Well, I got home last night around midnight Santa Barbara time, having just by the skin of my teeth finished getting everything closed out and paid off and shipped away, all my goodbyes said, et cetera. The flight was long, of course, and I was glad to have been mysteriously bumped up to business class for the longest stretch of it, Frankfurt to San Francisco - better food and plenty of room for those who can sleep on such flights.
Sadly, I made it home just in time to see my mom off to the Next Thing. She had been declining steadily for the last few months and was really just waiting to see me again before letting herself pass away, which she did about 4 PM today. We got to talk a bit, and I played ud for her, which she loved, said she wished she could get it together to sing, but it would take too much energy. But she wasn't afraid; she had a fine life, did most of what she'd wanted to do (perhaps there's a simulacrum of Paris she can visit where she is, now), left a lot of love in her wake, and died surrounded by people who loved and appreciated her, so it's all turned out as well as it could have under the circumstances.
In response to my last post, my friend Gregory sent me the following poem, an old favorite and one I think is appropriate for this moment, for my mom and for me, and maybe for you too... Konstantin Kavafis' Ithaca. Enjoy - I hope to write again soon.
As you set out for Ithaca
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:
you' ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaca always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.
Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithacas mean.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Ventilation
Well, hello yet again... I'm writing now only to report some of the difficulties I'm having shutting my little operation down, here. That is, to whine a bit... or let's be dignified and call it "venting."
As of today I have but a week left in İstanbul, leaving for California as I do on Wednesday the 26th of August. Last Wednesday the graphics card in my computer burned out (and I'm assured it would take only 3 weeks to repair) so I have been since then without access to any of the mountains of data, video, audio recordings, budgeting information, to-do lists, 'phone numbers and addresses etc. with which I could otherwise have continued the last of my actual research, not to mention the loss of internet access, which puts me here in a greasy internet café where - may the gods of ethnomusicology forgive me - the music is thoroughly awful, and to be honest, not actually improved by playing it at high volume.
But those losses turn out to be just as well since it seems as though I will need to spend more time than I'd anticipated closing out all my accounts and getting everything - books, several instruments, winter clothes, etc. - shipped "home," which in this case means a currently undisclosed location in Evanston, Illinois, where I myself won't arrive until some time in October. Not even the trans-Atlantic cargo ships are that slow, but I think I've got this part of it mostly worked out.
Am I wrong in my recollection that in the US one may call - by ordinary telephone! - one's utility companies to tell them that one is moving, arranging right there to have the service canceled upon a certain day in the future, the balance to be removed from a previously paid deposit, and the remainder to be forwarded to a new address? Oh, these clever Americans!
Here one must travel across town - in as many directions as there are utilities companies, all far away but in my case numbering only four - to stand for an hour in what might be mistaken for a line in order to get the first stamp to get permission to wait for the form that allows one to wait for the signature for the... like some rodeo clown in the Kafka Memorial Hoedown, all ending, for some reason no-one will explain, in additional fees obliterating the deposit left long ago and then some, and only then to get the bad news that, no, one can only cancel service the very day you will no longer need it, come back then to start the process over.
The ugly options, then, are either to spend my last day - if it could even all be done in a day - repeating this farce, or to cancel them all early and spend my last few days without water or electricity, and board the 'plane stinking a bit, perhaps having left some unwanted but inevitable gifts in the toilet as a tribute to the system.
Yes, I'll try to maintain my composure - thanks for your reminder - but a part of me rather does prefer the idea of simply leaving without a word to these tireless corporate servants (my debts having already been paid, and they with my deposits still), so that only a future generation of bureaucratic accountants will someday find my unfinished paperwork in a dusty archive, roll it carefully into the shape of a flute, insert it into a suitable orifice and wanly whistle my name in regret of our unconsummated relationship.
Thank you for your patience - if you will excuse me, I must leave to find a few cardboard boxes, and perhaps some adult diapers.
As of today I have but a week left in İstanbul, leaving for California as I do on Wednesday the 26th of August. Last Wednesday the graphics card in my computer burned out (and I'm assured it would take only 3 weeks to repair) so I have been since then without access to any of the mountains of data, video, audio recordings, budgeting information, to-do lists, 'phone numbers and addresses etc. with which I could otherwise have continued the last of my actual research, not to mention the loss of internet access, which puts me here in a greasy internet café where - may the gods of ethnomusicology forgive me - the music is thoroughly awful, and to be honest, not actually improved by playing it at high volume.
But those losses turn out to be just as well since it seems as though I will need to spend more time than I'd anticipated closing out all my accounts and getting everything - books, several instruments, winter clothes, etc. - shipped "home," which in this case means a currently undisclosed location in Evanston, Illinois, where I myself won't arrive until some time in October. Not even the trans-Atlantic cargo ships are that slow, but I think I've got this part of it mostly worked out.
Am I wrong in my recollection that in the US one may call - by ordinary telephone! - one's utility companies to tell them that one is moving, arranging right there to have the service canceled upon a certain day in the future, the balance to be removed from a previously paid deposit, and the remainder to be forwarded to a new address? Oh, these clever Americans!
Here one must travel across town - in as many directions as there are utilities companies, all far away but in my case numbering only four - to stand for an hour in what might be mistaken for a line in order to get the first stamp to get permission to wait for the form that allows one to wait for the signature for the... like some rodeo clown in the Kafka Memorial Hoedown, all ending, for some reason no-one will explain, in additional fees obliterating the deposit left long ago and then some, and only then to get the bad news that, no, one can only cancel service the very day you will no longer need it, come back then to start the process over.
The ugly options, then, are either to spend my last day - if it could even all be done in a day - repeating this farce, or to cancel them all early and spend my last few days without water or electricity, and board the 'plane stinking a bit, perhaps having left some unwanted but inevitable gifts in the toilet as a tribute to the system.
Yes, I'll try to maintain my composure - thanks for your reminder - but a part of me rather does prefer the idea of simply leaving without a word to these tireless corporate servants (my debts having already been paid, and they with my deposits still), so that only a future generation of bureaucratic accountants will someday find my unfinished paperwork in a dusty archive, roll it carefully into the shape of a flute, insert it into a suitable orifice and wanly whistle my name in regret of our unconsummated relationship.
Thank you for your patience - if you will excuse me, I must leave to find a few cardboard boxes, and perhaps some adult diapers.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Trip
Hello again! Back in İstanbul after around two weeks of vacation - click on the map above to see a larger version of our route.Part of me wants to describe the whole thing, but maybe that's a bit much for a blog as humble as this - I certainly hesitate to try putting up the 400 some photos we (mostly Andrea) took - but here are the basics:
Firstly the Black Sea Coast - while those masses of tourists who chose the Mediterranean edges of Turkey for their vacation were sweltering in 50C/122F temperatures, we spent the first week in the verdant, forest-covered northeast, where it was not only much cooler but rained quite a bit. Three days in Ayder (near-ish the Georgian border) and the Kaçkar Mountain air were refreshing, even if we were cold and wet much of the time, especially the day we climbed up to 3,000 meters (9,900 feet) to a crater lake (though now I'm not sure which one). Below is a picture of what it looked like to us, and here is a link to what it supposedly looks like in the sunshine.
Sunshine-free after a 3-hour hike straight up, in sandals - whee!After that we went back to the coast, through Rize (where the tea is so fresh it squeals) to Trabzon, the perfect setting for a certain kind of early-'60s cold war spy film with it's macho guys in tiny cars and Russian store signs, where we visited with friend and fellow ethnomusicology grad student Nico E. and later climbed up to the Sümela Monastery in all its defunct and grafitti-ed splendor.
Sümela - keeping monks high for hundreds of years.Onward west the high points were Amasya and Safranbolu with their restored Ottoman houses and Silk Road kervansarays, cobblestone streets, open markets, et cetera - really wonderful places I recommend visiting.
Amasya, former capitol of the Pontic Kingdom, home of Strabo,and training ground for many of the Ottoman Empire's finest Sultans.
This was our hotel - note the castle at the top of the mountain!
Safranbolu. Saffron tea, saffron candy, saffron perfume- is that what makes these people so nice and mellow? Even
the many metalsmiths - the last surviving medieval trade guild -
were pleasant and inviting conversationalists.
Except for the first jump to Trabzon (by 'plane) and the final trip home from Mudanya to İ-town (by hydrofoil ferry), all of our moving around was accomplished by way of long bus rides - 5, 6, 9 hours at a stretch - but there are many competing companies and buses are generally nicer than in the US. Only a couple times were there overcrowding or livestock issues to hamper the mood, and the countryside is generally nice, in a 'developing world' sort of way. And there were a couple of places we might just as well have stayed on the bus. I'll just say that Ankara has a very nice "Anatolian Civilizations Museum" (and had Atatürk's tomb complex been open that day, I'm sure we would have appreciated that, too), and that Amasra, despite it's obsession with local died-pretty rocker boy Barış Akarsu, its mouldy-smelling pension rooms, its dishonest fish salesmen and tawdry carnival rides - yes, despite bad public rock concerts 'til late in the evening, its concrete skeleton awash in adolescent grafitti - its museum was also alright.
Lastly before coming home we spent three days in Bursa, a lovely place, to me Turkey's "second city." With its castle on the hill, Silk Han, yet more restored Ottoman houses, friendly policemen, Karagöz-Hacivat (shadow puppet theater) Museum (in front of the tomb of the man credited with bringing the art from Egypt and developing its eponymous characters), tombs of Osman (the founder of the Ottoman Empire) and his son Orhon, Mount Ulu in the background, not to mention the candied chestnuts... whew! Nice place... yes; go there!
Anyway... now we're back in Üsküdar, enjoying the last few days before Andrea flies home. I'm still here until the 27th of August, then back to Santa Barbara, and later Chicago, to start the process of analyzing my data and writing up this dissertation.
Happy above the timberline in the Kaçkar Mountains.Smelled like sandalwood!
You must be tired by now, but remind me to tell you here about the new ud Mustafa has just finished for me, a special experiment that turned out pretty well. Meanwhile, be well yourselves and enjoy the summer.
[New Ud Update: rather than fight the business-laziness continuum, I'm just going to link here to a different web page with news about the new ud - enjoy!]
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