Learning curve

Several times a year I take on projects that are more than I can handle. I make sure that they are outside of my area of expertise, and keep me up late at night problem solving. Like writing a book in August and revising it while redoing my website and this blog at the same time.

My dreams as of late have been preceded by images of navigation bars, widgets, and CSS code, or snatches of dialogue from a story that I feel is emerging slowly compared to the gusto with which it was born over the summer.

In order to make myself feel better and ensure more procrastination, I downloaded these fantastic essential (free!) story outlining worksheets and checklists from Karen S. Wiesner's From First Draft to Finished Novel and am printing all 50 pages. The sound of the printer is soothing, and it offsets my guilt about paper and trees and all the ink I'm wasting. Not to mention the printer I have uses cartridges only available in the US, so it requires serious finagling to refill them.

A new job teaching (screaming!) English to grade school and middle school kids has me way out of my comfort zone, too.

Are there projects you take on that you know are worth the steep learning curve? 

Which language says 'Mother' best?

At school, my son gives me a hurried, "Bye, Rose!" Not mommy, not 'Anne', the Turkish word for mother, but Rose.

My two-year-old called everyone 'Baba', father or daddy in Turkish, until recently, and now she's learned Anne.  I hear 'mommy' when I ask my son to say, "Can I please have x-y-x, Mommy?" and he repeats.

Is this some kind of permissive parenting style? Some sort of confluence of culture where anything goes?

Not really, but being raised in Turkey has made my kids acquire language differently than I expected. My mother-in-law has hybridized English and Turkish, calling me 'Rose Anne' in front of the kids. As a result of American movies, my in-laws still think everyone (rudely) addresses their parents by their first name in America, even though I correct them. It gets confusing.

English at home, Turkish outside of the house, my husband and I agreed. But when I'm with the kids outside of the house, I hesitate.

If I speak Turkish in public, everyone will understand what I am saying, and with some regret that I care, it means they will be more likely to think I am a good mother.

Four years of raising children in Turkey, though, and some phrases in Turkish come more quickly than in English. Networks of expat women raising kids abroad help soothe my worries, while some articles remind me of the difficulty of being disciplined and consistent.  It feels like every day I choose my language.

Has your native language been shaped by a change of location?

Cultural style memo

Last weekend I went to a wedding. Evening at poolside, giant sparklers shooting into the air while the happy couple walked the aisle. Husband in cotton jacket with red polo, me in fancied up jersey dress with pleats and sparkles and flats.

Every. Single. Woman. was wearing heels. And some version of black with sequins. I had skipped the coiffeur and wore a ponytail.

"It happened again," I moaned to my husband, who's closest friend at the wedding chided him for wearing beige. I had led him astray telling him he didn't need to wear a suit. "I wore the wrong thing at the wrong time. Was there some sort of memo I missed?"

Some sort of cultural memo, I wanted to add. The one that tells me what to wear and when in Turkey.

I've learned to kiss hands and cheeks, touch hands to foreheads, implement a no-shoes-in-the-house rule, offer something to drink the second a guest enters the house, and implore them to sit down and stay even after five hours of tea. I've learned to accept that plans change at the last second, that mostly everyone will be late. I've spent hours at the coiffeur, basking in the pleasantries of salonistas and manicurists. I've even learned how to make some tricky Turkish food that impressed my mother-in-law, but for some reason, I've blindly guessed about what to wear to Turkish events and been wrong.

High Drama, from my Style Journal for 365 Days of Style

Tights and heels to a dinner where everyone is wearing sleeveless shirts and open-toed shoes. Jersey when everyone is wearing silk. Jeans when everyone's in a dress.

When have you felt this way, and is there something to learn from being slightly out of sync with your surroundings?

Summer stories

In the maroon recliner in our living room with the overhead fan whirling, I read A Tree Grows In Brooklyn And Maggie-Now every summer until we moved from Wisconsin to Minnesota. My reading grew to include contraband paperbacks I hid behind bookshelves and the now defunct Sassy magazine.  My first summer in Turkey I read everything by Jane Austen. I measured periods of time by the books I read and the beverages I drank while processing the melodic, confusing sounds of Turkish. 

This summer I have my own story to offer - The Mercy Troupers, set in the desert and trailer parks to the tune of evangelical roadies. I scratched out the first draft when I was 21 and sitting on a park bench next to Lake Mendota. Now ten years later it's the first story I've published.

Another summer tale, shot on our Canon Powershot SX10IS and edited in iMovie, is a casting video for House Hunters International. The video peeks into our home and neighborhood in Izmit. It's a love story. And a story about leaving home.

What story, book or otherwise, is captivating you right now?

Path finder

The path from there to here involved some stops along the way, but I'm a Midwesterner through and through. This illustration is a visual trajectory of the direction I took. On any given day, the things that affect my perception change. It can be something as immediate as noisy construction, the call to prayer, or school children out my window, or as reflective as considering each step I took to get on the plane to come here. This is not exclusive to the expat. This is inclusive to everybody.

What language do you use to describe your trajectory?

Medine Memi, 1994-2010

Medine Memi, may you rest in peace. May you now know a freedom you never experienced in life. May no young girl or woman ever again experience the horror you faced. A link to a Turkish news report here (in Turkish).

The book Batman'da Kadınlar Öluyor (Women in Batman are Dying) is an investigative report by female reporter Müjgan Halis from 2001. She interviews survivors of honor killings and family members in Batman, Turkey. I'm sorry there is no translation of the book nor her profile. Turkish-born female journalist Fazile Zahir's article in Asia Times Online also takes a critical look at honor killings masked as suicides. 

It is important to me to point to the Turkish women, female reporters and journalists above, and to hopefully add to the list of those who are asking questions and talking about honor killings. That there are female voices here that are not passive, but strong, and that their discourse must be acknowledged for contributing to building a safe place for women worldwide.

In honor of Medine, on February 5 of every year I will hold a memorial, no matter how simple or elaborate. As an artist, a writer, and most of all a woman and mother, I feel immense grief.

On the way to Ortaköy

This morning I boarded a bus in Izmit to cross a continent* to walk past Çırağan Palas where there was no one on the street save for a few couples and men pushing carts, where after leaving Beşiktaş only a block or two down the road on my way to Ortaköy there was a fire that a man hobbled in front of wearing a worn-down green sweater. The fire looked like muddy leaves aflame, the kind where brush and tree branches and leaves got swept together into a great or not-so-great pile and were lit to remove debris or clean out metal garbage cans.

Until we realized, all of us on the street, including a police officer at the police station across from the fire that was just staring at it while talking to another man quietly, until we realized the small fire had started shooting up another floor.

This is a real fire, I thought, and kept my head craned towards the orange spit canvassing the stone exterior until a headwaiter in a suit and tie emerged from a restaurant with a fire extinguisher, and the sound of “ssshhh ssshhh-ing” filled the nearly empty Sunday morning street.

Triumphant, he looked around while all along the street valet attendants were on their cell phones doing what, not calling the police because the police were already politely watching the scene, and I didn’t hear a fire truck once.

*from the Asian side to European side of Istanbul to meet the lovely Keryn, Renai and Verity in person, where after many months of blog reading and admiring the timing was right and the continent right to drink coffee in person and discuss photography, expatriotism, mothering, and milestones. 

Crafting personal geography

This week at expat+HAREM I ask: how does one's worldview literally shift as a result of location? Mapping the Imagination is about the lure of the world, what it means to unravel one's past while charting the future through unknowns, and how new perspectives shape the paths we are on.  

16th c. Ottoman map

My first post in the series, Hybrid Domesticies, can be found here. Please feel welcome to join in on the conversation!

Wiring issues

Today I am using the oldest ever Nokia in Turkey while my one-year old cell phone is getting serviced. In the meantime, my computer decided to crash while doing Auto Update (what's the point of this function if it only causes mid-week distress?), which means victory points for my darling husband who hates Apple. And to top it off, I couldn't speak Turkish today to save my life while trying to explain said malfunction. So everything is on hold again, except for the fact that I was able to sneak in a stop at the habberdashery (love that word) for DMC floss and canvas. No photo today because I'm separated from my computer, of course. Hoping your day was more pleasant...

Why are you here?

Allow me to indulge in a little brooding. I rarely do this in my blog, and truth be told, probably have not made a post without a cheerful picture of some sort.* But I had an Unfortunate Experience with a fellow countrywoman yesterday, who asked me the very question my blog title poses, but with no philosophical intentions and with a very (can I repeat this again? VERY) unfriendly attitude. And even after a good night's sleep, I am still alternating between bristling and hurt. This experience helped me to come to three conclusions:

• After 30 years, I still don't have good comebacks. This has become a lifetime ailment, I'm afraid. Just ask my brother.
  
• Being nice doesn't guarantee the same treatment in return, but anger certainly does
• I hadn't really thought to ask myself Why am I here? to such a degree since an existential crisis in high school
  

Brooding be done (and leaving out every possible detail, I know), the rest of the day was far more interesting, and fittingly surreal (sorry), with a visit to the Salvador Dali exhibition at the Sakip Sabanci Muzesi. I love his illustrations for Dante's The Divine Comedy. And there is no doubt he has been credited as an amazing painter, but I think he is a far better draftsman and it shows in his exquisite sketches and notebook pages.

I still have "The Return to Innocence" playing in my mind since yesterday after sitting in a cafe where it was playing, along with Crowded House. "RTI" - no thank, Crowded House, yes please. To brighten my day today I saw two very well dressed Japanese girls in my neighborhood walking arm in arm. I smiled the rest of my way home because I hadn't seen a hat that great in a long time, and it is nice to know every now and then that I am not the only foreigner around here.

*The little un-cheerful picture is from Dali's illustrations for The Divine Comedy, called the Delightful Mount.