Words, Fears, Men, Raın etc

There are many different kinds of men I hate which should be another post, really. But for now look at this particular kind; where they try to tell you that what ever you are feeling or thinking or saying is illogical and laugh worthy and that you are so craaazıe. This when done by just one person, I can easily dısmıss but when a group attempts ıt, I am a lıttle flustered,yes. Btw the fuckıng keys on thıs horrıd computer ıs all messed up. Like I will type a comma or dash from rote and something else comes up. What the hell is up with that, Turkey?
Anyway I will explain this later.

Adrienne Riche's words: Dream of a Common Language just makes so much sense right now.Even out of context. No one really knows English and this is hard especially if I take Taksi which I am trying my best to avoid. So today it was all tram- thank god for excellent public transportation- except for one Taxi. Plus obviously I am not pronouncing the names correctly. Then numbers! So they resort to typing on a calculator and showing me. Fine. But when I got lost multiple times, I thought of the dream of a common language and finally resorted to pointing and other forms of gesturing. I also wrote it down in big block letters and show people that now. It really isn't so bad except sometimes people go off on a roll and I listen and then just nod like sure, I understood that. Adios.

Today was a rainy day but it did not actually rain till I made it back to the Hotel. Now that it has been a week or so of staying most of these guys recognize me but there is exactly just one or two of them who I am comfy around- the rest either I am confusing some kind of cultural difference or they are seriously too friendly slash pushy. Really cannot find that slash thingy! So I constantly have a grouchy face and I am all kinds of flashing my wedding ring!!

The Museum of Innocence was the first stop today where they would not allow photography. The Museum really wont make any sense unless you have read the book. It is also the first Museum that made me cry. I really have no real grasp on why except I just felt a gulp in my throat and my eyes kept watering. Thankfully no one was around to witness this humiliation. There are a couple of things esp that broke my heart. For e.g in the book there is a passage devoted to virginity and sexism in Turkey in that period. It goes like this:

'In those days even in Istanbul's most affluent westernized circles, a young girl who 'gives herself' to a man before marriage could still expect to be judged harshly and face serious consequences. If a man tried to avoid marrying the girl and the girl in question was under eighteen years of age, an angry father might take the philanderer to court to force him to marry her.'

Somehow this sounds like Kerala. Not the father part, maybe not, but the rest.

In case 16 in the Museum are pictures of women under the title ' A few unpalatable anthropological truths'
In the case are pictures of about 25 women with their eyes crossed out with black ink. It was apparently custom in those days for newspapers to run the photographs of the violated girls with black bands over their eyes, the same device that the press used in photographs of adulteresses, rape victims, and prostitutes.
This was just all kinds of sad; so was everything else there. Maybe the sheer amount of hoarding, maybe the yearning of it all was just so disheartening.

Anyway afterwards I ate lunch at a small place next door where they understood nothing I asked so finally I resorted to good old simple point and ask from the glass case- Tea, of course, kebab and pilaf and their version of our Gulab Jamun called Kemal Pasa. Then I spotted the words ' Bookstore' so headed in and to my surprise found all kinds of crap! Mismatched earrings, paintings, books in multiple languages, and post cards but most importantly a box stacked with old photographs. Don't ask, just old photos of folks- woman in a bathing suit with a dog, a mother and daughter hugging, a woman in front of a mosque striking a dramatic pose- I don't know but I took some of them! The owner, the painter was really not into bargaining and so I got collected plays for 2 liras and then the most important of all- I got this old letter written in 1964 apparently and in Turkish! Kind of all tattered and falling apart just like the book and moth eaten sides and I guess it is a bit voyeuristic of me but I really wanted it! I want someone to now translate it for me!

Then I visited Istanbul Modern which was right next door and it was truly time consuming. I wrote down in my green book all the artists that I liked. But you know what the best surprise was and what a co incidence that too? In there was an art installation, a sort of a five minute film called- 5Ws plus 1H. It is by this artist called Fikret Atay.
The story I am currently writing is called: What Who When How and Why. And that is what the theme of this film was. In it is a woman being interrogated with her eyes covered and for each question the scarf on her eyes change color and for each question she answers ' You Know'.
But what a surprise. I will take it as a sign! I like signs.

After that, I got lost. Yeah, but finally I am back in the Hotel and so drained. Apo, later.

Istanbul

So I am in Istanbul, right? :D Yeah I am! Its quite cold and wet but sun shiny too, so all in all not too bad. My parents were here for a few days and now that they are gone- although I miss them- its kind of nice to get lost on my own. Speaking of parents. You know its one thing to realize that your parents are getting older, shrinking etc but it is another to actually watch the effects in action. I felt so bad for them at a point! When I was about to book my tickets after much painful contemplation if it will be too cold, where to stay, should I go in May, should I go somewhere else, blah blah, they come to me and are like: we will also come. I was like: oh, hmm,okay, why? They were like: we want to. :/ Then they are like: we heard there are mafias in Istambul. I am like ah I see! :) I tried leveling with them the best I could. I was okay with Amma coming but I didn't  tbh, want Achan along. Is that mean? It probably is. Mainly because we end up in disagreement all the goddamn time and that is really not what I want to do here. But then he was like, Amma only? Not me? Anyhow! So here they were! And to give them credit-- they were super. In braving the cold and walking around with me everywhere. I had to catch myself from being impatient with them at the train stations, at ferry docks, at general road crossing. At one point I had crossed already and when I looked back they were holding hands and peering left and right at the traffic and it was just, well, sad! So I decided to be as wonderfully nice as I could in explaining things and GENERAL PATIENCE! We all had fun I think. Although surprisingly Achan was more curious on the whole, more energetic and more adjusting than Amma.
They were both full of grievances and whining though! About the flies, about the service or lack of in busy cafes till I was like; okay, you need to stop, because you are ruining my day! Then they were cool. If anything I think this trip has shown them how dependent they are going to be on each other and for that I am thankful.

Anyway now on my own and a week left, I have enough plans and places to do and visit. Ideally I want to go to Bodrum and Troya too but I am might just run out of money and so will probably have to do with just Istanbul. I mean there is enough to do here, but still! I have made my own food tour list so there is that and the Museums! Pamuk#s Museum of Innocence too!
I am so super grateful for excellent public transportation which I have more or less figured out. I miss A though. More than missing I am angry at him for not being here. :(
I was going to blog everyday here but then I started writing down every day stuff in a book and then it occurred to me that if I wrote diligently I could give it to A to read and so I am doing that at the end of every day now! And I think because he doesn't read the blog anymore, it could be a surprise! All right more later.

Sex Writing

is truly the hardest thing to do.
And because it is so hard to do, my stance is to try and stay away from it as much as possible--which is not the best case scenario. So once in a while I allow some of them to have some sex. And mostly, I have noticed, the sex isn't good. The men don't perform, women are not happy, there is groping, there is awkward after-ward silence, there is feverish pretenses on part of both parties and then finally, I just give up. I wonder what severe psychological failing this implies on my behalf!
Most of the difficulty comes in language. It is one thing to say things out loud when actually having sex but to write it, in a "literary novel" is simply quite a task. And let me add, frowned upon. For e.g my Prof. said and rightly so: that even while depicting real life there is no need to add the ah's, hmm's and other sounds. Similarly  with sex writing you don't need to put everything in there. Cos' clearly we all know what happens! So what do you put in? --I really did not intend the pun! Freudian!

But then the problem of authenticity creeps in. For e.g if the story is about a dysfunctional  marriage, then of course, people are having dysfunctional sex- guilty of presuming, as always. But nevertheless, I find myself questioning the author's skill when something like that happens. In Monica Ali's Brick Lane, copious amounts of text is devoted to explaining the inner functioning of marriage, day to day little details, worrisome, tiresome qualities in both man and wife and yet not one single word about their sex life.And I did not in the least bit expect that.I felt sure it was creeping up on me, soon, now, and then the book was over!
It does spend a moment or two, rather well done, toward the end but mostly it takes the easy way out and this somehow seems illogical.
So we march on. Fumbling.


Here is one of the best erotic scenes that I have read in a while.

" She affected a very old and grubby khaki-colored mackintosh  which it was always a pleasure to help off, for below it, and always as a surprise  were soft, cool colors, and a body fresh and scrupulously cared for. Not even the mackintosh could hide the fullness of her breasts, to which she I had for some little time been admitted. They were not the self-supporting apples of the austere french ideal; but breasts curving and rounding with a weight just threatening pendent excess, which the viewer, recognizing the inadequacy and indeed crudity of the cupping gesture, instinctively stretches out a hand to support; breasts which in their free state alter their shape and contour with every shift in the posture of the possessor  breasts which in the end madden the viewer because, faced with such completeness of beauty, he does not know what to do. Pure joy it was later, at the assisted uncovering  to discover that she had painted the nipples of her breasts. So absurd, so pathetic, so winning. I kissed, caressed, stroked with hand and cheek; inadequate speech was dragged out of me. "Lovely, lovely," I said. And she replied, "Thank you." A cooling thing to hear, as I lay between her breasts; and heads and hands for an instant went still. But it was a revealing reply, in its humorlessness and confidence. The adoration of none could equal her own; and even at that first encounter I could feel her own sense of self-violation. Self possessed at one moment, she became frantic at another that the fumbling could go no further."

It is kind of a breast poem! But the beauty in it is possibly in how much it reveals about the characters and the language, of course.

My favorite words and phrases in this: Affected
been admitted
instinctively stretches out a hand
Assisted uncovering
Inadequate speech, dragged out.
Frantic at another.

For selfish reasons because sometimes I hate sharing books :/ I wont write where it's from till I finish it.

Poem a week

I am memorizing one poem a week. And as I rightly expected rote isn't easy as once long ago.
I am only beginning to really discover poetry, my knowledge about poets was restricted to Yeats, Frost and Plath and such well known names. But there is so much exceptional poetry out there! I don't claim to exactly understand everything but there is a finesse in so many poems that is hard to do in fiction. The language so fine tuned, each and every word selected with immense care--it really is fantastic. I don't think I SHOULD EVER attempt poetry. 

So here is the first one in what I hope will be a thing. 

Power
BY Adrienne Rich
(Dream of a Common Language)

Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power. 

Do Not Disturb

This isn't actually my post to write, especially since A is also a blogger and that would make things kind of odd so I wont go into his side of things. That would be his story to tell.

Non-interference is something that I would really like people around me to practice  As for me, I try. I really dislike offering opinions/thoughts/advise et al.. Although the few people close to me do say that when I don't approve, it is rather evident on my face and I am hoping this is something that is restricted entirely to just them. So with my own parents I find it very difficult when they have unwanted opinions-which are quite plentiful now a days-- so you can imagine how it is with A's mother. I have tried to be pleasant and easy-going despite immense difference of opinions over a variety of things. With my parents, I am less forgiving and I make it a point to be very clear about the lines. And since they are used to my reactions, things mostly go smoothly. For e.g my father and I--holy mother of god--do we have our difference of opinions. The latest among which is communism, god and why the communist movement wrecked Kerala in his opinion and how it was entirely necessary in mine.
We however make up almost instantly, perhaps because even our more hurtful comments are direct and straightforward. But with A's mother, I am having a bit of how do you put it- crisis?

Like I said, I can't exactly bring myself to disagree because the environment in his house is very silent, as less noise as is humanly possible and pretty uncomfortable--to be honest. But till now I have been able to navigate it decently. I try to keep quiet as much as possible even when she says things that otherwise I would have dispelled quite easily.

 For e.g a comment about transgenders being a pain in the ass/ scary would have met with equal amounts of displeasure on my part. I find a lot of things she says very offensive and I immediately think--boy if this were my mum she would really have had a discussion on her hand--. But I suppose it's not really my fight. Anyway this time, I had a series of unpleasantness from her. First off, I asked A, quite a while back, about the rules at his place. Of decorum and such, since I figured that his was the kind of place where such things mattered. At my own place I am used to a lot of things, for e.g putting up my feet, or general acrobatics on the couch but at his--everyone actually only sits-on the couch and he said, nothing like that. I think he really didn't think it through. Now when you are visiting for just a day or two, it doesn't matter but when you stay a week, sometimes you slip up and so I sat one day with my feet up on the coffee table and honestly, if his father was passing by or I hear him, I am on the alert and arrange myself into a more acceptable pose. God knows when she saw but she told him a few days later that-- he has been "spoiling me" and that earlier I used to help out in the kitchen and now I am just sitting there with my feet on top of my legs.

This has upset me because 1) I was sick on the said day that I didn't help and I had this racking cough which I felt was disagreeable to everyone and I didn't want to play with water and make it worse. And that we had visited some of his other family and I barley talked because talking makes the cough worse and when she asked, I said this also. But what bothers me more is I HAD OFFERED to help to which I was told--no,don't play with water and make it worse!! So basically I took that for face value because I am only expecting straight forwardness and boy, was I surprised. I was in no way prepared for such weirdness and secondly, I do not appreciate A being told that he is spoiling me. Because if he is, that is between us and no one else and I will not have anyone interfere in that. And what if he is. So what if he is!!


Then there is this whole other issue. Oh lord. She kept mentioning how A is now all into Malayalam movies and knows names of fish after hanging around with me. And the first couple of times I didn't quite notice anything in it but then later it was said to him that his standards have fallen lately and that he now likes standard less Malayalam movies! I don't even..
I wont write about this anymore because my reaction will be rather caustic and bitter.

So to sum up :/ this has been quite the eye opener. I can honestly say that the efforts I have made with her are at least fifty times more than I would even show my mother and in no way is this acceptable. What bothers me now is that I had been looking forward to having them over, but now --not so much-- and even as it makes me angry it is also more --just sad.
I will however get over it simply for A's sake. Because the one thing that surprised me more is his reaction.I know a lot of men who are immensely nice to their wives but caught in a situation like this would try to justify the other side or get bugged and be dismissive because they are simply unable to handle it but A was nice enough to understand this oddity quite well. And for that I am thankful.