I Carry Their Ghosts -- Istanbul, Turkey

Eight days left in Istanbul.

It’s Monday. Monday the 17^th of February at about a quarter after ten.

The calendar and the climate say it’s still winter, but I believe Istanbul has pigheadedly chosen to ignore this fact. I can’t say I’m bothered by this decision.

I’m starting this post on my little purple notebook with the enormous pen given to me by one of my student friends a few weeks ago. My script is loose and scrawling and I’m less than enthusiastic about deciphering it later and typing it up in the appreciably more legible Garamond size 12 on my laptop from the quiet of Cesim’s flat.

But I’m enjoying the looseness of the fat pen gripped awkwardly between my fingertips. It makes my hand appear comparatively small and can whimsically switch between green and blue and black and red and makes me feel like a little kid again. I never did learn how to hold my pencil correctly (much to my mother’s dismay) and feel duly rebellious whenever I scribble my observations, thinking back to how many times my mother corrected my clenched fingers (and the directly related amount of times I corrected right back).

I sit on a hard, narrow wooden bench with my back pressed against the metal wall between two ferry windows. I’m chuffed to have arrived early enough to choose one of the only spaces minus an inch of protruding sill that obnoxiously digs into ones upper back.

This will be a refreshing trip, I inhaled deeply and watched the seagulls winging around the docks.

My unforgivably dirty fawn boots push against the white rail in front of me. Two American girls sit on my right. One wears red worn Tom shoes and the other carries a grey and orange Gregory pack.

Gregory girl sports a foxy black faux hawk that I wish was mine.

They lean over the railing and look at the jellies. I lean over the railing and snap pictures of soggy bread and roses.

 

“Excuse me,” I sat back down and a blonde tourist interrupted my lazy thoughts with some manner of unidentifiable European accent. “Could you -- ” she motioned for me to move towards Tom’s so that the window would jam into my back for the entire hour and a half cruise. Usually, I would resentfully comply with this sort of request, but the public transportation system in Istanbul has gone and made me very territorial.

“Can you sit here?” I motioned to the space beside me. I’d arrived early to avoid the unpleasant seats and wasn’t about to relinquish my claim without a fuss.

“There are four,” she motioned to her friends watching me from behind.

Damn... now I’m really going to seem like an ass.

“I’m sorry... I... I really don’t want to sit over there -- ” I awkwardly stuttered, not quite sure how to proceed without appearing as self-centered as I felt.

“The window makes it uncomfortable,” Tom’s explained from the between-the-windows seat to my right.

The girl and her friends looked confused, but withdrew. I breathed a sigh of relief and vowed to be more assertive more often.

  
All this contemplation over the positives and negatives of leaving Istanbul has caused me to contemplate my worries and excitements about coming and going in general. I chatted with an inspirational tea-date friend (the best sort of box in which to put a friend) about visiting Colorado in October. I mentioned a couple of fears regarding returning to my hometown and she mentioned a quote by Eliot. Something that goes something like this:

“We maintain a fiction that the person we are with has stayed stable and constant since our last meeting, but that it isn't true.”

We are creatures of change.

Last year is a ghost of who I was last month. Last month is a ghost of who I was last week. Last week is a ghost of who I am today.

Today I am new.  Today, I am a stranger. As are you.

Everything that touches us alters us. Every interaction creates a new person who reacts to life in a new way. The people with whom I’ve experienced the most joy are now new creatures – my memory of what they were is a ghost of what they are. The people with whom I’ve experienced the most pain are new creatures. It is counter-productive, obstructive, naïve to imagine that I can simply pick up where I left off and that things will be the same. Needs change, wants change, roles change. I will not be needed or wanted to fill the same role as I did when I left my home last June.

So I must learn to treat those I knew as I treat those I meet – with no expectations, no judgment and a generous helping of curiosity.

I can’t expect myself to be my ghost. I can’t expect you to be yours.  I can’t expect us to interact in the same positive or negative way as when last we met.

Sometimes it hurts to remember that the world doesn’t stop simply because I’m not there. When what was most important in my life manages to carry on just fine without me, I feel very small indeed. I don’t know my sisters. I know their ghosts. I don’t know my parents, my brothers or my friends.

They’ve carried on and I carry their ghosts from eight months and twelve days ago.

This frightens me. It forces me to cherish the connections I make... but the lack of continuity and consistency is disturbing to live with. Knowing that nothing will be the same makes me afraid to meet old friends turned new because --

“I want this memory of this person.”

-- I’ve become attached to their ghosts and don’t want to admit that the person has gone with the moment.

This can be tremendously limiting. It keeps me from having intimate (ghosts haven’t got enough dimension for intimacy) experiences with people in the present because I am afraid we will have changed too much. That I will only disappoint and be disappointed. I am afraid to soil the past. I am afraid of failing to meet the expectations created by my ghost; the imprint I’ve left in their minds that no longer reflects my person.

Maud will visit me in March. Our ghosts are from December.

I will visit Charlotte in April. Our ghosts are from August.

Martin will visit me in June. Our ghosts are from October.

Tessa will meet me in August. Our ghosts are from September.

I will visit my family and hometown friends in October.  Our ghosts are from June. My brother has had a baby, my sister is graduating highschool and my friend is getting married. What I remember of them is a very old reflection.

I will visit Miguel in November. Our ghosts are from a single afternoon in August.

Yes, I’m going to make use of the cliché and say that people are like wine and cheese – but I don’t necessarily think we get better with age. Better is a value judgment and I do my best to refrain from using those. We simply change with age. The wine you drank today is not the same as the wine you drank last year. Based off of how you’ve changed, you could like it more or you could like it less. The only way to know for sure that you’ll be dissatisfied is to expect it to taste exactly the same. 

 

I’m finishing this post from the living room of the Beylikdüzü apartment. I had hoped to stay the night in city center, but Ümit’s parents flew back from Bursa for a doctor’s appointment in the morning. The flat suddenly became too crowded for the likes of me, so I was promptly booted to Beylikdüzü.

The Bosphorus tour was everything I needed. 

Tom's girl and Gregory girl turned out to be a splendid couple from California who farmed for six months out of the year and traveled the other six.

That sounds like a lifestyle I could get behind... perhaps if I had a base that felt more like home than Grand Junction...

They had traveled extensively through South America and were on their way to spend a month in India. We talked about food and culture and our respective understandings of Istanbul. I was so excited to meet with people from my own country of my own age that I’m afraid this excitement got lost in translation and transmogrified into typical obnoxious American behavior.

Too much, too loud, too desperate, too informed but not.

But graciously lenient of my reprehensible behavior, the girls allowed me tag along for the afternoon. The ferry docked at Anadolu Kavagi at 12:10 and we strode into the tourist town and leisurely hiked a hill to see the castle at the top.  

This is Yoros Castle, a structure from the 1300s that overlooks the convergence of the Black Sea and the Bosphorus. It was settled by the Phoenecians and Greeks before the Byzantium Empire and was occasionally occupied by the Byzantines themselves. When it's strategic power was recognized, the Genoese and the Ottomans started battling the Byzantines for ownership. At one point, the Genoese were able to hold the castle for 40 years -- lending it the name, "The Genoese Castle".

This area of Istanbul is famous for its fish.

Thanks so much for spending the afternoon with me and for your advice on visiting South America. Your company was refreshing and inspiring. Good luck in India!

Our ferry

 I gave the girls some space and switched on my kindle for the ferry ride back. The sunshine filtering in through the window eventually caused me to collapse onto my crumpler bag, jam my boots behind the heater and take a glorious nap.

We docked at Eminonu at about 16:30. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, tumbled down the stairs and crossed the bridge towards Istiklal Street. I half-heartedly searched for the Californians on the way, but decided that I’d probably hassled them enough for one day.

Why was I so negative? I think... I think I just really needed to realize that my difficulties here are understandable. I needed someone to tell me that my struggles make sense.

I bought two paintbrushes and a square of zinc white watercolor. I ate some Mado ice cream (which wasn’t nearly as firm or delicious as the ghost I remembered) and then boarded the metro for the tram for the metro to Topkapi.

Eight more days, Bourget.