Been a long time

A colleague was recently at a café in the “downtown” of a Spookytown outskirt town where apparently a group of “old ladies” were sitting around talking about their favorite Led Zeppelin songs. I’m not sure just how old said ladies were, but hearing this immediately brought back memories of singing “All of My Love” in my elementary school chorus (we also sang “Come Sail Away” by Styx, although that was because I for some reason had the sheet music) and made me feel kind of old too. Not only is a long time since I’ve done rock and roll (sadly, so very true) but also since I’ve managed to post anything here. Basically, I’ve been sick in one way or another since late January and am only now finally getting everything under control (I'll spare you all boring details).

So, even though I've been ill, I have been actually been going places and doing stuff. For example, a sudden sale on cross-country flights meant a last minute jaunt in mid-March to SF to hang out with Stovie (and Mom too). It's funny the stuff you get used to when you live somewhere, and then un-used to once you've been away for awhile. By the end of my time in the Bay Area (after living there for 7 years), I had stopped noticing all kinds of things: piercings of any kind; inappropriately youthful garb on hipster types; dyed hair; the sheen of dirt that seems to coat oh so many. And I'm still surprised when people comment on things that I wear that were literally completely unremarkable out there (e.g., my leopard-print rain jacket). But now that I've been gone almost three years, I feel like I walk around there with the eyes of a stranger, if you know what I mean, and what I am seeing is that that town is filled with freaks. Who knew?

Anyway, my visit coincided with the only sunny days in what was otherwise like 5 straight weeks of rain, which was great in terms of running around town (although our planned visit to baby elephant seals was foiled by rain, hail, and it being Day One of an icky cold). We mostly did a bunch of urban hiking, marching around town in different formations. One was for an anti-war march on the third anniversary, bringing back lots of memories of the day it all began, when San Francisco became surprisingly militarized -- tear gas, helicopters overhead for 12 hours straight, and police arresting people in droves. Stovie and I had trained for direct action, including how to be appropriately arrested, but in the end we hadn't been able to find any action we were willing to be tossed in jail for. This march was much calmer,

and I ended up sneaking away not long after it started to go get acupuncture. There was plenty of time all weekend though for urban hiking of all kinds. I learned that any place is a good place to do yoga,

although I also learned when heading into Stovie's yoga studio that anyplace is a good place to smoke crack as well (crack smoker not pictured).

On a more innocent note, I met Baby KingFather, who looks really a lot like his Greek dad, even when dressed for St. Paddy's Day.Baby Utrecht, on the other hand, looks a bit more like his Mom, and is also apparently a burgeoning foodie. From plastic toys, goat cheese or roasted figs are just a step away!In lieu of looking at giant sea mammals, we found other ways to entertain ourselves: e.g., after a visit to the (temporarily housed) aquarium, some hat shopping.Looking at ferries coming and going was also almost as good as being on the beach. Also entertaining was laying down backing vocals for a track on Stovie's in-progress album.My voice gave out about 5 minutes after the above photo was taken, and flying home with my cold led to a massive ear infection on top of everything else. So what with being on pencillin and antihistamines and two other kinds of medication, although in principle I know that I went to New York for a conference at the end of March, I can't actually remember much of what went on up there. I was apparently too dazed to document my trip photographically either, because all that was in my camera was a photo of this gravel barge that was chugging along some mystery river in Maryland (the bus took a long and winding detour to avoid an accident on 95),
and this photo of a construction site in the East Village that I passed in a fruitless search for an open cafe where I could work on my conference presentation. I have a few vague memories of the conference itself (somewhat dreamlike, although thank god my dreams are not as boring as that conference), seeing a Balkan band from Seattle in one of my new favorite places (J-ka's friend's friend ended up Balkan dancing next to my favorite choreographer, who is world famous and also apparently quite happy to correct the amateur dancing of handsome Italian men even if said handsome Italian men are clearly irritated by being corrected), and sitting next to a woman on the bus ride back to Spookytown who somehow managed to make her fried chicken last 3 out of the 4 hours of the trip. Three pieces of chicken! How did she do it? Just another talent exhibited by the remarkable inhabitants of Spookytown.

Finally, this weekend I took a 52-hour micro-vacation down in Florida (last-minute airfare + Priceline hotel = good times). It looked mostly like this,
although sometimes it looked more like this.
It was great! I feel better now...

Dünya küçük (or, It's a small world)

Yes, my "small world" Spookytown experiences keep rolling in with just a little more frequency than you might expect, like the fog rolling in over the rockbound coast of Maine. Last night, met a guy at a political-type meeting in DC - just minutes into our conversation, it transpired that his sister is weeks away from finishing the very same master's program that Stovie graduated from back in '04. I'm still waiting for the return phone call confirming my suspicion, but I bet he knows her (if she's anything like her brother, she's very good looking, and if there's a good looking young female urban planner bopping around campus, my money is on Stovie knowing her).

Not 10 hours later I found myself at the allergist as we attempted to figure out just what the hell is up with my hives (turns out they are not related to any medications that I've been taking -- more on this later). He placed 22 tiny droplets of highly concentrated potential allergens on my left arm and said that we'd have to wait 15 minutes to see what effect they had. "Oh, so I have 15 minutes to kill?" I asked, showing how very clear-thinking I am when on very little sleep (from being itchy) and distracted by the all-over hive experience. "Yes, you can read a magazine, or something," he kindly suggested. "Yeah, I think I'll just do some Turkish," I said. Long story short: he himself is Turkish, and his wife, who grew up in Turkey, is of the ethnicity that I do almost all of my academic writing about, and her grandparents fled to Turkey after the revolution from the very city where I spent a year doing my fieldwork. If I were a bit more omniscient (just a little!), I bet I would find that people I know in that city know people related to his wife. Seriously, I'm sure of it. Anyway, as was fitting, he taught me how to say "small world" in Turkish, and promised to google me and download some of my relevant articles for him and his wife to read. It can't be only me that this kind of thing happens to, but seriously, is it only me? It's really quite bizarre, I'm like the vortex of human coincidences or some such...

Find your happiness where you can

Lots to write about these days, but not so much time or motivation to actually do the writing. It might be nice to move past voice recognition software and right to brain recognition software, so I could just think things at the computer and it would write them down. Of course, then everyone would be producing Joycean stream-of-consciousness prose, and then where would we be? (Nowhere good, that's for sure.)

Today's happiness came from a quite modest place -- I had my first good hair day today since the Marlo Thomas hair debacle of early February. Upon this realization (approximately mid-afternoon, in the bathroom at work), I was able to face the rest of the day with equanimity, even my unexpected role as model for every single yoga pose in tonight's final practice of the winter session. In an outfit I had thrown on in my precisely 2 minutes at home between work and class: my not-so-camouflaging-of-the-body-flaws bright periwinkle shelf-bra tank top (on the tight and low-cut side) and my old black yoga pants with the saggy waistband and patched crotch ("did I patch it all? is anything showing?" were the decidedly non-restorative thoughts accompanying my demonstrations of each (crotch-exposing) restorative pose, not to mention the fact that several of the poses also involved lying back with several folded blankets between the shoulder blades, a distinctly bosom-highlighting posture that probably said something more like "welcome to my breasts!" to the nearly 40 class members gathered around me than "this is how you lie in a restorative way on several folded blankets that are positioned between your shoulder blades"). Anyway, by the time Wednesday rolls around, I will have visited an allergist, a therapist, a nutritionist, and an acupuncturist, and with mind-body problematic issues coming somewhat more under control (I don't even have the energy to list them all) perhaps I will be in a place that is more conducive to entertainingly writing up the continued (and even somewhat varied) adventures of Pangea in S-town (and also SF and NYC)...

(Sorry, didn't get a chance to take a picture of the good-hair day before it was ruined by the yoga ponytail, so no illustrations today.)