That Day in April....

Nine years ago today Fatih and I got married in a modest ceremony just a few miles from our front door.  It was a ceremony we carefully crafted to represent us and to celebrate our mixed faiths and cultures.  Our readings varied from love poems by Paublo Neruda and Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet to Emily Bronte and a familiar piece of scripture from 1 Corinthians 13:45.78.  The favors we gave our guests came from Turkey, silver evil eye charms and a glossy bag filled with Turkish delights. Our music was a highly varied soundtrack, with milestones of the ceremony marked by our favorite songs.  We danced to Van Morrison's Crazy Love, cut our cake to Mozella's "Can't Stop" and danced for hours to Turkish pop songs and all the modern top forty rock we could muster. Looking back I know it was truly our day, a day we designed to be about us and for us to share with our friends and family.  I think we got it 100% right. People still talk about that day, about my Dad's amazing speech, my sister's hilarious gangster-style toast or the surprise belly dancer we hired to kick off the party. 

Today we are both a littler grayer. Fatih is a lot thinner and we are parents to an amazing 7 year old who makes life so much more wonderful than either one of us imagined it could be.  That day in April, when I thought life couldn't be more perfect, I was totally wrong. Marriages are full of perfect moments...just not in one continuous stream.  Marriage isn't about everything always being perfect, always being "just right".  It can be hard, so hard sometimes and there will always be rough patches that wear you down. As the years pass, as the memories of that brilliant day fade and those vows and promises seem to grow fainter, sometimes you even question.  In the most difficult times, you may even have doubts.  Then, you have one of those unassuming, simply perfect moments in life and you are astounded by how complete and infinite your love is and you are so grateful for the life you have built together. And you think, in all the world this is my person, this is my best friend, this is my family and I would do anything, go anywhere, be anything for him.

Marriage is work, even the best ones. Its about having faith and hope and a little perspective too.  Love is recognizing the absolute perfection in imperfection and the grace in loving someone with everything you are.

Fatih, I still love you like crazy, everyday with everything I am. Happy Anniversary!

Human Nature and the Beautiful Sarcastic

"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
DAY 939 October 3, 2016
Prompt: “In so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to find rules without exception.” George Eliot
What do you think makes the human nature more interesting: its compliance with the rules or its deviations into exceptions?

Over the past several months I have been thinking a lot about human nature. In the past year it has been difficult to find the beauty in the human condition, to find the exceptional amid the noxious masses. There has been no shortage of stories about what the worst of human nature has to offer the world. It is hard not to see us as a species hell bent on destroying our planet and each other. We are so easily tore asunder by greed and rage. We are so easily misaligned, mislead.

The other evening my daughter wanted to watch "Book of the Life" by Jorge R. Gutierrez. It is a colorful and vibrant animated movie that tells the story of three Mexican children and how their destinies entwine. The story revolves around two key figures in Mexican mythology, La Muerta and Xibalba. La Muerta, pictured as a beautiful woman in a wide red sombrero and dress adorned with candles, is an ancient goddess. She rules the Land of the Remembered and loves all mankind. She is a champion of human nature, celebrating their ability to love and forgive, to have passion and mercy. She understands that humans are flawed and adores them for all their beautiful chaos. By contrast Xibalba, her estranged lover and fellow deity, has no faith in human beings. He rules the Land of the Forgotten and believes humankind is irredeemable and doomed. He takes delight in watching them fail and often intercedes to easily tempt them into malicious pursuits. It is a rich story, woven in a brilliant tapestry of Latin myth and history. I found myself thinking about it more later than night.

I thought a lot about La Muerta and Xibalba, and wondered where my own alliance would fall. Have I lost faith in humanity? Do I always assume that when pressed, most people do the wrong things? Do I believe human nature makes us more exceptional and interesting or threatens to make us irredeemable for all its deviation and darkness? Or, like La Muerta, do I still have faith in humanity? Do I still celebrate the human species, marvel at our abilities, at our capacity for love and kindness? Most days I think I would have to side with La Muerta and I feel comforted than I've not yet lost hope for us all.


"Blogging Circle of Friends "
DAY 1419: October 3, 2016
Prompt: October is Sarcastic Month or National Sarcastic Awareness Month
Have you ever written a sarcastic character? Do you know anyone who is sarcastic? Is sarcasm another form of humor?

Sarcasm is a life skill, simply put. I know people who have honed sarcasm to an exacting science and regularly employee it with such expertise that I am left in awe. It takes a highly developed quick wit that I am admittedly envious of. I've never attempted to write a sarcastic character, believing that to really capture it correctly, one would have to understand the nuances of sarcasm. While I am I fan, I am not by nature, given to sarcasm aside from using it on my highly excited and often overly dramatic six year old. My six year old is decidedly not a fan. She, like me, tends toward being more literal. I think there is a danger in using too much sarcasm too. I recently listened to an audio book called, "Poe", in which the main character was a young, 20-something medium who's tendency toward sarcasm ending up making him wholly unlikeable for me. It wore too thinly against a plot that was also a bit threadbare. I think it takes a good balance to manage any character with particularly strong personality traits. I think it can bring a humorous element to the story but if overused, it can have an adverse effect on some readers.

Misery and Faith

I've been writing/blogging now for many years. I've had at least one blog running for over ten years and its served as a rather rare and consistent snapshot of my life through some of the most substantial moments of the journey.  I find its been a good habit to randomly select a page and revisit that entry, it helps me reconnect with where I've been and most important, who I've been in the past. I has been a revealing practice that has given me a lot of insight to the person I am today and the choices I continually make in my life. 

Here is one from April 12th, 2007 that I entitled: Misery and Faith

The rain outside is pelting my office window. Certainly today's gloom factor weighs in somewhere are 9 on the 1-10 scale of such things. My little dog is sleeping in front of the space heater by my feet. I reach down to pet his soft head occasionally, as if to assure myself he is still there and that the good and gentle elements of my life are still alive and breathing. Not bearing to wade into the pile of stress-producing work on my desk, I've busied myself with seemingly more trivial tasks; looking up the addresses of long lost relatives, reorganizing my purse, filling out the health questionnaire for my new doctor. Its been a difficult morning. I woke up this morning cocooned around myself. I drove the sleep off with a hotter than advisable shower and loaded the dog and the latest bills into the car. I put more gas in...again. On the drive to work I was suddenly assaulted by a memory I can scarcely recall now. Driving to work under the pelting rain though, it was clear and bright. It was the memory of walking along the sandy path that curled around the Avery Point college campus. It had to be Spring, because though the sun was out and warm against my back, the trees were just beginning to bud and the air was still crisp with a winter not to recently forgotten. I was barefoot and he was dilligent in pointing out the little green land mines of goose poop so I could avoid stepping in one. He was walking beside me, as he often did, his lumbering gait keeping him just ahead of me. It was a memory so vivid but so fleeting it left me floundering about, my mind trying to re-access all the elements but coming up empty. It was from the time before all the darkness, when our lives were still comfortably linked by common threads of friendship, work and an appreciation of the sea and this beautiful, open place. Was it a message? A unexplicable communication from the beyond? And if it was, what was it meant to convey? I am more a daughter of science and matter than one of spirit and faith, but if I were to suspend that instinctual need to have all explained for a moment and just listen to my heart, I think I'd find a message. I think it was a reminder from my dear friend that life is full of small, contented moments and not to lose myself too far in the low and darker ones. The rain will stop and the sun will come out. The grass will get greener and the sea will beckon me again and there will be sweet afternoon walks when all I have to worry about is dodging piles of goose poop and breathing deeply of the ocean air.

Call Them Not Champions

I've taken a few days off from writing, afraid maybe of what I might shake lose should I attempt to express myself in electronic ink in my current state of mind after the recent devastating news stories. I've avoided listening to the opinions and commentary from our abysmal choices for candidates in the wake of yet another hate-fueled attack on American soil. Instead, I've tried, as I often have, to find the humanity at work in the chaos and place my faith there. It is easy at times to believe this country has become so divided, so crippled by political agendas that we have mortally wounded ourselves and have stalled our evolution as human beings. As humans we are endowed with these amazing abilities to think and feel, to design and engineer, to philosophize, to create beauty, to heal, to become champions of innovations, to evolve. Despite all our abilities and potential, we are so easily distracted by the insipid, captivated by the fear, lead astray by false prophets and their empty promises. I refuse to accept that all our fates are left in the hands of a cultivated and practiced liar who doesn't deserve our trust or an obnoxious and small-minded egotist who can not change his bigoted nature for the good of uniting an ailing nation. I refuse to accept that, as a nation build on the ideals of diversity and tolerance, that we would build walls or let the acts of a few poisoned extremists corrupt our perceptions of our fellow citizens. I refuse to believe we have failed our children by creating a sense of entitlement rather than rewarding them for excellence and achievement. I refuse to accept that we are a nation who would neglect our veterans or condemn others on the basis of their gender or sexual preference. I refuse to believe that as humans we can not appreciate that the love for God, our love for others, not only comes in many forms but originates from a place of peace and respect for all those who believe. I refuse to accept that hate has become a defining feature of our genetic makeup. I have more faith in us as humans. I refuse to accept those who falsely claim to be our champions and instead look for those quietly doing good, promoting the positive, evolving into the best versions of themselves they can be and encouraging the same in others.

“If you don't choose heroes, heroes will be chosen for you, and they will not represent values that empower you, they will represent powers that will enslave you”― Russell Brand


"Blogging Circle of Friends "
Day 1308 June 14, 2016
Let's talk about first impressions. I read an article in Family Circle about the importance of your front door on your home. They say that your front door gives an impression and says a lot about you the resident. Do you agree or disagree on it's importance? Do you feel it matters what the outside shows or is it more important to you what the inside reflects?

I hope my front door doesn't tell my story since its been adorned by a Christmas wreath and we are already in June. It my front door where to make a statement, it might be an unflattering one unfortunately. In general, I think outward appearances are far less important that what is inside. These days with social media, it is so easy to perpetrate one's life as being something it is not just by posting beautiful images and giving the impression of perfection and contentment. In much the same way, I believe a person's actions speak louder than mere words.


"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
Day 828 June 14, 2016
Prompt: “A perfect life makes horrible art.” -- Chris Rock, comedian
If you had a perfect life, would you give it up to create brilliant artwork of any kind?

I don't believe in the concept of a perfect life. No one's life is perfect because that's a very relative term. For me, my writing often comes from a place of turmoil, a place of extreme emotion so I welcome the dips and curves of an eventful life. It helps keep me creative, keeps me honest in my chosen "art".