"It won't stop me from eating bacon."

Perfect timing, swine flu. Just what the world needs - another global crisis.

As the numbers of swine flu deaths and confirmed cases rise worldwide, so does the fear mongering and transcontinental panic.

So we don't have color coded threat levels, but mere numbers will work just fine as a scare tactic. We don't have definitive answers about suspected vs. confirmed cases, but color-coded interactive graphics certainly depict the global ramifications. See for yourself: (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2009/apr/28/swine-flu-outbreak-mexico-pandemic) Don't the concentric circles somehow make it scarier?

What is it that's so utterly fascinating about swine flu? I remember SARS and the Avian flu, but I don't recall the extreme fear mongering and constant vigilance that this swine is getting. I don't recall the media obsession. Is it a different animal every four years? What's next? Kitty flu? A Chihuahua virus?

I am disgusted once again by a large corporation's ability to drown out individual voices and unwillingness to own up to its mistakes. Smithfield has turned La Gloria into a pig farming town to the epicenter of a potential global crisis.

I wonder how could this happen. Pandemics seem soooo 16th century. Nowadays it seems there is nothing an organic remedy and a GNC ammunity builder can't fix. Quarinting and shutting down cities feels old world and pre-digital age, but then again, at least we are not nailing people into their homes and posting signs about death to all ye who come on treeposts a la the plague.

Today, we have something even scarier: the interent. As a result of at-your-fingertips information, the layman craves expertise merely because he can easily acquire it. Understanding the mutation of genes and the specific means by which the disease is passed from animals to humans has gone from esoteric to common knowledge. It is not enough to merely know swine flu exists; we need to know the why and how of it all. Wasn't it better when we were all in the dark and just really, really afraid?

The news is filled with prefunctory details that seek to fuel the frenzy: CVC pharmacy will see a rise in hand sanitizer sales! The VP wouldn't set foot in Mexico, so neither should you! Keep your cool, says the Prez, but be very, very afraid. Lip service has become the only service. We keep commenting on the commentary because speaking gives us some sort of solace. Words fill a vaccum, and informatıon ıs the best defence.

At the end of the day, all we can do is live our lives. I don't eat pork anyway, but I'm not sure how I'd feel even if I did.

Carry on, then. Carry on.

Lost and Unfounded

Me looking melancholy as I mourn the loss of my camera.


Lost or forgotten items are par for the course when it comes to overseas travelling.
Still, I like to pride myself on being a notch above the average traveller due to my organizational savvy; I've kept it together for nearly two years by strategically placing and obsessively compulsively checking and rechecking my bags and bod for irreplacables: wallet, camera, keys, phone. I've kept it together - until now.

As soon as I realized my camera was gone while on holiday in Italy, the sinking feeling that accompanies the process of important item recovery set it. Next, the self-flagellation: somehow I have failed in the process of being a functioning individual. You irresponsible, scatterbrained, unkept woman! Yes, the loss of my camera somehow translated into failure as a human being.

Then there's the creepiness factor: what with all the information available out there about me on the internet, there is something that feels stragely violating about the fact that someone has access to a digital gallery of my life. I have nothing to hide (sorry, no scandalous or naughty natured pics available) - just standard tourist and hanging out with friends fare. Stil, I feel silghtly undone by the whole thing.

So I attempted recovery. I posted on craigslist and spent a half hour navigating the Florence City Hall home page. While in Florence I retraced my steps, asked waiters and conciergies if they'd come across my digital camera - so innocent, still seemingly new after two years together. We had a good run, my little canon elf powershot and I.

And then, after the denial and anger, I began to question the nature of my camera's existence. Honestly, why did I care about him so much? I delete many of the shots I take, or if I keep them, I don't bother to look at them. (The overly-critical perfectionist in me cringes when I see myself in photos). As for the validity of photos as memory triggers or nostalgic reminders I have no doubt, but those are not the primary reasons for the existence of my photos.

I guess I realized I like taking pictures more than having them. Carrying around my camera gives me an unexpected sense of control - that somehow elusive moments in my life aren't slipping away because I can capture them if I so desire. I miss the power of self-definition my camera gave me more than the object itself.

hadi, hadi (with a flick of the hip)

I don't know if taking belly dancing lessons in one of the art form's countries of origin is any more authentic than the cardio belly sculpting class I once took at LA fitness, but what the hell. I'm going to do it anyway.

I googled "belly dancing Istanbul" and came up with a page of women in gauche costumes catering to Western fantasies and idealizations of the East.(Cue Edward Said)

As far as I know, the quintessential tableau of an exotic belly dancer in a smokey, dimly lit tavern adorned with colorful tapestries, romantic candle-lit lanterns and enthralled men does not exist. A voluptuous, mysterious woman emerging from some incense-heavy corner to tempt men with her exotic eyes seems like something out of a bad 70's porno. The closest I've come to uncovering the belly dancing mystique was seeing exotic dancers dressed in Santa mini-skirts at a club on New Year's, or the tacky belly dancing costumes with faux gold coins hanging from furry bra tops sold at the bazaars, clubs for tourists playing off of some ancient riff about Oriental spice roads and Ottoman Sultan's harems. Its just so hard to hold onto the mis-en-sen of the past when you're a country trying so hard shed misconceptions and rightfully stake your claim in coordinates of time and space: 21st Century, The Industrialized Western world.

Basically, I put the belly dance right up there with people who think Turkey is accurately represented in Oriental Express and everyone wearing fezzes.

If anything, the culture I live on a daily basis - the culture I will take away and remember when I leave - is one overcrowded streets and over attentive waiters, political propaganda trucks blaring recorded messages and live phone calls to constituents through the streets at all hours, stuffed buses where covered women more often garner scorn than exude mystique, taxi drivers who find my attempt at Turkish cute and endearing, conflicts between secularism and democracy, men who stare not necessarily out of or overt sexual desire but merely out of curiosity, because everything is everyone's business. That doesn't sound very romantic, exotic, cultured, or even like very much fun. It sounds like real life.

Yes, Istanbul is rife with history, but much of it is muted, hidden or downright rejected. Besides, I live here in the present day, and that's what matters.
I was drawn to belly dancing for the same reasons I enjoyed burlesque; it is subtle, subdued, and much more appealing in an MTV world of overt sexuality and public displays of physicality. But perhaps the other doesn’t exist. We are always copying each other, until we can no longer recognize the original.

Tom Thievery

Theft is a crime on multiple levels; it violates the ten commandments, the law, social codes of decent behavior and the cycle of karma.

My leather jacket wasn't anything special. I'd only waited a year and a half to buy it, scouting out every leather establishment from the bazaar to the mall to find the perfect fit. I finally opted for a form fitting black bomber jacket from Mango - of all places - and of all places, it was recently stolen from my yoga studio.

The scoundrel who robbed me would either have to be a student at the studio or a random passerby who decided to go up four flights of stairs, walk in surreptitiously and have the gall to walk out with another person's item in hand. If you ask me, it's a risky way to go shopping.

I'm still giving the strangers at my yoga studio the benefit of the doubt. When I reached for my jacket and it wasn't there, I assumed it was a case of mistaken apparel identity. Perhaps in post-yoga euphoria someone had mistaken my leather jacket for theirs. In fact, as I began searching beneath the many coats on the wall of the dressing room I found a similar black bomber, distingushed from mine only by tacky snap button pockets. Otherwise the two were almost identical.

Theft was bound to happen at some point during my stay in Istanbul. Up until now, I've been quite lucky. I once left my wallet in a taxi, only to have it returned to my work with everything inside. The cabbie did request a 50 lira tip, but whether he was taking advantage of my foreigness or merely asking for a well-deserved thank you I'll never know. I gave it to him, justifying the tip as my way of keeping the incentive for honesty higher than the incentive to steal, and perhaps inadvertently adding to my own dwindling supply of good karma.

When I first started taking yoga classes, the owner warned me about the potential for theft. "This is Beyoğlu, after all. You just never know." I bought a cheap lock and always keep my personal items in a locker; the thought of my jacket being stolen never even occured to me. When I called this morning, he suggested that it was an accident - people had even walked out wearing the wrong shoes in the past. Still, I'm loosing faith - fast.

Stealing perplexes me. The stolen item is forever tainted with someone else's past - and not the good kind of taint, like the musty smell of my Belmont Avenue vintage store or the fading white movie star elbow legnth gloves I bought at an old costume shop in Hollywood, but a bad, foul taste in the robber's mouth that would prevent me from stealing ever again. But then again, I wouldn't know. I'm no theif.

Bun in the Oven*

At any given point in time, there are at least 5-10 women in various stages of pregnancy at the school where I do this soul-testing and occasionally spirit-crushing job called teaching. Subtle hints indicate their status: they begin taking the elevator instead of the stairs, they stop drinking coffee or heading out to the "fag cottage" for a smoke and start wearing loose fitting clothing. I do not know many women my age or older at work who don't have children or aren't trying to get knocked up. Pregnancy always starts with the ambiguous 'is she preggers or just fat stage,' and then boom! The itty-bitty baby bump emerges. Small, but its strategic location in the lower abdomen gives away the contents: a fragile, doughy, placenta-nourished bun of a baby. The women stay on at work until they are ready to pop, have a few months paid leave, and then return to school, their ovens barren and cold, waiting for the next little biscuit, or glad they got the first one out.

In Turkey, most women give birth via c-sections; they are quicker and cheaper for both the mother and the hospital. A woman with child is pampered beyond belief. I've heard that normally callous husbands wait on the mommies to be hand and foot. Turkish mothers are put on a pedestal - no prodding, poking or agitating allowed - and their offspring are no less pampered...or perhaps some would consider it coddled. Children should be spoiled and indulged, should they not? They are gifts, blessings, and the future of the family and the nation. This little fact explains quite a bit.

I have never spent so much time with pregnant women nor had friends with children up until now, and the whole watching kids grow and change before your very eyes phenomena got me thinking. I am unabashedly fascinated by the entire process, so I did what any normal single woman without the slightest chance of being pregnant at the moment but paranoid about the potential down the line (albeit the small potential and way down the line) would do: I borrowed my friend's books about pregnancy and learned everything I could. I read up on the various symptoms during each trimester and the side effects, like that my hair could get curlier or straighter, thicker or thinner. I might even feel like eating a hamburger. I might get fat. I might be an emotional basket case. I might never have to worry about it.

So yes, watching pregnant women in Turkey has made me think quite differently about baby birthing and child rearing. I don't know if American women actually feel differently about the whole situation, or if we are too modern, too egalitarian, to ready to criticize both the childless by choice woman and crazy Octo-mom for being too selfish and indulgent, too sterile a culture to admit that we like having babies for what they give us that is so hard to get from other people: unconditional love.


*bun = baby
oven=womb

Almost Anonymous

In this, my 70th blog post, I'd like to report on a sad state of affairs: I'm having a media meltdown of sorts.

Television has never been my babysitter. I have always been one to prefer a good book over the idiot box or its cooler younger sister, the internet. Oftentimes I'd rather stare at the ceiling listening to music and watching the pictures in my imagination.

Things changed when I moved to Istanbul. I got cable and I generally eat dinner in front of CNN international or E! I can hardly walk away from my laptop and into the next room without rushing to check my email upon my return. I wake up wondering if anyone has emailed me, and I often feel deflated when all my inbox contains is the NYT book update and a reminder to pay my student loans. I've even cried tears of anger over the lack of contact. And yes, on occasion I will even watch The Hills. It’s become a reflex, a need for perpetual contact. I justified my excessive (for me) internet and television usage as a necessary means of keeping up with global news while living abroad; a coping mechanism in a foreign country. However, I must come clean. It seems that I am no better than the other Twitterati whose ever existence is predicated on the fact that they say things, and others are forced to listen. Let's face it. I'd be the same anywhere in the world.

I have a blog and a website; I'm on Facebook and Twitter. I am no longer elusive and mysterious (if I ever was).Unfortunately, I find myself wanting to write numerous versions of a status that involves sitting in front of the computer searching for something of substance, realizing its becoming harder and harder to find.
I know, it’s not like I'm shooting up heroin, but there are side effects: I write less in my journal. I read fewer actual books. I question the very existence of journalism. I wonder if English Lit will be obsolete in a few years. And the information I so prolifically produce? It all just goes into the endless vaacuum of cyberspace, where one cannot see it in its entirety. I never know if it gets noticed, much less read. I never know if I achieve my purpose: to connect.

I've often felt I'm just not cut to be the media savvy type: I write and think slowly so that by the time I finish a post the moment has grown stale. My thoughts go sour before they go public. Nor am I okay with putting anything - a chirp, a status update, a banal blog entry - out in the universe without a bit of polish. I know spelling errors or inane comments followed by "oops, I take it back, that was my subconscious talking" have become socially acceptable, but they seem like attention seeking cop-outs. I like to pretend I'm at an old-fashioned typewriter; no mistakes or I have to start over. No cut and pastes. I don't like to be pseudo-raw on paper. I believe rawness comes not from just putting it all out there for others to sort through, but whittling it all away to the bare bones so readers have nothing left to pick at - just the truth. The latter takes more work. The formal is the literary equivalent of cringe worthy reality television. Call me a literary snob, but I refuse to prostitute language or stop striving for eloquent prose.

And yet, as a writer, unless I want to go the way of the dinosaur, I must evolve along with the rest of the world.
There are pros: there is a certain intimacy in self-publishing; there is no filter, no guarantee that anyone will ever read it. Freedom comes with anonymity. I don't think I will ever want to share everything; I don't care to tell you that I'm really worried the crown on my back molar is going to fall off and I will have to go to a dentist. I don't want to create a cutesy persona where I talk only about the perils of dating or every item I've consumed today and my caloric intake; and yet, it is these details, these images that attract and keep an audience, and I recognize that the internet is a sort of invisible stage. This begs the question: am I just another narcissistic wannabe using the internet as my personal sounding board? I guess I will let you (if you exist) decide for yourself.

Down Kopek

I find it hard to believe that revisiting yoga has taken me so long. Perhaps halting a practice that I love for over a year has to do with the fact that I still maintan a certain allegiance to Bikram's and Brian Kest's power yoga in Chicago and Los Angeles, respetively. I associate the intensity of Sunday morning power yoga with a particular LA lifestyle that seems incomplete without organic brunch, acting classes or a day at the beach; the sweltering sauna of Bikram's will forever be bound to a particularly frigid Chicago February. Although I had a yoga resurgance over the summer and I resolved to find a good studio upon returning to Istanbul, it still took me six more months to kick myself into gear. Yoga - or for that matter, any semblance of a spiritual life - seems to have no place here. It is part of a past world I no longer inhabit. Or perhaps I was hesitant to pursue yoga for the same reasons I flinch at the prospect of doing anything new in Istanbul: fear of getting lost, a long commute, being unable to communicate my needs or just merely not wanting to go at it alone.

My inculcation into the world of yoga was accidential. After college, I randomly ended up living mere blocks from one of the most renowed studios in LA. Despite its location in exclusive Santa Monica, the course was donation based. I usually submitted far below the suggested 10 dollars. The proximity and price is what allowed me to practice consistently, albeit briefly. Only after I began practicing did I discover that my yoga studio was was considered to be the epicenter of the American yoga movement, popular long before it became trendy throughout the United States.

From day one, the yoga aesthetic intrigued me: the streamlined poses, the sculpted bodies, the potent smell of jasmine or sage as you entered the studio, the fluid sanskrit jargon of the practice, the willowy frequent practioners who all took on that same elongated, gamine look regardless of ethnic origins. It all spoke of a higher consciousness, of potential transcendence of the pedestrian plane of existance I inhabited.

Early on, I recognized that yoga, like any other activity, came with its very own "scene" defined by a particular aesthetic and a set of subtle social codes. I also recognized that I sorely lacked the necessary accoutrements to fit in: nalgene water bottles, lower back tattoos, lululemon designer yoga attire, a certain air of self-satisfaction or contentment, and comradiere with everyone who entered the studio were beyond my grasp. I wondered what I often wondered while living in LA - if I was only projecting my inscurities, and perhaps it was everyone else felt like a phony and looked to me as an example of the real McCoy. I somewhat resented my fellow classmates, whom I figured had to do yoga and shop at Whole Foods for a living to get those bodies. They had the time and money to invest in the legnthy process of self-actualization, the common folk who have to work for a living simply can't afford to sacrifice their livlihood for pruning and shaping their spirits. Why didn't I float through the air like my fellow yogis? I guess I was just too stressed out. I came to love the practice but hate the scene.

I still maintain that yoga is one of the best things I've ever done for myself. Yoga - whether in Istanbul, Chicago or LA - still does it for me: it makes me feel strong, flexible and a more comfortable inhabitant in my own body. It was still yoga, but slightly different - my first time doing yoga led by a man speaking "Turklish" with an Irish brogue, my first time looking out over the Bosphorus while practicing, first time where a free sauna is available after my practice. My reintroduction to yoga has left me feeling slightly exhaused and sore, but perhaps one step closer to whatever it is I still seek from the practice.