On Fortune-Telling:

Murat. I haven't mentioned him much except to say that he's the one who's training me (read: wiping the floor with me) in tavla.

[Addendum: Murat is a [assistant/associate/full? The hierarchy is much more of a deal here than I realized in the States, but I really struggle to keep track of each person's place-- which is fine to me] professor in the biology department here. He's also a friend of Claire's father's good friend, which is how he's connected to us. Apparently he's also been an actor and lived in a commune. My kind of people.]

On Friday the 12th, before Claire and I made our strange and delightful overnight run to Istanbul, we went out for drinks with Murat to one of Bolu's two pubs. After a long discussion [argument? I'm still not sure] about the nature of belief, science, and the human imagination, a strange moment in the women's room when I didn't recognize myself in the mirror, and the realization that Murat and I both think the other's crazy, he picks up my coffee cup and begins to tell my fortunes in its grounds.

I won't go into too much detail here except to say that it was a legitimately freaky (read: perceptive and scary) fortune.

[Addendum: you all know that I've been 'reading fortunes' since I was ten and Amanda and I volunteered at the Wallingford Wurst Festival tent. I don't believe them. Unless I do.]

I didn't come here to "find myself" or "be changed" or other things that twentysomethings are reputed to do; I came here to work. That was my first post: "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 myself." Sheer, sheer idiocy. What was I thinking, that to leave the familiarity of loved ones and loved places and move to a place where I don't speak the language, that I would not be changed? That I would not find out things about myself that I had not yet realized? That maybe some of these things were born specifically of this geography?

That was my absurdist self-prophecy: although I love learning and plasticity, I would move to a new place and not change.

Yesterday after lunch (during Turkish coffee, of course), Murat asks me, "Why did you come here? What is it about this place that you like, that made you want to stay here?" And without much thought, but realizing as the words came from my mouth that they might be true, I said, "I think that there are things to understand here that I won't be able to learn about anywhere else."

Then I decided immediately that I hated this. I should be able to learn anything anywhere, right? Given enough time and willpower, a person could do it. I don't like the idea that "you had to be there" to know. It gives too much privilege to place or opportunity and too little to effort.