When I called to him he immediately jumped up and ran toward me – and flopped down on top of my feet. To me that is doggie language for “hang out for a while”.

Soon enough we were joined by the rest of his friends whom I hadn’t had a chance to meet yet…

and the playing got underway…

I got to meet a few new faces and give the lot of ‘em a scratch behind the ears…

The only one I couldn’t really get a chance to meet was a young black lab who just couldn’t seem to pull herself away from her game of barking at the surf as it came in…

Overall, it was a great little visit. The night before, as I was passing by in a taxi – I saw a drunken 20-something in the street harassing Fozzie. Fozzie stood about 25 feet away looking at him… I’m pretty sure he’d probably just keep his distance and run if the guy came after him.

I can see why these dogs might be afraid of people. But for some reason with me, they’re just as nice as can be and make my walks along the waterfront extra special.

For starters – all of the ingredients are foreign, the knives are dull, none of the spices are labeled and must be identified by smell, there isn’t a pepper mill to be found anywhere and the salt smells very strong of iodine from time to time.

However, not to be deterred, I stuck with what I know well. Fish. And here there is hardly anything better than some fresh Hamsi – that is if you’re in the mood for finger food.

I can’t stress this enough; Hamsi should not be overcooked. Nor should they be washed before cooking, unless you have the time and space to dry them completely which never seems to work. Also be gentle with the amount of butter or oil you use.

After the saute of some white onion, garlic and fresh tomato, salt, pepper, oregano and cumin in sunflower oil for about 10 minutes, add the Hamsi and gently work into the sauce with your fingers. Tools will break the fish.

Cover and let simmer for about 3 to 4 minutes. After that time has passed, uncover and gently ladle some of the sauce over the top fish. Cook for a few more minutes and then turn out onto a large plate or platter, putting the bottom fish on top to be served first. The dish is great served with bread for dipping. Season lightly with salt.

When it comes to cleaning the Hamsi, provided you haven’t overcooked them, you can pick them up one by one, by the tail and gently bend the tail back. The filet should begin to separate easily and come right off the skeleton of the fish. Turn over and do the same to the other side. In general this should provide a relatively bone-free meal.

If you can wait for the gratification a little, pull several filets and create a small pile to chow on with the rest of your meal. Me – I can’t wait and will pick them up and eat them one by one, my hands covered in sauce and seasonings.

The Mezgit filets (Turkish Whiting – central to the Black Sea and Sea of Marmara Region) are delicate and once again, the less you do to them the better they will be. These filets were simply seasoned with salt, pepper and a little cumin, dredged in flour and pan fried in a small amount of hot sunflower oil. Once cooked they are fleshy with a mild flavor and would go great with a beer, soda or citrus-flavored soft drink.

As for the Coban salad – I can’t take any credit for it. My sister in-law made it for the meal. Just take fresh tomatoes (never refrigerated) baby cucumbers, green onions, parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper and chop them into small pieces, mix them together and serve. There are no hard and fast recipes for Coban salad and it changes everywhere you go, but that is the basic base for it.

So get a fishing pole and get started – you’ve got a bit of work ahead of you.

It was just a week ago when I heard, or read the line “You can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat animals.” I assume you could say the same thing about a country. Don’t expect me to get all PETA on your ass or anything. I just happen to really like dogs and I find the way Turkey deals with wild strays to be a much more humane response to the issue of feral animals. Simply treat them like members of the community.

The deal is pretty easy. As long as the animal is docile and doesn’t show aggression toward people or other animals, they are left alone to roam and sleep where ever their hearts desire. One by one, the healthiest among them are picked up by the dog catcher, taken in, sterilized, vaccinated, ear-tagged and then released back onto the street. Many of them end up flopping in town squares where the handouts are frequent and become part of the normal landscape of the city.

Others, like the one pictured above, go rogue and stick to a more rural territory, sometimes packing together with other dogs in the wild or just going it alone. I’ve seen packs of 20 dogs or more in the mountains, all interbreed and usually missing their ears… The ears falling victim to fights and disagreements or to a farmer’s pocket knife to keep them from getting bitten off in the first place.

Often times the dogs in the country serve a purpose – such as guarding flocks of sheep, goats and cows from wolves and other poachers. The mightiest of these beasts is the Turkish Kangal dog.

A lot of people in Turkey have a very big fear of dogs – and I suspect that these dogs have a lot to do with it, as many people were chased by one as a child. They are everywhere – and have always been very timid around humans in all of my observances. However I have seen a few get excited for one reason or another and begin barking and jumping around. It will clear a sidewalk like a Godzilla sighting, with people scattering everywhere. I’m sure the eyes are what scare most people. They are very intense at all times and look pretty much like the one pictured above whenever they are encountered.

Don’t let that be a bad rap on them though. They are very independent dogs with a mind all their own and if one of them has the mind to chew your ass off I’m sure it would. But for the most part they are ok in the city. Out in the country they should be avoided though, for they are far less socialized and will more than likely see you as an intruder if you happen to stroll too close to their territory which can be far and wide.

An added joy of the Kangal as well as other dogs in Turkey is listening to them howl and bark at absolutely everything at every single hour of the night, only to get quiet about an hour before the call to prayer at which point they all begin to howl and bark again. It is a daily element of existence here.

One of my favorite local pups is a heavy-set German Sheppard/Golden Retriever mix which I in short order named Fozzie, as in Fozzie Bear.

My buddy... Fozzie the seas-side dog.

Fozzie is a big boy – so big in fact that I’ve seen people walk into oncoming traffic just to walk around him. As looks can be a bit intimidating, I sat back on a bench and just watched his behavior around people and more-so, their behavior around him. After a while I began to notice that any time someone walked close to Fozzie that his tail thumped up and down on the side walk. After noticing this I realized that most of the exaggerated behavior I was seeing from people who walked past him was exactly that – exaggerated. Somehow Fozzie had gotten a bad rap just by being a big pooch.

After a while I figured I would make my move… and I walked up and knelt down next to him. He looked up at me, as did most of the crowd on the sidewalk – who all stopped and gazed at me as if I must be mad. Children stood in awe and amazement as they watched me hold out my hand to Fozzie.

He looked up at me for a second, flapped his tail a few times on the ground, put his head forward on his paw and closed his eyes as I began to scratch him on the head. He lay there, enjoying the scratch for a while. And I enjoyed making a new friend…

MM

It is hard for us as Americans to face a faceless enemy. One without a state, without a flag, without borders, buildings or visible leaders. We don’t do well with it. We want someone to blame, to pin the target to. It damages our psyche to not have a tangible foe to do battle with. And that is what leads us to want to reach out and grab the next closest, available person in line.

I would be a liar to say that I haven’t had internal struggles and multiple quiet conversations with myself concerning how to deal with my emotions during my trips here to this country. Once again, I don’t have the time to go into it. But just know that I am sitting here missing my flag and my friends on this day.

What I must share with you though, and what you have to try to understand, no matter how difficult it may be sometimes, is that the few very shallow, twisted hijackers and their co-conspirators  who attacked us, hijacked more than a few planes that day. They hijacked an entire religion and an entire world full of people who believe in a religion and are devoted to it very, very deeply.

I’ll be the first to say that I don’t understand the religion and see a few things, as ignorant as I may be of other people’s beliefs, that I don’t like, will never like and nobody is ever going to convince me of their meaning, purpose or in what way they serve god and society. But what I will not do is condemn entire races, countries and civilizations for having something to believe in,  stand for and fight to protect. Those are values I can understand, and that strike at the very heart of what it is to be an American for me.

I will go on supporting someone’s right to believe in and worship whatever and whomever they want, so long as they don’t tell me I have to as well. I believe it is the right thing to do as a person and certainly the right thing to do as an American. We mustn’t lose who we truly are amidst any pain and desires for vengeance which still linger inside us 10 years later.  Today is our day to remember our fallen and pray, yes pray – in what ever way we may, for their families, friends and loved ones. But we mustn’t continue beyond this day to only think of our losses.

We have to begin to open our arms to, and find a place in our heart for the millions of people who have been displaced, shunned, injured, killed and maimed, wounded and tortured, seen their families and entire villages murdered as a result of the actions of a few lunatics attempting to bring us to war with a large part of the population of the planet. For they too are the victims of 9/11 and have suffered on just as great a scale as have we. We cannot continue to look beyond the sacrifice of innocents – take it or leave it – believe it or not – like it or not.

We owe it to ourselves as people, as citizens, as Americans – just as we owe it to the honor of our fallen and those still falling – to never lose sight of the fact that we were not born a great nation.  We had to fight and die and sacrifice to become one and the only reason we have had continued prosperity, was because people have historically learned how to understand one another, get along with each other and fight for and beside their neighbor for a common cause.

It is because we have been able in the past to look beyond our differences in the interest of a better good that we stand where we stand today with our heads held high after bowing them in remembrance. It is time that we start along that path of recovery yet again, and mend the fences with humanity. For it is our job. It always has been. And we have to do it in order to remain who we are.

We are not above and beyond that which takes place in the rest of the world and we are not impervious to the ugliness which hatched terrorism in the first place. It would help us to realize that the inability to exchange words, language, philosophy and common understanding are much greater barriers to peaceful coexistence than the mortar, round domes and stone towers will ever be.

My decision to plant my ass in Sariyer, Istanbul rather than in some other part of the city was an easy one to make, but I cant take all the credit for it. This is where my wife’s family lives most of the year and the house was available while they were away on holiday down on on the western shore of Asia Minor.

My other option was to stay in Cevizlibag with all of the in-laws. Cevizlibag is one of those areas on the outskirts of “real” Istanbul – where poverty and piety, oft bedfellows, are rife and after certain hours one doesn’t want to be strolling down the road looking around with wide wonder. It certainly isn’t a place for a big fat westerner to be roaming around after dark.

When you pull up a ring-side seat in a Sariyer waterfront cafe along the edge of the Bosphorus,  you are promptly greeted by schools of small fish which have been coaxed toward the shoreline by locals tossing bits of bread to them. The schools of fish attract more locals who stand in lines a hundred yards long to fish them out with rod and reel with seemingly little concern for time, as I have seen the same fishermen stand in one place over the entire course of a day to score a small pail of them.

Bosphorus fish

There is a good chance the fish will arrive prior to your waiter, even when the cafe is slow. The servers here are very efficient and short on words – even with the natives – but they are generally good spirited and eager to please. Just don’t come expecting the kiss-your-ass-a-thon that takes place in US restaurants. I can’t begin to tell you how nice it is to not have to listen to a 5 minute list of the daily specials and obtuse menu presentations that take f-ing forever and are the norm at places like Bonefish Grill. Smile, be friendly, but shut the hell up and get me my drink you twit.

My guide – chaperone – interpreter and for the last 3 days – shadow, has been my sister in-law Cigdem.

Sister in-law Cigdem

Always eager to please and constantly interested in my well being and comfort, she’s been showing me the local bus routes, what to say to the drivers to get where you want to go and pay the right amount, where to fetch the best fruit, fish, meat and bread and how not to get run over by the cars here – which if you’re new here can be really useful information because you ain’t in Kansas anymore Toto. Her help has been invaluable in keeping me alive, keeping me from getting lost, teaching me more Turkish than I knew when I arrived and seeing to it that my belly was full from daybreak to dusk on a daily basis.

It certainly doesn’t hurt that the weather here has been outrageously good since my arrival.

Sariyer, Istanbul

The view and the comfort from the sea air seem to do wonders for a soul that was a little crisp around the edges. I really seem to feel alive here. I suspect the Mediterranean region in general might be pretty effective for my blood pressure as well as any other ailments I might have in my head. It is a peaceful place at the moment and certainly helps with slowing the heart rate and grounding me a bit.

Then… Enter the Borek – the fluffy, doughy, butter-laced pastry filled with an assortment of ingredients, most commonly cheese, potato or meat.

The borek pictured here was one of great delight. It is best earlier in the day when it is fresh from the oven. Borekci (bor-wreck-gee)- or the man who makes the borek, are at work very early in the morning to make the days first batch and there are usually two firings, one in the morning and one just before people return from work in the evening. My plate was a combination of potato borek with a small amount of cheese and herbs and beef borek, speckled with black currants, onions and spices. Just this small plate is enough to induce a massive food coma, so beware. After eating this plate I was sofa meat for the remainder of the afternoon.

To see a master craftsman at work, plying his trade as a Borekci – check out this clip of one of the best in the business of hand making phyllo. If you ever wondered how they got it so thin… the grace with which he works is simply incredible.

The other part of any meal, stop or respite in the day in Turkey is the tea, or Cay (ch-eye). As I’ve written before, tea isn’t just tea. It’s a reason to pause and take a moment to reflect, a reason to hit the off button for a moment and digest the days events, an opportunity to step out of one moment in time and enter another which is less cluttered and closer to a more gentle humanity than the outside world. Tea offers you a breath and a moment to recapture yourself. If it were left to any other beverage I just don’t think it would add up.

Turkish tea

And they do it right here. Served in a small glass, paint peeling hot with cube sugar and a spoon. Absent are the 15 flavors, lemon wedges, milk, twists and other bullshit accoutrements that come with stateside tea service. It’s the reason why most American waiters would like to jam a fork in your eye when you and your beehive hair-do brunch buddies all order it at the peak of service – and owners are too stupid to figure out just how much it drags down the efficiency of their staff during weekend services when it is ordered most.

Here.. No fuss, no muss.. I’ve seen waiters put 20 glasses of it on a table before most of the guests can get their coats off. Restaurant owners in the states would do themselves a major solid by investing in Turkish tea making practices and technology… Um.. I think they use hot water and tea… Jackoffs…

So – tomorrow brings some new adventures for me as I begin to venture out a little further on my own… on the minibus.

Besiktas-bound minibus from Sariyer

Quick as hell in the flats and the equivalent of a donkey-cart on an interstate when going uphill, these occasionally smoke belching, un-air conditioned palaces of olfactory sensation are a staple here in Turkey. Often targets of regulatory interjection and ban-attempts, these small, independently owned and operated buses, or dolmush, are intimidating as hell to an outsider and really need to be studied a little bit before you simply go jumping on one.

I was most interested in figuring out how to get off of one. Getting on is the easy part. They are very efficient, dramatically cheap and are the way around town when you want to feel like a local. For about a dollar a ride – there’s no way to beat them. Just read the sign in the windshield before getting on or you could very quickly end up in a place that you really didn’t expect to be. Here is a nice link for more info on minibuses.

So it’s another day in paradise as they say.. Who ever the hell “they” is. We’ll see what it has in store for me. I don’t expect to do much except listen, watch and learn. But as I’ve already seen, with my plate of borek, the unexpected can come along at any point and change your day.

John Goodman - eat your heart out...

Generally it gets better after the first week and sleep is usually something that just ends up happening rather than being something that is planned. Yesterday I was doing the “Hey that guy’s passed out” head nod for an unknown amount of time and ended up bouncing my head off a cement wall about four times before I realized I had dozed off. And as it’s always entertaining for people to watch, my brother in-law Ozcan (ooz-john) was watching with amusement when I woke up.

Though I had good reason to be sleepy on top of the jet lag… The night before I had been up until 5am running around Taksim Square with Turkish voice over talents Andy Boyns, Mehmet Onur and my sister in-law Cigdem (Chee-dem).

Though a grainy photo does it little justice, Taksim Square is a raucous place which caters to many people and many different desires.

We went to many clubs – some of them packed to the gills, most notably MASK live music club which will have you elbows to a-holes about 20 minutes before the band is supposed to come on and it gets progressively harder to move as the music starts. However, it’s my second time there and the music has been above par both times with a combination of western rock, funk, jazz, pop and hip-hop.

From there – we went on to the last place I would have expected to find… An Irish Pub in the middle of Istanbul complete with a cover band playing CCR, Joe Cocker and Roy Orbison. Though they were out of Guinness, so we had to settle for a Danish draft – but the Jameson was 3 bottles deep on the shelf..

A startling sign in the middle of Istanbul..

As with all the other vices, the Nargile (Nar-gee-lay) or Hookah/Shisha pipes in Istanbul are by far the best I’ve ever had.

And I imagine that they aren’t good everywhere. People have a bad habit of going to a place and then making a blanket statement that “everything” in the entire country, such as the food, is great. I my friends, am a bit more skeptical. The one thing I look for when scoping out hookah spots isn’t all that different from what I do when I’m looking for a good sushi bar… Are there asses in the seats when I look in the window?

If the hookah bar is busy in Istanbul or Izmir – and it has older people sitting there smoking- and they aren’t a bunch of classless, asshole tourists giggling as they pass the stem around and talking far too loud – then it’s a safe bet that you aren’t going to run into some candy coated gag-weed like the stuff that is all over Fairfax and the surrounding area where I live.  The smoke is thick but light, smooth but strong and gently tastes of the flavor of whatever variety you selected, as advertised.

Nargile in Taksim Square

If you’re really lucky you’ll run into a place that sells natural tobacco like they do on the Izmir waterfront. It’s a special treat and contrary to popular belief, I smoked cigarettes for 20 years and quit over 3 years ago… and I don’t find myself longing for a stogie or wanting to run out and buy a pack after an evening or daytime hookah session. For some reason – I only want to find another hookah… and I’m happy to let it be a day or so before that happens.

MM

My father – his birthday is on the 7th of September – asked me where I’d be for his birthday and in true family fashion I told him I’d either be toasting him with a beer in Istanbul or floating around in the Atlantic. He asked, “Please don’t ruin my birthday. ” I’ll try dad… I’ll try…

The anticipated separation from my wife is hard to deal with. Normally we travel together but this time I’ll be leaving a month before her so I can have a little more “me” time in-country. It seems a touch selfish… You know paddling the “Good Ship Me” around “Lake Me” for a while.

Ben Turkce pratik ediyorum...

I’ve wanted some time to clear my head of the daily monotony and tedium of normal existence. It seems we get so caught up just existing from day to day. Years pass and we seldom realize that our stagnation is a byproduct of our own fears keeping us encased in our own little castles. It’s hard to venture outside the castle gates after a while. The brevity of our excursions is filled with little more than trips to the store for milk and cat food and hardly ever takes on anything of any sort of seriousness… and that is just the way we like it.

Being able to make it to the store without encountering any misfortune or angry people becomes an occasion to celebrate. We relish anonymity and event-less moments and count our blessings when we can make it through the days, weeks or months with a collection of opaque, anecdotal stories to tell. We’ve become satiated with such comforts.

Some new neighbors moved in across the street about a month ago. So far – not even so much as a wave hello, or an acknowledgement of existence. Just a steady stream of service trucks installing televisions and sound systems. Who knows if the old neighbors who lived there told them to avoid us – because in 8 years they never said hello either. Just time filled with empty stares while they let their little 4lb fuzzball of a dog out to take a crap. I thought I might get all Mayberry on their ass and bake them an apple pie to break the ice, but hell, they never tried either.

It just seems that at some point we have to break our own rules and venture out into the wild blue yonder for a while. Otherwise we should just be content to simply curl up and die – it’s bound to happen – on the inside anyway – if we continue to wander through the days trying to safeguard the simple, predictable, plain-Jane lives we cherish so much.

I’m tired of dying inside… I’m ready to go.

I was anything but patient when I began my quest for voice over success. I really did believe that I would be rolling in riches and all things material after a few years in the craft. I didn’t know at the time how foolish those assumptions were and I certainly had no way of telling who and what I would be when time began to tick by. I didn’t know that years later I’d be sitting here counting my blessings and basking in the glory of riches made not of paper and coin, but surrounded by scant material items which reach just outside the lines of necessity . I certainly never envisioned myself as being happy with so little.

When it comes to money and wealth, I am not a rich man, nor am I destined or predetermined to be one. Voice over has brought me a significant measure of success and notoriety. I’m published in a few books and have some national credits. I’ve managed to build and run two very successful little studios, I stress the word little. I’ve been a moderately successful voice over performance coach and have managed to change a few peoples lives for the better because of my instruction.

Life and occupational pursuits have been pretty good to me, all things considered. But I am not a wealthy man because of it. I live in a little tiny house with my wife and a cat named Levi. I drove the same white, 1988 Mazda 323 from the age of 19 to 40, until I sold it to my nephew, who in short order turned it into a battering-ram for deer. My other car is a 23 year old BMW e28 and I keep it alive in the driveway with a tattered collection of wrenches, jacks, lights and WD-40. My wife’s car is running a close second at 17 years old and I’m the local physician for that one too, as well as the cars of friends, family and neighbors.

Auto mechanics was never a vocation. It was something I taught myself after being ripped off by the local Midas in my home town of Fairfax. They stole from me, abused me, lied to me and mislead me and I have never, nor will I ever forgive them. I decided to show them in another way, by becoming a pretty damn good mechanic and making sure another dollar of my money never entered their coffer. But that is another story. Although it does speak to my spirit.

I have witnessed surprise and probably a certain amount of disappointment in some of my students faces when they pull up in my neighborhood for the first time and realize that they aren’t going to some ritzy castle, or to a studio clad in leather and designer lighting with big fluffy sofas and a fully stocked kitchenette. I live in a blue-collar, working class neighborhood full of people from almost every corner of the earth. I have a hillbilly on one side who covets and continuously enlarges a mountain of junk I think he’s saving for the apocalypse, and a young El Salvadorian family on the other side who has adopted me to a certain extent and allows me to share in all of their parties and holidays.

My yard is full of rakes, shovels, coolers and barbecue grills, tarp covered racing tires and a plastic-covered pile of dirt encased in railroad ties that my wife and I quite loosely refer to as a patio… At least one that is under construction. Further back you’ll find hip-high piles of gardening buckets, compost containers and crab-cages for catching blue crabs in the waters around Maryland and Virginia. My house looks more like the set in the 90′s television series Rosanne, complete with a hand-knit Afghan, or shawl, draped across the top of the sofa.

This is a far stretch from the scantily decorated, artsy looking studios and houses you see in magazines and promotional pictures and is a really far stretch from where I saw myself being many moons ago when I began my voice over journey. The interesting part for me is that I never knew I would be content this way. There was a time in my past where I looked at this lifestyle with a turned-up-nose snobbishness that wasn’t too dissimilar to the way some fashionably dressed tart might look upon a tattooed, son-drenched, shoeless, shirtless man in cut-off jeans waiting in line at a 7-11 convenience store. Though I had no reason to turn up my nose. Who in the hell was I? Certainly not any crown prince.

I’m the son of a fireman and a secretary, nephew of a cop, teacher, artist and ex-flower-child hippie. Grandson of two military veterans, a Baptist and an insurance salesman. My family came here with little, rose to have a little bit more and then hit the brakes. We are not children of privilege, there aren’t any silver spoons and the majority of my childhood had me in knock-off name brands and hand-me-down clothes. Where on earth would I get the stones to walk around glancing at others as tawdry seconds? I’m not entirely sure – but I’m certain that some of it came from false pride and a desire to see myself as better, or at least better-off than others.

I don’t know where we get it.

Maybe we can we blame it on the media, or fashion? Maybe style? Societal cliques that we all learned about in high school? Or classicism?

I still can’t help but wonder:

What is it which compels us to want to stand atop one another forcing others to look up?

What is it that drives us to have as much or more than our neighbor?

What is it that drives us to divide and categorize ourselves into different tiers of desirability and presumed importance?

What is it that gives us differing physical and emotional responses to someone dressed in rags verses someone dressed in the cloth of kings and queens?

Why do we see people of any standing as any more or less of a person, and then find ourselves wanting to be more or less like them, rather than more or less like ourselves?

I’m not sure I’ll ever find an answer to those questions. But my discovery of a little humility along the way has taught me a few things about ignoring the impulses which lead me to staring down my nose at others in the past. I learned somewhere along the line that the only things I’d find living a life of comparing myself to others were misery, jealousy, envy and disenchantment. There will always be someone with more, or with less, who is stronger, or who is weaker. In some ways now I am more willing to bow my head when I think of some of my past feelings, opinions and assumptions about the world and all of the mythological joy and jubilation wealth and money are supposed to bring.

Though I have been studying, practicing and learning how to live with a deeper, richer, more humble understanding and tolerance for years now, the most lucid revelations came to me after I was able to fully digest the observations I had made during my first trip to the far eastern countryside of Turkey. Of the many things I witnessed on that journey, an event which completely spoke to my consciousness… was the moment I was welcomed into the 300 year old stone home of a local village woman.

The floor was dirt, but not dirty. The walls were whitewashed and slightly yellowed from time and fireplace smoke. Imprints of hundreds of years of fingers were pressed into the clay which filled every crack in the stone walls, fingerprints still recognizable in some of the patches. The craggy, arthritic roof sagged and quietly called out as if it wanted to moan and cry with age and soreness. A half-wall of thatch, rock and clay concealed a pile of firewood and farming utensils in the middle of the room. Light from an open door and a lone window were all that lit the room.

Upon entering the room I was awash in my recognition of the absolute absence of materialistic vanity. When our eyes met, she didn’t look upon me with judgment. Her smile was genuine and she didn’t glance around the room in embarrassment because of how she lived or where she was living. She thought nothing of it, for it was all she had ever known. She welcomed me in graciously, offered me a stool to rest upon and silently vanished into the adjoining room to make tea over a small fire in the fireplace. The fire had to be lit, so tea in the country was going to take a while.

In that room I sat silently observing, glancing at every detail and studying the contours and shapes of it’s construction. In a somewhat psychedelic nature the rocks, roof and floor gradually transformed into a mirror in which the shallowness of my material life began to reflect. Throughout a lifetime developing highly tuned, acute observational abilities, this was the first time I was able to so clearly observe my own behaviors and indulgences. I was fortunate enough to witness my past behavior clearly and weigh the the reality of the existence I had so carefully crafted over the years.

I began to realize in that very room that my life up to this point consisted primarily of longing and wanting for something more than what I already had. I had never realized how poisonous that behavior had been to my soul, mind and body over the years. Without warning I discovered just how small my lofty wants and desires were.

Those moments of enlightenment have set me on a path to return to the country for a near 2 month trek. I’ll be setting out on this journey with a little more than 15 hours in language training, a new HD camera and a mind more open to new people, new experiences, unseen cultural observations, flavors, textures and sensations which until now remain very foreign.

It is the current tapestry depicting my short time here on earth that I hope to further adorn. I hope that in some way I am able to enrich myself during this journey, not with currency, but with a richness that money can never buy. The richness of life that only comes with a deeper understanding of how in the dictation of my own narrative over the years, I have seldom stopped and attempted to effectively understand the struggle and journey of others who make do with a fraction of the things I possess – yet seem from a simple greeting in an old stone farm house to have so much more.

I can’t wait to dig in and digitize them to preserve them. There is so much history in them, and the voices of those who are no longer with us. It will be a way to take a time machine back and visit for a while. I’m anxious to see what lies within…

Here soon enough I’ll be on another trip to Turkey. I’m busy getting ready and I’m hoping to share most of that trip here and on FB. Between Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in and every other media platform, I’m about ready to pull my hair out.. To this point I still really fail to see what the deal is with any of them – other than platforms to waste a TREMENDOUS amount of one’s day.  But still – I piss around with them on a daily or weekly basis.

Right now I just don’t have that much time to dick around. Too busy tying up loose ends here – getting ready for the trip… More on that later…

M