The Madame Bovary Syndrome Part I

Pardon me in advance. I must begin with a flowery extended metaphor.
If you have ever dared to move beyond the black and white squares of the circumstances of your birth on the grand chessboard that is life, you have experienced the joy of anticipating an idealized otherworld and the letdown when the fantasy becomes reality. What looked like the pinnacle is merely a plateau, and climbing higher, further, faster becomes a strange intoxicating addiction. You become dependent on constant injections of freedom and really living, knowing that the next summit or curve in the road is it. But once again turns out it isn’t. You will have finally arrived. But you won’t. Not now, not ever.

Last night, as I sat at an outdoor café, I was flanked by the many faces of Istanbul: Behind me: two contentious looking middle-aged men up in each other's grills arguing about something I couldn't understand. In front of me: my rum and coke, which came as a can of diet coke and, fifteen minutes later, an icy glass of rum. To the right: a butcher shop with a window display of hearts (I'm guessing of the bovine variety) the color of vamp nail polish hanging on a string, one above the other, like those cheesy chili pepper decorative lights gracing shop windows in lands far away. To the left (to the left - gotta love Beyonce): A mass of fascinating humanity I must view as a large group for fear of accidentally giving a man the eye. Below: foul smelling water coursing its way over my left heel through a shallow indentation between the street and the sidewalk (I think one of the fish sellers had poured a bucket of pescified water down the street). Above: the naked sky and those scintillating stars, as far away as ever. Oh, Istanbul.

So here I am. This is it. This is what the scattered seeds of an idea look like when they have come to fruition. They are planted firmly in space and time. I can put a date on it. I have a memory. I can point to the concrete, the physical. Then you say to yourself and your friend, do you ever think, gosh, we're in Istanbul? It never feels the same as when you imagined because between the dream and the reality you've had the pain of applications and visas, you're trying to avoid getting fish water on your shoe, you are asking yourself why you wore such uncomfortable shoes in the first place, thinking about which bar to go to next, if you really have to get up the next morning, and wondering when the rum half of your rum and coke will arrive. When you break it down into its components, its just another day. But I bet the stars look down and think, how wonderful.