July 2019

This month has been long and bursting with joys— the ideal summer month. The days are long and luscious and I want to enjoy every second of this beautiful season. I made a choice to mostly stay in Turkey this summer, and it was the correct one. Lord knows I haven’t been bored.

Best Of The Month

A big reason I stayed mostly in Istanbul this month was that I had quite a few friends passing through. I brought my San Francisco friends for divine Uighur food and helped them buy a carpet; I dragged one friend out on an all-day Bosphorus boat party (the best way to spend a summer day), I got to play hostess to friends who have put me up in Kas and Chamonix many times. Every visit made my heart a bit more full.

Another highlight was a quick two-day trip to Eğirdir and Kuyucak, the lavender village. This is the time of year when the fields are bursting with the fragrant purple flowers, and my girlfriends and I were eager to frolic. That whole weekend was full of laughter and exuberant joy. We also found some sunflower fields, just to make the whole thing even more magical.

Summer brings outdoor cultural events, and I was invited to two really lovely ones. I attended a concert at the Austrian consulate  as part of the Istanbul Jazz Festival that featured an all-female Balkan brass band (did they create this specifically for me or what) and two open-air films at Beykoz Kundura, which I’ll talk about in the Movies section below.

Worst Of The Month

My dear friend Nacho left Istanbul, and I am 100% still in denial, let’s not even talk about it.

What I’m Loving

Reads: I read a dense book called The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, and loved how much I learned. It looks at the rise and fall of empires through trade and resources, really fascinating. And after that, I needed to read some fiction, so I picked up The Power by Naomi Alderman and just devoured it. The premise is that women develop the power to shoot electricity from their fingers, and that power begins to invert the patriarchal world order.

Music: I’ve been loving this Turkish psych band Altin Gun: so many jams! I think I need to spend more time listening to Turkish psych. And here’s a playlist I’ve been listening to on repeat this month.

Movies/TV: On the first night of Beykoz Kundura’s open air cinema, the unusually wet and chilly weather moved the movies indoors— which was a shame, because the sound quality was quite bad and it was hard to enjoy the movies. I did see Paris Blues that night, and the four beautiful stars (Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Diahann Carrol, and Joanne Woodward) and Paris settings more than made up for the fact that I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

I went back the second night (which was outdoors) to revisit All That Jazz, a movie I became infatuated with when I saw it for the first time ten years ago, and which is still so good. The last scene is just transcendent. The film is semi-autobiographical and directed by Bob Fosse, so the dancing is splendid and his dark sparkly sense of humor is center stage. It’s bleak and weird and exuberant and GAH go see this amazing movie.

Podcasts: Ear Hustle is a great podcast but the episode “I Want the Fairy Tale” was something else; the end was so moving that I re-listened to the last seven minutes or so as soon as I finished it.

Radiolab is doing a series called “G”, about the history of IQ tests and the complicated ways they affect so much of our lives, and it’s really fascinating.

I listened to the series No Man’s Land on a recommendation from a friend; each episode highlights interesting women that history has neglected or misrepresented. My two favorite episodes were about Sylvia Plath and Ana Mendieta.

The two-parter called “The Search” from Rough Translation was devastating, and tells the story of an Iraqi photographer who started his own photo agency in Iraq— and then was taken by ISIS.

And the episode “Smuggling” from Power Corrupts was not only well down, but touched upon a lot of things that have been on my mind these days.

The Film Files

I shot so many rolls of film in Kuyucak, including many on my simple use camera— basically a disposable camera that can be reused. I love the lo-fi results and how casually I shoot with it.

Ephemera

I’m in the Lizzo Tiny Desk concert! I attended when I was in DC and the video was just released. You can see my little head bob up towards the end. Still can’t believe we were there.

When I moved apartments earlier this year, one non-negotiable for me was finding a place with a terrace or a balcony— it’s way too hot here in the summer, and I wanted to have a place to sit outside. I ended up with a small and glorious terrace that looks out on Camlica Hill, and I’ve spent so many sweaty afternoons and evenings out there this month, reading books and drinking wine and having long winding conversations with friends. I knew it was something I wanted, but the reality is even better than what I’d imagined.

Upcoming

In August I’m off to Madrid to visit Nacho, and then Germany briefly after that. And hopefully in the second half of the month, I’ll take a few days to go on my proper vacation, which will involve swimming, reading, and basically nothing else. HEAVEN.