How do you say good morning in TV?

My baby just woke up and after a brief cuddle session on the couch, the first word out of her mouth was "TV." I know; that's not even a word.

So I couldn't help but think about what I wrote for Kaboose. Oh well.

Guided by Intuition... or Not

I'm slowly getting addicted to Turkish TV. My latest guilty pleasure is a game show where the contestant opens chests to find money throughout the show. There's a lot more detail involved of course but basically, the entire concept is based on intuition and how much risk one is willing to take guided by it. The other night, a bus driver won enough money to pay off his debt, buy himself an apartment and spite his ex-wife who just left him. I had tears in my eyes.

What if your intuition is on vacation? Its cell phone turned off, it has no internet access on the remote island where it's vacationing and you have no desire to schlep all over creation to go looking for it (remember the 93 steps I need to take just to be able to go to the store for our daily bread?)

"A mother, with her intuition, will know just what to do. A mother has a feeling; she pays special attention, if someone is concealing, if someone's playing tricks. She rubs and scrubs and scours the secrets. Until the answer clicks," sings Carly Simon in Piglet's Big Movie. My intuition is most definitely on vacation.

The dictionary says intuition is the act of knowing or sensing without the use of rational processes and  that is exactly why I feel that my intuition has left me at the moment and I'm somewhat paralyzed by this reality. I'm, in fact, consumed by rational processes.

I saw nine apartments in the past few days, in entirely different neighborhoods, mostly on foot, and collapsed in exhaustion last night. I found only one of them tolerable, though very small, because it was the cleanest and in the most central neighborhood, within walking distance to everything I could possibly want to have near the apartment. There were so many things I liked about it and I thought my gut said "This is it!" Now that I'm thinking with a clear head, I know it to be entirely too small for us and lacking most of the things we're really looking for in an apartment.

I think my lack of recent and meaningful history with this city, with these people, with even the act of not working has made me lose my guiding force, my intuition. And knowing that what I think is my gut instinct is fooling me makes me hypothesize, research and test everything I do twice over, which, as you can imagine, is entirely too tiring.

So... it is a blindingly-sunny Spring day in Istanbul with lots of possibilities and all I want to do is join my intuition on vacation.

Mumbling In The Dark

The below post was jotted down on April 22nd:

Note to self: Do not vacation without the laptop ever again!

I'm in Izmir, in the apartment my mother shares with my grandmother, sitting criss-cross-applesauce on the twin bed the kid sleeps in when we come to visit. Normally, this would be my mother's room, her twin bed, her very blue bedspread, rug and curtain set. After the kid was born, a Barbie border replaced the framed prints on the walls and a toy basket the hamper. Such is the love that adorns children here. Such is the love that suffocates.

When I first entered through the front door yesterday, after four high-decibel days at my in-laws, I immediately felt at peace, reuniting with the quiet that I grew up with. But once night fell, the bad lighting, the extremely uncomfortable thrones my mother calls the sofas, and the really bad programming on her satellite-free TV all started to cramp my brain.

I'm working on The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai and can barely read 2-3 pages at a time. This place has always made me feel somewhat lethargic. It's a miracle I graduated from high school!

...

"This really is a lemon tree!" the kid exclaimed pointing at the lemons growing outside this room's second-floor window. Even though her days are filled with fun-loving relatives who spoil her rotten and lots of new experiences, nights make her sad. Last night, right before she drifted off to sleep, she said she really missed New York. She said she's not "feeling well" in Turkey. When I asked her to explain, she said she's not "great" at making friends or at speaking Turkish. My heart aches when she says things like this but I try to stay strong for her as I know, in time, she won't remember how challenging things were in these early days.

...

It turns out she might have the mumps.

Finding Flow Turkish Style

I read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Finding Flow ten years ago at the recommendation of my then boss. He first gave me a worn-out copy of an article his shrink had lent him. The article led me to the book, the book to my husband.

Maybe not literally, but I was in fact practicing the art of social flow when I met him, hoping to stop the over-analytical banter of my mind and truly enjoy the life of a twentysomething in New York. I was into jazz...very much into jazz.

"A good conversation is like a jam session in jazz, where one starts with conventional elements and the introduces spontaneous variations that create an exciting new composition." - M.C.

So imagine my surprise when the husband of almost nine years called our Saturday night outing "akmak" or "flowing." Apparently, going to Istiklal Cad. without any specific plans and ending up at 360 after a bite of tantuni is called flowing, i.e. spontaneous enjoyment of the city that has no rules and is simply ruled by street cats and seagulls.

Getting a babysitter was the best idea I've had since arriving here two weeks ago -- wearing four-inch heels and smoking a pack of fancy Marlboro Lights not so great. Nevertheless, I like jazz again. And Turkish pop and Turkish techno and whatever else this city has in store for me.

A Sunny Day Filled with Hope

I traded in one kind of to do list for another. Now my days are filled with school tours, babysitter interviews, insurance reps, grocery lists and heirloom recipes. Sounds mundane but each and every task is extremely overwhelming considering it still feels pretty strange over here. But when one begins one's day with a view like this, it seems nothing is insurmountable.

Looking for the Diva Inside

I'll admit I'm a bit shallow. If only I didn't keep forgetting how shallow I am. There's nothing that makes me feel better than a trip to a Turkish hair salon. I now know I shouldn't have delayed this bliss until Day 12 of our Istanbul adventure. It was deeply stupid of me!

A quick cab ride away from where we're living in Cihangir is the Ritz Carlton Taksim and inside, a true Turkish hair salon, complete with all-you-can-drink beverages. The haircolor/manicure/pedicure session took three hours out of my day, as well as major cash out of my pocket and some skin off my toes (it's not a Turkish pedicure until you bleed) but I consider it a small price to pay considering how good I look and feel now.

If only we had some friends to hang out with after our beauty pilgrimage. Unfortunately most of my friends work and don't have children, so Maya and I will have to start from scratch. There's a preschool visit and a babysitter interview in the works for this week. I also want to go check out a few neighborhoods on foot continuing my quest to find us a bigger place to live. I'm proud to say though that I've mastered the laundry, online grocery shopping and the 93 stairs one has to climb to get to our building from the street. Whether I can eventually call this place a home or not, at the very least, I'll have a tighter butt.