Cigarettes In Istanbul

13 hours stuck in a plane will get you just about anywhere, it got me to Istanbul. So many images rush through ones head when they hear the name of “the city.” Thinking of men in fezzes, covered women, old buildings, men with eye patches, and greasy street vendors peddling their trinkets claiming to be from some era that time forgot. The Istanbul I find now is so much different than those exotic far away places that we were told existed in old black and white films of Hollywood's golden age. The sun rises over the Bosphorus as I wait at the Besiktas ferry landing, and I realize that not even the weather is like you would think of a middle eastern city near the Mediterranean. It's cold, plain and simple, but it allows for a certain beauty. The sunlight pierces the clouds and I can see a streak of golden sunshine jet across the water onto the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, buildings carrying the burdens of a long and sorrowful history. Basking in the sunlight, motionlessly surveying the city, bearing witness to a turbulent nation, feverishly trying to hold on to traditions and nationhood while being mercilessly pulled into the undertow of a globalizing world which seems bent on attaching it's marionette strings from far away invisible hands. A city that has always existed in the margins between east and west, is now being forced to take sides in a world of stark absolutes.

A place where... everyone smokes. If the people of Istanbul quit cold turkey, then RJ Reynolds would go bankrupt. It seems smoking has a different stigma her than it does in America. In the U.S anti smoking ads have reduced cigarettes to something that only low class trailer park residents do. As if cigarette ash was only worthy of falling on some fat slobs greasy shirt while he devours a TV dinner and pounds a tall boy. Istanbul is a land where smoking is still cool, yes I said it, smoking is cool. In this way it reminds me of a European city, complete with cafes, shops and cobble stone walkways. However underneath this very vibrant and modern city lies a steady uneasiness. The calls to prayer 5 times a day over the loudspeakers do just enough to remind you that you are, however, in a very middle eastern metropolis. Where people are restricted from doing some of the basic things afforded to Americans living in the U.S. I can't offend Turkey or anything Turkish with my speech in fear of retaliation from the government. If the wrong person hears me, I could face jail time or deportation. Freedom of speech is the hallmark of American democracy, and I feel, without it a system of government cannot be called such.

All of this is however hidden by her beauty, and the sounds of her streets. Listening to the sounds of men shouting to sell fish, gypsies holding babies asking for alms, and the sounds of the flying seagulls who have just followed a ferry begging for some scraps of bread, one can forget the past by living in the ancient city. Much like one trades forgiveness for a lover's smile.

The Fugitive City

The Buddha perched on Ba Gua mountain is watching over his flock, in a city of outlaws, the seekers waiting and wanting. Just below bustles a town not so much different from our home towns, but this place offers us a way to flee our old lives, and live in a state of forgetfulness. A never never land of rich new smells, and strange faces. It is a sea of possibilities, but also a stepping stone that so easily becomes a foundation if the excuses are timed right, or the roots of complacency are allowed to sink in and take hold. A place where the cheap cigarettes burn away our past, and the flowing alcohol helps us to dull the pain of knowing we turned our backs on the ones we loved for the chance to challenge the unknown, in the fugitive city.

Some mornings I wake up and look outside with the same questions bouncing around my skull: What am I doing here? Do any of us really know what pulled us in? What was the sirens song that we found so irresistible, that we crashed upon this rock. Did we choose her, or did she choose us? We few wayward strays looking for something more, but finding only each other. We come, we go, knowing that each hello must someday spawn a goodbye, and each goodbye means forever.

It's funny, they call us teachers, but if they actually found out how little we know, they never would have hired us. Inside we are still kids, trying to outrun the hands of time reminding us that we can't stay young forever. The “responsible” contacts back home and biological clocks try to push us back into reality, but we don't ever want to grow up. We want to pretend our lives away lying to ourselves that we have plans and direction, but really, we are just stalling and hoping that time wont notice us under its radar. That's what makes us fugitives, we are all escapees from the bonds of normal society. The spouse would become a warden in our jail, the white picket fence would make up the bars, and driving in our steel coffins to work in a cubicle would be our hard labor; penance for being born in a digital age of consumer slave societies. We refuse to strap on the house arrest ankle bracelets of our credit histories, and languish under a life that would be no life at all. We realized that knowing exactly what we don't want is better than not knowing what we do want, and we are prepared to take our chances as outlaws here in Changhua, the fugitive city.

The Fugitive City part two

The quiet times. That's when my deafening thoughts reach their peak. It's amazing how often I let myself drown in the decibels of this inner space, as deep as the blue sea that surrounds this island at the edge of the world. If I can accumulate so much in 28 years, I wonder just how far away from real peace a lifetime will take me. I feel like I am leading some kind of double life. In the daytime I experience pure innocence in the eyes of the children I see, only to erase their lessons they teach me in the nighttime. The empty pleasures of cheap merriment seem to do a good job replacing the rewarding hard work I do with kids. The funny thing about equilibrium is that always breaking even never gets you very far ahead, but maintaining this homeostasis is the only thing that seems to make sense here.

Working with kids tends to put things in a bazaar retrospective. They remind me of a time when my greatest concern was choosing which playground toy I was going to play with, and whether I was going to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or baloney. I never thought about bills and money and war and news and.... whatever. In a way I am still like that. I chose which pub to go to and I could care less about the dark underbelly of the city, namely, the gangster element. I am told, that a while back there was a crack down on the mafia in Taiwan, They were chased out of most of the big cities and most of them decided to flee like the rest of us to Changhua, a safe heaven for all fugitives. It provides an interesting dynamic to the town; the people ranging from hard working salt of the earth, to the weeds of the mafia that seek to strangle out any profits one might gain through honest livelihoods. Where do we fit in, the lofty teachers? We charge three times what we need because we speak in what the Taiwanese think is perfect English, with our golden tongues that spout the honey of our native accents. I know what we are really selling for their money, that is, just an idea. I know they will never sound like we do no matter how long or hard they study, but still they cling to this idea that only educated white people can somehow transfer our silver speech patterns to those who pay top dollar.

“Heaven awaits you on the other side.” we say, “English, is a universal language, everything you could ever want to do is made possible through us,” we spin our indulgences on thin sheets of cardboard as certificates of completion. What the ink should spell out is: “Congratulations!... your son or daughter is a little shit and wont pay attention in class, their English would be so much better if you took more responsibility as a parent and raised them yourself instead of shipping them off to this glorified daycare.”

But that's the day time; at night we wash it all all away with Taiwanese beer between the cracking sounds of billiard balls among the smell of a dodgy smoky bar. I'm not complaining, we lead a charmed life. We drink with the gangsters that provide us with the nights entertainment, while in the daytime we promise children a better life while we take the money of the hard working fellows that just the night before paid off the gangsters not to bust up their shops... and the circle is complete. The circle of my home here in the Fugitive City.

Part 3

It's weird, Germany was one thing, but it was still the west. Shit in the east is crazy. the education system reminds me of that song by Pink Floyd, the wall. The teachers here call the schools "robot factories," because everything seems to be taught as an automated response, and all answers are absolute and mathematical, as if ideas were something to be shunned, and the kids are carted off to school, literally all day, to become another drone in the hive.

But I rule my classes, I ask the students what they think, I don't care if they color the sky purple, and the grass pink. I allow them to disagree with me, as long as the grammar is OK, and the idea has some backing support. It's hard going for the first 6 months, but slowly my students are starting to have their own ideas, and when i see them think of something original or thoughtful, I feel like I did that, I don't just teach English, I teach them how to think for themselves.

My boss is a D bag. He has never taught a class in his life, and he thinks schools are supposed to be run like a business, where the customer (the parent) is always right. He is so removed from the education process and he reigns the Chinese teacher with fear and berating language. He is so disconnected from the classroom that he never sees how I teach, he sees my rising test scores, and he's happy. If he sat inside my classrooms, he would be appalled by how much free expression I teach in my class. He wont see how I smash the molds around my students to get at the individual, he doesn't see that I treat my kids more as equals than coming from a position of power. Something he would never understand.

the thing that gets me is, there are many travelers in Taiwan, who teach to earn a few bucks, but there are few teachers. It's sad really, cause these are children's lives we are talking about, teaching isn't like working on an assembly line or... turning burgers, it's a job that puts you in direct influence of a child's development for their whole life. I wonder just how many people get that. I wonder if they understand that if you have a bad day, and you snap at someone or have less that infinite patience with a child... well, you might alter how they operate in society for the rest of their life. It's serious, and it's not something that should be taken lightly.

anyway, I'm on my lunch break so you got me on teaching mode. But I will say that i love my job, I love teaching more than flying, or writing, or anything. It feels great to do something that you know matters, and that you can feel good about it when you go home at night. It's exhausting, and most nights i come home wiped out teaching around 10 hours a day. Still, I look forward to the next day, I hope i never lose this motivation for teaching, because it feels great.

Part 4.

Malaise. It's a killer. Winter is over and we are in full swing of spring. The heat is rising and everything seems to come out of the hole in which it was buried for the last 4 months. However I, I am slumping. I'm getting to this point where I am told we all go through, the tipping point of living in the fugitive city. Were the months have gone by, and still some left, and limbo grips me. I have to make a decision, about staying or going, and the city is very tempting. The demons of procrastination start to weave their lies. “Just a few more months,” they whisper, and spin their reasons to stay longer. It's exactly the same feeling as waking up to an alarm clock you deliberately set early because you promised yourself you would get up and exercise, but for that half second of weakness, you decided to hit the snooze button. The last two months have been lived inside the feeling of that half second.

Nothing seems to happen, despite so many revelations of emptiness. I have been confronted with the hollowness of the nights, here, and in Taichung. I thought my life would mean something here, and for the daylight hours when I teach, I think it does. I get the most amazing rush when one of my students learns something new, or uses something they learned to have a better understanding of life....

Nights, well, nights are a different story. The thing about fugitives is that they like to escape, and escape we do into the clubs, the pubs, the parties, and the live music festivals. It never seems real, nothing and no one seems real, the faces are covered in masks as thick as my own, the eyes as hidden as well as I hide my own, the words as empty as the bullshit I spew from my mouth every weekend. I don't recognized myself in the mirror, all I see is my mask. It's become a part of me now, as I am sure theirs has become a part of them. The new life here has given us all a chance to recreate ourselves into what we want, no matter how many lies we have to tell, so long as no one really see us for who we really are. My perceptions have also dimmed, if I see someone without a mask, I think maybe that they are wearing one anyway. I am having a hard time telling the real from the unreal, and the lines are blurring everyday. We find only irony, coincidence and excuses running rampant like a plague throughout our lives. The infections of our illusions whispering promises and other such lies in our ears. The irony is that these promises and lies keep us going, they sustain us and bind us, but I hate the idea of being fueled on utterances of vague covenants, and false sincerities murmured in shame. I hate even more that I would never be able to tell the difference in the first place, dismissing the truth as a lie, and accepting the mistake as if it were the flawless.


Nobody sees me, I can't see them... all is well and safe in the Fugitive City.

part 5

It's late August in the Fugitive City. The heat is rising, and the humidity is almost unbearable. It's ghost month, the city streets are filled with sacrifices to the ancestors, and the smell of burnt money permeates my nostrils. August brings more than just wandering ghosts, It also brings wandering teachers, and so, the Fugitive city claims more surrogates into her bosom.

They are wide eyed, hopeful, and every thing they see is new. Like being born, they are flooded with sights and sounds and smells that they have never encountered before. New and wonderful and frightening. They are in survival mode, but also willing to make a huge step forward. Every day brings a new and wonderful, or terrible experience. Every person they meet is a seasoned world traveler, and they hope to fill up their passports just like us who have already gone before them. And the new fugitives feel, maybe for the first time in their life.... the infusion of a true life. Much different from the life that their friends and family back home feel, much different from anything they thought they would feel. The feeling of how life could be is addictive, harder to kick than cigarettes, harder to beat than heroin. I want it again, i want the months long rush of kicking myself out of comfort, and into the life giving expanse of the unknown.

If you embark on such a journey, remember one thing: You cannot go back. The people you know at home, your friends your loves and loved ones are so quickly sacrificed on the altar of this new life. You can get back home some day, to the place and people you thought were home, but you can never GO there again. They will not know you, you will have changed in such a way that they won't be able to understand you. You can show them pictures and explain to them cultures, but you cannot bottle up the feelings and inject them into the veins of the people you were once close to. Your mindset and world view expand so vastly that they wont be able to keep up. Then, you realize, that you are gone. You have left them behind, and you can not bring them with you. You have changed.... Just like the drugs change people. The addiction, dancing through your veins like a storm of broken glass, has made you into something they can never understand.

I want my fix, I need my fix, I need need need it so. It's time once again to hurl myself into oblivion, into the vast and unimaginable unknown. To give up everything, and feel the firestorm of life! Someplace hard, someplace rough, some new and wild adventure awaits me, the addiction holds firm.

Away
I
go....

part 6

The fugitive city 6 - The Ark of Gods

The time I have left is all too fleeting. I've made my choice, time to end my life as an outlaw in the fugitive city. The excuses were far to many to stay, but the fear of stagnation was all I ever needed to keep me rolling, keep me hovering just outside of stability. I am sleeping a lot more now, this isn't a good thing, insomnia meant savoring life, and holding on to each moment as if it were my last, and sleep is my number one escape from the inevitable.
Last week it really sunk in, after a learning that Taiwan has more deities than it can keep track of. The story I heard from a tour guide in Taipei a couple of weeks ago was that Taiwan is a sort of Noah's ark for ancient Chinese gods. When the Chinese people started immigrating to Taiwan some 300 years ago, each immigrant brought with them their regional gods and started setting up temples. After a few hundred years of wars in the mainland, and government changes from the Ching Dynasty all the way to Japanese imperialism and Mao's communism, the gods were flushed out of their homelands, and eradicated under multiple regime change. The only place these old gods were aloud to thrive was in Taiwan. Almost a thousand gods transformed into refugees. It seems that even the gods on this island are fugitives.
So I started seeing Taiwan as a hiding place. A place to hide myself away from the things I need to take care of and the people I need to love. This is a refuge for people who are running, and when runners find safety and a shelter away from conflict, they stay. It's too comfortable for me here, and it's time to find my own way. But with every change, there is a problem.
I've come to know and love my friends here, and I can't stand the thought of leaving them, as I left my friends in Germany, as I left my friends in college and from friends and family in San Diego. It will happen again, wherever I go, and it will keep happening until I find that place, the place that has enough of what I need to stay.

To my family in the fugitive city, you have become my blood, and you are forever welcome at my table. Wherever I may be. You know who you are.