March was the longest month, and April flew— and both of these time warps left me ill at ease. Yes, in some ways it’s a relief that the days don’t drag by as they did at the end of March, but the feeling of time running away from me isn’t so nice either. And yet, we had sunshine and blooming flowers and somehow we got through it, and that’s beautiful.
Best Of The Month
Despite the hard times we live in, I’ve been very determined to find as much beauty in each day as possible. In Turkey, we are locked in on weekends, but I spend those days sitting on my terrace in the sunshine, drinking afternoon Bloody Marys or gin & tonics, reading books, and there’s something peaceful and lovely about that. I ride my bike regularly on non-lockdown days and one day I found tulips that were planted outside of Goztepe Park, so I could enjoy them. I went for a walk at midnight one night with two friends right after lockdown ended, and that was wonderful.
My friend Demetri left Istanbul (more on that below) but we spent his last afternoon sitting in the sunshine on my terrace, drinking beer and playing with my analogue cameras, and it was such pure joy in the middle of a pandemic. It’s no secret that Demetri kept me sane for the first month of all of this, and part of that was our early, half-serious decision to not socially distance from each other. Together, we had really beautiful moments of normal life in an abnormal time, and his last afternoon was just one particular blissful iteration of that.
We also published a piece about the end of tango in Istanbul with the Daily Beast, and I’m very proud of it… if you haven’t read it already, please do.
Also, my birthday was this month, smackdab in the middle of a four-day lockdown. Normally I have a big party and bring together all the people I love for my birthday, which was impossible on every level this year. So I wore a fancy party dress and a big sun hat and red lipstick and swanned about on my terrace all day, receiving notes and letters and calls from friends, and I tried to enjoy the weird circumstances as best I could. And I did enjoy it! Maybe it was atypical, but it was a lovely day.
Worst Of The Month
It was hard when Demetri left, because as I said, he was the one person who I behaved normally with, and even though I knew he planned to leave in mid-April, it was still quite sad when he really left.
I also ended up with a freak ant infestation in a couple corners of my apartment, which is never fun to deal with but ESPECIALLY not during a lock-in weekend. I am dealing with it, but, UGH.
What I’m Loving
Reads: I’ve been reading at a quick pace but the book I most enjoyed this month was The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick. I’ve never seen the Amazon series they made from the novel, so I knew very little going in except the central premise of the book: that Germany and Japan won World War II and split the USA between them. It’s very good.
Music: I’ve been digging the songs I’m Not Your Dog by Baxter Dury, God Only Knows by the Langley School Music Project, and Gender Wayang (Burland Remix), which is apparently the winner of a competition to make remixes from David Attenborough field recordings.
Movies/TV: My friends and I watched Dolemite Is My Name for our virtual Sunday movie night and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would! And the era-appropriate funk music is just perfect.
Podcasts: Of course I’ve listened to many podcasts during my time at home. Girl Taken and Tunnel 29 are both easily bingeable BBC podcasts, the former about a refugee and his daughter who aren’t exactly what they seem, and the latter about a tunnel to escape East Germany in the ‘60’s.
I loved the March episode of Hit Parade, about the various waves of Latin influence in pop music, with a focus on the late nineties / early aughts prime of Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, and Shakira. Hit Parade is going behind Slate’s paywall, which might make me actually buy a Slate membership, because it’s truly one of the greatest podcasts.
I’ve been listening to Rabbit Hole, an ongoing series from the New York Times about YouTube radicalization, which is sort of terrifying but very well done.
My friend Jonathan Hirsch has a podcast called Telescope that tells short stories about how people are coping with the pandemic, and I’ve loved hearing these dispatches from all over the world.
The Film Files
On Demetri’s last day, we ended up playing a bit of a game with my Pentax. I would shoot a picture and then hand the camera to Demetri, he’d take one and hand it back to me, and so on for the whole roll. Then we started the process over again on the same roll, shooting double exposures. It was spontaneous and silly and fun and some of the pictures are quite lovely.
Ephemera
I haven’t adopted the cat, but it comes in to hang out regularly, and it’s nice to get cat cuddles every once in a while.
I also asked for letters and received a few, so thank you for that! Still working on replying, but I love getting long email letters, they make me so happy.
Upcoming
Perhaps this is the first time since I started these monthly updates five years ago that the “upcoming” section is utterly confounding. Usually I mention my upcoming travels, and if there are none, it’s usually because there’s so much coming up here in Istanbul. So it’s very strange to be facing this endless stretch of unknown, of sheltering in place, or not being sure what to look forward to. I can’t lie, I have been deeply affected by all of that. So I try to look forward to slowly inching towards a better version of this, and maybe eventually an end of it. And maybe hugs. I miss hugs.
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