Out Of The Fog

Sometime in January, I stopped writing on this blog.

I managed to get out a December post and my 10-year post (a few days late), and then I stopped. The earth ruptured, my emotional state ruptured, I was drowning in fog and every attempt to write anything felt impossible.

I’ve been raw, every feeling ready to burst out of me all the time, quick to laugh and quick to rage and really quick to cry.

I cried at a wedding (Bara’s), at a movie (All the Beauty and the Bloodshed), at a podcast. I cried with the friend who runs my favorite cafe for four hours one night; as we ate soup together at 2 in the morning (still crying), I realized that this was perhaps the most intimate experience we had shared in seven years of close friendship.

I’m usually so good with dates, but I lost track of time, of what happened when.

In January I listened to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors and Burt Bacharach because the joy was a distraction. In February, I listed to Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers because suddenly that grief was legible to me. In many of these months I still managed to make my little playlists, and my sister teased me about their names, but I’ve never had a straightforward system beyond emotional resonance for organizing the music in my life.

I went to movies. I saw a silent film called Filibus and a series of Buster Keaton films. I went to see the third Ant Man even though I’ve never seen any other Marvel movies and left my umbrella in the cinema. I saw four William Friedkan films when the film festival did a retrospective (Ranked in terms of enjoyment: 1. Cruising, 2. The French Connection, 3. The Exorcist, 4. Sorcerer.) I watched the Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream at Karen’s place and re-watched Knives Out at home. I saw a stunning movie at the Film Festival (All The Beauty And The Bloodshed) and a dud (Human Flowers of Flesh) and one from Pakistan that was very good (Joyland). I went to see Basic Instinct by myself at a Prague cinema on a Sunday night.

I listened to too many podcasts to remember or list individual episodes, but certain series have been comforting constants: You Must Remember This, Cautionary Tales, Hit Parade, Articles of Interest, Believe in Magic, Louder Than A Riot, The Sound, I’m Not A Monster, and probably others, though it’s hard to remember what I listened to and when, now that the beginning of 2023 is such a haze.

I read so many books. I re-read John LeCarre for comfort, those stories of mid-century stagnation in British intelligence. I read books I loved and books I hated. I read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (loved), Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (loved), Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer and Lab Girl by Hope Jahren (liked and liked). I started to re-read the Kate Atkinson.

I made friends and lost friends and let go of friends, something I am not good at but have been working on making peace with. Some people showed up in ways that I will never be able to repay. Others disappeared in ways that broke my heart. I felt an immense amount of love, constantly. All the beauty and the bloodshed.

I ran away to Athens, which helped for a few days. I ran away to Portugal, which helped for a few days. I ran away to Thessaloniki which barely felt like running away at all. I ran away to the Lycian Way and did tarot cards with Lauren for days. I threw myself into Prague and I hoped the lightness I got from that trip would last more than a few days. I feel constantly torn between the urge to stay in constant motion and to be out of here all the time, and my love for Istanbul and my friends and my apartment and my little life. Maybe I’ll go to Berlin and Datca and Bulgaria. Maybe I’ll stay here and get my work done and outrun the deadlines that are alway at my tail. The world is already feeling lighter, somehow.

I hope to get back to regular monthly posts on this blog after this, but I don’t think it’s possible to get back to normal, because there is no such thing. Change is constant and this has felt like a long season of transition, but maybe every season is. The changes have walloped me and also I’ve tried to embrace them. I thought about cutting my hair. I thought about smashing all my routines. I thought about memorizing Hamlet. I thought about what life would look like if it wasn’t this one. After the earthquake, I seriously thought about my life without Istanbul. It’s the first time I’ve ever seriously thought about that.

I finally feel like a corner has been turned. Just the act of WRITING this silly blog post feels like a corner turned. For months, I haven’t been able to articulate a single word. How do I talk about the worst of the month when each month is the worst? How do I balance my desire to be as open as possible without trauma dumping, bleeding out on a virtual page? How can I tell you what these last months have been when I’ve been so lost in them? I haven’t been able to answer those questions, so I haven’t written at all.

But now I have. I think this is the beginning of the next season, though I don’t know what that season is. I finally feel hopeful that what is coming will be good, somehow. Rooftop parties have started, boat parties are being planned, the summer sun is sparkling through the endless gray.

Throughout this whole period, friends have sent me poems upon poems— tiny little gifts that always made me cry and swoon. My best friend Kelly sent me many, but others came from friends who couldn’t know how much I needed them. One lovely one came from a friend I haven’t seen in maybe eight years, and only met a few times in person anyway, but that’s the glory, isn’t it? The poem ends like this:

There are many reasons to treat each other

with great tenderness. One is

the sheer miracle that we are here together

on a planet surrounded by dying stars.

One is that we cannot see what

anyone else has swallowed.

I am grateful for the great tenderness of these last few months, for all the beauty in this world, even for the pain– all the beauty and the bloodshed. Summer is coming, the season is changing. It’s time to go swimming.