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.
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1 comment:
Eric,
your entries and comments in this blog were an oasis. Let me send you this poem of K. Kavafis, as a memorandum for your trip (and also every trip).
Gregory
Ithaca
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 Ithakas mean.
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