Tag Archives: Turkish tea

The puppets get worried, up Turkish tea infusions

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During the nights, the little cenghi puppets (a.k.a. the little dancing ladies in English) plied me with herbal Ada Çayı so I could sleep…but there was an extra empty glass there, and I think it was my Father’s glass. I miss him.

After our return from Turkey (you can read about how the puppets handled that right here, over there and just down there as well) and my Father’s passing, there was a month of fog and gloom – and just general stuck-ness.

Even Karagöz moped a bit, but just a bit.

And then, when the family could gather, there was a wonderful memorial service, and somehow I felt I could move on again. And move I did, with the dog, right on down to our nest-shack in Provincetown. I just got the heck on out as fast as I could – leaving M. behind to work between long weekends with us.

But, I found I had moved on to not much – my mind wasn’t capable of much.  It just felt like being a recluse, living in seclusion and shutting down.  It wasn’t, Perihan Hanım (my fairy godmother puppet) reminds me, “feeling like” doing that, it was just all I could do.  And

For the first three weeks, I spent my days alternately staring at the white-raftered ceiling (which turns from sunny white to neon blue at dusk) and the ever-changing blue-grey-green bay out of my window.

Books left for my summer reading lay limp in the humidity, untouched by human hands that could (but didn’t) bring them into mind-life.

The laptop remained encased in a click-closure.

The freshly made bed was untouched – in favor of the couch and the breeze by that night-light window.

Food carefully picked for a healthy retreat remained in the fridge, passed by for cranberry juice and crackers with many glasses of rabbit’s blood Turkish Rize Çayı from the by-now very worried little chorus of dancing ladies during the day – and herbal Ada Çayı during the nights.

“We think,” the ladies said in quiet, demure unison, “that perhaps you would have felt better sooner if you had followed the Turkish burial tradition – the one about three days?” Sighing and wringing their hands, the little cenghi then felt badly, saying “we apologize, we know this is not very culturally sensitive of us, we know you have a different tradition, but we overheard this in M.’s subconscious mind.”

“I agree, little ladies,” I demurred, while blowing on the tea glass between my fingertips, “you may be onto something there, but I am glad we waited for the family to be around in order to go through it all together.”  Feeling a slight bit of closure, I stood upright if for not other reason than to just move – to change things up a bit. And as I did, a copy of the Provincetown Banner newspaper M. had picked up the previous weekend fell to the floor.

And as if the universe had offered me an invitation, there it was, an announcement about Provincetown’s Carnival 2012 – with “Space Odyssey” as the theme. And, instantly, I knew what I had to do. I knew it in phrase form before the vision appeared in my mind screen – the phrase just tumbled out of my mouth to the dog’s curious ears – “Ottoman Space Invaders.” Safiye Rakkase, the vainglorious dancing girl puppet, jumped up onto the coffee table with a banshee scream of joy – “FINALLY – she said – COSTUMES TO MAKE!”

As if a puppet myself, controlled by Safiye Rakkase’s glimmering puppet strings, I sat up on the couch, googled “silver lamé fabric” and immediately ordered 12 yards before heading out to take a walk in the night sky.

To be continued…

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“Let nothing die inside:” Karagöz puppet chaos and wisdom

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old ship compass north south east west compass rose

The puppets, and M., encourage me to go more east than west in the way I live my life...this old ship's compass sits on our coffee table,reminding us of the presence of different approaches that exist in our lives...today, the puppets are all over the compass rose in this regard!

When I last left you, I was basking the glow of a purple, lavender-scented foot massage and paraffin bath.  OK, at least my feet were basking in that glow.  I awoke this morning to the horrific beat of my heart and the anxiety of knowing that I am desperately behind on work.  Even with all the “no” answers I am giving now that I have the security of tenure almost gained (one more hoop to jump through, the Board of Trustees needs to rubber-stamp my letter), the work is just piling up higher and higher.  Not enough hours in the day, etc.  I often lament M.’s ability to clear his mind, take time and space for himself, and just generally take it easy. “Eastern approach, canım, is a saner way of life.  Join me in it?” he says, smiling on some days, his hand outstretched.  I am rarely able to let myself do so, I am sad to say.

Today, I bypassed the Turkish tea offered by the chorus of dancing ladies – sweeping aside the bed covers and making a mad dash for the kitchen.  Instead of taking their kind morning offer, I went straight for the red bull Nepali-style super sugary milky tea to blast myself into productivity.  I started to furiously make lists, Skype with my struggling student research group, catch up with a former student, talk with an administrator about a failing student at school, sort papers and type – seemingly all at once.  Slowly, the tears started streaming down my cheeks.  “How am I ever going to get all of this done and do a good job and do right by my students?” I wailed to nobody in particular as my dog looked at me sleepily from nest on the floor, one ear drooping sleepily across the room.

The puppets looked worried.  Karagöz tried doing a few back flips to make me laugh, no dice, just more tears.  The little chorus of dancing ladies began to chant for Peride Hanım, my fairy godmother, to come and save the day (she hasn’t shown yet, and they are still chanting) and Khadijah took time out from preparation for her impending nuptials to try to massage my neck, which didn’t help, as Kenne, the Queen of Manners and Ladylike Behavior was berating me for not “just” being a housewife and instead allowing myself to be dressed in pajamas, a plastic apron, a light blue pashmina scarf and mis-matched socks with messy hair and no lipstick at 12:20 p.m. on a Monday.  “You need to quit this job, m’lady! This is TOO much.  This is not a life fit for a lady.”  Karagöz interjects: “damn, so much ranting today, how bout that??”

Hacıyatmaz grins as all of this goes on, wobbling back and forth as he does 365 days per year, reminding me of all the personal writing that is welled up inside me like an impossibly perfect and ready to be sliced watermelon on the hottest of summer days.  “You must get it out – you have that new Turkish mother-in-law idea that your e-friend gave you to work on that is already half written in your head, what are you waiting for?”  The write-a-matrix just turns to look at me and starts cracking her whip on either side of the massive stack of papers that represent all I am to do today.  All the while, I am wailing.  And at just the crescendo of this madness in moments marbled together in a pounding heart, I get the email from a journal editor explaining that my review of a manuscript is 2 months overdue – and this one hadn’t even been on my radar!

Victoria Falls entered my living room, and all the puppets were washed away.  After the falls receded into the memory of my unconscious, I looked around at my somewhat clean slate.  Yes, my life is cushy, I am financially stable, I have a dream job, I have health insurance, a partner I love, a family who cares about me and friends galore.  I know all of the truths and reframes but in this moment, I am still at my wit’s end.  I can understand people’s desires to “tune in and drop out” and today, I am not far from it.  Yes, I put too much pressure on myself to do good work, but isn’t that part of what is important?  So much to figure out. So much to do.  So many limits to set.

As I listened to the water dripping around me, I sat, slump-backed in my great grandfather’s chair, staring at the blinking cursor on my screen.  And slowly, one of the shadow figures made their way across it.  Yehuda Rebbe appeared there, looking at me intently and gently and truth be told, he made things one iota better today.  Well, at least he stopped the tears, for now. And at least he got me back into a somewhat-functional-mode. He just came up onto my laptop, stood in the middle of the screen, directed the puppets to hand me a Kleenex, and said these words:

“The tragedy of life is not death, but what we let die inside of us while we live. A man named Norman Cousins said this, and I don’t know who he is, but he is wise.  I suggest you meditate on this today, as you try to do some of this work.  But whatever you do, don’t let anything die inside of you today, m’lady.  Take the eastern route today, if you can, not this nonsensical, unhealthy, soul-stomping western route to mania and mayhem”

So, that is the goal for today.  Nothing will die inside.  The puppets all seemed to agree with this, so for once, there is consensus in the puppet household called my head.  Let’s see what happens tomorrow.

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Of Turkish tea – and t-tests

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It’s been a grading bonanza this weekend and on into this week.  As I turn the pages, make my comments, labor over assigning grades (I hate them) and figure out how to turn my responses into a meaningful learning moment for some of my struggling students (blow to my ego), I am constantly up and down, refilling my Turkish tea glass  with the strong dark brew hewn of Assam and Rize tea leaves.

I learned this mixture from watching M.’s Teyze (maternal aunt) mix proportions of Rize tea (from the Black sea region) with Assam tea (from, presumably, India).  She swears by the mix, as does M.  Once, I tried to supplement rose-petal infused Assam for just plain old Assam, to no good result and the protests of the aging matriarch who was visiting at the time.  “It tastes like soap,” she was reported to say.  Oh well, so much for creativity.

In any case, this weekend, I am getting the tea myself, instead of relying on the little chorus of dancing ladies, who are usually lovely about delivery, as I have exhausted them – “m’lady,” one of them said the other day, “you are drinking SO much tea, is it healthy?” I finally told them how much I appreciated their efforts, but that I could make tea for myself. After much consternation and debate, the little lady puppets decided to let this be as my skills, they tell me, have improved significantly.  Quipping to them with the best of my statistical humor, I asked them if it was statistically significant.  They drew blank looks.  I reminded them that I am grading exams about “independent samples t-tests” and “paired samples t-tests.”  They again drew blank looks and I let the topic drop, but not before Hacivad Bey asked me if I was referring to the Istatistik-i Umumi Idaresi – the Ottoman Empire-era statistics agency who conducted the census between 1891 and 1914.  I just said – “yes, something like that.”  I teach enough statistics in my university, I’d like to give it a break at home, not going to be teaching these puppets statistics anytime soon unless I get another breath of workaholism.  While my tea consumption during this grading phase might be an indicator of workaholism, I would like to think of it more as an endurance-oriented coping mechanism.

TEA...

A Turkish double tea pot (Photo credit: lorises)

But in any case, back to tea.  Gone are the days when I struggled to execute the perfect brewing of Turkish tea (you can read about one such hilarious learning moment here, where I was caught unawares by an early visitor whilst still in my nightgown, and ended up using once-boiled tea only (Horrors! The yabancı gelin (foreign bride) couldn’t make properly brewed tea).  All I have to say is, for someone like me who hates grading as much as I do, the ability to just run down the stairs to refill my glass is a wonderful option to keep me going.

Any guesses about how many tea glasses worth of tea had to be drunk to get through this stack of tests?

Thirty-two.  More than two per test for this class so far, inşallah it will end soon!

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