they are cute-looking and tasty when cooked right (and fucking DISGUSTING tasting, like ass, when cooked wrong), is the eggplants. they are not bulbous and ugly, like the GM shit at the grocery store, but compact and yummy. today my aunt asked me to go pick two from the garden for her eggplant rice dish (which is fucking incredible), they are doing surprisingly well considering this is the aforementioned eggplant patch where the kittens relieve themselves. here i am, cradling the precious little guys:


and here i am posing with them, before they are cut up for the rice, they remind me of my elementary school band instructor and his wife, the choir instructor, he was gargantuanly (is that a word?) tall and thin like a stick, and she was probably the shortest, roundest woman i have ever laid eyes upon, she also had a huuuuge space between her teeth, she was fucking crazy looking. i haven't thought of them in years!:


also, i'd like to redeem myself by showing that i do, in fact, do some chores, i remember it somehow surfaced in late june, near the end of our lease on hutchison, that i had NEVER EVEN ONCE taken out the recycling or the garbage, i claimed it was because i had afternoon classes and someone else would get around to it before i had the chance, but that's a lie, i was just a lazy fucking jerk, so it was pretty ceremonious when i did it the last recycling day, carl and katie and erik gathered round as i sheepishly carted the recycling box across the living room, i like to call that day "the long march." but look, guys, i do chores here, i swear!!
here i am de-beaning the beans, what's that called, shelling them? removing them, i guess? anyway, i don't know what these beans are called in english, we call them barbunya beans, they are neon pink on the outside, the individual beans are white with purple spots:


and because i know you care so much, and empathize with my difficult situation, here is a close up of my painstakingly hard task:



so there you go, a little summary of the past day and a half. i end, dear reader, with the obligatory cat segment of the post:



these little mother fuckers are so cute, man, it's sickening!

fuck yeah!

motherfucking air canada never put my luggage on my flight out of montreal, so my bags were missing in action for the past few days. this morning i phoned them to harass them regarding the bags' whereabouts, they pretty much said they had no idea where they were right now, that they were being expedited to turkey some day, but i mean come on, i'm in the middle of fucking nowhere, air canada doesn't even have a help desk in the country! the smarmy representative implied it wasn't their problem anymore, and for the first time, i kind of lost it while dealing with a 'representative' of any sort, i claimed i was an artist (uh, kind of? i wish?) and that my bags contained original work (which wasn't true save for a couple silkscreen prints on fabric scraps, two log cabin quilt blocks, and a badly done cyanotype) so i sounded like a total fucking jackass, which is what i was going for i guess, and talked a lot about 'goddamn responsibility'...but, to make a long, uninteresting (and sort of self-defamating) story short, this afternoon i picked up my bags mysteriously from a dingy corner in the izmir airport. so i'm stoked! my precious birthday fabric (the flea market fancy collection by free spirit fabrics) is now ready to be patchworked into some masterful (har) creation, and now i can finally change my underwear! it's been days, my friends, days.
i haven't been able to take pictures yet, but my uncle snapped a couple of the cats in the garden. let me talk about the cats, please, it brings me joy, so just listen, please. there is a white cat, this is the mother. then, two black and white kittens, and a tabby, and once in a while the tom cat father saunters in. he makes strange gargling mews, he's very large and muscular, and the kittens all come running to him. he sits down for a minute, then peaces out, presumably to pay visits to his hundreds of other bastard children housed in the gardens of neighbors. these cats are rad, they are afraid of us, which is good, because we're probably the only humans nice to them, so they can't get too comfortable with people lest they get cozy with the wrong folk, the kind of folk who beat or kill kittens! turks and street cats don't usually mix. anyway, they hang out nearby all day, and beg for food, my uncle has been feeding them butcher shop scraps (they gnaw on bones, these kittens!), and generally romp around in a sickeningly cute fashion. here are some photos. love them like i love them!



please, note the kitten's dangling legs:


throw a kitten on the barbie! they hang out on the barbeque, and on the woodpile. they also sleep and pee in the eggplant patch, and my aunt's roses. this has started a small feud.


not much else to report, my day is interspersed with eating and lying down, sometimes crocheting, and going to the market to have more things to eat while i'm lying down. i'm going to go to ephesus, an ancient port city, there is a giant medusa head made of marble that i used to really appreciate.
i realize my readership will probably plummet, because the second entry of this blog is almost entirely about cats. so be it!
iyi geceler!!