I Wake Up Torn

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
-E.B. White

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
-Annie Dillard

In a city which overflows with instances of suffering and invitations to pleasure, the question of how to spend the day presses upon us with particular urgency. From the moment we awake, the options overwhelm; to reach out to an individual or community in need, or submit to the immediate stimulation of the senses? To commit to a creative project, or delve into pure hedonism? Hesitating for even an instant will most likely lead to seduction; into the many lures which await.

I, like many other expats who initially planned only to pass through Istanbul or stay for a shorter period of time, am surprised to find myself, 2 years and roughly 730 çay later, still here. People are drawn to Istanbul for all kinds of reasons — East meets West, old meets new, a varied cuisine, hospitable people, rich culture, a chance to learn the language, job or educational opportunities — but, after the honeymoon period, people stay in Istanbul only when enough of their initial intrigue and romanticization of the city remains intact. Some, after just a few months, overwhelmed and underpaid, will leave and never look back. But many, once entranced by the unmistakable soul of the city, will prioritize their desire to make it their home. The erratic work hours, the traffic, the commute, the politics, the occasional brush with death, all become manageable once that crucial leap has been taken.

For those of us who came to Istanbul on our own accord, unforced by political or economic factors, we probably had an image in our mind of what our life would look like here — writing in a sparsely furnished room, playing music on a street corner or on the ferries, painting the daily beauty of the city, aiding refugees, studying Ottoman history, smoking nargile while contemplating the Bosphorus — and though we may of course partake in each of these endeavors, what has impressed me most about living in Istanbul is the city’s ability to sweep you up in an intensified surge of life. You needn’t do anything — the action will come to you. Things will happen. While walking to your local tekel to buy a couple of Bomontis, you’ll see or hear or smell something that will leave a unique imprint on your senses and imagination. You’ll spontaneously try the midye dolma from that guy on the corner who you’ve passed by for months. A fight will break out in a bar. A protest will appear out of thin air. Some captivating face or building facade will catch your eye. You will be moved for no apparent reason at all by the busker’s tune you’ve heard a thousand times before. You’ll stop and stand in the middle of the street, awash in the vibrancy all around you, and you’ll return home invigorated or disheartened, euphoric or disconsolate. In either case, you will be changed. Merely to live in Istanbul is an art.

Time here laps upon itself and floats down the Bosphorus and out to sea. Everything blurs together and you can’t remember if it was one or two summers ago that you last visited home to see your family and friends. You have stayed longer than expected, but are unsure exactly how long that is. There is a mysterious force at work in this city. There is something in the air. And the water. And the raki; some magnetic pulse which lures you out of linear chronology and which, once encountered, makes all other supposedly major metropolises appear dull by comparison. It’s refreshing to periodically venture out of Istanbul, but while walking around other cities you find yourself wondering where all of the people are, where’s the excitement, the noise, the energy, the life? Who needs order and etiquette, tranquility and restraint? You desire chaos, conflict and passion. Istanbul, like a doomed relationship you can’t abandon, draws you back.

The dilemma, alluded to in the introductory quotes, is how best, if you have some particular passion or calling, to commit to it and to retain whatever you may perceive to be your essential self. If you are not mindful (in any city, but particularly this one), you risk losing yourself (which may, in fact, be what you wanted in the first place) to the manic momentum of Istanbul. If you are not conscious of how you spend your time, it will be spent for you. Every day after work, you are faced with a simple question: Stay in or go out? Remain in your room and get down to whatever it is you feel most strongly about, or step out into the stream of being which flows perpetually past your front stoop. Attempt only to dip your toe in and the current will snag you and carry you away and you’ll wake up the next day in a stranger’s bed, on the other side of the Bosphorus, with a mean raki headache, a half-eaten durum in your hand, and a pet turtle gnawing at that very toe you so naively used to test the waters.

Awareness. It’s about awareness. How we yearn, when bogged down with work and petty obligation, for the precious free time to pursue what really matters to us. And yet, when granted a wide-open day, how desperately we seek to fill it up with every kind of endeavor but the one to which we feel most urgently drawn. A single day, at any rate, is not enough. If we are to truly commit to something we care about, whether a creative discipline or a social cause, we must carve out regular time for it. We needn’t be obsessive and reclusive hermits, but we must learn to turn down that ominous offer for ‘just one beer’ if we are to make any real progress in the direction of our aspirations. It isn’t easy. Planning and plotting, as a form of procrastination, are far more comfortable. We are able, before actually engaging with the complexities of a daily discipline, to indulge in idealized notions of what could be. We possesses great, latent works and endless supplies of compassion within us — we just haven’t gotten around to expressing them yet. This, of course, is a cop out. And, so long as we never act, there’s simply no way to know whether or not it’s true.

It seems that the art of living in Istanbul is a matter of one’s ability to deftly weave between the various, intensified modes of being — work and play, solitude and encounter, creativity and kindness. After stretches of action, reflection; following engagement, retreat. To seek balance in a city of extremes. To have a particular direction in mind, while allowing enough space to be periodically swept up in spontaneous revelry. And to always leave room, as I have now, for ‘just one beer’.

Images courtesy of the author.