This Post Has Nothing To Do With Gezi Park

So I know I wrote in my last post how I feel guilty every time I do some public Internetty thing that's not related to the Gezi protests.

Except sometimes things happen that aren't related to the Gezi protests. It's true! Actually, fairly often things like this happen because I, like everyone else in the world, just sort of get on with things just in case the world doesn't actually come to an end.

Everything here remains completely fucked up, though. Rest assured. It's not gone away and it's not calmed down and nothing is okay really. I've got my fingers permanently crossed waiting for the next thing.

Metaphorically crossed. If they were crossed for real, I wouldn't be able to get on with things.

Last night, we went to a going away party for a friend/co-worker who's managed to find something to do with her life besides The Job. She's not actually leaving the country like most of my friends here do eventually. She's just found something way cooler to do, which is telling stories. That's right. You can totally have a job telling stories. Not writing, mind you. Telling stories for real, from her mouth and with her body. It suits her perfectly and she's good at it and she can make a viable income from it.

So went to Bomonti in Nişantaşı to her house. LE had gas or something and started getting upset about his tummy and then he started weeping-- not crying but weeping, which is way sadder so I carried him for awhile up a hill and ran across a few streets through traffic and now my back is all fucked up. But that's not the story.

My friend's house is near a bunch of fabric sellers. I'm not sure if it's an everyday thing or a weekly thing, but the fabric sellers had apparently exploded onto the street, into neat piles of scraps of fabric.

I love a good ground score. Over the years I've trained myself to quit picking stuff up off the ground and keeping it. It was getting out of hand. Now I limit myself to keys and small things that I don't know what they are. But the fabric was too much. I put the no-longer-weeping kid down and scored like 100 4 x 4 swatches of different types of plaid. Checked fabric, if you're British. I have no idea what to do with it all, but there are a million things that could be done with it for sure, especially if I could sew, which I can't really except for utilitarian repairs.

My friend was ready for LE with kid's books and art supplies and juice. He had a rest and then he was fine, especially since her partner brought him a tray of snacks and a bowl of pekmez to the bed where he was hanging out keeping a low profile because the room full of grownups was too much for him. It was lovely. He was happy because of the pekmez and the cat that didn't bite and also because everywhere he goes, there are people who love him.

The past two weekends, BE and I have been all civil and shit. We have united in our mutual hatred of AKP. We have conversations in which he uses words and sentences and no one argues. He even joined a friend and I for Sunday brunch this past weekend. I always invite him to stuff like this, but he never joins and I was completely shocked he decided to join this time. My friend is the first person in my life in I-don't-know-how- long who saw BE's good side. Usually people are all, "I can't see you married to that guy-- he's such a dick," because BE is usually such a dick to my friends. But this weekend he wasn't. He showed his good side that I'd kind of forgotten he has and we had one of those 2 hour breakfasts and it was delightful.

Later that day when I emptied out LE's school bag, there was this inside:

It says, "He went to a restaurant with him mom and dad and he was very happy they were all together."

He drew this before we had all had brunch together. I can't remember the last time before this we've all had a meal in a restaurant together but it's been at least a year. I couldn't decide if I should be sad LE wants us all to be together or if I should be glad we may be managing something like that, sometimes at least.

And it's pictures that bring me to the story. On the Metro home from Nişantaşı, there was a guy sketching people. Everyone was peeking at him trying to see what he was sketching. He was assiduously ignoring them. We sat across from him and he was clearly sketching in our direction but my friend and I were just doing everything we could to keep LE amused because he was up Way Past His Bedtime partying with the grownups and due to crumble any second.

The guy got off the Metro before us and as he passed by he let a paper drop at our feet. It was this:

I love that he wrote "Hi."

Everyone around us craned to see. LE wondered aloud why he was holding his penis in the picture. Some Americans nearby exploded laughing and I told LE it's because he's always holding his penis even though I'm pretty sure that's not what he'd doing in the picture.

We argued for a bit over who got to keep the picture and I won and it's in my office now.

I'm sure there's some way to conect this all to Gezi and random acts of beauty, but why bother? If you wanted to do that, you already did.

I hope it was as good for you as it was for me.