So I have been sitting, staring at my computer for awhile now, struggling to come up with something to write about for this final blog post. I know that I have learned a lot and that I have changed as a person, but it is too soon and too close. I haven’t had a chance to process and I don’t know how to put these feelings into words. So I’m choosing to do this instead. Memories.
Tuesday 7/14 – seeing Gazipasa, seeing the dig house, again for the first time…a place I have only lived for one month previously but a place that is filled with so many intense emotions and vivid memories…a place that looks and feels like home in the strangest way
Wednesday 7/15 – seeing the acropolis again for the first time…mixed emotions…so much physical exhaustion and pain from bruises, muscle cramps, thorn scratches…so much blood and sweat…and yet so much pure adrenaline and excitement that manages to supersede the pain…so many possibilities for exploration and discovery, for the unknown, for the chance of…something
Thursday 7/16 – the silent war over the air conditioning…nine o’clock, click click, turn it down…eleven o’clock, click click, turn it up…twelve o’clock, creak, open the balcony door…one o’clock, creak, close the balcony door…three o’clock, click click, turn it down…four o’clock, click click, turn it off…and then our poor, fragile, non-Turkish bodies adjusted and it was all good
Friday 7/17 – the call to prayer…it creeps in…sometimes I notice it, sometimes I don’t…but it’s always there, a constant in the background…a melodic landscape to explore…a foundation
Saturday 7/18 – the first free day…the first opportunity to collapse in a bruised and battered ball and not move…and promptly waking up, right on time, around five in the morning and going up to the terrace to watch Gazipasa and the sun lazily stretch and wake up
Sunday 7/19 – Selinus, the first big hike of the season…the first chance to see the scope, breadth, width of the past inhabitants of Rough Cilicia…intermixed with a modern Gazipasa…what is it now, a child’s playground?
Monday 7/20 – remembering the feel of the pick and the trowel…remembering how to feel beyond into what is beneath the soil…remembering what is the most efficient, the least painful
Tuesday 7/21 – the music, the Turkish pop music that is somehow irrevocably tied with my memories of Turkey…good or bad depending on your tastes…a thrumming and a warbling that seems almost more like bird song than human song
Wednesday 7/22 – duct tape…yes, duct tape…duct tape on feet, on ankles, on fingers, on gloves, on pants, on tools, on…just about anything…let the gods bless duct tape
Thursday 7/23 – the sleeping, exhausted, completely oblivious faces on the bus ride back to the dig house after a long day at site…Hidayet’s grinning, mirth-filled face in the rear-view mirror as he laughs at us poor, hopeless souls
Friday 7/24 – animals…so many animals…the dinosaur chickens, the mad turkeys, the lumbering cows sticking their heads over the fence as we wash pottery, the mass sheep crossings late at night, the roosters…at least I hope it is a rooster because if it’s not I don’t know what is making that sound
Saturday 7/25 – the boat ride…the crazy captain…Kelenderis, the sister site of Selinus…frolicking in the middle of the Mediterranean in an almost surreal series of moments…a Turkish craziness so different from conservative Guney, the village our site is located in…the many different faces of Turkey
Sunday 7/26 – Anamur, my once upon a time favorite site…it has since been displaced but when I went there I didn’t know that…home to some of the most extensive ruins, bluest water, highest mountains that I climbed, jumped, and raced over…also home to some of my greatest battle scars…oh the thorns of Anamur
Monday 7/27 – the bees welcoming us back at breakfast…so many bees…swarming around the jam, around the eggs…saying we missed you, we missed you, we want to be friends, why are you running away screaming…
Tuesday 7/28 – the burst of energy when you find something in your trench…or you realize something you were expecting to find isn’t there and it’s confusing and exciting…and suddenly nothing else matters but continuing to dig, continuing to remove soil, continuing to articulate
Wednesday 7/29 – the morning market stop…we drive…we stop…we pile out of the bus, sleepy eyed and groggy but with our priorities in tack…caffeine, sugar, water…not sure what the order is…we pile back in…we drive…and promptly pass out for precious fifteen minutes available to us
Thursday 7/30 – pottery washing…at times so soothing and therapeutic…at times so aggravating…but always shocking in amount of information available…time period of structure, use of structure, social class of inhabitants in structure
Friday 7/31 – Rahmi’s whistle…never has a single sound held so much power…never has a single sound been able to bring forth so much joy and so much sadness…never has a single sound…well, until it was stolen by Kay
Saturday 8/1 – Hassan’s celebration…his military going away/engagement party…the little children of the village trying to dance…the village elders actually dancing…the random American foreigners desperately waving their arms in the air in strange patterns…but the energy and the joy of the dancers is pervasive…even to the maybe bored, maybe bemused, maybe deeply invested onlookers
Sunday 8/2 – the Antalya museum and Perge and Aspendos and Side…a long day to say the least but a good one…a museum and then to the site many of the artifacts came from…a site where you can still see the indentations in the roads from cart wheels, where you can see the calcium deposits on the water pipes…then Side which is so bizarrely intermixed with tourist central
Monday 8/3 – the heat…not the dry desert heat of the southwest back home, but the still humid heat of the Mediterranean…when the sun blinds your eyes and the sweat rolls like rain down your face, nose, chin
Tuesday 8/4 – alarm clocks…a nasty invention alarm clocks…they make people sad, and grumpy, and tired…have I made my point?
Wednesday 8/5 – the Turkish students…they deserve more than a day but here they are…Murat, Ozgar, Delik, Aylin, Mehmet, Tugay, Muge, Kubra, Onur, Mevlut…good people, good conversations, good moments…I hope that one day I can give back to them everything they have given me
Thursday 8/6 – moving pieces…I’m in a trench…I’m in a different trench…I’m in another different trench…I have a person with me in my trench…I have a different person with me in my trench…I have two people with my in my trench…I’m in a different trench again…and yet comparing that to the alternative…one trench…it is all a puzzle and the more pieces I know the better
Friday 8/7 – the drive down to the cove where we swim is an experience…it is also terrifying and often feels vaguely life threatening…but recently I have reached a place where it all feels good…I think I find this even more concerning…but in any case, the cove is the cove and is therefore glorious and a much needed haven after a week rolling around in the dirt
Saturday 8/8 – Lamos, my new favorite site…tall craggy cliffs grasping for the sky…fortress walls on mountaintops…Hidayet’s insane driving up said cliffs that somehow manages to get us there in one piece…a site so looted and so little guarded and I have to wonder how long there will still be a site to visit…a reminder of what archeologists can do but also how limited we are…how there is much we can save but also much that is inevitably lost…there is a sadness to it
Sunday 8/9 – the beach and beer and shooting stars…simply laying on the sand, fingers and toes wriggling comfortably, beer tilted in the sand, the sound of the waves and the water and the sea rolling in and out, stars streaking across the blue, gray, black night sky, and all the while surrounded by friends and the misty silhouettes of mountains…a good moment..a snapshot in time
Monday 8/10 – the blue mountains…the blue, blue, blue mountains that we drive past every morning on the way to site…they look like they’ve come out of a watercolor painting, smokey grays and blues overlapping each other with blurred edges and the morning mists hovering in between
Tuesday 8/11 – becoming fond of roots…I find it hard to believe I just wrote that…but they are so reliable, so constant, you know they will always be there for you, both in your moments of happiness and sadness…and then finally learning which roots you pull, which roots you twist, which roots you chop, which roots you simply glare and snarl at for a day before taking a chainsaw to them
Wednesday 8/12 – food…Aishya’s food…Emil’s food…never in my life have I gotten such a consistent thrill out of meals…Aishya’s salad…the green beans…Aishya’s salad…the cake…Aishya’s salad…the eggplant…Aishya’s salad…the ayran…no, never mind, not the ayran…did I mention Aishya’s salad?
Thursday 8/13 – a lazy day…a work day…a day to process, to remember, to be thankful
Friday 8/14 – a plane ride…taking off…gone…memories
maia