Of sunny days and short fuses.

Summer is in full swing here in Calgary - that short fleeting season of endless outdoor festivals, iced lattes, patio beers, backyard BBQ's and mosquito bitten flip flopp'ed feet. The season of urgency and sunkissed skin, of tinted lenses and slurpee sticky hands, late night thunderstorms and lawnmowers buzzing, the time of year that makes extroverts of introverts, and social butterflies of committed homebound hermits - after all, no one really wants to be like Morrissey, spending warm summer days indoors, writing frightening verse to a buck-tooth girl in Luxembourg.

Sitting idly at my desk at work, the air conditioning unit blazes away while the sun still manages to seep its fatigue inducing warmth through the window onto the corner of my chair; the sunny days just seem to melt one into the other -hard to imagine that in a few months there will be snow on the ground once again (and that really isn't pessimism talking, but just the reality of life on these unfortunate Canadian prairies).

This morning I was privy to a rather odd interaction relating somehow to the summer weather; as I sat on the bus to work, wearing my usual attire of denim cut-off shorts, tank top, cardigan and sandals, a sun burnt old man (who was being rather oddly chaperoned by two attractive Asian 20- something ladies), began talking to me such that I had to remove my headphones and ask him to repeat himself:

"Are you wearing anything down there?" he asked, bemused, as he pointed to his crotch and I glanced down at my lap, covered by my purse and a book, slightly confused, slightly horrified.

Apparently my seated position and carry-on parcels had obscured the view such that the poor dottering old man thought I was in my underwear on the bus - imagine that!! His two "caregivers" (nurses, wives, girlfriends- who knows), laughed and smiled and I adjusted myself, and replied curtly, "I'm wearing shorts - but thanks for noticing".

I wanted to tell him where to shove his cane, and to take note of the fact that he too was wearing short-shorts, (an all white ensemble that conjured up images of pasty privileged white men in Palm Springs who have no doubt drank too many glasses of scotch and are making disparaging remarks about the hotel help), and that it generally isn't polite to make commentary on the percentage of near-nudity exhibited by sweaty people on the morning bus, but I decided for my own sanity it was best to write him off as a senile old fart who meant no harm.

It did give me flashbacks to last summer though, and the infamous "Mashallah" men of Istanbul -those mustachioed beasts lurking on low stools, sipping tea in various alleys throughout Tarlabasi- who made sure to always make a remark on how much leg I happened to be showing as I swiftly walked down the street in my obviously-much-too-short-shorts.

Summer is a tough season for a girl to keep her cool in, especially when under various grades of sexual harassment -no matter what corner of the globe. I take some solace that at least I am not living in a country where, in some absurd defense of quasi-modesty, women are discouraged from laughing in public  -as Turkey's deputy Prime Minister was recently quoted as saying. As if my feminine blood wasn't already reaching dangerous internal temperatures - such idiocies take it from a gentle simmer to a full on raging blood-boil. It  always makes me wonder - do men who make these sorts of comments truly not see how irrelevant their statements are? How self important and grandiose does a person have to be to think that their opinion is of any importance? Who asked you to open your damn mouth anyways? Who asked you to look at me?? I am wearing shorts because it is HOT outside, you ignorant buffoons - I honest to god can't wrap my head around the level of privilege that men who make comments on women's appearance, to total strangers, must feel. You don't see me outing every bald head or beer gut I see, do you? How about you shut your cake hole and let me and my booty live in peace?

Times like these I know I need to just grab (another) iced latte and head for the nearest body of water to cool off. I do miss my beloved Istanbul Bosphorous, with its fishy breezes and shisha pipe cafes on a warm, tiring summer day - lazing on the evening ferry, watching the sun set. I crave being near a body of water, even if I'm not much of a swimmer (and lord knows what kind of lecherous old men are lurking around Calgary's pools); At least I have the lovely Bow river to stroll along and sink into my own reveries, where nobody notices the length of my inseams, nobody ruins the skyline with their arbitrary remarks, nobody has the audacity to spoil the sunshine.

In like a Lion and out like a Lamb

March in Calgary is a moody month at the best of times; whereas in some parts of the world the heralding of spring brings with it mild weather, budding cherry blossoms, warm winds and pedicured sandal ed feet, in the unforgiving climate of Western Canada, March is a confused indecisive time wherein it can be snowing one hour and deceptively sunny the next. People in parkas sip beer on patios. Cats make near obsessive compulsive-like journeys in-and-out the catdoor, while office workers similarly fidget with their windows, opening them one moment to exclaim how beautiful it is outside, and then desperately plugging in the space heater an hour later while frantically sipping their 3rd latte of the day, twitching.

Today was one such example: I awoke this morning and was greeted by several inches of sparkling snow outside my window, collecting in the branches in the most photogenic of fashions. I zipped up my black biker boots and did up my weathered parka and trudged to work. After spending the day indoors daydreaming of warm faraway places while doing my job (which, in fact, is helping to plan tours for other people actually going to warm faraway places), I caught the bus to a dentist appointment and emerged repaired and polished in the early evening dusk to walk back home accompanied by a gorgeous balmy spring evening, glorious warm winds melting the days snow into oblivion and setting my heart ablaze with renewed optimism and some sense of purpose.

It's amazing the tsunami effect that decent weather can have on a girls spirit.

Mere weeks (days) ago I was feeling completely trapped and boxed in here in my Calgary life, unsure of what I am doing here back in Canada at all, ticking off the weekdays and "working for the weekend" (it's no accident that the band who wrote that song was from Calgary - When existing for half the year in subzero temperatures, it becomes necessary to have at least the weekend to look forward to, lest you attempt to bury yourself in a snowdrift and call it quits). Without sounding too bratty and privileged (because having a Canadian passport that even allows you to travel the world freely does make you privileged), it's a damn hard adjustment to go from a few years spent wandering the globe, living in insanely exciting and gorgeous crumbling megatropolis' like Istanbul....to working in a quiet office in discreet Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Not that this adjustment is anything new by any means, but I havent had to deal with a full on Calgary winter in several years now, coupled with the travelers reintegration. I'm not sure I can do it again, to be honest.

Which brings me to the next leg of this haphazard entry. I came back to Calgary to somehow "make my peace" with it, to prove to myself that I wasn't addicted to the rush of travel, that I could take pleasure in the so-called small things (which really implies a hierarchy I am not comfortable with), that I wasn't in danger of falling over the nomad cliff edge of doom (assuming I havent fallen already -which really I probably have but I prefer to think of myself as scrambling into uncharted ledges rather than freefalling to my demise). My brother asked me recently if I had "made my peace with Istanbul", which elicited nothing but amusement from me - Make peace? With what?? I have nothing to make peace about in the sense that Istanbul has never caused me any grief whatsoever - beyond the over-zealous mustachioed men, occasional tear gassings and the ghetto bottlekids during the Bayram celebrations who liked to shoot pellet guns at me and occasionally explode things in my general vicinity. I'd go back in a heartbeat, if I could figure out a sustainable plan and a way to make a living that didnt involve kids pooping their pants for a sub-par wage. Calgary on the other hand, has always proved somewhat more elusive in the peacemaking department - we are like old comrades that went to war together, and somehow over pints we end up brawling in the alley and then having a silent, lenghtly feud afterwards, occasional rockets being fired until a cease fire is drawn up in the form of a bowl of Pho.

Tonight walking home felt like some semblance of peace being made though. I don't hate this city. I have loads of great memories here; Family, Friends. Maybe I'll stay awhile this time. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll get TESOL certified and return to some faraway place and then change my mind when it all goes wrong and go somewhere else. Maybe I'll ride my bike to Mexico. Maybe I'll hitchhike to Shangri-la. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

Either way, life isn't always about some grand logical plan building towards some perfect, stable, "happy" life - some of us rather enjoy the unpredictability of it all and the adventures that happen along the way, and I think maybe, if anything, I've made peace with that. That I might thrive, and be most fulfilled when living in some semblance of chaos, in a way that doesn't appeal to most people I meet. That doing anything that doesn't bring out your best qualities, whatever they might be, isn't worth suffering for. My life might not make sense to anybody else, but as long as it makes sense to me and I am happy, then I must be doing something right.

Eternal Return

I have been back in Canada exactly one month. It is actually somewhat hard to believe that a month has passed by so fast - still jobless, sleepin' on my Dad's couch (I have upgraded to an air mattress but mostly I'm scared that Truman will pop it in his late night enthusiastic purrs and paw-stretches and I thus end up back on the couch); I am generally rather restless and spend most of my time reading and writing in coffeeshops and catching up with friends; my mind half in this wintery Canadian landscape, yet half still somewhere on an Istanbul hilltop. My feet in boots and socks trampling over snow, my hands still grasping halfheartedly at sheesha and kebabs.

I've been perfecting the sloppy art of post-modern hobo life now for 3 years, you think maybe I'd be used to it - but the reverse culture shock of coming home from 6 months living in Istanbul with all its +15 million inhabitants, to Calgarys modest 1 or so million, is still a pretty big change. I'd say my first 2 weeks here were spent in a bit of a stupor, and now I've finally woken up, eager to find a job, a new apartment, some semblance of "getting back on track" (whatever track that might be.)

As was to be expected, Ive drank a lot of pumpkin spice lattes, and ate my fair share of Pho. The concept of eating all sorts of different types of foods is almost overwhelming. I can easily eavesdrop on conversations once again and see girls and boys with big tattoos and crazy hair. The streets where I live are empty after dark, there are no children shooting cap guns at me, no goats being slaughtered in the street, no gas-van making the rounds, honking up and down the road and waking me at 7 am. Calls to prayer have been replaced with an eerie silence -one that I also love, that is the silence of Western Canadian winter, where the freshly fallen snow muffles everything else, and you hear the crunch of it under your boots like mashed potatoes. Yet the sense of space is staggering, and I miss Istanbul's crowds, getting lost in the crowd, assimilating into a giant throbbing mass of drunken people walking up Istiklal street on a Saturday night (which at the time, drove me crazy, but now of course seems so nostalgic). Canada is wonderful, I have no cause for complaints. It's all just a bit weird. How quickly I can feel back at home, as though I never left at all...yet how I still feel like when I fall asleep, eyes closed -I am in Istanbul.

German Philosopher Theodor Adorno once wrote of displacement and writing, that "for the man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live". Canada might be my homeland, but being that I have spent more time in the past few years outside of it, than in it, I guess it's far to say I feel like I'm living in some sort of exile, and maybe that's what motivates me to write so much - as ridiculous and pretentious as that does indeed sound.  At least that motivation is still there - even if I myself don't really know exactly where I am.

Canadian deer, caught in winter headlights

lists

Things I miss about Canada, in no particular order:

- Sunday afternoon Pho with Endri and Jessica
- Sunday evening dinners and guitar jams with my Dad
- laughing hysterically with my brother over our absurd lives
- spending time with my family
- walking alone by the river with my headphones on and then sitting on benches and writing in my journal
- drinking beers by the river with my friends
- the Ship patio and going for BRUNCH (omg Eggs benny, yes)
- goths
-girls with big tattoos and shaved heads and dreads and boots and all the rest
- drivers who obey traffic laws
- dancing to 80's music (with the aformentioned goths)
- sunsets over the prairies and maybe even sometimes driving to the mountains on the weekends
- my mom <3
- tim hortons timbits and iced caps
- late night subway subs after the bar
- pizza -available by the slice!!
- multiculturalism and feeling like ANYONE can be a Canadian if they live in Canada and we are all basically equal
- bathtubs
- vegan food! the concept of vegans! HIPPIES! the SMELL of hippie grocery stores!
- nostalgic walks through the old neighbourhoods i used to live in
- The Roasterie
- Oolong tea and chess games -and beating Endri :P
- Sheesha at cafe med with friends on friday nights
- drinking wine with Ahmad and Marko and Endri and Jess and getting silly
- Getting ridiculously drunk with Cody and Mandy and Barret and Jesse and all the rest of my awesome punk rock open minded friends and being the "responsible one" (hah!)
- Truman! my beloved cat
- hearing English being spoken

Things I will miss about Istanbul when eventually I leave:

- being surrounded by history and old buildings and mosques that were built hundreds and hundreds of years ago
- buying groceries outside my frontdoor at the weekly Tarlabasi market, and spending less than the equivalent of 10 dollars to fill up my whole fridge with fresh produce and cheese and olives and eggs
- dancing all night to gypsy arab-esque music in rooftop terraces with great friends (and having to help to quickly shut all the windows when teargas begins to float in suddenly...)
- buying illegally imported Djarum Clove cigarettes from random street stalls down on the harbour of the golden horn, for 6 lira
- Living in a building with a winding spiral staircase
- squeegee-ing my bathroom floor after i take a shower
- buying my spices in an Ancient Medieval covered bazaar
- being able to walk any direction and find new strange places - from little ramshackle cafes in Tophane and Cihangir to decrepit buildings and fish shops along the harbour at Karakoy, to those old blackened wooden Ottoman structures that are about to collapse in Kasimpasa...everywhere you go there is history and huzun and it's all for the taking, to see and breath in and smell, for free...this is probably what i'll miss most.
- Going for Nargileh as often as I like and drinking little tiny cups of tea with it
- reading Orhan Pamuk -in the city he lives in
- Iced turkish coffee at Kahve Dunyasi (like cocaine in a cup)
- waking up to the call to prayer at 530 am and then falling back asleep for an hr or so before getting up for work
- my little 2 year old class of adorable monsters
- buying dinner at my local lokanta and eating bread, rice and pasta all in the same meal
- yogurt on rice
- kumpir potatoes, 1 lira baklava and other local delicacies
- feeling like every day something new and weird could happen