I want to say more about environmental writing, about what I’ve learned, but I feel it’s been already been covered in discussions and this blog well. I was disconnected, but now I’m not. I’ve come to value passion, again, as much as I do clarity. I took things for granted, but not anymore. I have little else to say now, as this class comes to close, but I would like to share what I’m doing in the next couple of days, as it speaks to my experience.
On Tuesday, my sister and one of my closest friends will be taking a drive to Lake Chelan and the Columbia River. We’ll be waking up early, having breakfast at our spot, and heading through Highway 2, better known as the North Cascades Highway. We’ll pass through an Indian Reservation, the Cascade Mountain passes, and through mineral-turquoise Diablo Lake. We’ll get higher in elevation until we see the mountains get snowcapped, the valleys daunting, with the air becoming light. But soon it will flatten out and we’ll go through Methow Valley, through Winthrop, Washington’s infamous and gaudy “Wild West” town and subtle, dusty Twisp. When we reach the Columbia, we’ll be heading north to the Okanogan Highlands, to see that steppe I’ve been dreaming of seeing all year. What was I thinking? That I could go without this? The primitive roads, the sagebrush, the signs for rodeos and stampedes, and all the forever blackened firs.
I don’t really have time or the money to be meandering. But I tell myself this is research, that now that I know what I’m identifying, it’s valid research. When the sun goes down, we’ll hit my cousin’s campground at the Falls, where Chelan meets the Columbia and have beers, yell and sing, and feel cool water.
The next day, we’ll wake up early with black coffee and pan-fried eggs, and take the rural route out to Spokane, dip down into the rolling clay fields of the Palouse, back west through the Basin and Yakima, our baffling “The Palm Springs of Washington.” We’ll go through vineyards, orchards, hops, through all the little towns along the highways of the Inland Empire that are little else besides a church and a gas station. I don’t know what we’ll do on this day. I just know it will end in Crescent Bar, watching the sunset over our dammed, but mighty Columbia with both Pittsburgh and Seattle feeling equally apart from me.
My time with friends and family will be shortened, and neither of the bunch will understand why this is so important for me, why it’s necessary to see what’s inland. To echo my first entry, they’ll never understand that this place is a crossroad to me, the place where I first became intimate with the land as much as people, the outer limits, the unknown of my home. I’ve lacked the tools, the eyes, the age and wisdom to look at this place and meditate on it. I’ve lacked them up until now.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Monday, August 8, 2011
Final Place Entry: Thursday, July 28th and August 8th. The Ravine Trail and Confronting Solitude.
People here still ask me why I chose Pittsburgh. They probably always will. My answer will always be distance. How well can somebody write about a place that they’ve never seen from the outside? I write about my home now with passion, but that wasn’t always the case. I couldn’t wait to leave it after college. I’ve never forgotten how close I was to never coming back.
Today, I’m at my mother’s house, sitting outside on her deck. The weather is cool, in the low sixties, and a wind is lifting the smell of saltwater through the hemlock and strawberry trees to where I am. Right now, there is where I want to be. I want to be here with my dogs, my coffee, and even the crane flies. But I know the novelty will where off, I will grow restless, and crave Pittsburgh again, even though I was so happy to leave it behind the remainder of the summer. The Northwest is a funny place. It’s a great place to be from and it’s great place to end up. As for all that life between, Pittsburgh has served me far better.
On the Ravine Trail, I think of it as a city, a work in progress, a place reinventing itself. It’s me. I’ve become rather fond of it, even at times become defensive. Pittsburgh is like my sister. I can insult her, but no one else can. Soon, I’ll be leaving it on the Empire Builder.
There is little wildlife to be seen today in Frick Park, all of them certainly aware before I was of the coming storm and rainfall. It’s darker than it should be at this hour.
In this blog, I’ve portrayed this place as a poor substitute for my home, but that’s really no longer correct. Becoming somewhat frayed by living in a city, it’s honestly become a bit of a refuge.
I need distance from my home to write about it, but I need reminders, too. In everywhere else I’ve lived, I’ve neglected that, even avoided parks, and tried to go hard without. In Pittsburgh, I wasn’t doing so well with urban living and needed that hike, with that person in April. I can’t remember a time in all my travels where I just went into the woods and thought about my life. Not until now.
Standing here in the Ravine Trail, I again think about my life and all its comforts and distractions. I’m afraid of nature because of the silence and the deeper thoughts and reflections that usually go in hand with it. Maybe that’s why as much as I miss Washington, I’m always ready to leave it with difficulties such as someone I don’t want contacting me on my birthday, one less dog, a dinner table missing someone, suddenly all coming to the forefront, all now unavoidable.
I hear birds now, the static of cicadas high in the oaks. The clouds are getting darker, but the thunder and lightning has yet to begin. Their air is again stagnant, near tropical, although a cool breeze moves through the woods. I can feel the soft dirt through my shoes. Everything is okay. The trail is empty today. The solution to avoiding your own thoughts is to keep moving. But that’s not a sustainable or happy life, is it? Graduate school has decisively put me in place for two years. This class has had me coming here every other week to confront solitude.
One result: On the Empire Builder, I fall asleep at random intervals. Cat naps. My laptop is closed and my headphones are off. The first time I was on this train, it was an adventure. I didn’t want to miss a single unfamiliar landscape or any town. But now I know the route. I’m left with only my thoughts. I’m okay with that.
Another: I first became intimate with nature in the Inland Northwest, but Frick Park, of all places, appears to be my reacquaintance. The morning we arrive in Spokane, I notice maple trees. I realize that I learned how to identify maples from the Ravine Trail.
Today, I’m at my mother’s house, sitting outside on her deck. The weather is cool, in the low sixties, and a wind is lifting the smell of saltwater through the hemlock and strawberry trees to where I am. Right now, there is where I want to be. I want to be here with my dogs, my coffee, and even the crane flies. But I know the novelty will where off, I will grow restless, and crave Pittsburgh again, even though I was so happy to leave it behind the remainder of the summer. The Northwest is a funny place. It’s a great place to be from and it’s great place to end up. As for all that life between, Pittsburgh has served me far better.
On the Ravine Trail, I think of it as a city, a work in progress, a place reinventing itself. It’s me. I’ve become rather fond of it, even at times become defensive. Pittsburgh is like my sister. I can insult her, but no one else can. Soon, I’ll be leaving it on the Empire Builder.
There is little wildlife to be seen today in Frick Park, all of them certainly aware before I was of the coming storm and rainfall. It’s darker than it should be at this hour.
In this blog, I’ve portrayed this place as a poor substitute for my home, but that’s really no longer correct. Becoming somewhat frayed by living in a city, it’s honestly become a bit of a refuge.
I need distance from my home to write about it, but I need reminders, too. In everywhere else I’ve lived, I’ve neglected that, even avoided parks, and tried to go hard without. In Pittsburgh, I wasn’t doing so well with urban living and needed that hike, with that person in April. I can’t remember a time in all my travels where I just went into the woods and thought about my life. Not until now.
Standing here in the Ravine Trail, I again think about my life and all its comforts and distractions. I’m afraid of nature because of the silence and the deeper thoughts and reflections that usually go in hand with it. Maybe that’s why as much as I miss Washington, I’m always ready to leave it with difficulties such as someone I don’t want contacting me on my birthday, one less dog, a dinner table missing someone, suddenly all coming to the forefront, all now unavoidable.
I hear birds now, the static of cicadas high in the oaks. The clouds are getting darker, but the thunder and lightning has yet to begin. Their air is again stagnant, near tropical, although a cool breeze moves through the woods. I can feel the soft dirt through my shoes. Everything is okay. The trail is empty today. The solution to avoiding your own thoughts is to keep moving. But that’s not a sustainable or happy life, is it? Graduate school has decisively put me in place for two years. This class has had me coming here every other week to confront solitude.
One result: On the Empire Builder, I fall asleep at random intervals. Cat naps. My laptop is closed and my headphones are off. The first time I was on this train, it was an adventure. I didn’t want to miss a single unfamiliar landscape or any town. But now I know the route. I’m left with only my thoughts. I’m okay with that.
Another: I first became intimate with nature in the Inland Northwest, but Frick Park, of all places, appears to be my reacquaintance. The morning we arrive in Spokane, I notice maple trees. I realize that I learned how to identify maples from the Ravine Trail.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Prompt #5: Fire Ecology and the Serotinous Pine.
I love it when life has long arcs. I know, I know. Dramatic unity is best saved for fiction and creative writing, not real life. Janet Burroway devotes a significant section of her seminal Writing Fiction, to cement this difference in the novice writer. Still, I love it when it happens.
The element of nature I found myself most attracted to was always right in front of me, one of those things that sounded, as a kid (maybe even as an adult), too crazy to be real. I was drawn to it for that, never researched it, and just let it be.
Metaphor and symbol. Ugh. I compare handling them to handling live explosives. Simile is fine. They’re funny, light-hearted, and safe to use. Just noting a casual similarity that evokes. Metaphor is a stronger statement. It is. Not like. Is. I never go looking for them. If they’re in my writing, I’m usually using them by accident. I feel as if they’re too obvious, too unwieldy. They seem incompatible with minimalist writing, an enemy of word economy.
But on rare occasions, metaphors do just simply arise. When they do, they’re usually within nature. I remember a story I wrote about a man repressed, drying out near the Columbia River, reflecting on a member of his family who was far more wild and savage. I didn’t know it then, but the Columbia was perfect for it, really. Long, surging, originally mistaken for the ocean, but now dammed in fourteen different locations, now suppressed, suffocated.
The element I found myself drawn to was two particular kinds of pines, the lodgepole and the ponderosa. When I was with my father, watching the Tyee Creek Fire of 1994 level the North Cascades, and I fretted about the loss of trees, he told me not to worry. He said that the fire caused by lightning was a good fire and that the trees needed it. I was in disbelief, of course, watching firs being set ablaze that fire could give life to the forest. The next year, when we returned to the site of the fire, there were certainly charred trees, specifically firs. But next to them were, what I realize now, were lodgepoles, smaller, but radiant green, and ponderosa, gleaming orange, having shed their old bark.
Trees that only flourish, replicate, and/or reproduce in fire. I mean, that sounds absurd, right? I was obsessed with these trees for years, never knowing their names or how they really functioned until, well, nineteen years later when I had to do research for an environmental piece.
Lodgepole and ponderosa are different, but related. The lodgepole pine is what is called a serotinous tree. The seed release of a serotinous tree is triggered by environmental factors compared to maturity. The American Heritage Science Dictionary gives a slightly different definition: “[A serotinous tree is] late in developing, opening, or blooming. For example, serotinous pine cones may persist unopened on the tree for years and only burst open during a forest fire. Serotinous flowers on trees develop only after the tree has produced leaves.”
Huh. A tree that is late in blooming, only reaching maturity when exposed to an environmental trigger associated with destruction rather than any sort of birth. No, that’s not a slap to the face or a functioning metaphor at all.
The ponderosa is not serotinous the way a lodgepole is. It’s much more adamant than clever. Whereas the Tyee Creek fire consumed the fir, leaving their remains for more than a decade after, the ponderosa stood. Unlike the lodgepole, the ponderosa seeds, their resin containers, don’t need fire to be released. Between 45-60 years old, the cones drop, and the pollen spreads in a golden dust. Fire clears the thicket, the invasives, the squirrels and jays, and the ponderosa, last man standing, blushes orange and is free to reproduce unmolested.
Metaphor for patience and endurance? Nah.
Last thing: My thesis director has noted that of my collection, the one linking theme in every single one of them is fire. Whether it’s a wildfire, explosion, an act of self-immolation, or whiskey spat on embers at a campsite, there is just fire everywhere. I’m still working on it. Fire is still associated with destruction most ways you slice it. But with serotiny? Not so much.
The element of nature I found myself most attracted to was always right in front of me, one of those things that sounded, as a kid (maybe even as an adult), too crazy to be real. I was drawn to it for that, never researched it, and just let it be.
Metaphor and symbol. Ugh. I compare handling them to handling live explosives. Simile is fine. They’re funny, light-hearted, and safe to use. Just noting a casual similarity that evokes. Metaphor is a stronger statement. It is. Not like. Is. I never go looking for them. If they’re in my writing, I’m usually using them by accident. I feel as if they’re too obvious, too unwieldy. They seem incompatible with minimalist writing, an enemy of word economy.
But on rare occasions, metaphors do just simply arise. When they do, they’re usually within nature. I remember a story I wrote about a man repressed, drying out near the Columbia River, reflecting on a member of his family who was far more wild and savage. I didn’t know it then, but the Columbia was perfect for it, really. Long, surging, originally mistaken for the ocean, but now dammed in fourteen different locations, now suppressed, suffocated.
The element I found myself drawn to was two particular kinds of pines, the lodgepole and the ponderosa. When I was with my father, watching the Tyee Creek Fire of 1994 level the North Cascades, and I fretted about the loss of trees, he told me not to worry. He said that the fire caused by lightning was a good fire and that the trees needed it. I was in disbelief, of course, watching firs being set ablaze that fire could give life to the forest. The next year, when we returned to the site of the fire, there were certainly charred trees, specifically firs. But next to them were, what I realize now, were lodgepoles, smaller, but radiant green, and ponderosa, gleaming orange, having shed their old bark.
Trees that only flourish, replicate, and/or reproduce in fire. I mean, that sounds absurd, right? I was obsessed with these trees for years, never knowing their names or how they really functioned until, well, nineteen years later when I had to do research for an environmental piece.
Lodgepole and ponderosa are different, but related. The lodgepole pine is what is called a serotinous tree. The seed release of a serotinous tree is triggered by environmental factors compared to maturity. The American Heritage Science Dictionary gives a slightly different definition: “[A serotinous tree is] late in developing, opening, or blooming. For example, serotinous pine cones may persist unopened on the tree for years and only burst open during a forest fire. Serotinous flowers on trees develop only after the tree has produced leaves.”
Huh. A tree that is late in blooming, only reaching maturity when exposed to an environmental trigger associated with destruction rather than any sort of birth. No, that’s not a slap to the face or a functioning metaphor at all.
The ponderosa is not serotinous the way a lodgepole is. It’s much more adamant than clever. Whereas the Tyee Creek fire consumed the fir, leaving their remains for more than a decade after, the ponderosa stood. Unlike the lodgepole, the ponderosa seeds, their resin containers, don’t need fire to be released. Between 45-60 years old, the cones drop, and the pollen spreads in a golden dust. Fire clears the thicket, the invasives, the squirrels and jays, and the ponderosa, last man standing, blushes orange and is free to reproduce unmolested.
Metaphor for patience and endurance? Nah.
Last thing: My thesis director has noted that of my collection, the one linking theme in every single one of them is fire. Whether it’s a wildfire, explosion, an act of self-immolation, or whiskey spat on embers at a campsite, there is just fire everywhere. I’m still working on it. Fire is still associated with destruction most ways you slice it. But with serotiny? Not so much.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Place #5: July 27th. Nine Mile Run and Reclamation in Nature. 2:48 P.M. Hot, Pleasant.
Nine Mile Run is not what I expected.
Its entrance is just below the Parkway, completely invisible to the unacquainted. Unlike the Ravine Trail, which greets you with cardinals, aromatic flora, and muted traffic, Nine Mile Run, after drawing people in with the sound of its faint, trickling stream, stops them in their tracks with the sour, blunt odor of sewage overflow. Up close, it resembles the L.A. River far more than any of the three that carve Pittsburgh into a triangle, a creek held within, together, by a corridor of boulders and concrete. Discarded plastic bottles outnumber the sycamores and cottonwoods. The sound of the Parkway reverberates throughout the woods.
It’s not what expected. It’s my fault for having expectations. I don’t blame the stream.
After a fair warning about dogshit on the trail, the smell of sewage quickly dissipates and becomes hard to describe. I remember a conversation I had with an ex-girlfriend, not one of my brighter ones, about photosynthesis—exciting pillow talk, I know. She said she loved the image of a plant, happy and fat off of ingesting sunshine, devouring waves (and/or particles) of it much like we do food. For better or worse, I’ve never forgotten that image, one that wouldn’t be out of place in a pre-school. I bring it up because that image reminds of the particular, organic fragrance—the one that followed the sewage—that I only find comes out in late spring and summer, and only when the sun is its peak hours bearing down on green plants. Closer to the water where fish and bullfrogs have been sighted, a smell is more tangible: Slight chamomile.
Not much further up the trail, the water becomes a cloudy turquoise, greatly obscured by a chain-link fence suffocated by small vines. Our guide tells about the old philosophy of streams, its function to be cleanse and take away sediment, all that is gray, all things we no longer have use for. I find this appalling, wondering about the need to suppress a stream of water instead of building around it and taking away any potential function.
I find the mismanagement of water to be the most abominable form of pollution. But I’m calmed when I take in the scenery: Canadian thistle, creek willows, spider webs refracting light, dragonflies dueling and/or mating.
I thought about my expectations for this place, still trying to manage them and the reality of this place. That’s when our guide speaks of Nine Mile Run as a reclamation project.
Often, we talk about conservation, preservation, the meaning of wildness, the ethics of access. But this is the first time I’ve ever really thought reclaiming natural landscapes. It’s a rather triumphant concept, isn’t it? Urban saxifrage, roots splitting sidewalks and roads, ragweeds growing over railroad tracks, ivies and hops covering homes, modern day hydras that only multiply when divided.
Mercy. I think I need a moment when I think about reclamation. Abbey and Foer have gotten to me in regard to expressing unadulterated passions, about letting your emotions show in writing. The environment is always approached with a zero-sum mentality. Worse than a zero-sum game. We have rationalists, devil’s advocates, and mealy-mouthers. Where is our abundance of advocates and proponents? So much of nature writing involves stopping the hemorrhaging, the sprawl on wild lands. The only direction to go is down. But taking it back, now that’s something.
(And thus we have the have the opening statement of how I became an eco-terrorist.)
I’m getting off track now. But I was wrong to look at Nine Mile Run with such disdain. It’s in a state of recovery. The guide, those familiar with the area look more delighted than anything else, recalling just how much worse it used to be.
Oh, expectations.
Its entrance is just below the Parkway, completely invisible to the unacquainted. Unlike the Ravine Trail, which greets you with cardinals, aromatic flora, and muted traffic, Nine Mile Run, after drawing people in with the sound of its faint, trickling stream, stops them in their tracks with the sour, blunt odor of sewage overflow. Up close, it resembles the L.A. River far more than any of the three that carve Pittsburgh into a triangle, a creek held within, together, by a corridor of boulders and concrete. Discarded plastic bottles outnumber the sycamores and cottonwoods. The sound of the Parkway reverberates throughout the woods.
It’s not what expected. It’s my fault for having expectations. I don’t blame the stream.
After a fair warning about dogshit on the trail, the smell of sewage quickly dissipates and becomes hard to describe. I remember a conversation I had with an ex-girlfriend, not one of my brighter ones, about photosynthesis—exciting pillow talk, I know. She said she loved the image of a plant, happy and fat off of ingesting sunshine, devouring waves (and/or particles) of it much like we do food. For better or worse, I’ve never forgotten that image, one that wouldn’t be out of place in a pre-school. I bring it up because that image reminds of the particular, organic fragrance—the one that followed the sewage—that I only find comes out in late spring and summer, and only when the sun is its peak hours bearing down on green plants. Closer to the water where fish and bullfrogs have been sighted, a smell is more tangible: Slight chamomile.
Not much further up the trail, the water becomes a cloudy turquoise, greatly obscured by a chain-link fence suffocated by small vines. Our guide tells about the old philosophy of streams, its function to be cleanse and take away sediment, all that is gray, all things we no longer have use for. I find this appalling, wondering about the need to suppress a stream of water instead of building around it and taking away any potential function.
I find the mismanagement of water to be the most abominable form of pollution. But I’m calmed when I take in the scenery: Canadian thistle, creek willows, spider webs refracting light, dragonflies dueling and/or mating.
I thought about my expectations for this place, still trying to manage them and the reality of this place. That’s when our guide speaks of Nine Mile Run as a reclamation project.
Often, we talk about conservation, preservation, the meaning of wildness, the ethics of access. But this is the first time I’ve ever really thought reclaiming natural landscapes. It’s a rather triumphant concept, isn’t it? Urban saxifrage, roots splitting sidewalks and roads, ragweeds growing over railroad tracks, ivies and hops covering homes, modern day hydras that only multiply when divided.
Mercy. I think I need a moment when I think about reclamation. Abbey and Foer have gotten to me in regard to expressing unadulterated passions, about letting your emotions show in writing. The environment is always approached with a zero-sum mentality. Worse than a zero-sum game. We have rationalists, devil’s advocates, and mealy-mouthers. Where is our abundance of advocates and proponents? So much of nature writing involves stopping the hemorrhaging, the sprawl on wild lands. The only direction to go is down. But taking it back, now that’s something.
(And thus we have the have the opening statement of how I became an eco-terrorist.)
I’m getting off track now. But I was wrong to look at Nine Mile Run with such disdain. It’s in a state of recovery. The guide, those familiar with the area look more delighted than anything else, recalling just how much worse it used to be.
Oh, expectations.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Prompt #4: Istanbul.
Recently at Chatham, a large number of MFA students went to Turkey for their field seminar. I initially was set to go as well, but after a long discussion with our director, I realized that perhaps it wasn’t for me. Going to Turkey wouldn’t have been an adventure so much as it would’ve been me revisiting familiar ground.
I don’t talk much about the time I spent in Istanbul anymore. Enough time has passed and no longer do I have strong feelings about a place that was so important to me. The important part is that, at least, I remember the way I used to feel towards it.
A month after my father passed away in 2008, I did something that I don’t think anyone expected: I took a job in another country. With a large part of my family grieving and reassembling their lives, I fled for Istanbul, Turkey. There is a sense of guilt I feel to this day about it, about leaving, but I remember being on that plane from Seattle to Chicago, Chicago to Istanbul thinking that as selfish as it was, it was something I had do for myself. I had to come to terms with a life, without a father, alone.
Istanbul had me from the start. After Orhan, the school’s assistant picked me up we took the drive from Ataturk International to Kozyatagi on the Anatolian side of the city. The word metropolis doesn’t suit Istanbul. The city alone contains more than twice the people from my state, possibly even three times more with the undocumented lost in the Eurasian sprawl. Combined with oppressive pollution and an early spring heat, I was overwhelmed. But not the overwhelmed that is typically accompanied by anxiety. The kind of overwhelmed that makes you feel powerless, fatalistic, where all you can do is just watch. Jet-lagged, jittery, surrounded by people speaking a different language, I remember drifting in and out as Orhan spoke in broken English. Istanbul, if you were to consider it a European city (which I do not), would be unusual. Paris, Rome, Berlin, Barcelona all reeked of sulfur and dogshit, tagged in graffiti, preventing you from being adrift and lost in their supposed magic. But Istanbul smelled of vetiver grass, chamomile, and deep citrus, the avenue of my apartment lined with palms and neon-violet flowers. I would wake up later that night and take a stroll for baklava and a phonecard before returning to my pastel-colored apartment and grieve alone and far away from everyone I’d ever known—grieving properly. My room had an outside balcony and from it, I could make unfamiliar constellations in the sky, realizing that Istanbul was and remains the only city that could ever happen in.
There are many things I give Istanbul credit for, but this remains the first and most important. Time would pass in Istanbul and I would become one of them, fall in love with one of theirs. But as with all unfamiliar places, all alien and exotic, a routine begins to develop. That crowded midibus and ferryboat that was so fascinating, such an experience, would become an inconvenience. Crossing from Asia into Europe, over time, becomes a commute. When the time came to choose between my adopted home and my real one, I would choose the latter.
I don’t want to say I never look back—I do. Not as much as I used to, mind you, but I do. I try hard to stay in the now, not let nostalgia get the best of me. I know Istanbul is a different place now and all the components and people of my life from that time have moved on. But whenever Washington started to drizzle, or Pittsburgh gets too cold, I think back to sunlight flashing in Gizem’s eyes, all those walks with her by the cay at Kadikoy and pedestrian, cobblestoned Istiklal Caddesi. I think of the Galata Bridge and the fishermen with their cigarettes dangling out of their mouth, the toothless simit salesmen wishing God would bestow his peace upon me. But mostly, I think of that spring, that morning after that first night, and how everything would be okay.
I don’t talk much about the time I spent in Istanbul anymore. Enough time has passed and no longer do I have strong feelings about a place that was so important to me. The important part is that, at least, I remember the way I used to feel towards it.
A month after my father passed away in 2008, I did something that I don’t think anyone expected: I took a job in another country. With a large part of my family grieving and reassembling their lives, I fled for Istanbul, Turkey. There is a sense of guilt I feel to this day about it, about leaving, but I remember being on that plane from Seattle to Chicago, Chicago to Istanbul thinking that as selfish as it was, it was something I had do for myself. I had to come to terms with a life, without a father, alone.
Istanbul had me from the start. After Orhan, the school’s assistant picked me up we took the drive from Ataturk International to Kozyatagi on the Anatolian side of the city. The word metropolis doesn’t suit Istanbul. The city alone contains more than twice the people from my state, possibly even three times more with the undocumented lost in the Eurasian sprawl. Combined with oppressive pollution and an early spring heat, I was overwhelmed. But not the overwhelmed that is typically accompanied by anxiety. The kind of overwhelmed that makes you feel powerless, fatalistic, where all you can do is just watch. Jet-lagged, jittery, surrounded by people speaking a different language, I remember drifting in and out as Orhan spoke in broken English. Istanbul, if you were to consider it a European city (which I do not), would be unusual. Paris, Rome, Berlin, Barcelona all reeked of sulfur and dogshit, tagged in graffiti, preventing you from being adrift and lost in their supposed magic. But Istanbul smelled of vetiver grass, chamomile, and deep citrus, the avenue of my apartment lined with palms and neon-violet flowers. I would wake up later that night and take a stroll for baklava and a phonecard before returning to my pastel-colored apartment and grieve alone and far away from everyone I’d ever known—grieving properly. My room had an outside balcony and from it, I could make unfamiliar constellations in the sky, realizing that Istanbul was and remains the only city that could ever happen in.
There are many things I give Istanbul credit for, but this remains the first and most important. Time would pass in Istanbul and I would become one of them, fall in love with one of theirs. But as with all unfamiliar places, all alien and exotic, a routine begins to develop. That crowded midibus and ferryboat that was so fascinating, such an experience, would become an inconvenience. Crossing from Asia into Europe, over time, becomes a commute. When the time came to choose between my adopted home and my real one, I would choose the latter.
I don’t want to say I never look back—I do. Not as much as I used to, mind you, but I do. I try hard to stay in the now, not let nostalgia get the best of me. I know Istanbul is a different place now and all the components and people of my life from that time have moved on. But whenever Washington started to drizzle, or Pittsburgh gets too cold, I think back to sunlight flashing in Gizem’s eyes, all those walks with her by the cay at Kadikoy and pedestrian, cobblestoned Istiklal Caddesi. I think of the Galata Bridge and the fishermen with their cigarettes dangling out of their mouth, the toothless simit salesmen wishing God would bestow his peace upon me. But mostly, I think of that spring, that morning after that first night, and how everything would be okay.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Place #4: July 12. Return to the Ravine Trail, 9:39 PM. Hot, Dark.
Kat made fun of me the first time I ever saw a firefly. It was about two weeks ago, after a soccer game, and we were sitting down to beers at the Waterfront when I saw this flickering, pale green light in front of me. Combined with the hit to the head from the car accident, the humidity, and running around in it, I thought it was a sign that maybe I should get my head checked. Sure enough, I see the long silhouette of an insect—suddenly relieved—its enlarged abdomen glowing. I didn’t know Pittsburgh could get fireflies. I tell Kat that this is my first time ever seeing a firefly. She gives a half-interested, “Oh, that’s nice,” assuming it was just the first of the season.
In the Northwest, we don’t get fireflies. I don’t know that they’re a signal to the start and halfway point of summer. I never captured them in jars at night with my sister, put them into Mason jars, and had an organic nightlight. I do have memories of flipping june bugs off of my mother’s deck, hearing that horrific, heated hiss and dodging the crane-fly, which resembles a giant mosquito that has an affinity for your face. (Go ahead, look at the Wikipedia page for crane-fly and tell that doesn’t look like summer fun.) You can imagine my surprise at seeing a bioluminescent animal in front of me as I’m about to sit down for a drink. I’m jaded about a lot of things, a world-class skeptic for sure, but there’s something about seeing the firefly that just makes me a little stupid with excitement. I’m certain I’ve seen them before about the city just when it started to get hot, but maybe I’ve just dismissed it as optic phenomena, much like those stars and strings we see at times.
On this particular night, they seem out in abundance and Lucas, as payment for allowing him to stay at my place the past couple of days, takes up Beechwood to the Ravine Trail. We decided not to enter the trail this late, sticking near the trim field of crabgrass and white clover before the walking path dips down, where the lightning bugs drift lazily. My sandals are on, but the ground is still wet from the scattered rains. The sun has gone down and there’s only a faint bit of light left, just enough to see where I’m going. As acquainted as I am with trees, I’m still not much of a fan of the woods at dark, especially with looming, near-electric sounds of cicadas moving their wings.
Lucas, like Kat, is from the Midwest and doesn’t share my enthusiasm. It almost feels like this is the playtime he’s allotted me after supper. I’m afraid of capturing of the insect in my hand, mindful about recent readings about messing with nature, afraid I’ll press too hard in my excitement, but will end up with glowing paste in my hands. I learn quickly that simple, soft contact, the firefly will just attach. I even get one between my hands, but I notice in its anxiety it doesn’t seem to glow. I’ve heard about synchronization, where fireflies over time will start glowing in unison. Not tonight though. Regardless, I prefer the asynchronous illumination. Since the first sighting, I see them in pairs and triads, but here in this flat introduction to the trail, there are at least a baker’s dozen. My feet are wet, I’m chasing bugs, it’s late and I’m playing outside and it’s enthralling. Someone needs to remind me I’m almost 26.
In the Northwest, we don’t get fireflies. I don’t know that they’re a signal to the start and halfway point of summer. I never captured them in jars at night with my sister, put them into Mason jars, and had an organic nightlight. I do have memories of flipping june bugs off of my mother’s deck, hearing that horrific, heated hiss and dodging the crane-fly, which resembles a giant mosquito that has an affinity for your face. (Go ahead, look at the Wikipedia page for crane-fly and tell that doesn’t look like summer fun.) You can imagine my surprise at seeing a bioluminescent animal in front of me as I’m about to sit down for a drink. I’m jaded about a lot of things, a world-class skeptic for sure, but there’s something about seeing the firefly that just makes me a little stupid with excitement. I’m certain I’ve seen them before about the city just when it started to get hot, but maybe I’ve just dismissed it as optic phenomena, much like those stars and strings we see at times.
On this particular night, they seem out in abundance and Lucas, as payment for allowing him to stay at my place the past couple of days, takes up Beechwood to the Ravine Trail. We decided not to enter the trail this late, sticking near the trim field of crabgrass and white clover before the walking path dips down, where the lightning bugs drift lazily. My sandals are on, but the ground is still wet from the scattered rains. The sun has gone down and there’s only a faint bit of light left, just enough to see where I’m going. As acquainted as I am with trees, I’m still not much of a fan of the woods at dark, especially with looming, near-electric sounds of cicadas moving their wings.
Lucas, like Kat, is from the Midwest and doesn’t share my enthusiasm. It almost feels like this is the playtime he’s allotted me after supper. I’m afraid of capturing of the insect in my hand, mindful about recent readings about messing with nature, afraid I’ll press too hard in my excitement, but will end up with glowing paste in my hands. I learn quickly that simple, soft contact, the firefly will just attach. I even get one between my hands, but I notice in its anxiety it doesn’t seem to glow. I’ve heard about synchronization, where fireflies over time will start glowing in unison. Not tonight though. Regardless, I prefer the asynchronous illumination. Since the first sighting, I see them in pairs and triads, but here in this flat introduction to the trail, there are at least a baker’s dozen. My feet are wet, I’m chasing bugs, it’s late and I’m playing outside and it’s enthralling. Someone needs to remind me I’m almost 26.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Prompt #3: Clydesdale-Quarterhorse Mix.
Not long after my father passed away, my mother, suddenly not taking for granted how short life is, started doing a lot more of what made her happy. By the end of 2009, she went ahead and purchased a rescued horse named Cici and started making a weekly habit of going down to the stables in Black Diamond.
My mother is a funny lady sometimes. She was born in the Garlic Gulch area, the Little Italy of Seattle that sadly, doesn’t exist anymore. Before she was too old, she moved to the southwest part of the county to Burien, an area that wouldn’t come it’s own city until 1993. Her entire life has been spent in and around the city. Her memories consist of working downtown, summers spent watching airshows by Lake Washington, fish and chips on Alki, and going to the Pike Place Market for her grocery shopping. She is a city slicker through and through. Yet, if you talked to her now, you wouldn’t see that so much. She listens to the country station, vacations in the Inland Empire instead of near the rainforest or the Pacific, fantasizes about cowboys, and spends her time lately at the base of Mt. Rainier where she keeps her horses.
I went ahead and told her one day that her past doesn’t seem to match her present very well. She then told me I was too young to remember, but around where we grew up betwixt Burien and Renton, was a thoroughbred horsetrack called Longacres that was demolished in 1992. Apparently it was quite a sight, the glacier-tilled ground conducive to racing, six-digit purses, and an appearance of Seattle Slew himself running for cancer research. After my mother finished telling the story of how she had sneaked into a VIP lounge and was hit on by James Caan, I went to do some research about the lost track. The Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, an extremely useful tool for my thesis, had quite a bit of information about Longacres. Remembering the nostalgic glint in my mother’s eyes, nothing I read was more unforgettable than this line:
Many had generational associations extending back to Longacres’ earliest days, and for these the loss of the track was a personal threat to both lifestyle and livelihood.
Unlike my mother, I was not nearly as attached or even all that interested in horses and often declined her invitations to join her at the stables in Black Diamond. I’m not sure exactly when I started going along with her on our weekends off. One thing I love about my home is how despite the fact that Seattle stretches nearly thirty plus miles from north to south, all it takes is twenty minutes, by ferry or highway to be resoundingly out of the city. It wasn’t long before we were in flooded organic farms alongside the Green River, with highland cows gawking at us as much as we did them.
As you probably weren’t expecting, I never had a close attachment to my mother’s horse, Cici. She was temperamental, unfriendly, and forced my mother into surgery after she bucked her off. Realizing that she was not a horse for a novice like my mother, she was sold off and sadly died of colic shortly after being picked up by her owner. But there’s an adage that hung in the barnhouse of the stables: Once you a buy horse, you don’t stop with just one. My mother purchased another, an American thoroughbred colt named Dude, who was simply too young and too massive to ride.
Despite not having any attachment to a horse yet, I found myself curious about them. My mother’s friend and horsetrainer, the Gayle to her Oprah, Marie devoted her whole life to tending and breaking horses. She wasn’t alone at the stables. Every horse owner, stable hand, there was an odd mythology behind them I simply wasn’t getting. This was at a time when I thought horses, simply, were just very dumb animals. (Granted, they still can be sometimes.) But when so many people are strongly attached to an animal, well, you have to admit you may be wrong about something.
This is when I began reading about the history of horses. The thing that captured my attention was how, in this world, there only true one wild horse. That would be the critically endangered Prezwalski’s horse. It wasn’t long before I became curious about the differences between a wild and domestic/feral horses and looked into behaviors. They’re really quite a curious prey animal in that although they’ll flee, they’ll also stand their ground. I would learn from Marie that it’s important too, as a human, to stand one’s ground against them as in their structure, we can be see as a subordinate and prone to be nicked and charged. Instead of being mad at Cici, I became more sympathetic towards her when I realized that horses have impressive memories and realized, much like my beloved Belgian shepherd at home, she was likely abused. I learned about the differences and roles in mares, colts, and foals. Although it’s still in progress, I learned and am still learning above the variance of breeds and what exactly being a cold or warmblood entails. At this point in my reading, well, I found myself actually enjoying going to the stables with my mother.
Still, my interest in horses was relatively at arm’s length and it wasn’t until my mother brought home a Clydesdale-Quarterhorse mix named Dunny that I began to have an attachment. Dunny, due to his breeding and growing up in an environment filled with noise, was not easily spooked. He was and is calm and gentle, if but a bit clumsy. I was a little bit nervous when my mother called him over and told me to keep my hand flat while I fed him. He took it, stood there, and let me get closer and scratch him behind the ear. So it began every weekend when I would take him from his pen, get the scrub brush, and go to town on his mud-matted hair and mane. Occasionally, he’d try to jerk away from the metallic circle brush and step on my boots, but I’d never get upset. At times, with Marie’s encouragement, I’d have to be firm and lead him by his rein with authority, uncomfortable as that makes me at times with animals. This would all end up a bonding experience with Dunny and it was hard, much harder than I thought when I drove off to Pittsburgh for school.
Even though my interest in horses still learns towards curiosity instead of affection, I had certainly come a long way from someone who shot his mother down each time he was invited out to Black Diamond.
My mother is a funny lady sometimes. She was born in the Garlic Gulch area, the Little Italy of Seattle that sadly, doesn’t exist anymore. Before she was too old, she moved to the southwest part of the county to Burien, an area that wouldn’t come it’s own city until 1993. Her entire life has been spent in and around the city. Her memories consist of working downtown, summers spent watching airshows by Lake Washington, fish and chips on Alki, and going to the Pike Place Market for her grocery shopping. She is a city slicker through and through. Yet, if you talked to her now, you wouldn’t see that so much. She listens to the country station, vacations in the Inland Empire instead of near the rainforest or the Pacific, fantasizes about cowboys, and spends her time lately at the base of Mt. Rainier where she keeps her horses.
I went ahead and told her one day that her past doesn’t seem to match her present very well. She then told me I was too young to remember, but around where we grew up betwixt Burien and Renton, was a thoroughbred horsetrack called Longacres that was demolished in 1992. Apparently it was quite a sight, the glacier-tilled ground conducive to racing, six-digit purses, and an appearance of Seattle Slew himself running for cancer research. After my mother finished telling the story of how she had sneaked into a VIP lounge and was hit on by James Caan, I went to do some research about the lost track. The Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, an extremely useful tool for my thesis, had quite a bit of information about Longacres. Remembering the nostalgic glint in my mother’s eyes, nothing I read was more unforgettable than this line:
Many had generational associations extending back to Longacres’ earliest days, and for these the loss of the track was a personal threat to both lifestyle and livelihood.
Unlike my mother, I was not nearly as attached or even all that interested in horses and often declined her invitations to join her at the stables in Black Diamond. I’m not sure exactly when I started going along with her on our weekends off. One thing I love about my home is how despite the fact that Seattle stretches nearly thirty plus miles from north to south, all it takes is twenty minutes, by ferry or highway to be resoundingly out of the city. It wasn’t long before we were in flooded organic farms alongside the Green River, with highland cows gawking at us as much as we did them.
As you probably weren’t expecting, I never had a close attachment to my mother’s horse, Cici. She was temperamental, unfriendly, and forced my mother into surgery after she bucked her off. Realizing that she was not a horse for a novice like my mother, she was sold off and sadly died of colic shortly after being picked up by her owner. But there’s an adage that hung in the barnhouse of the stables: Once you a buy horse, you don’t stop with just one. My mother purchased another, an American thoroughbred colt named Dude, who was simply too young and too massive to ride.
Despite not having any attachment to a horse yet, I found myself curious about them. My mother’s friend and horsetrainer, the Gayle to her Oprah, Marie devoted her whole life to tending and breaking horses. She wasn’t alone at the stables. Every horse owner, stable hand, there was an odd mythology behind them I simply wasn’t getting. This was at a time when I thought horses, simply, were just very dumb animals. (Granted, they still can be sometimes.) But when so many people are strongly attached to an animal, well, you have to admit you may be wrong about something.
This is when I began reading about the history of horses. The thing that captured my attention was how, in this world, there only true one wild horse. That would be the critically endangered Prezwalski’s horse. It wasn’t long before I became curious about the differences between a wild and domestic/feral horses and looked into behaviors. They’re really quite a curious prey animal in that although they’ll flee, they’ll also stand their ground. I would learn from Marie that it’s important too, as a human, to stand one’s ground against them as in their structure, we can be see as a subordinate and prone to be nicked and charged. Instead of being mad at Cici, I became more sympathetic towards her when I realized that horses have impressive memories and realized, much like my beloved Belgian shepherd at home, she was likely abused. I learned about the differences and roles in mares, colts, and foals. Although it’s still in progress, I learned and am still learning above the variance of breeds and what exactly being a cold or warmblood entails. At this point in my reading, well, I found myself actually enjoying going to the stables with my mother.
Still, my interest in horses was relatively at arm’s length and it wasn’t until my mother brought home a Clydesdale-Quarterhorse mix named Dunny that I began to have an attachment. Dunny, due to his breeding and growing up in an environment filled with noise, was not easily spooked. He was and is calm and gentle, if but a bit clumsy. I was a little bit nervous when my mother called him over and told me to keep my hand flat while I fed him. He took it, stood there, and let me get closer and scratch him behind the ear. So it began every weekend when I would take him from his pen, get the scrub brush, and go to town on his mud-matted hair and mane. Occasionally, he’d try to jerk away from the metallic circle brush and step on my boots, but I’d never get upset. At times, with Marie’s encouragement, I’d have to be firm and lead him by his rein with authority, uncomfortable as that makes me at times with animals. This would all end up a bonding experience with Dunny and it was hard, much harder than I thought when I drove off to Pittsburgh for school.
Even though my interest in horses still learns towards curiosity instead of affection, I had certainly come a long way from someone who shot his mother down each time he was invited out to Black Diamond.
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