novel
We were playing Soccer in the oblong field next to the rose gardens, those roses, buxom rubies all leaning over each others shoulders like a gaggle of secret-sharing ladies, and I wondered who takes care of those roses, who not only lays the shovels of their hands into the earth and hunches down with their overall-ed knees pricked by thorns, but who draws up the budgetary allocations for maintaining the stocks of gossiping flowers, splaying out and sunning around the arch of that lovely trellis, what printing company was hired to laminate the sign with the well-intentioned but pesky German Shepard with the diagonal red line of prohibition laid over his lapping-happy face, who drives by in their fancy roaring car for fish dinner and ignores the packs of botanical bobbing babes, sucking on a designer cigarette and thinking about his co-pilots thighs.
Ertugral kicked the ball over my shoulder as I thought about the roses, and I pretended to be winded to sit in the grass, indian style and slightly turned away from the weird floating Ata-head statue to think about being not only a hawk circling over Umraniye, an electric buzzing Simurgh watching the city in fast forward, but the eye of providence seeing each and every social relation in synchronic voyeurism, average necessary labor time for tucking rose bulbs into the earth, canine talent agency office managers, building engine blocks for the new wealthy, cucumber scented lotion for thighs, the water down my throat.
This city would be lovely if stripped of its social mystery, if my super power was to know each hand that assembled the rubber tires of the city bus choking the E-5 at the metrobus stop, the hours of time spent zipping the blouses and pins clasping head scarves, and one two three four five blue jeans buttons, and stretching elastic underwear everyday a little more taut over the blubbery yağ-fed legs of the pack of public transportees, despite their heterogeniaty all united in their left-crooked dispondant public transportee gaze of impatience. The 155 lurches up and the crowds mitosis seems stretched between the simit stand and the already sardined swinging door of the weighted bus. As I whiz by in my service bus, what did the driver have for breakfast, who sold him the mirror he tied his company-logoed tie in this morning, what reklamlar fed his indecent dreams the night before.
Or how about a utopian bildungsroman set in the era when both sides of the E-5 come together to plant tomato plants, kiss inbetween the stalks, channel water with their shovel hands, up and down the lanes of highway. The two outer lanes left for tandem-paddle boats, tandem windskates, tandem longboards and tandem pogo sticks, anything that gets the job done. Children letting go of paper boats that navigate the safe clean channels of water under arches past chicken coops, gurgling under the old train tracks, betwixt the admiring stubby fingers of other amateur papyro-seamen. Lovers in rowboats in fenerbahce, now free of the yacht tyrrany, taking turns with the oars in the clean seaweed water. Unwrapping their aubergine picnics and rocking back and forth in their long summer kisses, sweat on their foreheads, feet over the sides as the lights come on in the apartment blocks with ivy creeping up the sides, vertical gardens framing the orange living rooms with families free from wage labor enjoying long dinners of e-5 tomato soup and mushroom bread.
Where is the narrative arch in a post-commodity metropolis? What does our brave heroine Ipek do between attending ideology bonfires in polonezkoy and voting on drip-irrigation projects with the other horticulture pioneers? Fighting the creeping Urstaat of the junk yard padishah, splashing greek fire on Bulgarian intruders, looking to trade their post-consumer recyclable earthenware, neon Çatal Höyük rip-offs.
Ertugral kicked the ball over my shoulder as I thought about the roses, and I pretended to be winded to sit in the grass, indian style and slightly turned away from the weird floating Ata-head statue to think about being not only a hawk circling over Umraniye, an electric buzzing Simurgh watching the city in fast forward, but the eye of providence seeing each and every social relation in synchronic voyeurism, average necessary labor time for tucking rose bulbs into the earth, canine talent agency office managers, building engine blocks for the new wealthy, cucumber scented lotion for thighs, the water down my throat.
This city would be lovely if stripped of its social mystery, if my super power was to know each hand that assembled the rubber tires of the city bus choking the E-5 at the metrobus stop, the hours of time spent zipping the blouses and pins clasping head scarves, and one two three four five blue jeans buttons, and stretching elastic underwear everyday a little more taut over the blubbery yağ-fed legs of the pack of public transportees, despite their heterogeniaty all united in their left-crooked dispondant public transportee gaze of impatience. The 155 lurches up and the crowds mitosis seems stretched between the simit stand and the already sardined swinging door of the weighted bus. As I whiz by in my service bus, what did the driver have for breakfast, who sold him the mirror he tied his company-logoed tie in this morning, what reklamlar fed his indecent dreams the night before.
Or how about a utopian bildungsroman set in the era when both sides of the E-5 come together to plant tomato plants, kiss inbetween the stalks, channel water with their shovel hands, up and down the lanes of highway. The two outer lanes left for tandem-paddle boats, tandem windskates, tandem longboards and tandem pogo sticks, anything that gets the job done. Children letting go of paper boats that navigate the safe clean channels of water under arches past chicken coops, gurgling under the old train tracks, betwixt the admiring stubby fingers of other amateur papyro-seamen. Lovers in rowboats in fenerbahce, now free of the yacht tyrrany, taking turns with the oars in the clean seaweed water. Unwrapping their aubergine picnics and rocking back and forth in their long summer kisses, sweat on their foreheads, feet over the sides as the lights come on in the apartment blocks with ivy creeping up the sides, vertical gardens framing the orange living rooms with families free from wage labor enjoying long dinners of e-5 tomato soup and mushroom bread.
Where is the narrative arch in a post-commodity metropolis? What does our brave heroine Ipek do between attending ideology bonfires in polonezkoy and voting on drip-irrigation projects with the other horticulture pioneers? Fighting the creeping Urstaat of the junk yard padishah, splashing greek fire on Bulgarian intruders, looking to trade their post-consumer recyclable earthenware, neon Çatal Höyük rip-offs.
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