Things I Didn't Know I Loved

it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird

- Nazim Hikmet, from Things I Didn't Know I Loved

I was sitting in my university library last week. Everyone was scrambling around, looking at all the EFL books and materials, when I found a massive photobook called Konstantinopolis'dan Istanbul'a. From Constantinople to Istanbul. I grabbed the book, sat down at a nearby table, and heaved it open. Inside, I saw a picture of Beşiktaş from the 19th century. There were a few Ottoman-style houses scattered across sparsely forested hills. Where were the crowds? Where was the traffic? The stained, crumbling, soulless apartment buildings? They were absent. And in their absence, I realized something important. I grabbed the nearest teacher by the arm and gasped, "Look! Beşiktaş was a park!" She nodded, and walked off with her grammar books.

Why was this so important to me, and not to anyone else? They had all seen pictures of Istanbul in the past, but so had I. I had looked at similar pictures before and thought, "Wow, I bet Istanbul was cool back then." The difference this time was that before, I was looking at the crown jewel of one of the world's great empires in it's glory, impressive, but distant; this time, I was looking at the history of my city. At that moment, Istanbul's history became my history, and I realized that I'm finally home.

Why was it so difficult to see this for the last three years? I've been thinking about that for the last few days, as I've been sitting in Sofia, waiting for my work visa to be processed so that I can return to Istanbul, to my home and my job. I think I've found the answer. Istanbul could never be home to the boy who left Ohio 3 1/2 years ago. I wasn't ready for a home. I was ready for gothic cathedrals, for biergartens, for espresso mornings and jazzy tobacco evenings. I carried my Americanness with me to Europe, and I kept that image of myself: quiet, reserved, bitter, hopeful, wanting something better, but unwilling to adjust my definition of good. Coming to Istanbul was a shock, and I raged against it for the first year, accepted it in the second and came to secretly love it in the third. But admitting that love to myself was tantamount to admitting that I was no longer the boy wearing the tweed jacket and fedora who stepped off that plane in Philadelphia 3 1/2 years ago.

But I admit it now, as I begin my fourth year.

It's a funny feeling, you know. Home is what most people are born with. But I've grown into mine, as it's grown into me. I may not live in Istanbul for the rest of my life, but when I think of home, I'll always think of my dear, dirty Kadıköy.

Belki tanışmak zor, iyi anlaşmak zor, peki görüşmek çok mu kolaydı. Çok kısa bir zamanda belki birazda zorla, bence gayet iyi de anlaştık.

I'm heading to the consulate now to pick up my visa, then I'm jumping on the train home. It's been a long week, and I miss the city I never knew I loved.

Aaron

Oh... Beautiful Day.

Some of you may have seen the comic strip in my wallet. There are three panels. On the first, there is a dog chained to a post saying, "I start every day believing today is the day I'll be unchained." In the second panel, he says nothing, but stares blankly into the sky. On the last, he says, "Oh... Beautiful Day."

That comic strip has been in my wallet for the last 3 1/2 years now, and it's been pulled out at pubs in at least 10 different countries, as I drunkenly try to explain the significance. "Lookee, friend! He zhush doeshnt give up, you know. Like you and... like me! We'z zsush differnt. We'z shtrong."

However, the point really is, I believe, that although the dog knows that he won't actually be let free, he hopes for it every day, and that hope keeps him happy.

Well, I guess that's a lot like me and Istanbul. Even as I was packing my bags and jumping on that train to Bulgaria, I knew I'd be back here. I wanted to get back to adventure, to new and exotic places, to freedom. However, I didn't firmly believe that I'd be able to stay away, and I was right. In the end, as I was stumbling drunkenly around BAPHA, waiting for my job to begin, I got a very important email, and I had to make a difficult and adult decision, (Yeah, me! Adult decision!). I chose to forgo Bulgaria and come back to Istanbul for my career.

Özyeğin University, a new private university here in Istanbul (opening in September) offered me a job, and I'd have been a fool not to take it. Basically, this rich philanthropist, Hüsnü Özyeğin, has decided to open up a university and is determined to make it the premier university in the region (Eastern Europe and Middle East). To this end, he's investing A BILLION DOLLARS of his own money, purchasing the best equipment money can buy and hiring the best teachers he can find (not yet sure why I got the job). And if he succeeds in his goal, my being one of the founders of the EFL department in such a cutting-edge university means my career is set.

So, here I am, starting a fourth year in Istanbul. Got a few mixed-feelings about it, but I've already met a lot of cool new people at the university, and the year's already starting out really well. I even went on a short holiday down to the south of Turkey with one of my colleagues, Anna. She's Armenian, but she's more LA than any American I've ever met.

I'm going to start my DELTA (Diploma for English Language Teaching A...something)in October, which is almost equivalent to another M.A. Maybe this is what I need. A serious job, a career, a work permit, stability... I guess it's about time for those things.

To that end, I went and rented myself a fantastic apartment, and spent way too much money at IKEA. Bloody IKEA... It's in downtown Kadikoy, with a fantastic view of the Bosphorous, like none I've ever seen. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right.

I'm putting down roots, God help me.

Home on the train

Friends и komrades,

Greetings and salutations! No, please, save the applause until the end. This blog has lay dormant for many a moon, as I've been rushing hither and tither across the windswept waves and yellow foam of the Bosphorous, throwing down gerunds and infinitives like a gangbanger on an inner-city playground. So, what has transpired in my five mum months? Well, aside from being paid ridiculous amounts of money in exchange for wagging my tongue in ways only we native English speakers do, not a whole hell of a lot.

Winter kept me warm,

covering Istanbul in forgetful snow,

feeding a little life with kuruyemis and salep.

Summer surprised me,

coming up over the Bosphorous with a shower of rain;

I stopped in Sirkeci, and went on in sunlight,

into Gar Pub, and drank Efes for an hour.

Bin gar keine Amerikan, stamm' aus Istanbul, echt Turk!

But, alas, perhaps 'tis not meant to be. For first, my plans to travel south were foiled at the outset by my former home, the good ol' crusading USA. As it were, Syria don't give no love to the yanks. Having said that, the fact that I was a legal resident of Turkey would have allowed me to get a visa, save for one critical detail. Notice that I said was. Once again, I am a citizen of the world - homeless and free (what's the difference?). I had the choice to either spend 500 Lira and renew my residence permit in a country where I may or may not stay for the forseeable future, or scrap my plans for the Middle East and head back to the land of cheap beer and clouds - Bulgaria.

Thus, I am lost yet again in the Sunny Beaches and Golden Sands of your favorite ex-Soviet satellite and mine, Bulgaria! For those of you with limited knowledge about this Eden among the Eastern Bloc, let me elucidate a bit. Република България is a fantastic and eclectic mix of history and culture, having been occupied by nearly everyone (except the French, big surprise!), yet never relinquishing their unique spirit, which largely involves ingesting huge amounts of pork and shaking their heads no when they mean yes. Walking down the street, one can hear colorful conversations in such exotic languages as... English... and, if one is lucky, that particular brand of British English which consists nearly exclusively of the words "pissed, muppet and shag". Yes, Easyjet flies here...

Bulgaria's lucky neighbors are: Romania, Europe's largest exporter of WILD FUCKING RABID DOGS; Serbia, who still vehemently denies committing Europe's latest (but not least) episode of mass genocide; Macedonia, who really wants to be a country of its own, and succeeds only in as far as nobody really gives a shit; Greece, Europe's golden boy, the only Balkan country who is actually profiting from EU membership; and Turkey, of whom I have talked at length in previous correspondence, and will bore you no further with except to give a big shoutout to my scarf wearing bitches (Hell yeah! Rock that newly-permitted token of oppressive Islamic culture in your own mad way! AKP Rules!). (Note: All Turkish women reading this should please understand the intricacies of American countercultural language and understand that the previous statements were in no way intended to offend anyone, whether they choose to cover their head in deference of their closed-minded masochistic society or not. Thank you.)

Bulgaria's area is 110,000 square kilometers (42,823 square miles for you yanks), and the population is 7,262,675, having dropped nearly 700,000 since EU membership, which accounts for all the recently hired Tesco employees and whores in London's Soho district. The GDP is almost $93,000,000,000, which seems like a lot, until you look at it per capita, which falls just short of $6,000. Oh, yes, the average Bulgarian wage really is just over $100 a week. But when you figure in the fact that I'm drinking from a two-dollar two-liter bottle of quality beer right now, you'll see that life here can be oooooooohhhhh so sweet...

So, what am I doing here? Filling up on cheap liquor and fresh, fresh dead pig before I take the slow train back into the city formerly known as Constantinople? No, no. It seems as if I and the Ottoman Empire have finally decided to part ways, albeit it a few months later than I had originally thought (as I suspected, my coffers were getting too full to depart).

My company is doing well (on paper at least. The Turks don't really like to pay promptly, if at all), and although my students are truly wonderful and esteemed alcoholics (never have I made so much money in the pub), every fiber of my being says that my time in that part of the world is, at least for the moment, finished. He, приятели, I am currently seeking gainful employment in this most excellent of forgotten countries. The gainful bit, however, is doubtful (remember the GDP?), and I am, at the moment, satisfying myself with beer and beach.

I have, however, found a tentative job here, though it does require teaching... erm... children. Now, the money is right, certainly for this country, and the location is right (cigarette breaks on the beach, anyone?), but can I really stomach teaching halfway-developed humans again (I mean kids, not Turks). My interview is tomorrow, and if all goes well, I'll be looking for a flat soon here in BAPHA!

And what's my long term plan? Well, those of you who know me (all of you, to varying degrees), should know (or have learned by now) that I don't really go for long term plans. I'm here, yani. If Bulgaria doesn't work out, I'm going to go in a different direction. Thus far, I've cleverly narrowed my options down to four - North, South, East, and West. To be honest, I'm leaning towards Poland at the moment, but who knows? My new plan is to go where the ratio of salary to cost of beer is the most favorable (i.e. no more Muslim countries).

Friends, my monkey is tired now, and it's almost time to head back to the store for my 3rd two-liter of beer, so I'll take my leave of you all now. Once again, I thank you all for your continued support in this now fourth year of my exile, and I sincerely hope that none of you die before I get a chance to see you again.

The Solar Calendar Resets Again

Oh, oh, oh, my scattered sad little bunnies, Happy New Year!

But really, when you think about it, what's so new about it after all? Isn't it the same old tired year recycled over and over? We sure do try to make it new, but how often do we actually succeed?

"This year, I'm going to lose 10 pounds"

"This year, I'm going to get a promotion"

"This year, I'm going to stop getting drunk and beating my wife"

However, chances are that this year you're 20 pounds fatter, still struggling to make your mortgage payment, and the only reason you've managed keep your hands off of your significant other is that you woke up after your last round of bourbon with a kitchen knife pressed to your genitals. When it comes down to it, the only thing that's actually new is that there's a bloody 8 where the 7 used to be.

An 8.Do you guys remember Y2K? Do you remember the hysteria about the millenium? Techies full of doom and gloom about the biggest computer glitch in history - "Planes will fall out of the sky! Missiles will launch automatically! You'll order a pepperoni pizza and get mushrooms instead!" The world was going to be a real, live Die Hard movie. That was at least exciting. Bill Clinton would have become our very own Harrison Ford, and can't you just imagine Kim Jeong Il as a twisted, sociopathic computer hacker with a hot kung-fu girlfriend?

And all the religious nutsos - "Jesus is coming back! The sky will roll back like a scroll and reveal New Jerusalem to the damned!" Sure, that'd suck exponentially more than Y2K - I'm pretty sure I couldn't hide from God in a bunker - but at least it was interesting, wasn't it? And can any of you actually tell me that you weren't just a little trepidatious as the clock ticked over from 11:59 to 12:00, and the year clicked over from 1999 to 2000? Those of you who were sober enough to remember it, anyways.

It's 8 years later now. 8 YEARS. Something like 1/10 of your life has passed by since then - if you're lucky. Do your old buddy Aaron a favor and look in the mirror tonight (before you get too drunk to do it without laughing). What's changed in those 8 years? Are you married? Do you have a career? Children? Do you have facial hair? Wrinkles? Look at the bags under your eyes, the stubble on your cheeks (or legs, ladies). Look at your sagging breasts and your crumpled dreams. Are you now where you believed you would be when the 20th century came to a close? Either you're not (and that's what I'm betting on), or you never really had any dreams to begin with.

But then, what use are dreams anyway? A dream is sort of a self-defeating prophecy, isn't it? I mean, you look at your life, find it wanting, and look into the future saying, "I'm not 100% happy now, but when I get X dollars, or X women, or to X city, job, or social level, I'll have climbed up several points on the fire escape of contentment, and I'll be more satisfied than I am now." Of course, this sort of person (shyly raising hand here) is never really satisfied with anything are they? And they see the present only as a stepladder towards a future that doesn't so closely resemble mediocrity. Pretty sad, isn't it? Either rot where you are, a sad bag of water and calcium, or trade your solace now for a future where you'll have more money, more prestige, more lovers, more toys, and still be nothing more than a sad bag of water and calcium.

Now, I could easily launch from here into a feel-good, motivational, after-school specialesque pep talk, where I tell you to appreciate the life you've been given, to stop and smell the flowers, and to hug your family, children, and neigbors (WARNING: If you live in America, do not hug your neighbors. You will be prosecuted.). But I'm not going to. Do you all really believe your Aaron has changed that much? No, no, no. I'm going to tell you the same thing I've always told you. Push. Bleed. Fight. Struggle. "For what?" you ask. "It's pointless. I should just make my rat hole as cozy as possible so I can be comfortable until time and gravity pull my ever expanding rolls of fat, and me along with them, into the ground."

You can spend your entire life traveling the world; you can meet lots of interesting people; you can learn every language, read every book, try every variation of Baskin and Robbins ice cream, but for what? You'll fill your synapses full of neurons that are far more interesting than what's happening in the latest season of Lost, but then your brain will fall apart, and you'll lose it all in the same way. The mind is not immune to time. Nihil de tempore fugare potest. I'll tell you why. Because that's LIVING.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean that you have to travel around like a homeless hippie. I mean that you have to ask questions (and look for the answers). You have to be curious. You have to giggle. You have to have beliefs that you won't abandon until you see that they are wrong. But you have to be willing to see that they are wrong (I'm looking at you, Christians). You have to follow your dreams, no matter how pointless they are in the grand scheme of things. You have to go to stupid lengths to stand up for your beliefs, and most importantly, you ALWAYS have to be able to say, "I did the best I could. And then, I found that I could do better than I believed." If you can say that, you'll usually find yourself immediately afterwards saying, "And I succeeded."

But here are the most important things:

Don't try to be an asshole, but don't be afraid to be an asshole either.

Only do your best when you're doing something important - but struggle to make sure that you're always doing something important.

Make yourself the most important person in your life.

And finally, you can give money to people who don't deserve it, but don't EVER give even one minute to someone unworthy of it. It's an insult to yourself, and that's the worst kind.

Oops, I got all didactic. Oh, well. You've probably stopped reading by now anyways. Allow me then to squeeze in a little bit of unimportant information about me and my meness. It's time to reflect on my rather extended stay here in Ye Olde Constantinople. What have I done with my last two and a half years? I took a little (er... really, really long) break from the road. I made some (er... a decent amount of) money. I got some experience in my career, in my life, in my language, and in my self. I'm a better person than I was when I got here. I now know the meaning of hospitality, and what it means to have a guest. I'm closer to understanding friendship. I'm nowhere near closer to understanding relationships, but that one's well beyond the greatest minds, if you ask me. I can cook marginally better, and I've learned how to laugh. For no reason at all. Most importantly, I've learned how to pull myself up from nothing into something - and that's the greatest thing you can ever do. I've learned how to land on my ass and spring right back up onto my feet.

Sometimes I feel like I've wasted the last couple of years of my life, but I guess when you look at it that way, I've grown more as a person in the last two years than I have in the rest of my entire life. And that's one thing that I, like most others, forget. We get too preoccupied with growing outwardly - physically, financially, socially - and we forget to grow inside.

So, what's my plan for 2008? Well, I've got one more week of work at ALTA left, until I'm totally free. I've still got several private students that I'll continue to work with, and in my free time, I'm going to be throwing myself into the corporate world. Soon, I'm going to start giving lessons at a couple of different companies, charging the big bucks. Basically, between Educit, my private lessons, and my corporate lessons, I'll be working like a dog, but at least I'll finally be working for myself, on my terms. Will that be as rewarding as it seems? Only one way to find out!

Again, I raise my glass to 2007 and drink to 2008, yet another year that brings us all closer to our deaths! Hayata!

Surprise, Surprise!

Well, nothing really worked out the way I had planned...

First, Lindsey's no longer here. She spent a total of about 3 weeks here in my flat before I realized that inviting a girl that you don't know at all to come and stay with you indefinitely, especially when you have no job and your country is in the middle of political turmoil, is a bad idea. I kind of imagined that I would help her expatriate herself (I see myself as a kind of under-ocean railroad), but I'm pretty sure she just wanted to lounge around and get drunk all the time on my dime. So, I told her she had to leave.

So, what was the poor girl to do? She was without money, without a job, without a ticket home, without anyone to support her, and stranded halfway across the world. A couple of friends of mine took her in for a couple of weeks, but when she destroyed their flat by clogging up the plumbing (doesn't take much - the pipes here are made of aluminum foil and chewing gum) and causing all the sewage to seep back in, she was officially up a shit creek (pun certainly intended).

Fortunately, she just happened to run across an American solider on leave in Istanbul. They fell in love, yada yada yada, and he's whisked her away to live in Rome. I tell you, that girl's got skills. I wish her the best of luck, and I'm sincerely glad she's found someone else to follow around Europe.

As for me, I'm not working at ITU after all. I got an email in mid-September saying, "Er... We still haven't received the necessary documents for your employment, but we really hope you'll continue to wait for us and our government to get our shit together. We know you're not making any money or anything, but we're sure you're a really swell guy and everything will surely come up roses!" Of course, I did the professional, loyal thing and got a new job the next day. (Jobs for English speakers grow on trees here. I couldn't count the amount of times I've been propositioned in pubs... For jobs. English teaching jobs. Damnit.)

Anyway, now I'm working in this nice little family run school called ALTA Eğitim, or Beş Günde İngilizce - English in Five Days. Basically, the scam is this. (Did I say scam? Oops, sorry boss). Students come here for only one week, nine hours a day. They walk in, drop off their telephones in the office, and enter the classroom (equipped with comfy IKEA chairs, beautiful IKEA tables, and a brand-new IKEA stereo system that spills out lovely Baroque music, performed by the IKEA symphony orchestra), and shut the door behind them, effectively leaving their lives behind and entering into an ENGLISH SPEAKING WORLD. Which is a room. And me. And cheeseburgers.

Yeah, we eat cheeseburgers for lunch. Every day. I guess that makes it seem more American. We spend 9 hours together, no breaks, which means we eat breakfast together, smoke cigarettes together, drink coffee together, eat lunch together, and at the end of the day, drink wine together. That's right - I get paid to drink wine. The perfect job for an English teacher!

Actually, it's a really nice place to work, and they're really successful. They advertise in every professional magazine in Turkey as well as have a team of young women cold calling every major business in Turkey, trying to get these huge companies to pay for their clients to come learn English. And do they learn English? Well... no. I don't think so. But still, the students walk out every day, smiling and feeling successful because they just spoke English for 9 hours straight! They don't even notice that they're not really learning anything new. They're too amazed at the English they already know. It's a brilliant system, and the owners deserve every one of the millions of Lira they're earning.

In other news, I'm beginning preparations for opening my company. I've settled on a name - Educit Editing and Translation. Why Educit? Well, it's from the Latin meaning to draw out, where we get the word education. It means that we draw the meaning out of your document and translate it into English (or something like that). It's also kind of cool because the first two letters and the last two letters spell "Edit". :) We've reserved the website, and it will be opening soon: http://www.educitenglish.com/ (no longer in service, sorry! -ed)

But don't worry, even when the millions start rolling in, I won't forget about all the little people who helped me get here. (I'm not saying you're little. Really. I was only speaking comparatively, I promise.)