Vois sur ton chemin.

Look to the path. It could lead you or one of your favorite songs anywhere.

Nightmares Abound

Somebody in my neighborhood is practicing the piano. Every now and then, they make a mistake, but it sounds good. It sounds clear and bright and cheerful, like what you'd expect to hear coming from a piano at a Mothers' Day brunch. Hopeful.
In a different neighborhood far away, but not too far, my Syrian friend's family is thinking about how they'll get bread and vegetables tomorrow. Will they cross the street to buy what they need or will they go with what little they have left. If they cross the street, will they get shot or will the friend behind them get shot or will it be okay.
In a different neighborhood quite far away, my mom's friend's husband is recovering from a stroke and dying from cancer and getting ready for a surgery to repair his broken arm.
In my apartment, cockroaches and spiders and flies are dying from the pesticide that was sprayed on Friday, and are then getting flushed down the toilet. In comparison, it is nothing.
But what beauty is left here? Is the piano enough to make up for the nightmares we all face and the nightmares we all create?
  

I don't want to be loud, but sometimes I get tired of being quiet in a world that favors the presence of sound.
I don't want to be a man, but sometimes I get tired of being a woman in a world that favors the presence of men.

Dear Stranger,

Dare I say friend. I wouldn't be writing to you, but I'm afraid my situation has become quite dire. I believe my life is indeed in danger. I've been trapped in this room for over a week now and can find no way out. I've tried crawling under the door, but something's blocking it. Books, maybe? I've explored every square inch of this room and can find no crack, no crevice, no weakness. If this letter is to reach you, whoever you are, perhaps you can send help? I don't even know where I am, so I can't give you directions. All I can do is hope that somebody, anybody finds this in time and knows what to do.

All I remember was trying to fly home from Tivak Park. Then a powerful burst of wind blew me into this room. This damn room. At first, I thought it'd be okay. I was a bit flustered and frightened, but I clung to the curtains as the wind died down and I started to feel warm and safe. I knew I was in one of your homes. I could tell. It's easy to spot a human home...with all the lights and straight lines and carpet and fake things. And food. Your homes are very comfortable, I must say, but I didn't want to stay there. It wasn't my home.

Just as I was about to take off through the window and back into the night and try to find my way, a lady appeared in front of me. I've never come so close to a human before. She could see me from across the room and didn't take her eyes off me. She walked slowly up to me, and then just stared, without making a sound. A perfectly still, silent stare. For a long time. I thought maybe it'd be okay. Maybe she didn't mind me being there for a bit. Her expression was very difficult to read. So I decided not to try and fly at that instant. It might frighten her. Us cockroaches have a bad reputation for being frightening to humans. Well, you know now. I'm a cockroach. But I'm not that bad. I'm not. I've got a family and I feel horribly knowing that they must be worried sick about me right now.

I wish now I had flown. Right at her face and right out of that room, instead of sitting there like a hopeful idiot while she slowly closed the window, backed out of the room, and then returned with her phone. I could be at home now, safe and warm under the kitchen sink with my family. Instead, I just sat there, feeling a bit stunned that she was taking my picture. For the briefest of moments, I thought she actually liked me. I thought she was taking my picture because she thought I was beautiful and interesting and that she was glad I was there. And that she wasn't like those other humans that throw shoes at me. I thought maybe we were turning over some sort of new leaf in the human-cockroach interaction. Ha, I'm such an idiot.

After she took my picture, she stood there in front of me, never letting me out of her sight, for a long time, looking at something on her phone. I know now that she was researching cockroaches and how to kill them. As you might guess, things got worse for me at that point. You humans are so strange. So selfish. You fill the world with the fruits and fouls of your labor, you take everything from us, from the world, and turn it into something fancy, something stupid - a basketball, a car, a parking lot, a latte, a magazine, a cookie - and you get angry at us when we accidentally show up in your home.

Your home? This tall and crumbling block apartment that has been here for a mere 30 years? Where you sit amongst your items. Where you surround yourself by the outputs of other people's tiresome jobs. Where there used to be, not that long ago, orange trees and olive branches and pelicans and goats and leopards and sea turtles. And cockroaches. Your apartment here is 30 years old. My home here is 250 million years old. And the respect I am shown is a spray bottle full of soap and water, from which I barely escaped. Then a slammed door. And now silence. Nothingness. No escape.

A room full of your things and I am miserable and dying and alone. So if you, my friend, my kind stranger, happen to find this letter, could you please tell her to let me out. Tell her to let me go back to my home. To my dear sweet family. To what has been mine for millions of years. Please convince her that this is not right. It isn't fair. I have the feeling that I am not going to last much longer, but at least I know that I am only one of many. That 30 years is nothing compared to 250 million. That my family's future is going to last longer than yours. That your things and your jobs have gotten you nowhere, and that we will persist in being where we belong, where we always have been, for the duration of your visit here.
Just tell her that for me, could you please? Thanks.                

I fell asleep with the breeze and awoke with the wind. The wind was strong enough that it was carrying the stars away, one by one. My little pellets of night light were being taken away. Far away. I knew immediately that this was tragic and I'd miss them deeply. But they were happier there, together with the wind, far away. I got up and closed the balcony door. I fell back asleep with stillness and stumbled into a monsters' wedding where I was laughed at and poked in the ribs and made to stand on a table alone. The bride and the groom stood in front of me with stones in their gnarly hands. Their noses were huge and bulbous and flopping down in front of their jagged, crooked mouths so that none of their words made any sense. Eventually, sunlight dissipated the wedding party and dissolved the stones and brought me back to life. I don't dream often anymore, but when I do it's terrifying.        

To be liked.

My favorite pictures are often the ones that few people like. Weird lighting, my feet in a place or on a day that means something to me, something old, something surprising. I like those pictures. I do. But they're not the popular ones. Expansive landscapes, flowers, sunsets, cute animals. I'll take more and more pictures of them because that's what is liked. Not the meaningful ones. If I could take away one invention of my lifetime, it'd be the like button. In all of its forms. Because who doesn't want to be liked. And who doesn't shape themselves and what they do and what they say and what they show in order to be as liked as possible by the people in their lives. Instead of being the being that they are or the being that they want to be, they think about the being that is liked. Who is that being? Made up of stupid little clicks that somehow take on meaning, and yet are typically given without a thought. Generating confidence in their presence, and casting doubt in their absence. I'm glad you have no way to like this blog. Otherwise it'd probably be a very different blog. Full of daisies and selfies and words that mean nothing to me.            

But I'm glad that you're here.

This Summer.

I spent 3 days in Flagstaff, listening to and telling my old friends stories, wandering up to Lowell, gaping at the night sky, drinking Macy's Specials, eating popcorn and toasting Pabst B Ribbons at the castle, walking my friend's dogs. I felt my Flagstaff happiness return and didn't really want to leave and could picture myself living there again, some day.

I spent 6 weeks in Princeton, working in a cubicle with two monitors, stacks of paper, and meeting reminders, and not minding it one bit, making new friends who shared a love for puns and science and ice cream and quiet, walking miles and miles around the campus and along the canals and through the neighborhoods, pondering how a place could be so green, listening to Yolanda's stories on Mexico and life, trying to catch lightning bugs and squirrels on camera. I felt a new kind of happiness and didn't want to leave it behind and could picture myself living there again, some day.

I spent 4 weeks in Reno, passing precious time and eating mounds of kale with my mom and sister, getting one last, quiet, indescribably beautiful day with the Dusty Dude, playing new, slow songs on my old favorite piano, catching up with old friends, driving cars and finding cars to drive,  making coffee for my mom in the mornings, kickboxing until the familiar blisters returned, shopping a little bit too much for myself and friends, making another visit to American Flats with dad and Austen and Jaden, and, of course, not having enough time to go to Lake Tahoe or do the other billion things I always think of to do when I visit home. It's a place of unconditional happiness and I will always envision myself living there again, some day.

I returned to Antalya yesterday, where I found my apartment surprisingly clean and welcoming, despite a 2 months' thin layer of dust, where I have good friends who I am excited to see and who are excited to see me, where I can walk for hours and never really get tired, where people compliment my horrible Turkish and are pleasantly bemused by the fact that I am American, and where there are so many cool places to visit every weekend it's a little overwhelming. This is where I live now, today, and I am happy about that.

Every year, the world becomes more freckled with the places and the people that I love.