November 2018

November rushed forward, as I tried to tie up loose ends in Istanbul before I went to California for my annual trip to the west coast. That divide always makes the month feel both longer and shorter than it really is; I feel like I spent the month in a haze and only emerged when December arrived.

Best Of The Month

I ran a 10k! After three months of training, I ran more K’s than I ever had before. The splendid thing about running this race in Istanbul is that I ran from Asia to Europe, across the Bosphorus Bridge. The day was sunny and crisp and the race was fine. Finishing it was divine.

My friend Parvaneh came to visit Istanbul; I brought her to Istanbul for her first visit (my second) in 2009, and it was the first time we’d been back in the city at the same time since that trip. What a treat.

I went to Los Angeles for a day to run some bureaucratic errands, which would have been tedious except that it was a bonus day with my sister. I spent much of the day walking, which people don’t generally do in LA; but the weather was gorgeous and I didn’t mind strolling through the quiet neighborhoods.

Worst Of The Month

This has been a month of chapters closing and new things beginning, both in my professional life and in my personal life. A very close friend left Istanbul, and the way he went was stressful, though the situation is better now. (I’m going to stay vague about that, for now.) Another person with whom I have a complicated history is also leaving Istanbul. In my professional life, I’m a freelancer, so it’s not unexpected that jobs shift and end and start again, but I’ve had some steady gigs for a while, so re-entering that uncertainty has been challenging. I am grateful for the way my heart stretches and grows with so many changes, but it’s still strange to grapple with.

Also, though the 10k was one of the best parts of this month, dealing with the organization of the race was one of the worst. It was badly organized and the crowd bottlenecked at the beginning, and I truly thought I might be crushed to death before I even got to the starting point. I would run a 10k again but, thanks to that awful experience, I probably won’t run this particular 10k again.

What I’m Loving

Reads: I read a book by my friend Fariba about the drug trade in Afghanistan and her experience as a refugee growing up in California. Her book Opium Nation is fascinating, and it kept me company in a lot of airplanes and waiting rooms this month.

Music: My sister and I have been loving this song Bubblin by Anderson .Paak—I was a big fan of his back in 2016, so new music is always welcome.

Film/TV: I’m still deep into my first ever viewing of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though now Pesha and I are watching it together remotely, as we’ve been in different cities.

I attended the press opening of a great film series that’s happening in Istanbul called Kundura Sinema. It’s taking place at Beykoz Kundura, a reappropriated shoe factory that hosts my favorite summer concerts (including the one I went to on the night before the coup in 2016). The series presents six films about cities; at the opening, we watched The Naked City, a police procedural from 1948 that shot on the streets of New York City—an unusual thing, at the time. I loved it.

Now that I’m in California, I have access to Turner Classic Movie channel, so my parents and I watched the old film noir The Big Heat. I’d never seen it (though I’d read about it) and I was honestly surprised by how fantastic it was. I knew it would be good, but it was REALLY good! I didn’t realize it was directed by Fritz Lang (who directed Metropolis, one of the greatest films of all time as well as one of the best filmgoing experiences I’ve ever had), though I knew it starred Gloria Grahame (and she’s fantastic).

Podcasts: I listened to the limited series Standoff, about an event in the early ‘90’s that I knew nothing about. Ruby Ridge was the site of a days-long siege by the FBI that left three people dead and led to the rise of the far-right. Highly recommended.

I am often ambivalent about the podcast Dissect, which takes an album each season and analyzes it song-by-song. I find the host sort of aggravating, and he has a way of explaining obvious concepts that makes me groan. But he keeps picking great albums, and the chance to spend deliberate time with such good music keeps me listening. This season, he’s digging into The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and so I keep listening.

99% Invisible is consistently good and I feel like I could highlight their episodes every month (and I probably do). Two notable ones I listening to in November were Fire and Rain, about the preponderance of fires in California and why they happen, and Devolutionary Design, about the band Devo.

I’ve also been listening to Switched on Pop, and I am not ashamed to admit that I listened to their old episode The Oeuvre of Taylor Swift, and I loved it. Come at me.

The Film Files

I got all my film back from my trip to Chamonix, which was such a treat. Particularly, a roll I shot on Ektar 100 came out so well, thanks to the crisp blue Chamonix sky and my friend Natalie’s crackling red hair. I also found a roll of film that I never got developed which I think might be from June… hopefully I can find a place to cross-process it in California and see what’s on this forgotten roll.

Ephemera

Our second piece from Zanzibar was published in The Daily Beast. It’s about a woman who started an all-female band, in defiance of the island’s sheikhs.

Upcoming

In December, I’ll return to LA and then go back to Istanbul, just in time for the New Year. Otherwise, the Bay Area is my playground, for now.