Decisions

It has come time to decide. Well, actually, it seems more like my decision was made two months ago when I chose not to work. It has now come time to act accordingly. I have purchased a ticket back to Manitoba, by the most roundabout way possible. I will first fly to Kiev, where I have a whole fifty five minutes to catch my next flight, which is to New York City. I will spend a night in NYC, hopefully in the Menno House sleeping. The next day I will catch a flight to Winnipeg, after a layover in Toronto that is. All told I will spend almost seventeen hours in the air, which is utterly ridiculous. But for some reason this winding, lengthy road was the cheapest I could find, even with the night in NYC. And lets face it, I'm not one to pass up a night in the big apple. All this shall come to pass on January 11, with me stepping foot on my native soil shortly before midnight of the 12^th.

Once I made this decision it only made sense to make the most of the time I have left. With Europe on my doorstep (there is a great debate as to whether Turkey is in Europe or not) it would be just plain dumb to not go and see some of it. So the plan right now is to get a 21 day continuous Eurail pass and spend that almost month seeing as much as I can. I have a rough beginning in my head with a wide open end, which seems about right for this sort of endeavour. Bucharest, Prague, Berlin and Amsterdam would make a good little circuit to start with , and once I'm up there it would be a shame not to swing over to Ireland (unfortunately Britain is not included on the pass). From there who knows? I have to be back in Istanbul over Christmas, so between now and then I will go wherever my pass will take me.

Mosque to Mosque

After some delay I have finally made it out to some of the more ancient and popular sights around Istanbul. Last weekend Jess, Landon and myself decided to hit up the Sultanahmet (the Old City) and see what there was to see. We first went to the Basilica Cistern, a spectacular underground water reserve built in A.D. 532. With atmospheric lighting and 336 columns it feels larger than it actually is, though it is certainly not small. There is still about three feet of clean water on the cistern floor, containing a large supply of carp and koi that looked ghostly white. A wooden walk way guided us to various points of interest, including some ornately carved pillars and the famous two Medusa Heads as water drips from the ceiling. A very cool place.

We came up into the sunlight and made our way to the near by Mosque of Sultan Ahmet I (The Blue Mosque). It is still a functioning mosque, so after removing our shoes and Jessica covering her head, we walked into the large main room. The walls and ceiling are covered with intricate, largely blue tile work, from which it gets its name. Even with the large amount of people milling about it still feels like a peaceful place. Guests are asked to stay in the rear section, while worshipers are in the central area. Such dedication and craft devoted to ones God is humbling.

Then yesterday, about a week after, I decided to finally go see the Aya Sofya (Church of the Holy Wisdom). From the outside the Blue Mosque is certainly the more impressive of the two. The Aya Sofya just looks big, but not beautiful. As I stepped into the main chamber I realized that they put so much effort into interior that they really didn't need to make the exterior anything special. The Aya Sofya has been both a Christian church and a Mosque in it's life, though now it is a museum. What strikes first is the immensity of the place, it really is massive. Yet every inch of it is covered in a beautiful icon or an intricately carved bit of marble or an urn made of alabaster. It is truly a breathtaking building. It speaks of grandeur and great pride. I spent a good while exploring every piece of it I could find, taking pictures I knew would never capture that sense of awe it demands.

Losing a Friend

Recently I have found my mind going back over the last two years of my life. This is the span in which I worked at the Mennonite Central Committee in a program called Open Circle. We were a prison visiation program, which meant that we found volunteers from the community to go into prison and visit with people who did not otherwise receive a visitor. It was an amazing experience, to be able to sit with those people, in that place and talk with them. To spend time with them. While I have many incredible memories there is one person who keeps coming to the forefront, I'm going to call him Carl here, to protect his identity.

I sat down once to try and write what I know about Carl, but just as I was getting into a rhythm I found myself stopping up short. This happened again and again. I'd try writing it from a different angle, but I'd soon stumble and loose the thread. I now realize that there is no thread. I am no longer able to pull together my experiences of Carl into a single, fluid story, because he wasn't that in my life. I knew him for such a short while, and then only in fits and starts. He popped up irregularly and dropped away just as fast. I can no longer be sure of the chronology, but I don't think it much matters. I'm almost certain it wouldn't have mattered to Carl. He was a story teller, and his stories never took the straight forward route. They would double back, catch something that was missed, and take a different route. What I remember of Carl are the single episodes. Those times when he came into my life from the outside, said a few words, then drifted off again.

I remember going to pick him up from the boarding house he was staying in mid June, the summer of 2009. It turned out he lived only a few blocks away from where I was going to move to in a few months. A rough neighbourhood that people warned me away from. The house I ended up living in was a great place. I never had any trouble there and we made a home of it. Where Carl lived wasn't a home, but it was a place to stay, which was enough.

Open Circle was putting on its annual art show, a project that I had been working on for nine months. It was in its third year and it was the largest show yet. We had a visual art instillation at the Mennonite Heritage museum Gallery that would be up for the entire summer. That night we were going to kick off the exhibit with a performing art show. Carl was a song writer. He played the guitar and had done so at many Open Circle events. Over the last few years his health had so deteriorated that he couldn't get his hands to make the chords anymore. At the previous year's show he had got up front and just talked for ten minutes. He could do that. With no notes, he would tell stories and keep his audience captivated. Earlier in the year Open Circle had produced a CD, on which Carl was featured. For this year's show we played a track off of it, then Carl got up speak about the song.

I don't really remember what he said, but I do know he didn't just keep it to the song. He talked about Open Circle and the place it had in his life. He talked about his visitors, the friends he had and the life he had lived. Carl didn't stay long after the show. He was tired so he went home.

I remember hearing that they were going to pull the plug on Carl. I was shopping at Superstore with my roommate. Our house must have run pretty low as we had filled both his bike trailer and my large hiking backpack. We were outside of the store, just getting onto our bikes when I got the phone call. I had been expecting this to happen at some point, but I didn't know when. I was told they were doing it in half an hour, and if I wanted to be there I could. We were at the Superstore by the airport in Winnipeg, Carl was at the hospital in St. Boniface, and all I had was my bike. My roommate offered to take both my pack, full to the brim with mushrooms and pasta, as well as his trailer so I could go straight to the hospital. After transferring the pack I hoped on my bike and began making my way there. Right out of the Superstore parking lot I was stopped by a train, and had to wait for it to pass. I'm pretty sure I made it there in exactly half an hour. Up until this point the hospital had not let me in, as I wasn't family. It didn't matter that he didn't have any family, just that I wasn't them. This time when I got to the front desk, sweating and breathing hard, and asked for him they again asked if I was family. I hesitated. the nurse looked up, and I said yes.

I remember meeting him a couple of times to interview him. My first assignment with Open Circle was to write an article on Carl and his visitors. To spotlight a relationship that had lasted long and developed into something meaningful. That was the first time I met him. Later I was tasked with writing profiles of all the artists in our art show. During these two occasions I asked Carl to tell me about his life.

He talked about hitching across the country time and again for thirty years. He survived on handouts and whatever he could scrap together playing the guitar. He usually made almost enough to eat and to buy whatever drug he was on at the time. He learned how to be out in the cold, days at a time. He learned that to live in that world meant you had to steal. It was the ones that didn't steal you had to be wary of, as you never knew what they were up to. When I mention that this all sounds romantic and poetic (I had been reading a lot of Kerouac at the time) he stops for a second and smiles a bit. He says yeah, there was a bit of that. There was probably about ten minutes of romanticism a week, but everything else was just a struggle to survive. All throughout this time he never go close to anyone, or at least not for very long. At the end of it he landed up in jail in Manitoba, which is where he met Open Circle.

He also talked about going to college and getting a psychology degree. He wanted to pursue studies I think, but he never said why he didn't. He also owned a business at one point. He reckons he was close to being a millionaire, but now the money was all gone.

One story sticks out of the many where he almost died. Drunk, he had passed out in a snow bank during a blizzard. Dumb luck brought another drunk out there and he happened to notice two feet sticking up out of the snow. He dragged Carl inside and thawed him out.

I remember hearing other stories about him, from people who knew him better. He suffered a stroke a couple of years before I met him. Throughout that time the only people to visit him in the hospital were from Open Circle. When he came to for the first time he joked that he wanted to convert to Mennonitism. During the same hospital stay a nurse was trying to stick an IV into his arm. After a few failed attempts he chastised her saying he could do a better job in a back alley with a rusted needle. At one point the director of Open Circle felt afraid in his presence, he saw that man who would do anything to survive. He didn't leave though, he made sure he was by the door and kept talking to him. That was years before I met him.

I remember a woman contacting Open Circle after he died. She had read the obituary online and called us. After we talked about him she realized that Carl was her father. She hadn't seen him for sixteen years. We sent her a copy of the CD, the photos that we had and a copy of the lyric book to his songs.

I remember the hassle of trying to put on a funeral for a person with no legal family. They are officially under the jurisdiction of the province at that point, and while there is a small budget for a funeral if it is requested, it is not much. Us, along with the community chaplain, started asking around and people came forward amazingly. Thompson funeral home offered to donate space and time for the funeral, the services of a coordinator, money for an obituary and the hearse for the trip to the cemetery. The province paid for the coffin, the cemetery donated the grave site and everyone pitched in for the headstone. We were trying to do the only thing we knew how to do, send him off with as much respect as we could give him, something he hadn't had much of in his life. So many people came out to say goodbye.

I remember getting to hear that same voice we heard that the art show one last time when we played that same song at his funeral.

I remember hearing that the funeral coordinator we worked with was a student, and Carl's story inspired her to do her thesis on unclaimed bodies.

I remember hearing the first time he collapsed. The year before he had had intestinal surgery. After years of abuse his intestines could no longer work properly, so they gave him prosthetic ones. Over the year he had collapsed a few times, every time being brought to the hospital. But he would always wake up and check himself out before they could find out what had happened. He never like hospitals much, in fact there were some he would down right refuse to go to. He said they were racist.

The final time he collapsed his heart stopped. The paramedics were quick and they got him going again, but he never woke up. They did exploratory surgery and discovered the artificial intestines had not worked, and his digestive system had turned to mush. Nothing was it through and his body had gone into toxic shock. His body poisoned him.

I remember walking up to him in the hospital, seeing three other people standing around him. The director of Open Circle, the community chaplain and one of his housemates. I got there just as they were taking his breathing tube out. There was an uncanny steadiness to his breathing, which continued right up until the end. We stood around him for a while, not saying much. We prayed a bit. Carl's roommate cried. After about an hour we talked it over and decided to set up a vigil. There was no telling how long Carl would last, and there was no point in us all staying there. It could be five minute or twenty four hours. I said I could take the first shift after I had gotten something to eat and a coffee. Carl's roommate said she would wait until I got back.

I ate in the hospital cafeteria, I think I had a sub and maybe a fruit cocktail. Before I went back up I bought a magazine, the Walrus. When I got to Carl's room (more of a corner really) the roommate said that she had been having some trouble with her foot, and since we were in a hospital she wanted to get it checked out. After she was gone I settled in on a bar stool type chair. Every now and then a doctor or a nurse came in, checked something and said nothing had changed. After a while a nurse came in and said she was going to drain his urine, and asked if I could step out. After about a minute she stuck her head out from behind the curtain and called me back. She said she didn't know what happened, he had been completely steady one minute and the next, he was dead. She stood there for a while with her had over her mouth, saying how awful she felt.

Doctors and nurses came and went, checking things, and making the pronouncement. I tried to call the director of Open Circle. I couldn't get a hold of him at first, he was in a meeting. But I soon did and he started his way back over it took about twenty minutes. While I waited for him I sat with Carl. He looked different, his skin was yellower and he was completely still.

What I remember of Carl is confused. I see him sitting in a booth at Tim Horton's, cooling off his small hot chocolate with a creamer. But I also see him on that hospital bed, yellow and tattered. He is both alive and dead in my mind, walking around and lying still. These are the two pictures of him I carry around with me and I try to hold them both at the same time.

Parks

Parks in Istanbul are for lovers. Everywhere you turn there is a couple walking hand in hand, laying in each others arms, or sharing a picnic. More often than not they are kissing, oblivious to the other oblivious couples wandering around them. They do not make a sound, as they go about their business. So they will pop up in the least expected places. As you go around any corner be aware it might be concealing a lover or two. It doesn't matter what time of day you are in a park, they will be there to. Perhaps stealing away a lunch hour, or making that break between classes worthwhile. These are not parks made for families. They are steep sloped, covered in cobble stone walking paths, flower arrangements and fragile statues of girls holding baskets. Benches line every path, in part to provide a resting point for those sojourning uphill, but also to make the lovers' stay more comfortable. Sure, there are some play structures, but those are just for show. The lovers are the true patrons, finding a rare spot of solace in a city unsettled.

Delayed

Well, it seems as if I'm not to great at keeping this thing updated. I will not promise to do better, as both you and I know that promise will likely be broken quite soon. But I may try to think of these posts as less daunting than I have been. I have never been great at talking about the things I do. When people ask me what I've been up do I usually draw a blank, not for the life of me being able to remember anything I've ever done. It's a weird quirk of my brain which makes small talk difficult sometimes and blog posts often downright impossible. But I will try to drag my memories out of myself and write them down here.

I feel it's time to be more honest with you, my dedicated eight followers; I am currently not working. In fact, I have not been working during my time here. I did attempt teaching English for about a week and found that it just wasn't for me. There was a lot to this decision, and the most important factor was a sense of exhaustion I had been feeling since last spring. My work with Open Circle, while incredibly rewarding and something I will never regret, was taking a toll on me that I was largely unaware of. By the time I was finished there I was finished emotionally and spiritually. I had a span of one day between ending my work with Open Circle, packing my house in Winnipeg, doing my share of the cleaning, moving to Winkler and leaving on a family trip to New York. Once in New York our pace was frantic, and while I had an amazing time it was not what one would call restful. After we got back there were a hundred little things to do in the week and a half I had before I left for these mighty East meets West shores. With all of that I found the little energy I had left drained.

As I obtained a job here I was still living under the delusion that I was fine and would be able to handle anything. I was informed that I would be teaching my first class about twelve hours before it was to take place, not giving much time for preparation, or to finish my training. It did not go well and after attempting this for a few classes I had a sort of nervous breakdown. I reached a point where I just could no longer force myself to do things I was not adequately prepared for. I was exhausted and I knew that I needed to rest myself. So, against my accountant's judgement (just kidding, I don't have an accountant), I quite my job and have been taking the time since to rest and relax, to try and recuperate.

I have not been doing nothing, in fact it has been a wonderful time. I spend my days writing, reading, going for long walks, watching movies, seeing the sights and mostly indulging myself in those things that I love. I have been working on some short stories and poems I'm becoming really proud of. I've never had real time to dedicate to my writing before. It was always more of something I'd do in my spare time when I had the energy for it. As I try to give writing a real go I've found it incredibly difficult and boundlessly rewarding and terrifying in equal measure. Perhaps once I get some things up to snuff I'll post them here.

As I begin to feel more like myself again I am now faced with a dilemma; what do I do for work? To be honest I really do not like teaching, and I find it not something I can fake easily. And as it was the trigger of my breakdown I'm not really interested in going back to it. But after much searching there isn't really any other work for someone who does not speak Turkish (I asked a fellow ex-pat how long it took him to learn Turkish, he said about a year and a half). So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, with a dwindling bank account. I do not for a second regret my choice to take some time to heal, but it has landed me up in a rather difficult financial situation, and I'm not as of yet sure what I'm going to do. I have a few options I'm looking into, and as those hopefully become more real I'll relay them here. But until then I ask for your prayers (and if anyone has any ideas of what I should do, please let me know). I know God brought me to this place for a reason, now, the trick is figuring out what that is.