Yaramaz Went Away

It mostly consists of work and exhaustion and eventually a bit of Awayness.

January:  After 16 days of fluorescent green trees and paving stones painted with moss and raindrops, of a house full of long-unseen family and dogs and edible exotica, of empty sidewalks and English Spoken Here, of friends from toddlerhood reappearing in a Jamaican jerk joint over pale ale and  plantain chips and other friends from a previous adult incarnation emerging as lovely and fundamentally unchanged as ever, I am back in the land that built two ungainly bridges between two continents.

February:  I have yet to see daylight today, aside from through my office window and aside from the 20 or so minutes on the way to work not spent underground.

March: I have hayfever. Except there is no hay (or any quantity of living greenery at all) in Istanbul so I don’t think it’s really hayfever.

April: I am very very very tired this week.  Twice so far this week D. has brought me coffee in bed that I could barely wake up for- Monday I was able to drink most of it before falling back into a coma, but this morning I could only manage a few sips before falling back into a stupidly deep sleep.

May:  I woke early from a dream in which the neighbourhood was being circled by military helicopters and air raid sirens were wailing and I saw a ’50s style rocket being launched from somewhere near my dreamland Osmanbey Armenian cemetery and watched patiently as it flew through the air over the flat and landed explosively on the gas station up the street that doesn’t exist.

June:  Top Ten Foods Meme … stolen from used_songs

10 Favorite Foods (in random order)
1.  Thai and Indian curries (any and all and super hot)
2. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
3. Tomatilla Salsa, spiced sautéed potatoes, and an egg over easy, all swirled together (it’s better than it sounds!)
4. Vietnamese Pho/Japanese udon soups
5. Potatoes in any form
6. Pink grapefruit- juice and fruit
7. cherries and strawberries and peaches, in season
8. a good espresso-based coffee- noisette, cappuccino, latte, whetever
9. thick turkish yogurt with muesli and cut up bits of fresh fruit
10. gözleme

July:  Back at work, though with far fewer, far slower mental images flickering through my coffee addled brain. It is nothing like the 1968 Warhol experimental film that was rattling about just before I left.

August:  I fell asleep sometime around one last night. We had gone over to Dan’s for a rooftop teras barbecue, which was lovely- Steve was there all manic and wired with his fabulously decadent girlfriend Özlem, and Dan has a new girlfriend, Esra, who seems to be dragging him happily from his quiet little shell.

September:  It is day 2 of Ramazan, and I am somewhat underslept due to the drummer pounding away for suhoor somewhere just outside our flat, whenever that time is, just before sunrise.

October:  I’ve been back for nearly a month now. The rainy grey wet contrast to Istanbul’s unending bright humid heat has been welcomed.

November:  In Oaxaca, surrounded by Offerings and Skeletons and small children painted with truly scary ghoulish makeup carrying small plastic pumpkin buckets, asking for pesos. The dead are among us today.

December:  In La Palma, in very Northern El Salvador. We chicken bussed up this morning from lush Suchitoto, our place of seclusion for the past few days (aside from the guys screwing in the bathroom, and the girl puking her guts out after, all amplified amazingly through the cinderblock walls).

A steel grey afternoon in new shoes, playing scrabble with Waycho and the applesauce-mad baby, drinking tea, eating vegan brownie dregs. I feel very calm right now, very balanced. So balanced and calm that I am terrified of losing this equilibrium, terrified that my inevitable upcoming changes will destroy my hard won sanity (it’s a rare commodity for me). The feeling of hopelessness that I had nursed is easing up and my meditation under my breath is no longer "am sad, very sad, sad’.  I like being around family. I like being with Lola again. I like being able to close my bedroom door and savour the solitude. I like feeling at least superficially in charge of my daily routines.

I hope I can keep this fleeting feeling of hopefulness.

At home, tucked away in my cozy basement bedroom with lots of blankets and hot coffee and blinds closed against the outside cold snowy air. I am very happy to be here, Hot water showers are marvelous. Peace and quiet are marvelous. Solitude is marvelous. Libraries are marvelous. My calm is slowly starting to creep back into my bloodstream. It has been gone a long, long time. I had spent many many months teetering on the edge of breakdown, with many sleepless nights up contemplating why I was feeling like I had no hope left. Hope is returning slowly. Not sure where it went, but it was certainly waning for quite a while.  Maybe I just needed my solitude back. I’d had over a year of nonstop human interaction, day and night, with no downtime. My inner hermit nearly lost it.

And so, am back, via San Jose, Denver, Las Vegas (rerouted from snowy Seattle). It has been a long journey. Now waiting for job interviews to start next week to find out where I will be living next.  It’s an odd feeling not knowing if you will be living in beijing or rural oman or wherever next year. I never get used to the uncertainty.

For the record, Bob Seamonster’s long lost cousin Hector has just joined Facebook. Anyone who wants to befriend a well-educated and erudite lake monster can find him there.  He is a fine monster. He’s hoping Facebook won’t disappear him too. Fingers crossed.

Barking like a dog in San Jose. We finally have a nice, warm dribble of a shower and a bed that doesn’t slope down into a valley in the middle and no need for an industrial strength fan so my ribcage isnt in agony, but the cough is getting lungier. I scare people.  We got in last night, far later than expected. Our bus from Granada was sworn to take 7 or 8 hours (I swear! So does Lonely Planet! And the Tica Bus dude at the station!) but we were at the Granada bus station at 9:30am yesterday and arrived in San Jose around, ooo, let’s say 8:30pm.  I had booked our hostel here based on the location of the Tica Bus Terminal, in theory (on the map) around 1st Avenue at 9th Calle (avenues are numbered north to south, calles west to east, all quite logical). When we got in to San Jose, checked the map, tried to hail a taxi and failed due to a football match being on, we set off in the general direction we thought we ought to be heading in. First we went in one very wrong direction but didn’t realise it because no central american city ever has street signs and if you ask for directions no one knows the names of streets (because there are no signs) and can only refer to landmarks you know nowt about. After consulting with a couple in a security booth, we retraced our tracks back to the Terminal and went in the other direction, through a neighbourhood your mother always told you to stay away from, especially after dark.  After trying futilely to ask passers by where we were and if we were indeed heading in the right direction, a car pulled up across the street and asked us if we needed help and told us we were in fact in a neighbourhood our mothers always warned us about.  We were, they said, heading in the right direction, but were a few avenidas off and many many calles off. We were pointed to a big main drag two blocks in (safety!) and wished well. Very kind. We hauled our tired bodies and many bags over those 2 blocks and managed to persuade a reluctant taxi driver to take us to our hostel (not far from here, we swore- look! See the map! Very close indeed!).  After the first dozen calles went by, we realised that perhaps the bus terminal had moved and no one had thought to mention this to us.  We were in fact on the other side of town. Whoops.  We got in, felt wretched, ate pasta somewhere up the street, tried to get at least one unit of alcohol into our ravaged systems, then slept on the first good bed in about 6 weeks.

We fly out at 7:21 tomorrow morning, into Denver International Airport, where planes seem to catch fire after crash landing. Sigh.

Going to Costa Rica on the 9am bus from Managua, to be joined from here at around 10am, showing up at 9:20, they said. I am quite shattered, no sleep due to a night of bronchial bollix and hearing all sorts of music in the white noise of the fan (this time, fast and sharp Black Sea fiddle/keman music and Led Zepplin).  We have an 8 hour journey by bus to look forward to, with the usual hot and dusty border crossing. I am looking forward to going home. I really need a hot shower. I think the Turks were right- these cold showers and nights full of cool breezes from the fan are making my body hurt and my lungs go crazy.  I will soon get sick and die from it all, if things go as predicted.

Just discovered that CIBC charges $5.00 for every withdrawl abroad. Garanti Bankasi didn’t charge anything so I had been lulled into a false sense of the world being not as greedy as I had remembered. For the past few weeks since I started using my Canadian account, I had been withdrawing the vast sums of 1000-2000 cordobas at a time (Vast, I tell you! Our room was 1200 cordobas for the whole week for both of us!) and had been charged 5 bucks a pop. I just checked my online account to make sure that I hadnt been charged for the three failed withdrawl attempts earlier today and realised that I had only been taking out $50-$100 at a time. $35 dollars in charges for about $400 in withdrawls. Sigh. I hate banks. I hate myself for being stupid enough to forget that i could take out larger amounts at a time.

Yesterday, we went to Masaya, a town halfway back to Managua, about 50 cents by minibus. They pronounce it like Messiah and I garbled it like a Turkish Masaya (Masa-ya– to the table, as in, Masaya gidiyoruz, we are going to the table).  To The Table is a famed artisanal town, renowned throughout Nicaragua for its craftsfolk and artistry and markets displaying the wares of their efforts.  Where the minibus dropped us off (‘Si, Si! Masaya!’) bore no sign of crafts or markets- just a long dusty stretch of highway and gas stations and shacks advertising Coke or spare tires. We walked along the highway in the heat, bright sun bearing down, until we reached a roundabout and asked the construction worker on the gutted Pollo Campero site where we might find the fabled markets. They were about seven, maybe eight blocks down the 9 o’clock side of the roundy roundy, across the highway.  We walked. And walked. Masaya is flat and relaxed and has old haciendas mixed with nasty new shacks, culminating in a rather magnificent old 16th century Spanish mercado, which resembled, perhaps, the Alamo or a hollowed out hall found in Oaxaca. It was filled with many many little shops full of lots of pretty things. This year, there will be gifts. I may be the prodigal daughter returning yet again but this time my arms will be full of things other than my cat and the remains of my meagre life possessions. It rained heavily, great downpours. We walked and walked and walked until our shins split and heels thudded in our shoes.  We took a taxi back up those 8 rainy blocks to the highway, ignoring our taxi driver when he insisted as we got out that our agreed fare was actually per person (it wasn’t) and hailed down a pleasantly uncrowded chicken bus back to Granada and walked the many blocks from the bus station back to our room. 

I couldn’t sleep all night- my body ached and my lungs ached and ribcage ached and the fan blowing on us made me cold but my skin was hot. Toss-turn-toss-turn. I may have slept at 4am or 5am and when I awoke my lungs and ribs and bones still ached. After a brief attempt at coffee and internet, I went back to the room and failed to sleep. I am feeling better now- had my first meal around 5pm, the lovely fake tacos made with freshly grilled pupusas and lots of fresh coriander and chopped onion and lime juice and salsa piquante.  I could live on those. My lungs and ribs still ache but I dont feel like death anymore.

We are going to San Jose Saturday morning. While I was lying deathly on the bed this afternoon, D. went out and bought them and did the laundry. It’s good to be looked after.

I have quite a bit of time to kill as D. has a job interview with China in about 30 minutes and I have nothing that I need to do or want to read.  I am borrowing this from The Art Of Non Conformity, a site I am hooked on but dont always see eye to eye with.  I like the premise of it but I am not sure I am ready to do the full Excel spreadsheet he links to.

This is my Annual Performance Review, as assessed by me. Ahem.

• What went well this year?

1. I have traveled overland from Mexico to Nicaragua (or Costa Rica as of this upcoming Saturday) without any tummy problems or malaria or muggings or anything bad at all. It has been a good journey, I am now pleasingly tanned and well fed and have read a lot of good books along the way (Wally Lamb- I Know This Much Is True, Diane Ackerman- A Natural History of the Senses, Michael Palin- Hemingways Chair, something stupid by Michael Crichton I found in a hostel in Oaxaca, Po Bronson’s What Should I Do With My Life, half of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s opus- particularly the very addictive Pendergast series, a memoir of a Cuban exile whose author’s name I have forgotten, another memoir called Do You Hear What I Hear about an agnostic daughter’s exploration of her father’s sudden decision to become a priest, and more). 
2. D. and I went to Mardin, Plovdiv, and all over Romania. We took a lot of trains and I used a lot of Turkish.  The bacon in Bulgaria and Romania was wonderful. Mardin was magnificent.
3. I vastly improved my cooking through endless home cooked meals, mastering several different curries and fine tuning my chili and my shredded chicken and ginger soup.
4. I carried myself, my cat, and my favoured possessions back to Canada after a massive personal inventory overhaul in Istanbul, giving away 75% of my accumulated possessions and selling off my hard-won, much missed furniture after deciding I needed a change.  I still havent quite recovered from the shock of it but I think it was the right decision.
5. I have learned enough Spanish to understand what is going on around me, to read pretty much all signs and labels and museum info pages and menus, to understand most of what people are trying to tell me and to speak somewhat better than a brain damaged monkey.
6. I saved enough money from work to be able to relax and not have to seriously worry about finding another job for another year, if necessary (but am looking anyway)

• What did not go well this year?

1. I worked myself to exhaustion, not allowing myself enough downtime or enough emotional distance from my job. I put myself on call emotionally  24 hours a day, every day. That wasnt healthy.
2. I went deaf in Romania and it unbalanced me and bubbled me in silence for most of July.
3. I gained about 10kg from sitting on my ass all day at my desk, often for 10 hour or 12 hour days,  doing endless mind-numbing timetabling detailing and answering phones and emails and other DoSsy things and not looking after myself. And drinking too much tea and with that too many cookies. I am not sure I suit a desk job. It was the first time in about 15 years that my body shape actually changed. Very disturbing.
4. I didnt take advantage of my flat, as I had planned to. I was so worn out from work that I had no dinner parties at weekends, no one came over for after work glasses of wine, no rainy day scrabble tournaments, no tea breaks with any of my neighbouring friends (and Osmanbey held quite a few people I liked). I stayed in, watched videos, read, slept, ate, had small nervous breakdowns.

• Results from Last Year

I didnt do this last year, but I do remember that my greatest need of 2007 was to get my own flat, my own furniture and a solid, happy, full life that included a job that didnt kill me with long teaching hours and split shifts. After things started not working with Azzam and after a year sharing a flat with Dixie,  I had planned a year of contemplative solitude interspersed with much craved pockets of social interaction. I did get my own place mid year and it was beautiful and I loved it and filled it with all the things I had been craving for years- gorgeous simple burgundy cotton curtains, a jute rug from India, various antique armoires to hide my things away, a book case to hold all my lovely books, my own fridge (not a crappy 8th hand one!) and stove and washer. I got the ADoS job after working half a year in the Vodafone saltmines.  I loved the change away from teaching but it made me ill from overwork and stress and the neverending demands from teachers and admin staff. I worked longer hours than I had ever anticipated. My attempt at solitude failed miserably as I met D. within a month of moving in and he moved in 3 weeks later.  We werent very social. I was ill for most of the autumn of 2007 and D. just didnt feel like seeing anyone.  Nothing went at all as planned. I left the job and flat after just slightly more than a year, though I had planned to stay in them both for much longer.  I am still not sure if I made the right decision. No regrets, just some sadness at things left undone, lost.

• Planning for the Next Year

1. I am looking into doing my MA or MFA- either in education or creative writing or something as yet undetermined. I feel like I need to actually DO something.
2. New jobs in new countries- waiting for replies about university posts in Oman and China, still no idea where I will be come Springtime. I do know that I want a job with fewer teaching hours and longer holidays, even if it means the pay is lower than I might like. I want the calm, the time.
3. I need to cultivate calm. Work on my forgotten yoga. Slow down. Find solitude. Cook. Write. Breathe.

• Theme for the Year

No more breakdowns!

Caldo Xochitl Soup

6 c Rich chicken stock
1/2 c Vermicelli
3 tb Vegetable oil
1 Whole cooked chicken breast, cut in strips
2 Chopped green chiles, OR 1/4 c Salsa
1 Tomato, peeled and chopped
2 Green onions, finely chopped
1 Avocado
Chopped cilantro (Chinese parsley)
Toasted pumpkin or sunflower seeds

Heat chicken stock in slow cooker on HIGH (300).

Break vermicelli into 1/2 inch pieces. Using a large frying pan, sauté` vermicelli in oil until lightly browned. Drain on paper towels. Add to simmering stock. Cook until al dente, about 10 minutes. Stir in chicken, chiles, tomato and onion. Heat just until hot through. Peel and dice avocado. Place in small bowl.
Mound cilantro and seeds in small bowls. Serve condiments alongside soup. Makes about 6 to 8 servings.