it is the new year (but i am an oldie)

happy 2011!

(i)

we greeted the new year here in turkey in the good company of a visiting friend. a bit like christmas -- even new year was a rather quiet affair in izmir...just some music and fireworks at midnight in the nearby square + loads of people strolling by and packing the usual cafes and restaurants along the sea...which, in truth, is what happens every weekend - if not every evening!
anyway, nothing close to the grand parties and concerts we could only see on tv - broadcast from american, australian and european squares.

(ii)

read my horoscope for the new year and apparently there are ghastly times ahead! -- which does not surprise much, after all. am not an expert, never intend to become one and would never want to sound like a "know-it-all"...but usually the first months with a newborn are everything but happening...it is like a stand-by / slow motion type of thing... so, i guess being horoscopically challenged matters less than zero, really -- doesn't it?

and it is january now - which reminds me of that song "june in january" sung by bing crosby in 1934... and later performed by dean martin too. being a fan of the oldies... i kind of like mellow songs like this one and being january "my month" - i smile whenever i hear it.

A clouded moon creeps across the clouded sky
Winds of January sigh and moan
And yet it's June.
I can see a sky of blue
Dear the miracle is due to you.
Just you.
It's June in January
Because I'm in love
It always is spring in my heart
with you in my arms.
The snow is just white blossoms
that fall from above.
And here is the reason, my dear,
Your magical charms.
The night is cold
The trees are bare
But I can feel the scent of roses in the air.
It's June in January
Because I'm in love.
But only because I'm in love with you.
Oh the night is cold!
Won't it be to bear?
But I can feel the scent of roses in the air.
It's June in January
Because I'm in love
But only because I'm in love with you.

(iii)

not many new year's resolutions that come to mind at the moment... am just taking notes on what movies and books i want to check out as soon as i can. in particular -- have included the following films in my wish list:

-- never let me go (based on the uber famous novel by kazuo ishiguro - and adapted for the big screen by genius author alex garland... am sure this one will give me the creeps... but did read plenty of promising reviews on it...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXiRZhDEo8A

-- jack goes boating (first movie by philip seymour hoffman as a director - watched the trailer and am already sure it must be an incredibly odd cookie)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1BwBhk9nqM

-- blue valentine (much talked about in the states. already praised for its acting and criticised for the inconsistencies of its script...starring ryan gosling and michelle williams)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvlI7Ok8Kus

-- la bellezza del somaro (italian byopic that was reccomended as "genius" by many friends - especially for the peculiarly accurate portrayt it offers of the so-called radical-chic middle class italy swarms with)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcNECG0lYa4

-- cosa voglio di piu' (another italian piece by director soldini)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9dcnBVqnM&feature=fvw

(p.s.)
went for one of my final check ups before delivery last week and as we were leaving the clinic - asked by my husband whether he could be present at the moment of birth - the doctor informed us with a very broad and genuine smile "it is turkey here, ...you know?" - which was comedy to say the least... and a very quick reminder of how very un-romanticised labour and birth still are here. truth be told... i kind of find this reassuring.

as mentioned earlier... i am a big big fan of the oldies - ...and the "oldie" ways, i figure.

"once in a house on fire" - andrea ashworth

"once in a house on fire" - by andrea ashworth is the best book i have read this year. the book is an autobiographical tale of ashworth's upbringing in manchester. the uniqueness of the book stands in the fact that, despite being a story about neglect and abuse - it is written with child-like candor, a quality that fills every page with enchantment. as you read...especially when ashworth describes her teenage years and her decisive struggle to leave her sad past behind through her giftedness - you find yourself, as a reader, to cheer and hope for her. the final happy ending (ashworth entered oxford and later pursued a career there) is a joy to read about.

"once in a house on fire" achieves the impossible result of describing pain and desperation without ever ceasing to sound deep down full of life. it is an extraordinary book that celebrates the triumph of a young girl over hatred and ugliness - all thanks to the strengh of her inspiring spirit.

...THAT'S LUCKY, I THINK! (scattered notes after christmas)

(1) will quit work in approx. ten days and i cannot even begin to say how sorry i feel about this. i will miss teaching. when we first moved here i kind of dreaded the idea of a teaching job - picturing a future of idle time spent with bratty, unbearable students. which was not the case in the end (quite the opposite, actually) and i now know i will miss being at school immensely. teaching has allowed me to gain unique insight into turkey and turkish ways - but it has also been a very enjoyable professional and personal experience. all in all, i do have a strong sense of gratitude for a merely accidental job that has made me more curious about others and happy to read more, do more and do better.

(2) my topic for this week is "advantages and disadvantages". this time around i am asking my students to point out at the positives and negatives of different conditions. e.g. being a university student versus working; being a man versus being a woman; being born in turkey instead of somewhere else; etc.

collected some interesting answers so far. remarkably, most students - when questioned about the advantages and disadvantages of their nationality tend to state that the major con about it is "being looked down at by other countries" - whereas they very often mention as a pro the "geographical position we have" (?) alongside "our very long and heroic history".

girls tend to get kind of quiet when they have to explain what they enjoy about being women. they all seem to complain about how easier things are for men - usually described as "stronger... more dominant... and much, much freer...". also...one guy in my class tonight came up with the most extravagant idea - saying that the pain of labour experienced by women giving birth is a piece of cake if you compare it with the excruciating pain of circumcision. plus, he added with a serene smile - "even if you work... with pregnancy...what you get is a long holiday - that's lucky, i think".

fascinating. almost mesmerising.

(3) christmas was a quaint affair - and a working day for me. waking up to the sight of my baby boy opening his presents was exciting and sweet... but i will forever be grateful for yet another relatives-free christmas. just exchanging wishes over the phone with family members i never hear from for the rest of the year (including my older brother) did somehow manage to depress me slightly. call me a rotten consummerist - but i seem to enjoy the festive atmosphere (lights, decorations, carols, snowy landscapes, pretty cakes, candles...) more than the actual core of christmas rituals, namely: family rounds, embarassing moments of awkardness, overcrowded parties you never wanted to attend to begin with and the silliness of forced rethorics about the joys of family life. something that, if it is real and sound...will never need to be celebrated - let alone blabbed about.

(4) with 2010 drawing to a close - i find myself looking back and thinking it was a very eventful year. it kind of took off in a rather uncertain, confusing / slow way - but it had very many precious moments. summer was amazing to say the least - and very rarely i can recall another sunny season filled with so much beauty and real, utter relaxation. turkey does have some gems of places to visit and enjoy.

overall, i would say it was a very different year. it did make me a better person - more capable of truly enjoying smaller things; more capable of listening; more into sports; more passionate about cooking, reading, writing; more into movies; more "there" for the friends i really care for; more practical. and somehow happier - i would dare to say...even if some aspects of my new turkish life still baffle me - like the bizarre, unglobalised, unexplainable social ties and life i seem to put up with here. on a more intimate note...emotionally - my feeling is that i keep on giving (and giving in!) while receiving only indirectly and from unexpected sources (like students, whom - if you put it into perspective - are in truth little more than strangers) and receiving zero (if not mediocrity) from people i was naively hoping more from. something natural, i figure -- perhaps (anthropologically) fascinating, at times...but hardly fun, at the end of the day.

yet... after all i have recently learnt that everything is relative - even grief... and, as my student tonight had the cheek of pointing out -- no pain can compare to the pains of circumcision! (..."and that's lucky, i think!")...

(5) looking forward to receiving soon visit of friend landing here on wednesday and coming to celebrate new year at ours.

(6) two days before xmas, i fell asleep during introductory visit to private clinic where i will give birth in a couple of weeks. the place had the tacky grandeur of some of the public buildings built in romania under the dictatorship of leader ceausescu. the staff seemed lovely. the rest of the soon-to-be mothers taking part in the introductory session - were safely sided by their respective husbands who looked 50% bored and 50% clumsy. perhaps... as i could relate more to these feelings of puzzlement - as soon as i sat down on a couch i fell asleep. only to be awaken by a nurse commenting in a soft voice "look at this one. god bless!!".

(p.s.) concept of "privileged geography" of turkey still escaping me.

"questi giorni quando viene il bel sole..."

i was in starbucks after class tonight and there was some music playing. it took me a while to realise why it sounded soooo familiar...and then i finally nailed it. it was an instrumental version of "on days like these". wow. i was floored. i whistled its tune walking back home and picturing the super famous scene that goes with the song - which actually opens the classic "the italian job" with matt monro's velvety and uber60's voice butchering any resemblance of the italian language..."kwesteeeee johnny kwandoWWW v-eeee-E-NNNNeeee eeeLLL BEL SOW-LE"

((...i am such a sucker (and a softie) when it comes to retro music / movies!))

...............Questi giorni quando viene il bel sole

On days like these when skies are blue and fields are green
I look around and think about what might have been
and then I hear sweet music float around my head
as I recall the many things we left unsaid
its on days like these that I remember
singing songs and drinking wine
while your eyes played games with mine

on days like these I wonder what became of you
maybe today you are singing songs with someone new
I'd like to think you're walking by those willow trees
remembering the love we knew on days like these
its on days like these that I remember
singing songs and drinking wine
while your eyes played games with mine

on days like these I wonder what became of you
maybe today you are singing songs with someone new

Questi giorni quando viene il bel sole

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z8aLdIejPs

UP SERIES

Am currently hooked on the cult British series "7 Up" ...and because of its beauty and unique, heartbreaking, thought-provoking ingredients - am starting to consider it sheer genius.

The Jesuit motto: "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man" is the inspiration for the 7 Up documentary series, which has been interviewing the same group of British people at seven year intervals since 1964, when they were each seven years old. (so far the series' documentaries include: 7 Up!;7 Plus Seven; 21 Up; 28 Up; 35 Up; 42 Up and 49 Up).
The children were selected back in 1964 to represent the range of socio-economic backgrounds in Britain at that time, with the explicit assumption that each child's social class predetermines their future. Every seven years, the director, Michael Apted, films new material. Filming for the next installment in the series, 56 Up, is expected in late 2011 or early 2012.

7 Up is a landmark in British television, consistently voted Britain’s most influential documentary of all time, as well Europe’s.

The children involved in the project came from differing backgrounds. There were four rich children

- three boarding school boys (blonde, stuffy John Brisby, geeky Andrew Brackfield, and cute Charles Furneaux);

and a girl from a wealthy family (snobby Suzy Dewey);

- two boys from a children’s home (black Simon Basterfield - and white introverted Paul Kligerman);

- four children from the poor working class East End of London - a boy (short, cheeky jockey wannabe Tony Walker)

and three would-be lifelong girlfriends (blond ugly duckling Jackie Bassett, quiet Lynn Johnson, and tall, motherly Sue Sullivan);

- two middle class boys from Liverpool suburbs (outgoing, bright Neil Hughes, and average Peter Davies);

and two ‘wildcard’ kids, who would turn out to be the most self-fulfilled of the fourteen.
The first (Bruce Balden) was an upper middle class sensitive blonde boy whose father abandoned him to the English boarding school system, and wanted to be a missionary when young. The last was the only one from the English countryside... Nick Hitchon, who had a bit of a glow about him from even the first film.

7 Up has the kids at their precocious best. The three rich boys, later dubbed The Three Wise Men, by Apted, already display signs of snobbery, if not outright bigotry, and rich Suzy is certainly a bigot. Poor, short Tony seems a hooligan in the making, and shy, big-eared Bruce seems doomed to be a male wallflower. But there are surprises in store. While the rich boys remain snobs, they are not as predictable as one might think, and while cute and perky at seven - Neil is slated to go on a ride through mental illness and paranoia later in life.

In the first film, they are seen in sharp black and white, bouncing off the walls and full of quips like pre-school Beatles. At age 21, we see them in the gauzy colour of 70s film stock. They are faux-rebellious chain-smokers, reflective and cool-headed, with all the time in the world to spare. At 28, they are still young, but they've made choices that cannot be unmade. They are like adults-in-training. At 42, they are heartbreaking. Youth has quietly slipped away. Spouses have come and gone.

All throughout the footage - one ends up feeling some kind of hypnotic effect, as repetition (of questions and faces) heightens the domino propulsion of events that bear out the Jesuit motto’s truth. The extroverts and introverts as children are extroverts and introverts in middle age. Those with silver spoons have done well, while those with less struggled, even as their lives are more interesting. Yet, the success of the rich was not for anything special, but their many advantages and priviledged education brought some kind of immediate quality to their lives. It is interesting to note the plethora of lawyers the film follows- John, Andrew, and even Peter, as well as Suzy’s husband. Not surprisingly, they are the least imaginative of the subjects, thoroughly homogenized by what Charles, in 21 Up, called the conveyor belt mentality of British society that spits the upper class kids through boarding schools and Oxbridge colleges. However, this is far more than the class-based polemic of its roots.

How forty or so minutes of scattered quotes by a person (at 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49...regardless)

can so intimately convey such huge portions of their character, as well fate, amazes. Most of this is due to Apted, since... while everyone has a story, you need a great artist to tell it, and even when he errs in trying to foreshadow things, or tries to contrast rich Suzy with the working class girls, he never condescends to his subjects, nor his viewers. The art of selection and contrast comes into play in ways any singular film cannot match, as the intercutting forces introspection. This lends itself to irony, as well the foreshadowing implicit in the series’ motto. Watching the films in sequence, in a short period of time, heightens these feelings, while watching them a second time, especially the earlier films, brings a sense of déjà vu to these characters, as you recall things from their past (and yours) while knowing what will befall these people that their onscreen selves are clueless of.

By watching all the films in a row one sees the formation of patterns that, even though none of these people are exceptional, are utterly human and relatable.
Their lives twist in surprising ways at times. The result is that even the most insignificant tic or twitch takes on seeming relevance.

What the series does best is parallax not only the lives of the individuals filmed, but those of the viewer. We are forced to ask where our families or we were, externally and internally, during the time periods each film captures, as well the corresponding life stages each film represents, and it is almost impossible not to be bound up in this pursuit. Inner character may not fundamentally change, but the seven year intervals always make you feel success, happiness, love, heartache, loss could be just around the corner- ...for the fourteen people featured in the documentary.

And yourself.

lucy honeychurch far better than self-help books

been exchanging few emails with a friend who always provides interesting tales on his rather happening sentimental life. yesterday, after a year of new names of random girlfriends coming up every two months or so -- and after receiving punctual updates on their ways, tantrums, qualities and flaws... i suggested it could be easy to compare them to famous literary characters.

one of my main frustrations about teaching in turkey is that people here are 100% oblivious to any modern and contemporary literature... and to any modern and contemporary notion of western / european history. this kills me a little bit -- as literature to me is one of the major sources of cohesive observation and understanding of the people we meet and live with. forget self help books, forget therapy, forget agony aunt's columns, forget psychology tests in glossy magazines. i believe books, poems, short stories - if read with an open heart can fill our minds with ideas and references to look at others with a clearer vision: which, i trust, can translate in an improvement of our empathy... as well as a massive enhancement of our sense of humour.

history - as a subject, as a planet - is a form of literature in the extended sense. a kind of endless novel...with a legion of characters and a continuous addition of chapters and narrative twists.

having said this.

this morning i sent an email to my womanising friend and noted that:

-- new flame I. could well be a character from Oscar Wilde's best pages. fickle, funny, ditzy;

-- long lost love C. could be a woman out of one of the early Alain de Botton's books. cerebral and with plenty of ambition;

-- disappointing K. did remind me of a F. Dostojevski's character. sheer ambition and not much else;

-- much adored E. on the other hand did make me think of Jo March in Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott... or some Jane Austen's heroine, like Emma Woodhouse;

and that (finally) S. was a tad like Lucy Honeychurch (too aware and respectful of conventions...afraid of letting out her true self) -- yet before meeting George and ending up becoming "transfigured by Italy"...

(now...enough morning blabbing...time to go for a long swim!)

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

NUMBER 8

It was a face which darkness could kill
in an instant
a face as easily hurt
by laughter or light

'We think differently at night'
she told me once
lying back languidly

And she would quote Cocteau

'I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say
'whom I am constantly shocking'

Then she would smile and look away
light a cigarette for me
sigh and rise

and stretch
her sweet anatomy

let fall a stocking

********
UNDERWEAR

I didn’t get much sleep last night
thinking about underwear
Have you ever stopped to consider
underwear in the abstract
When you really dig into it
some shocking problems are raised
Underwear is something we all have to deal with
Everyone wears
some kind of underwear
Even Indians wear underwear
Even Cubans
wear underwear
The Pope wears underwear I hope
The Governor of Louisiana wears underwear
I saw him on TV
He must have had tight underwear
He squirmed a lot
Underwear can really get you in a bind
You have seen the underwear ads for men and women
so alike but so different
Women’s underwear holds things up
Men’s underwear holds things down
Underwear is one thing
men and women do have in common
Underwear is all we have between us
You have seen the three-color pictures
with crotches encircled
to show the areas of extra strength
with three-way stretch
promising full freedom of action
Don’t be deceived
It’s all based on the two-party system
which doesn’t allow much freedom of choice
the way things are set up
America in its Underwear
struggles thru the night
Underwear controls everything in the end
Take foundation garments for instance
They are really fascist forms
of underground government
making people believe
something but the truth
telling you what you can of can’t do
Did you ever try to get around a girdle
Perhaps Non-Violent Action
is the only answer
Did Gandhi wear a girdle?
Did Lady Macbeth wear a girdle?
Was that why Macbeth murdered sleep?

And the spot she was always rubbing -
Was it really her underwear?
Modern anglosaxon ladies
must have huge guilt complexes
always washing and washing and washing
Out damned spot
Underwear with spots very suspicious
Underwear with bulges very shocking
Underwear on clothesline a great flag of freedom
Someone has escaped his Underwear
May be naked somewhere
Help!
But don’t worry
Everybody’s still hung up in it
There won’t be no real revolution
And poetry still the underwear of the soul
And underwear still covering
a multitude of faults

in the geological sense -
strange sedimentary stones, inscrutable cracks!
If I were you I’d keep aside
an oversize pair of winter underwear
Do not go naked into that good night
And in the meantime
keep calm and warm and dry
No use stirring ourselves up prematurely
‘over Nothing’
Move forward with dignity
hand in vest
Don’t get emotional
And death shall have no dominion
There’s plenty of time my darling
Are we not still young and easy?
Don’t shout.