Time for me to start this vacation, bitches.

A while back, I wrote a post about transitions.

I've been thinking about transitions once again—ever since I left NY and arrived in Turkey. This one seems especially hard, and I've been trying to figure out how come. After all, I ought to be used to these cross-cultural shifts and code switching by now. So what's going on this time?

A bunch of things.

• The unfamiliar in re-integration. When I arrived in Izmir, so did my sister's partner and a friend of his who is going through divorce. Even if I don't know the former all that well, I do know his sense of humor, and he is family. But the distressed buddy, I've only hung out with once, and I don't think we ever exchanged any words the whole night (at a Passover dinner in Istanbul with two families I don't know—f.u.n.). So coming to Izmir and having a near stranger in my home did not help me feel at home, well, at home.

• Logistics. I fucking hate logistics. I have 7 friends from the US coming to visit me in Turkey this summer. They all have different dates of arrival and departure. In my ideal world, they would have all stayed at my grandmother's house since she will no longer be able to leave her home in Israel to vacation in Turkey in the summers (see post from a year ago about the bus accident that crippled her forever). Alas, my uncle has rented out my grandmother's place, and I have had to figure out how to host all these people in our tiny home.

Complications to figuring out logistics: 4 of my visitors have not given me specific dates; 2 of these have yet to buy their tickets, and the other 2 don't seem that concerned that unless I make hotel reservation for them, they will have to pay a whole lot more money than they think on a room. Many emails later, I have finally made arrangements for the people who have their dates down and given the undecided four the info for the hotel I chose for the others, and told them to take care of themselves. Stick a fork in me, I am d. o. n. e playing travel agent.

One of the more annoying things has been how everyone in my family suddenly began stressing about my friends' plans, their lodgings, when we should take them to see what, who will room with whom… If there is anything I hate more than dealing with logistics is having to deal with other people's logistics. If there is anything I hate more than that, it's my family chatting at a loud and high pitch amongst themselves about my friends' logistics.

Can't we just plan the first night and plan the rest of it all by ear? That's what I would do. Oh, right. These are not my travel plans. So why am I making them again??? Oh. Turks are hospitable and shit; that's why. Right. (I'm feeling terrible already that one of my guests will be sleeping on the living room couch. Fucking cultural values.)

Bottom line: I've been so tense about future plans that I've been unable to just chill and be present in the present.

• Missed connections. I have no friends here; the very few people I am still in touch with from high school do not live in Izmir. I miss having friends to be silly with; I miss my partners in crime. I miss yapping over drinks with someone who gets me. Shit, I miss friends who don't always get me.

Despite all the stress I mentioned above, I've had awesome experiences too. I love the time in The Aegean as always. I am reminded again and again how much I love the food here. Even though I would have much rather hugged a dolphin in the wild in a sea, getting to hold onto one and riding her in a pool with a lameass life jacket on was, I have to admit despite the sadness I feel for the dolphins that live in a pool, a pretty amazing feeling. Every time I come back here, there are some things that I just can't describe to someone else. I don't know how to describe the food or the way the sea appears when you dive in and flip around to look at the surface from below to someone who hasn't been here.

I experience a lot while I am here that changes me somehow, things I want to bring back with me from one home to the other one, things I want to hold onto, things I need everyone who knows me to know. Being gone for two months is a weird thing. I am starkly aware of the distance between this home and the one in San Francisco. I am painfully aware of my friends' absence in my life right now. When I go back, it always turns out –understandably– that my friends, who have been in their daily grind as usual, have been less aware of my absence for two months. To them, two months have flown like water (ah, I am already using Turkish idioms in translation), like any other two months—much like two months during the school year come and go without my feeling a need to think a whole lot about them. I get back and it's like I've never left. I, meanwhile, feel an ineffable distance between us, which only I can close by forgoing all the things I could try to share about what being in Turkey was like. I ask about their two months, about what's new, and I usually get the answer that I never get used to: that it's been the same old, same old. It's hard for me to imagine how two months can go by without some new thought, a new spark of inspiration, a new photo, a new haiku moment, a new beauty among the muckheap up mundaneness can cross someone's path. So I give the typical high school student answer when it's my turn to say something. You know, the "How was school?" and "Fine" routine. . . And we move on. And some things get left behind and put aside that only I know about, like some furnishings and ornaments that don't quite fit in my other home or go with the rest of the stuff already there.

• My damn pride. The only person I have called in the US since I have left NY is a woman I've never met. Enough said.

. . .

Nah. Who am I kidding? I've always been too verbose for the "Enough said" line.

So…

Sure, her awesomeness deserves the phone card investment. At the same time, I know at least one more person who admittedly has "stories coming out of my ears." But no. No sign of weakness shall be made visible for people I love whom I know I might actually see soon. Damn my damn Kapuya stubbornness and our "show no vulnerability" pride.


Of course, I write about it all here. How do I even begin to make sense of the paradox before it appears before me as hypocrisy? Very well. Maybe I'm OK with putting down what makes me feel vulnerable in writing because I am also stubborn about protecting the illusion that whatever I post here is ultimately for me.

...

I like them apples just fine, thank you.

And now that the logistics are done, the new plan: to get out of the house early and start this vacation, bitches.