Cyborg Chameleon

It's startling how many different cycles we go through in a lifetime and how fast we transition from one to the other, feeling more or less comfortable/weary (do these two cancel each other out?) in any situation. No, this is not going to be one of those romantic posts about the meaning of life. I am just alluding to the fact that an even an eternal night dweller like me could easily tell her friends that she had to go to sleep at 2 am last night and cut the night short (while everyone else was having a great time doing tarot readings with Mexican bingo cards and watching cool videos of kinetic typography on youtube) since she has to wake up at 7 am with the puppy. And that statement did not even feel strange or out of the ordinary for me as I looked at the puzzled faces of my friends, who seemed confused with this sudden switch to the suburbanite woman of responsibilities mode. After only two weeks of having a puppy in the house and a month of living in Ferndale that is. I went straight to bed and knew that it was exactly 7:00 am when I heard Dziga whimpering in his crate without looking at the clock in the morning. I got up, wore my boots without hesitation or complaint, took the puppy out of his crate and carried him out to the backyard to go potty, and watched the neighbor take his own dogs out silently in the early morning chill while Dziga sniffed around for either a perfect potty spot or something that he can chew on. After eating and playing for about an hour and a half, he went under my bed, his surrogate "den" during the day (only sleeps in the crate at night and when he is extremely tired) to take a nap, as a part of his usual routine if not daily ritual. I sat on the bed, opened my laptop and found myself staring out the blinders towards the walls of house next door, a typical suburban view. How ordinary all this appears, as if this has been my life for as long as I can remember. The hot and humid climate and lazy summer days of my hometown on the Mediterranean, the hustle and bustle of metropolitan Istanbul, or the haunting urban desolation of Detroit seem many miles and lifetimes away. I am not feeling nostalgic or numb since I am a deep believer in the regenerating power of creative destruction (of past lives in this context) but there is a certain weariness that comes with the territory; with changing so many skins and filling in so many slots that others call identity (here is my shout out to Gramsci and Foucault) only to leave them to be taken over by others shortly after. We, humans, are not butterflies, we do not have one single coccoon one needs to weave to go through the ultimate transformation, that one single rite of passage. We are chameleons at best, yet with a memory that unfailingly reminds us of the colors of the past, making them re-appear as faint impressions at unexpected moments (but Bergson explains it better than me). Ah well, I'd rather think of myself as an android or a cyborg, something unnatural if the choice is up to me, but that's a whole different story. This post turned out to be a borderline the-meaning-of-life rant for some reason, despite my better judgment. Blame it on the early morning coffee!

Guess who is coming to dinner

The little fuzzy bear aka Dziga Barkov arrived yesterday just in time for dinner. I was supposed to pick him up from a couple in Ann Arbor on sunday morning but they called me early saturday to let me know that he would be ready in the evening. That led to an emergency visit to petsmart to get puppy food, toys, and collar, only to realize how gigantic and heavy puppy food bags for large breeds are (carrying them will be my new workout routine). Large breed would be an understatement for Dziga, of course. When I went to pick him up, he appeared to be at least twice as big as his sister from the same litter. He is a black bouvier des flandres, a herding breed originated in the Flanders region of Belgium, France and the Netherlands. The males often measure somewhere between 60-90 pounds but the lady that I adopted Dziga from said that he'll probably grow up to be 120 pounds, now that he already hit 12 pounds at 8 weeks. That, my friends, is considered extra-large by all standards (well, that is definitely heavier than me!). Anyway, he is adorable as you can imagine but still pretty much a baby. His first night went fairly uneventful, although I had to wake up every 2 hours to take him out to pee (thanks to the fast metabolism of puppies) and towards the morning the anxiety of being separated from his littermates finally sank in. He cried a little (but only a little) so I let him out of his crate and sleep on the floor instead. He was fine after that. Now he is sitting next to me on the couch and trying to be calm. Soon enough it will be potty time again.

Moon Over 'Burban Street

I was planning to write this post on my first night in Ferndale, the nice little suburb that I moved to last sunday but alas, the furnace broke immediately after we moved in and I got paralyzed in-between trying not freeze to death and unpacking. Not to mention we had a Chinese New Year themed housewarming party 5 days after we moved in, which required ample amount of preparation. Anyway, long story short, I am a suburbanite now and live in a spacious 3 bedroom house with pear green walls and a fairly big fenced in yard. That is a pretty drastic change considering that my post-fire apartment wasn't even a studio but rather an efficiency flat without a kitchen. You can imagine how having a dishwasher and a microwave feels after such stoic conditions. That is not the only change in my life though. If everything goes as planned, I will have a cute little puppy, which won't stay little for long, on sunday. Does anyone want to guess what breed? Well, you'll have to wait till sunday to find out.

Summer Album

Phew, it 's 6:15 am and I finally finished uploading and arranging my summer photo album (which contains about 111 pictures! yeah, it took forever). That means there won't be any need to avoid writing to the blog any longer, embarrassed of the lack of commentary on my adventures in the UK, Scotland, and Turkey. Anyway, I tried to send invites to view the album to you all but in case, you haven't received it, drop me a note and the invite will be on your way.

The Quiet Coach

This post is dedicated to Felix, the little bilingual boy (raised in England with French parents), who kept my imagination going on the mysteries of speech patterns by tirelessly repeating the same phrase on the train from Glasgow to London. "Repeating" is an understatement, really; he actually improvised on the phrase "going on a train" and came up with pretty fascinating variations. To be honest, I found his performance a little annoying at first, expecting a somewhat extraordinary silence in the so-called "Quiet Coach". However, soon enough, I was entranced by the rhythm and inner dynamics of the phrase and began to repeat Felix's ingenious utterances in my mind. Here's a sample of our mutual soundtrack, which Claudia Gorbman would probably call meta-diegetic (referring to inner or mental soundtracks of characters in films, as she explained in her plenary speech at the Screen Studies Conference in Glasgow): (Think about Steve Reich's "Different Trains" album as you read this if you wish, adding sound effects, train whistles, and pastoral sounds from the Scottish landscape to the background) **** Going on a train Going. Going. Ing. Gooooh-ing. Ing. Going. Going on a trraain. Going on a track. Come back. Train on a track. Trrain. Dee doo dah, train. Going. Weeh! Going on a train...

Leaving the Mo"town"soon

Waiting for my flight to London at the airport. It was a little difficult to explain the security personnel why I did not have an American visa on my passport but they decided to let me go after an extensive search. Those new x-ray cabins that spray strange stuff on suspicious passengers are pretty futuristic, I am glad that they keep me updated about the latest technology in homeland security each time I travel somewhere. I'll definitely feel neglected if I don't get those frantic red marks on my ticket one day. By the way, let's hope that the landlord will fix the cracks in the outer wall of my apartment while I am away. It has been pouring heavily almost everyday for the past couple of weeks in Detroit and my windows started leaking. I've mastered the technique of collecting rain water in buckets and drying the floor with rags in the last 4 days, which undoubtedly will become useful one day. Especially if this strange weather change becomes permanent due to global warming. You might start hearing about the monsoon season In Detroit after all, as it certainly felt tropical if not monsoon-like throughout the entire month. I'll meet Emrah at the Leicester Square metro station in London tomorrow morning. It will be nice to spend a day with Emrah and Sevi before taking the train to Glasgow the next day. Since they just moved to their new house, there won't be any internet access but I'll try to keep you informed about my trip.

The Constant Visitor

Phew, I just checked my mailbox and found out that my British visa is issued. Now i can actually start dreaming about Glasgow and the rest of my vacation!