a room with a view

photographs are a form of injustice to the place as i know it.

since you asked

Last night I dreamt about Oludeniz, the hotel I spent my childhood summers in. It is almost unbelievable, because my dad dropped me off with a car and I ran towards the garden bar that was once there, before they changed the garden area so many times; removed the bar, removed the swings, the ping-pong tables, added the swimming pool. Every summer we went there, I would find something had been altered but I would generally be the same, with my books and summer outfits and hopeless love stories.
But in my dream I ran towards the garden bar that was there when I was like 5, and started talking to this waiter -Ahmet abi- who was there through most of my childhood. But I was me -a grown up who can reach and lean over the bar- and he was somewhat older. I still called him Ahmet abi -something that suggests that he is older than me- but secretly wondered what what my older version was to him. I admit to always having had a thing for him, Ahmet the waiter.
And so, -late- in the morning I woke up with Gulin's key in the door, telling me to "wake up" so I do. (This is major, nobody wakes another off their sleep in my family.) There's a letter in her hand, a long-expected one from Marion&Heinz Hartner, my parents' ancient friends from that hotel in Oludeniz. From the time of the garden bar. We would meet them every summer in the hotel, and sometimes they would visit us in Denizli and stay in the beautiful hotels of Pamukkale. There would be ceremonies of exchanding presents. That was the highly European and definitely non-Turkish part of my childhood, which prompted me to utter the words "Heins nice man" at the age of 6 or something. Gulin and I were his froggies. I think we still are.

Yes, I am still a froggy with skinny legs and green eyes, opening the huge boxes of Barbie-doll equipments in half-lit hotel rooms and sleeping in dad's lap as they sat and talked in the garden late into summer nights, drinking gin and tonics. And maybe I am still after the mystery of the scent of hotel rooms accomodating Europeans- the curious combination of moisturizers and magazines, candies and insect repellents, sunblocks and perfumes. Why doesn't my room ever smell like that?
Yes, I still want to know.

i can fly
but i want his wings.

i must be the 10918th girl in love that says it
but i can't help it.

imagine i was a singer in the sixties.

commute monologue

is that a walkman?
is there a walkman?

what can i say
the words destroy all meaning
there's only clichés
to get across this feeling

i know you don't think it makes sense
but i thank god everyday that you exist
and are in my life.

i don't know how sorrow finds me so easily.
am i hiding in the wrong places?

bday sequence

27

and so it ends- or is about to end.
my birthday, the expectation and the excitement of the attention, and the exhaustion that comes after.
the flowers, with so many colors and scents so strong, lilliums and roses.
words, wishes.
all beautiful and hopeful.

2+7=9
7/12/1979
i am a nine.

i ran into Beth. we sat and talked and had coffee. updated each other. it was good to see her. she has one of the best voices i have ever heard. and she is a queen on the stage.

the string of balloons on the sea. still colorful as the day fades into an evening blue. i could rent a toy rifle for 5 shots and aim at them and maybe accidentally aim at the full moon. thinking it was one of the balloons as it hangs yellow over the sea.

silenced the ipod when walking through Bogazici. i wanted to hear birds and trees. yes, trees are louder in Fall.

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