Brains in Vats

Today I was in my communication's class and I was reminded of the "brain in a vat" theory commonly used in philosophy and science fiction. (You know, neo is a body in a vat... but only because bodies are more fun to set free.) At the beginning of the class our professor apologized for not returning any of our emails over the holiday and informed us that it was due to his father's death. We were shocked and expressed our condolences and he moved on with the lecture. It was a little unsettling how normal his lecture was. He had the same level of energy and passion for the topic. I would have never guessed that his weekend was filled with such a sorrowful event. Oddly enough though, I only had trouble focusing for a few minutes, and before I realized what was happening I was drawn into the normal awkward teasing out of ideas that is our class.

An hour and fifteen minutes later we took our break. I was sipping tea with some of the other girls there on exchange and they inquired about my boyfriend. I informed them that no, my boyfriend does not live in Turkey with me, but my fiancee does. They were very happy for me and a discussion about marriage and our plans for our wedding followed. But after a few questions the rest of the class filtered in and we picked up our intellectual pursuits exactly where we had left them.

At that moment I felt stripped of my identity. It was an odd sensation as I had never really valued or even thought about my personal identity in class before. I have always taken for granted that class is a place where we leave behind our personal lives and speak in theory. I never thought of people coming to class as full-fledged individuals with all sorts of experiences and priorities that have nothing to do with our lecture. In a lecture there is that annoying girl who always brings up the same topic that doesn't actually have anything to do with what we are talking about, and the cute boy who actually did the reading and voices his opinion that echoes yours just before you raise your hand, and the girl who seems to know everything and the guy who doesn't pay any attention and you kinda wonder what is in his notebook, and whether the girl next to him is actually taking notes on her laptop or checking her email. They are not complete people. They are momentary actions. They are glimpses at habits. They are most of all a vessel for thought that sometimes bears their duty easily and sometimes struggles.

It is like instead of being a single brain in a vat, all alone in nothing, we are a group of brains that were shoved into a jar and get shaken up for an hour or so. This realization caused two longings in me. First of all I longed to know my class more. I wanted to go out and have beers with them and ask them about their boyfriends and girlfriends and extracurricular activities. Secondly, I wanted to go back in time and enroll in a university that uses a small cohort system for their undergraduates because there is something altogether enticing about actually knowing the background and inspiration that gives birth to the processes that you get to hear only the results of in a lecture.

Oh well, there is no going back. But there is always now, and sometimes tomorrow.  

In defense of marriage...

I have long been the type of girl who thought that she was never going to get married. No, not one of those desperate, forever-alone girls stuck on self-pity and thirsting for a man, but more of one of the girls who just never quite got the point of marriage. I have seen too much divorce to really take marriage seriously, and I do not think that it is right for the state to monitor what is or is not a family based on religion. On my 13th birthday I vehemently disavowed marriage, promising my father that he could look forward to having an unwed daughter forever. Over the years I have been a bridesmaid and a groomsman, in weddings to celebrate unions that have now been dissolved, and both times I felt a little cheated by the whole ordeal. (I know, it is selfish. I am sure that what the bride and groom felt was much more significant than what I felt, but if I believe in marriage, and if I believe in a wedding, then it is a moment when you ask the support of your family and friends for your union, and make a promise not only to your significant other, but also to them. The promise to your sweetheart that you will be forever theirs can easily be made in bed, and sealed with a kiss. The rings and ceremony is for the social seal of the marriage.) So, all in all it was easier to forego the idea of marriage and just live each moment how I saw best, in a very selfish, self-defined, egotistical way. I was quite happy that way.

So, why the change in theory?

Well, first of all over the past couple of years there has been a change in my heart. Not only have I finally settled the restlessness that drove me as a young adult, but I have also gained more respect for the social world. Five years ago I was determined to go through this world alone. I was an island. Now I have a much deeper understanding of community and friendship. I still don't have much respect for religion or the state, but I can see the need for the support of friends and family when you choose to be together with one person for the rest of your life. I think that some of this is due to the natural aging process, but most of it is due to my peace corps experience... seeing the way other families live; both American and Bulgarian.

Secondly, I have honestly never felt about any one else the way that I feel about Nikola. I thought that I knew love, and I did. I knew all sorts of love. But with him I also know this huge, unbeatable trust, and the depth of it is unbelievable. I am pretty much drunk on trust these days. Trust and acceptance. It is wonderful. For that reason, I would never let him go, and also, I happily want the entire world to know that we are together, side by side.

So, one morning we woke up and were talking about when we would get married. There was no proposal. We both just knew that we would get married. Conversations about immigration and residence permits and our landlord only renting to married couples had already helped to plant the idea within us. Two years from now, next summer, and then, suddenly, why wait? We decided that we will get married this winter. I know that it is quick for a lot of people. We have been dating for three months. When we get married it will have been six. It isn't much time. But I think that we are both the type of people that once a decision is made there is no going back and forth, trying to decide if it is right or not. It just is.

I don't think either of us really have a clue about how to get married. There are so many traditions that we first have to learn (as our experience is quite limited) and then cut through to get what we really want our wedding and marriage to be about. I think this is going to be a very fun three months, followed by a very fun party, followed by a very fun lifetime with the most incredible, inspirational person that I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. 

Intimacy

What is intimacy? Is it the vulnerability associated with nudity? Is it sharing your shame, or your dreams that you fear may never come true? Or perhaps it is less to do with vulnerability of any type and more about consistency- sharing regular time and experience together and being honest in your actions and reactions to things. I have seen couples search together for this elusive intimacy, and some succeed and some fail to find it. I have seen individuals yearn, thirst, beg, and desire for intimacy in all of its forms. And where can it be found? In a friend? A lover? Family? The unconditional love of a pet?

Last night at school we had a very intimate presentation topic. Our block dealt with Visual and Sensory Anthropology and our assignment consisted of bringing in 3 sensory objects that contextualized us in a cultural or political setting. I went directly towards scouting for my objects as my focus as scouting is full of symbolism, and experiential learning. However, as I listened to the presentations of my classmates I started to feel that I had ducked out of the assignment. They brought in such personal, intimate examples. From the football cards that one boy had traded with a now-deceased friend that contextualized the politics of war for him, to a cut-off dreadlock that helped a girl express her non-hetero-normative gender, these secrets were dark and personal. I could have brought in any number of secrets. I could have shared. Instead, what was most important to me was not secret at all. It was very open, and acceptable. Is intimacy only built in secrets and shame, and the strength to share what is unacceptable? Perhaps it is built in shared passion like the boy who charmingly spoke of his obsession with the ticking sound of clocks...

I came home and my boyfriend met me at the bus stop with a jacket. He wrapped it around me and took my hand. We shared a dinner, cuddled up to each other and watched a television show. We kissed. He read me a story. We made love. In the morning we cuddled and I talked and talked, telling him all about the class from the night before. I revealed to him my fear that I was loosing my academic touch, and my joy at the response I received from my instructor. (A very positive  response, which also contained specific areas to work on.) It is a relationship that doesn't lack for intimacy, for trust, for a depth of (Here I must insert a word that does not quite explain what I am going for, but there is no other) security. I have no fear with him.

Yet the teasing out of new intimacy reminded me not to get wrapped up in the soft love of a single individual. The intimacy of friendship, of family, of crushes, of animals on the streets and even the trees that grow around us are all intimacies that I need in order to be a happy, whole individual. 

Fall in Istanbul

I have never been very impressed by fall. In fact, I have been known to be downright hateful towards any season that was not summer. However, leaving the safe haven of my eternal summer deep in the southwest I have come to experience, timidly at first and then with a bit of curious anticipation, other seasons.

For me fall has always been a time of ending. It reeks of decay and death. The leaves turn brown, the sap in trees runs slowly, and it tells the coming of winter. Winter, which could be appreciated for what it is if we didn't try to control it... if winter consisted of blankets and hibernation  books and knitting and hot chocolate and mindless movies, then it wouldn't be so bad. But winter consists of bad drivers, waiting in the cold for public transportation, heaters on too fully in public buildings, and sickly lighting schemes. It is not something to look forward to in the way most modern humans experience it, or try not to. Winter is an awful dissonance between realities (the desired and the experienced) and a time of humans waging war against the eminent will of nature, and fall is just the ramping up to that disgusting display. Or so I thought.

Here, in Istanbul, fall has a completely different feel than what I have experienced before. It is mid-October now and the weather changes daily- some days a bit windy, some days warm and mild, occasionally chilled and rainy. Every day is a surprise. I enjoy the juxtaposition of short sleeves and scarves, or long sleeves and bare necks. I love the gentle breeze that, somedays, comes up off the bosphorous, kissing along the neck of my university campus. It is a breeze without temperature, neither cooling nor warming, it just lifts the small hairs on your arms or neck and then places them down again, ever so gently, without any effort or crude moments of shock. Everything seems peaceful. People are settling into their routines, they have unwound from summer vacation, and they are drinking coffee and talking in low voices with small, satisfied smiles.

I never knew that a month could be like this. Or else I forgot. What I do know is that right now, in this time and this year, I am exactly where I need to be. The place of Bogazici opens up to me and folds over me, and I feel safe, and tickled with tiny promises of experience. Fall or not, October in Istanbul is perfect. 

Subtle Gear Shift

When the cub came back from Bulgaria he brought a delightful array of presents for me: a family ring to solidify our fake marriage, coffee mugs from his parent's trip to moscow, and a bicycle to take me here and there and, on a good day, back again to him. The bike is something that makes me squee inside. A friend once defended his reasoning for getting his daughter a bicycle as it being a rite of passage and an experience in responsibility and freedom. In the gridlock of Istanbul that freedom is a breath of fresh air. There is nothing quite like being able to control my pace and speed and get to where I want to be, hills and effort be damned. But the bike has one thing strange for me: the gear shift. I am used to indexed gear shifters. You know, the type that click thoughtlessly into place with the flick of a finger. This shifter requires a little more thought and finesse. Effort, time, whatever you will. It isn't that I can't handle it, but I definitely have been spoiled by magic for my entire life.

Riding home the other day I realized how much my relationship outlook is like a gearshift. I have always been the type of person that locks immediately into place in a relationship. For me there is no "dating - for - fun," phase. There is love, or not-love and there is no reason to dabble in a relationship if the connection is not there, just for amusement or companionship. At the same time there is no reason to pretend that the connection isn't there when it is. I have never been the type to play hard to get. People think that this is an unhealthy way to live- that it betrays some personal attachment issue deep within me. Maybe this is true, and maybe not. All I know is that it has been the only thing that makes sense to me. If you feel love, then say it. If it is important to you then care for it. It seems quite simple to me, not some twisted form of desperation. However, finally, this bike has helped me to understand the other perspective. There is no commitment in the shift. You can get halfway towards the next gear and decide that you were wrong and back down without consequence. There is no stopping, no turning, no jolt in the indecision. At the same time, sliding up to the next level is an awkward experience with a bit of friction until you are settled, sometimes not worth the intention that it requires. I get why people find it so difficult to find a relationship and settle into it; why they date so many people that it will obviously (even to them) never work out with. Well, call me easy and automatic, but I will stick to my indexed life. 

Victory as an Interpretation

It is strange to be back in academia. I am waiting for the day that I go to school and it feels normal. Right now I am still in wonder of it. I vaguely recall these sensations of stretching within my mind. Ideas bounce up against the edges of my understanding, demanding more room. They lick at my capacity, tickling, demanding. The vague recollections that I have of this are actually quite scary. I was never the type of kid to practice moderation and when I learned something new I went heels up all the way in. That is not to say that I got caught up in all kinds of fads, although I went through the usual college development, but more that I would wrap up in trying to understand something new so much so that I became a knot- a black void. I am sure that I spent most of my high school and college career incomprehensible to those around me. Now that I am back in that familiar setting, feeling my mind jump off cliffs, I wonder how much of the catatonic dreaming that I experienced was due to the search for understanding and how much was from my chemical imbalances. I don't see many other people walking around with their heads positively fizzing, but then I suppose I can't see their brains. Actually I believe that most people go to college seeking knowledge, not understanding, and so they activate a completely different part of their brain than I do during and around classes. But sometimes the quest for "understanding" goes deep enough that even I call bullshit on it.

I am taking an English Literature class- "The Modernist Novel." I quite like it. It gives me an excuse to read some fiction, our professor is passionate and knowledgeable, and in a lot of ways it reminds me of my Shakespeare class, which thoroughly challenged me back when I was 19. Today though, I could barely keep from laughing with the absurdity of our discussion. We do "close readings" of the text, which means that we go through line by line, word by word, and relate everything to the social issues and influences of the modernist period. In theory that is okay. However, at one point, when we were looking at pronoun usage and other word choice issues, I realized that what we were doing was rather pointless. Yes, everything can be related to the early 1900's, but that does not mean that the choices were intentional. Conrad did not choose these lines. They came out of him. Writing was not a strict formula, a scientific exploration. It was a creative act. One could argue that his time period influenced every aspect of his writing and so therefore becomes visible in every word, but I think that is stretching things a bit. At some point lines are just filler to get to a bigger idea, and a close examination is really us just masturbating our own historical frame.

Once I realized this I really started to enjoy the class. It is a game. There is nothing to understand. It is an exercise in application. There is no truth. There is no right or wrong. After all the work and effort and whether or not you choose to enjoy the experience, Victory was really just an interpretation. 

Friends

I met a guy during orientation. A group of us went out to grab beers afterwards and I thought, sitting around a table and talking about nothing, that any one of these people could become my friend. This guy turned up in one of my classes, and we magically run into each other occasionally. Two weeks later he casually, in some form of teasing, drops the f-word. You know, the one that for some reason usually makes my spine crinkle in bad ways: "friends." I very quickly squashed that delusion with a sharp flick of the tongue. "We are not friends, yet."

It's a critical moment in friendship, for me. A person who is actually interested in becoming my friend will dig deeper. They will ask why, and what is a friend. They will try to learn my definitions and possibly deeper understanding and friendship can be born. It's rare though. Most people take if offensively, because most people have no real desire to be friends with anyone. They just want everyone to view them positively. Well, a friend is someone much more than a person that I kinda like and think is okay. A friend is someone that I trust and love. I am sorry, that does not come without some effort.

Usually.

On Friday I stopped by the doner place near to my house. For some reason I feel comfortable there. I feel welcome. There I had a small chat with the man selling doners and we were so excited and happy to have that conversation. I was offered tea, the Turkish sign of friendship, which I accepted, and I skipped out of the shop thinking to myself, "Hey! I made a friend!"

Stop. Pause. What? Why is it that I would consider him a friend and not this student? Is it because I expect more from Americans, or people who have a fluent understanding of the english language? Is it because I have a certain set of barriers for each person, and if they have the potential to be closer than their friendship is more precious and harder to obtain? Is it a quantity thing- if there are more of a single type of person around then it requires more? An identity thing? Something that I just cruelly inflict on people who I think MIGHT get it? I am not sure. It whirlwinded me into having to think more about friendship... again. <Sigh> 

Is this real?

I am sitting in an empty classroom, taking a little of the campus internet to finally update my blog and try to figure out what 2+2 equals in Turkey. This morning I woke up, had a coffee and played guitar and then took a bus along the channel to my university. I walked down the steep university hill towards the south campus, taking in the bobbing boats in Bebek and debating the possibility of taking my longboard to school despite the steep hills and occasional speed-bumps. I grabbed another coffee and a pizza (black olives are briny here, and very tasty in the morning) and wandered the Engineering building to find a room that was not in use. It is such a minor morning. Nothing extraordinary happened, but what I cannot quite believe is that I am back on a university campus after nearly 10 years.

University campuses are  different from community college campuses. Community college lacks the, well, community, that universities try to cultivate. The students are too diverse, focused on different aspects of their lives. Here there is a strong majority of traditional students, all focused on two things: their studies and their social lives. Work and career are still whispers in their souls that they have paid little attention to. They think they are academics. They are here where things are safe. As my instructor for Communications and Media pointed out: here you can try things, you can make mistakes, you can create as many alternative models that you wish, and you do not have any consequences. Academia is a place for the theoretical. It is a place for taking chances. And the students talk about politics and current events and social theory instead of gossiping and complaining about administrative issues. They think that they are academics. Of course, the cats here think that they are lions, so maybe we are all just fooling ourselves, but I will take it while I can get it.