Silk Road Stories

Friendships made in just a few short hours. Life stories shared, professional commonalities discovered, mothering suggestions offered, all while eating some of the best Turkish food I've had in Turkey. The women I met from the Bursa International Women's Association were French, Italian, German, Russian, American, and more. How were we able to relate to each other with different cultural viewpoints? Different occupations, different ages? I went to speak about creativity and left marveling at the ability for community to form abroad. Enlightened conversation. Multi-national viewpoints.

Bursa, known for being the last stop on the silk road, has a vibrant international women's community. I met a Turkish woman who runs her own coffee shop after first studying finance in Turkey, designing textiles in New York, and returning to start afresh with coffee and pastries she decorates herself. I met an American opening the first quilting shop in Turkey that will be selling fabric online (yea for me!). I met a German graphic designer who breezed through my drawing exercises. I met homemakers juggling multiple kids and learning new languages. I met a woman with her 2-month old baby who apologized for her English while elegantly articulating that the only thing she wants to do is be a mother right now.

Riding a bus to Bursa that left at 7:30 a.m., I sat next to a university student wearing hand-knit leg warmers and gloves who offered me her saltine crackers. 11 hours later, we coincidentally rode the same bus back to Izmit, laughing when we boarded the small service bus that took us home to nearby neighborhoods. She studied economics. Had taken her final exam that day. She was a photographer. We made a date for coffee.

I believe that the things most difficult to overcome, public speaking being way out of my comfort zone, are emboldened by passion. By the support of a community that honors unique, individual voices that examine larger cultural patterns. I am passionate about art and life being merged, even if it is messy. I am grateful for breaking out of routines. And the kismet relationships that can form just by hopping a bus.

The Art of Cultivating a Creative Life

20 women sit around long tables pushed together in a corner of a café in Istanbul on a Saturday morning. The clink of coffee cups, the murmur of orders being placed. I pace around a little bit, preparing myself physically and mentally to talk about creativity to this group of professional women that I have been a part of since 2007.

The painter Robert Motherwell reportedly always started his day with figure drawing, though in his finished work, literal figures are scarce. He did it because it got him up and moving, pushing kinetic energy around until the good stuff could come out. He knew the power of drawing.

I have planned a drawing exercise for this reason, and I move around the room, saying hello to all the women who have come: a mother with her 6 month old baby and her 4-year old daughter, a salon owner, lawyers, entrepreneurs, writers, bakers and teachers.

The title of my talk is The Art of Cultivating a Creative Life. I hand out sheets of paper and pencils, and we do one of Betty Edward’s exercises from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I do this to dispel the “I can’t draw” so “I’m not creative” myth. I also choose this exercise because it relates to perception. How we think we see a chair, a hand, a house, but what we really see is a symbol. By slowing down our brains, we trick it into overriding its impulse to see the symbol of a hand and not its network of lines, hangnails, smooth nail beds, and curve of the thumb. Some women grasp a shift in their awareness immediately, others later as I talk about the application of a seemingly simple exercise to the borderlands of work and home, to professionalism, to adapting to life as an expat in Turkey.

I talk about navigating new territory abroad. About being faced with making decisions in the gray areas of bi-cultural life. I talk about reinvention. The spark. Creativity as a way of being and not just the action of sitting down to make something or write something. I talk about the magic of dialogue, concluding by putting out the extraordinarily uncomplicated idea that all moments in life are art. And then I pose this question:

Can you identify where you feel moments of spark in your own life?

Now, where are yours?

I'm a fun-loving foreigner who likes French roast

Whenever I buy my over-priced whole-bean bag of coffee from the world's largest coffee chain, I encounter polite smiles and a friendly greeting by name from the baristas. Why? Because I am a fun-loving foreigner who likes French roast. I do enjoy other coffee strengths, though I rarely dip into mild or medium; however, I am known as Rose Hanım (Mrs. Rose) French roast lover and so as not to disappoint anybody, I buy it week after week.

One night coming back from Istanbul after my art opening, I ran into the cafe with chocolate unknowingly all over my face (because of course it is dark in the car and I can't see my face) and I try to ask for French Roast coffee beans to take home. I'm over-exaggerating my pronunciation, practically singing "Fr-eee-nch" to get my point across because the whole time the barista is backing away slightly. Back in the car I notice my face with fright while my husband chuckles and takes a sip of his mocha. It took me a long time to recover from that experience, exactly one week later when the coffee beans ran out.

Most recently, a different barista exclaimed to me, "You REALLY like coffee, don't you?" She laughed. "You come here a lot." I was taken aback, a little embarrassed. Was I flaunting my coffee obsession? This is Turkey, after all, where displays of excess seem frowned upon. Yes, yes, I do love coffee. Nescafe makes my soul cry out in pain. I wondered, though, is making your customers feel ashamed of their purchase a good marketing strategy? Mid-way through opening the vacuum-sealed pouch, she asked me if I wanted it ground and I said, "No, I have a grinder," to which I got a blank stare.

Next time you wonder where I am, be sure to check the coffee bean display where I am crouched by the extra-strong roasts grabbing 3 bags at a time. Whole bean. Because I have a coffee grinder.