Housecleaning

Between now and 1 September, I've got to do the analog equivalent of organizing (read: deleting!) 1600 inbox e-mails. If anyone wants to loan me a paper shredder, now's the time to step up.

Because I'm feeling anxious about a number of aspects of this upcoming year (Will I master Turkish? Will I have time for artmaking? Will I...?), I want at least to feel incredibly prepared on the bureaucratic front.

So I'm cleaning my house. And already the wilderness that is my home/work/journal/e-mail/network/sleep/grow environment is trying to reclaim the space I've cleared away. Negotiating the paperwork of a person who chronically ignores her mail is like fighting the Hydra-- I organize (read: destroy) one pile, and it's become two more!

Thankfully, I've been finding some things to save-- thoughtful, philosophical pieces from Andrew (C.W. in another blog), pictures of gingerbread houses from Monica, Christa's thesis, discourses on truth and power from Dustin, links to kittens-in-sinks videos from Matt, and more. I am grateful for these small gems and oddities amidst the tedium.

"My Own Imperfect Air"?

I learned two months ago that in two months I'll be working in Bolu, Turkey at Abant Izzet Baysal University. A number of years ago, I stumbled across Stephen Dunn's "Tangier" in an old copy of Perrine's Sound and Sense, 10th edition (I think. Thank you, Mr. Genest, for assigning this work. My copy's so beat up now that I can't really show it to anyone.). To this particular poem I attribute my having lived in Walla Walla for nine years-- or, rather, my having not run away from Walla Walla in nine years.

So, "Tangier"

There's no salvation in elsewhere;

forget the horizon, the seductive sky.

If nothing's here, nothing's there. 

I know. Once I escaped to Tangier,

took the same face, the same lie.

There's no salvation in elsewhere

when elsewhere has empty rooms, mirrors.

Everywhere: the capital I.

If nothing's here, nothing's there

unless, of course, your motive's secure;

not therapy, but joy,

salvation an idea left behind, elsewhere,

like overweight baggage or yesteryear.

The fundamental things apply.

If nothing's here, nothing's there –

I brought with me my own imperfect air.

The streets were noise. The heart dry.

There was no salvation elsewhere.

I came with nothing, found nothing there.

Stephen Dunn

I hope that this travel log will be a catalog of my experiences in Turkey as well as some of my remembrances of Walla Walla. I take with me what I have-- I cannot expect either Turkey or Walla Walla to provide me with answers that are not already within my self.