Nomadic Tribe Soup

Everyday I wake up to a massacre. My morning sleepyheaded-ness coincides with killing en masse. Grains of coarsely ground coffee in hot water yield to gravity in the french press while I eye my prey. It's like an artsy music video. Each day, sometimes before going to bed too, I kill soft bodies. With a valid excuse as foolproof as an EU passport, I meticulously wipe away the larvae on the ceiling. At any given moment of inspection there are at least ten, eleven of them. By the upper corners, near the blinds, over the sofa we had no place for, nor could throw away that blocks the entrance of the kitchen… This killing is legitimate, I repeat like mantra. The wiggly worms are delicate. Frankly I put my life on the line by getting on the wobbly chair and swiping a wet paper towel gently over one so as not to smear the contents of the tiny immature body on the whitewashed ceiling. When they are captured intact, I take pride in my insectarian efforts. I am an empathetic human. They ca...

Before an American physician and pathologist coined thalassemia , there was already blood in the Mediterranean. There was bloodshed around the Mediterranean for thousands of years before anyone ever thought of hemoglobin and the severe anemia that particularly affected the people of Italy, Greece and Turkey. Coined from Greek words 'sea' and 'blood', thalassemia seems like a lethal tribute to the clear blue waters of the Aegean and the Mediterranean. I saw a photo of a child fished from the sea recently. The tiny parcel was in the arms of a man kneeling in a boat, as if he were an offering to the gods. Not to the Gods of the EU but most naturally to some pagan gods who would welcome the lifeless little fellow still wearing a red beanie. Should the kiddo have a name, it remains as slack a question as his swollen, dangling body. We conveniently go by numbers when asylum seekers and refugees flood the seas, shores and gates of pristine first world exclusivity. So we a...

My attention span is a pinwheel. Spun around distractions, it just crab walks away from clarity. I said I will write everyday in December. I didn't. I can beat myself and pity myself and remind myself that I always screw things up as if I were my own long term partner in a tedious relationship surviving on the lowest common denominator: mutual bitterness. Alas, no. Today I feel particularly tolerant. I have a few things to say to myself. This blog, with its irrelevance, may not speak much to others. I'm not promoting products or a lifestyle. I am not giving advice or hope. I'm not an astrologer and Tarot could be a word in Tagalog. I'm here for the heck of it. I come and go as I please. Like the home I always imagined but never had, this blog is airy and there is a hammock icon on which you click, off you end up in Apotheka beach, Chios. Mais non. Because internet knows the world is full of wandering attentions, it provides knowledge in point form. 10 things you nev...

I wake up at Asli’s house on Saturday and make it to my doctor’s appointment in Fulya early in the morning. The night before I was eating chicken and rice from a minivan parked on a slope in the former slum-ghetto surrounding the north gate of Bogazici University. We were, prior to that, at a meyhane frequented by students. Six women’s who we were. Bajar, a rock band singing in Kurdish had been on stage earlier as we danced in a long halay between seats of a BU theatre. I roll the time forward to the sun on my face. Now. I’m in Ihlamur Palace. Outside it’s autumn in December. Yellow leaves dot the green grass and what’s it with the birds relentlessly chirping over traffic noise? Let my civilization be, you silly creatures! Let us be! Let us fold the earth in concrete origami and roar in our busy, busy, busy. You chirplings have nothing to do, mind you. The marble interior of this quiet four-chambered modest kasr is extraordinary. I know little about marbles, Ottoman architec...

There is a lot I can say about Vivian. Her name derives from Latin 'vivus': alive. She's blonde. She has a laughter that will melt your icy heart. Vivian will tell you everything like the world were her own private snow globe and she'll find herself out of breath and sparkly eyed at the end. I first met Vivian at the ice rink in my neighbourhood of Junction Triangle in Toronto. She was wearing what appeared to be a Russian fur cap, she knew little about skating, she nodded as I explained the basics and off she went on her own like a baby goat, agile and merry. I turned to Seçil, with whom she'd showed up, and asked "What is this ?" "Isn't she lovely?" Seçil replied. (insert Joel's cell phone pics at the ice rink here if you ever find them) I lived in two houses formerly inhabited by Vivian. The first one had a huge rooftop terrace. I remember a sleepover in Viv's queen size bed on the floor. As if through the confessional window...

There is a new residency program by the coolest fart institute of mental health and well-less-ness clinic called the normal. si bap bap du bap I signed up because I'm interested in the innovative aspects of self worth and breathing techniques and spiritual cleansing and protozoaic detox. I want to heal myself. Badly. Somewhere over the Arch de Triomph, life is so worth it you crave a credit card. Nothing's short of meaning if you dare. Tectonic movements of the third kind. If you know what I mean. I take on, for instance, small battles. I battle up and down and around the beetle bush and nobody tells me about the maze. Mais, mais 'maïs' it may be to the French, as if they have to gentrify everything. If I, too, chew pebbles in my mouth I sound very, very philosophical (à la française avec de la moutarde). Blè d'inde,  the Québécois would say instead. Their fur was more furry than the Europeans. Potatoes and lard made them strong. For when America was inve...