Rich and Sushi

Dearest Aideni,

Here are pictures of sushi eaten on a sunday and Rich enjoying the reality of it. One of the wonderful things about sushi is the spicy additive of ginger, which rich doesn’t like but I love, wasabi paste, a green asian horseradish that’s extremely hot and spread in the tinies chunks across the sushi, an soy sauce. This latter element, poured modestly over the morsel, gives a salty, meaty dimension and adds succulence to the somewhat dried rice.

I know you don’t like fish, but I thought I’d at least share some of the excitement, if possible, of Rich’s and my dinner hour man Sundays.

Love,

Stephen

Round Lake Pictures

Dear Aiden,

Here are some pictures I took of where I was Sunday when you called. Included is a distant shot of the car I rented on the dirt parking area, views from within the car, and views where I held my camera phone millimeters from the water itself. I love you much, and thank you for calling.

Gushing affection,

Stephen

A Description of Goa

Hi, Aideni!

My friend Marcus sent me a message saying that he’s in Goa and will be returning to Thailand soon. I clicked on the word Goa, which was hyperlinked, and I found this rag-tag fanciful description which I thought you’d enjoy.

Yours,

Stephen

Introducing Goa

Those who haven’t visited Goa tend to imagine it as some kind of Indian Costa Brava but with more cosmic karma and, thanks to this image, many people vow never to set foot there. However, Goa, like everywhere in India, is never quite what you expect. In places the infamous hash-fuelled days of Goa’s golden hippy years are still alive and kicking, especially around Vagator & Chopora, while in others, like Calangute & Baga, the all-inclusive package holiday is king. But these are two very narrow sides of the Goan experience and anyone who spends much time here will discover that Goa contains more variety and vitality than almost anywhere else in India. Head into Panaji (Panjim), one of India’s smallest and most likeable state capitals, and, instead of self-contained tourist resorts and trinket-selling dreadlocks, you’ll discover a Portuguese pantry of flaking architectural delicacies spiced up with Indian exuberance. Inland, you can stand in greener-than-green fields picking vanilla pods, bathe with elephants or visit market towns like Mapusa.

The main draws of Goa are the beaches, such as Anjuna, which are every bit as clichè-beautiful as they’re supposed to be, but just as much of an attraction is its intriguing fusion of colonial Portugal and modern India. There is almost nowhere else in India where the influence of the former colonial overlords remains as strong as it does in Goa and it’s not at all unusual to find crucifixes hanging on walls next to posters of Shiva and groups of elderly Goan men conversing in Portuguese. Wander the crumbling cathedrals and basilicas of Old Goa, for a fascinating insight into this colonial legacy. Goa may not be as cool as it once was but it’s certainly just as magical.

Constructing More Pleasureable Pathways

Dear Aiden,

It has been seven days since I’ve given up my worrisome habit altogether. Fortunately I’m on the Releasing Habits chapter of the sedona method which has given me some novel things to consider. I can use all the help I can get, and I’m glad it has this promise. It makes sense, too – it offers forgiveness allowing you to release if you’ve had a relapse of this habit as well as allowing yourself to release on the habit prior to acting out on it.

I hereby offer you help and declare that from March 18th, as I stopped my particular habit, we shall both dwindle in our worries and resentments. Who knows? Maybe they’ve stopped altogether, and in their place are flourishing deep images of happiness and a gorgeous bond so that we know how to recognize them and make use of them when we see them.

I am thinking of this image – as peculiar as it seems, I’ve named it pleasurable pathways. In an article I read about narcotics addiction, apparently the addict gets a reduced number of channels through which seratonin and other endorphins can flow in the body. When I thought I was angry yesterday it’s exactly how I felt: that pleasure liquids were trying to flow through channels that were too parched and dry and sucked together like gaunt cheeks to let the liquids flow; hence my frustration. Analogously, imagine that my liquid spirit also want to flow to your family, and our bodies want to flow through the routes to each other. Should we be happily married, we shall want to flow via airlines, boat routes, trainlines and other pleasuring pathways from country to country. Imagine the nervous system like our map of Istanbul. We want happiness to flow through all streets and tramlines. We now know how many people speak english. We now know there are street names on the corners of the buildings. XOXOXOX

Why I Love You, Part I (in progress)

You are the kind of kindness who embodies types of forms. Gentle with proprietary giggles, compassionate with the bloom of paint into water (like that video of a bowl we watched at Istanbul Modern). You allow me to loll with sanguineness inside myself. You lay dreams like glistening no rooz eggs who will, yes, darling, hatch. You throw standards like the clothes off your body, as high as you can fling them, offering to vest the moon, sun and stars with them. They smile back at you and let gravity return the modest favor.

You are as thoughtful as a person can become looking into impeccable water with a millimeter of surface tension over the rim of a clear glass. Many days you are a completely new person to me, freshly born, a morning soul. I love your blinking open eyes. You stretch out with volumes of the masters; solid companions as we join the queue of philisophical nomads. You bustle with accomplishments. Just that you try to play the violin, try to make art, is to me art. You have accomplished a huge dream, dear! Alert your other dreams! You have become a true doctor – a graduate of the best university! Enjoy this, please. Give succor like a color bloom in water to your hard worker. Then, when you are quenched, justified, satisfied, what dreams might you entertain in the future?

You have respectable stock and interest in learning; curiosity in art and science. You have in bed a delightful body to inform my waking depths by holding you. Alive with quirks, nerves, aspirations, you are friendly like a silken puppy who nonetheless makes a gentle playmate to butterflies.

You talk to me compassionately with those in need; you give where you are able; you use your rational mind to give advice and I love you for it. I am gratified by the way you learn and teach – profoundly through whimsy and invented games with unstatic rules that mate and bear children. Open with your two-sided emotions – you deal them to my many personalities like cards in a game we all are fond of, at which we want to win. Multilingual, your branching tongue (which I kiss with pleasure) desires to grow, guide, nourish the many.

No Rooz Tavlodet

Precious exquisite Aiden,

It’s so pleasant to think of the new year referred to as New Day. How it reminds us of the dramatic freshness with every dawn, and even can suggest the more miniscule – that every hour, minute, heartbeat is an entirely fresh and new event, as if we can allow ourselves to die and be reborn any time we like. A question we might have, experiencing the genuine power of rebirth, is what have we become this time around? Are we a plant, an elephant, a rare strain of algae, a lover of politics? Are we paramountly disdainful of unwashed feet yet in love with bacteria? Where, who and what and why?

You ask me Why? so much I sometimes ponder it when we’re not talking. Increasingly I haven’t known what to say, how to answer. But it wasn’t always like that. It seems in earlier days of discussion I spoke more deliberately, factually in my candor, speculated less, so that if a Why? came up I could have at least two or three options with which to answer. Maybe I had more mental resources then. At least it seems this way to me now. Or maybe I was just free to say “I don’t know,” more often. Or you just didn’t ask Why? so boldly and abstractly. Why? Why are you so beautiful, Aiden? Why are we so generous to the world and so in love with each other? Why are we able to caress each other to sanguinity with mere words, motions, intonations at polarities of the globe?

Reading your blog, I seemed to see the colors green, like palms or olives, and orange, like a tiger or a bloated sun dipping into the horizon and awaiting its constellations of prey. These striking colors, however, were made lovely and demure in a glaze of heat; in the sweat of the jungle and as they commingled with the brown-blacks of human Africa. I loved it, felt my root ancestry in it. Do you feel that Africa is your birthplace, too?

Today I thought in the gym of writing you a blog. I didn’t feel like it – maybe because I was in the gym, but I pondered – despite my distance recently I want to reach out to you in love from some new aspect of myself. The other parts have become overused and strained. Love, an ideal, sets a miraculous standard, and requires growth (and how deliciously so it often does!) Could I make the clam foot of my soul tongue through its shell and caress and nourish a very soft part of you who has remained untouched in the anxieties of our tempestuous online love affair?

I intend to touch you as softly as fertile mud, like an overripe avocado’s nutritious insides or a lukewarm glaze of olive oil. I intend to be as smooth as the marble in the Cemberlitas Hamami and appeal to the tastebuds in your eyes the way that strawberry tart we shall someday acquire did from behind the sugar crystal of its Istanbul glass.

Yours,

Stephen

My dear love,
I am so blessed to be able to write to you again. I think God of seasons is helping me in the process since I feel so much new energy and enthusiasm since lady spring has shown her new gown. How can one be depressed or gloomy when you enter the street many new born blossoms stare at you happily with the widest silliest smile? You happen to smile back unintentionally. I am happy we celebrate our new year this time of the year ..it helps one to feely truly refreshed. I miss you so much .I have been in khakali in the last two days so it is comforting to be at home again. I told you I will tell you series of stories about our imaginary trips around the planet. Now here I am to start with the first episode. I don’t know if they will ever happen in actual life but am sure we can enjoy the fantasy equally even. Let’s begin our journey:

Africa, Zambia

I don’t know how and when we actually decided to enter this totally captivating strange world with which I feel no harmony. But being here feels like living at least five or six new lives. Time has different meaning here. you tend not to care about getting old or being late. the only importance time has here is the time you are alive. only when you are at your death bed you know the time is ending. You can touch the effect of world’s wrong politics here directly. No politician needed to explain things to you in a beautiful fashion. You see things yourself.
I remember we had so many doubts about what to do in future and what we wanted from life. we were so worried about marriage and its effect on our lives. we had a very unstable shaky situation. constant worries and disappointment., it was when you suggested to go to Africa .because you thought that your connection with your dark colored children somehow affects our relationship in a beautiful style .So I finally agreed to go to another trip with you and this time to an absolutely new world. A true adventure, Africa,.
We decided to go as volunteers since it helped the idea of connecting our souls to their unfamiliar world. as if god needed a few more extra hands to organize the mess there. we came here by the help of some children helping foundation or what. we had no idea what to expect.
Here we are about a month. The nature is truly intact here. She can be herself without worrying about her looks or manners. Like a woman who is married for 20 years. No longer she worries about her weight or her messy hair in the morning. and you simply love her wild appearance. We live in some campus .many colorful tents. but we have to make some wooden houses in next month or so since the rain season is close. you are so excited to make a tree house for us. and whenever you talk about it I see two little stars dancing in your adorable swamp irises, which makes my heart thrill. People here have a new style of communication .they use different parts of their beautiful chocolate bodies to express what they mean and we barely understand them. It is magical to see how glamorously happy they all look despite of their poverty and primitive life style. Children seem to be so enthusiastic to connect with us. I watched you the other day how you played football with a group of little boys ,it felt like you have been doing that all your life. such a perfect harmony.
The forest is so deep and damp. she breathes heavily. the air is stagnant. many different insects fly constantly around. and sometimes you hear noises you have never heard .the unknown possible source of the sound sometimes scares you. But it also adds to its charm. listening to the music nature makes. butterflies are as big as my palm here .the colors are unbelievable. such a great artist this God must be! Adapting to this new kind of living is somehow difficult but it helps you to connect with the source of creation more easily. You no more suffer from mental masturbations you used to have in big cities. Rules and laws don’t work here. You have to be creative to survive. Through helping you gain life. You feel fulfilled. you enjoy eating oats or cereals more than all delicious foods you used to eat. Because you know it keeps you alive. you have a new standard of value here. you feel disconnected from the rest of the world but somehow more connected to the common soul of people. you wander like a lost child absorbed to colors and dangers ..Learning how to walk your own way.
I love you.
Aiden

XOXO – a little poem of you and me one day, I hope ;)

Hi, Aiden,

It was thrillingly delightful talking with you by phone yesterday. Here are some more sincere hopes written somewhat like a poem.

Love,
Stephen

Two Scores Long

Retired from a career
of the heart’s laughter
two scores long, cheeks
scored with wet light,
we sidle our seats into
side-by-side twin chairs and
one finds, with the mind
of one’s hand, the other’s
mindful hand. Mine
yours or yours mine, we
bother not to be aware.

Leaves Leak

Hi, Deluxe!

Here is a poem I made directly after we talked – making some kind of broader communication of our IM chat, reinvested into you. I may make changes, as usual since I only spent 20 or 30 minutes on this. But it feels so pristine and dear to get it out!
Love,
Stephen

Leaves Leak

Baby leaf of a yearning green,
a comma addendum
to long lines of stoic oak,
waiting for the last manure
pastures to dethaw,
let’s get married young.

Naked oak above: You are
Hercules and hydra
embattling the winter sun. The same
wood which gnarls the sky
was climbed by my antique
progenitors. This same
sun obfuscating the caller
on my ringtone iphone
made a bland afternoon of
Thrace and Carthage; shone
in that unblinking blinded
Cyclops eye.

Winter is corroded by
the uncombed children
of spring. Former frost
muddies the revelation of
Medusa’s hair at the
base of each forest
trunk that falls.

Darling Medusa, even your
stones aren’t
forever.

We are free to be silly and
unprofessional again. From our
deepest weakness spring
forth navies of
generations. Baby leaves
leak through statues of our
former selves.

Can You Read This?

Dear Aiden,

I love your curiosity. Here is a picture

by Jean-Michel Basquiat. Does it amaze you as it does me?

Dear Aiden, you are a deeply aesthetic young lady with a marvellous shepherdess sense with all kinds of people. I have never known such gentleness as yours. I am bathed and made new in it.

Love,

Stephen