divorce integrity

In Turkey divorce is seen as a failure. A place where the majority of women know their place and stay in it. A place where mothers control and manipulate their daughter’s behavior, attitudes and imaginary freedom with a heavy dictatorial hand called love. Chains of love.

One was different. She confided in me. I listened. After seven months of marriage she’d decided to leave her husband filing divorce papers.

“I feel so much better,” she said. She opened up. She felt free. She had a lot to say. She’d believed her husband in the beginning.

“He lied to me. He courted me with sweet words and I thought, or believed I thought or thought I believed he had an open mind but I was disappointed because he wasn't honest...so after some time measured in weeks then months I saw his, how do you say, irresponsibility, how he wouldn't contribute his heart to me, to our relationship and then, when I tried to talk to him he was closed to me, he shut down and I was working and trying to keep the flat up and work on our relationship but I saw it was difficult, then really, really impossible to live with everything in my brain and heart.”

She inhaled. “Now, when he saw my action to end the marriage he was filled with remorse and regret and apologies. But it's too late. I told him to move out. He returned to his family. He tries to bother me every day in his childlike whining way but it's over. I can handle it. I am strong and know what I want in my life. My family is very supportive of my decision.”

“In China it’s always about saving face. Appearances. Here, it's about self respect, growth and personal dignity,” I said. “Some get it and some don’t.”

“Yes! I am not living the lie anymore. I feel free.”

dead sunday

I learned from Ankara students how they were tired.

They loved being addicted to their phenobarbital phenomenon reality altering life, taking anti-depressants by mouth. I processed their fear and anxiety. 

A national Turkish problem according to a psychiatrist I met one day by chance on purpose my second week is anxiety.

It was a dead Sunday.

Clinking a small musically inclined silver spoon dissolved square sugar cubes made in a factory where the hygiene conditions were abysmal.

I sat in a tea house filled with artifacts. Iranian carpets, blue amber oil paintings and thick deeply embroidered cushions near a well thumbed Tarot deck. Fortune telling is an art and science depending on the suspicious, auspicious way. I gifted them the State of Relaxation. The Zen Tarot. Reading, feeling, absorbing the future.

We are all extras in someone's film, said Sappho.

starvation

A man came to their village. He arrived on foot. It was on the Marmara Sea. Olive orchards dressed hills. 

A white butterfly skimmed blue sea. It’s wings created a gentle wind passing the traveller sitting on a stone in the shade of shale. His feet pushed pebbles. Waves washed shores returning to their source, rolling millions of pebbles in the current creating a gentle musical interlude. 

The soft machine of media’s old cultural myths broke down. Desperate people tried the remote. The batteries were expired. 

They created fire sending smoke signals across the reservation to Anasazi, Navajo, Apache tribes. Flying clouds acknowledged them.

An imaginary fear of poverty and starvation gripped them. White butterflies skimmed over a cresting white wave tumbling along blue water.

Kindness and compassion eased suffering. They may or may not have been really listening.

Metro Woman

Namaste,

He saw her through a window when the metro pulled in.

Alone and cold, she waited for the green metro door to open.

It was late. She wore a thin black sweater and long gray skirt.

She was slight...olive pale skin, black hair pulled back, around 45. 

She limped into the car dragging her right foot. Her left foot was normal. Her right foot looked like a case of elephantiasis. She sat twenty feet away. 

She bent over and slowly raised her skirt from around her ankles. The burned and bloody skin damage ran three inches across and ten inches high. Either first or second degree burns. A layer of skin was exposed, red, lined with white. Bare and exposed. She needed medical attention.

Two men across from her stared and diverted their eyes.

She sat, fingered a phone and grimaced. No tears, just a stoic face. 

The metro rolled through night. It passed a river, a neon bright Everest furniture store, fast food emptiness and an expensive private hospital filled with antiseptics, bandages, lotions and potions and patients with money.

She inspected her ankle, touching an edge of fried skin with a white tissue. Clear cold air sent shivers through her central nervous system shutting down pain receptors. 

Metta.

Hawk Informers

A male street hawker spoke with flair and conviction, If you don't buy my cheap cotton hat with a national flag red star, or a cheap wooden bracelet made by an orphan, then the next time I see you while I am walking hot Hanoi streets in the middle of the broiling day with sweat streaming into my eyes trying to make a living, then I won't know you.

My eyes will be dark and lost in their pitiful future. I won't remember you. Ever.

I will continue to walk. All day. In the heat. No water. No rest. To walk, work, meet tourists. No pity. This is my social and economic reality. People ignore you when they don’t have a sale.

Darwinian logic. Evolution of the species. Survival.

I’m not surprised, said Charlie. This is common throughout the country. The Central Party creates a climate of fear. Fathers report wives. Wives report sons and daughters. Daughters report their fathers. It is an evil cycle.

Charlie is a member of the Shining Path Young. This is our new generation, with a new generation of informers and spies. They make good money. They keep their mouth shut and know their place. Infamy. 

What I do today is important because I'm spending a day of my life on it.