Well, It Ain't Over Until

Well, I did not do the General MacArthur thing a few months ago and promise that “I shall return.” I didn’t feel like saying it and was in no mood to say it. I was fed up with the untrustworthiness and viciousness of some folk who once existed in my life as a blogger and in my life as a teacher in Turkey. I needed an at least temporary hiatus from as many people as I could get, a few other bloggers included.

Last week before I came back to the states from Turkey, I decided to return to blogging on a once a week basis since I am now planning to write a book. Though I had briefly posted my plans on Facebook, last night I told my friend and fellow blogger Al-Hussain (I have not been keeping up with his coolly, provocative posts lately)that I had decided to go back to blogging. He had encouraged me to continue, but I had been adamant that I would not. Call me a snob. Nevertheless, I still feel that blogging is statistically a waste of time especially for people who are a cut above the average blogger in talent or who are attempting to be. Yet I also agree with my friend and fellow blogger Catherine in the comment she made on my last post. There is some value to blogging, especially if you have something worthy of sharing and your writing is at least somewhat above average.

Now that I am back at home, I can easily blog. When I was in Turkey, I did not have internet access at home in my final months there, nor did I have the time, mind, or energy to blog.

In the last two years I have gotten a crash course in how humanity can be at its best and worst beginning with the time when my blogs were hacked into and deleted by someone who was once a friend. It has sort of been down hill since then and always some of the ones who give me the most pain are people who are Turkish, but then at the same time some of the people who grant me so much joy are Turkish too. I guess they always reach out to me more than a lot of Americans do. We don't tend to reach out to people the way some Turkish people do. They are curious. We're cautious. Eighty percent of my friends on Facebook are Turks. My love/favorite is Turkish. So the connection is there whether I try to run for the hills, get out of town, or not. I was told by my most recent Turkish boss that I have a Turkish temperament. Maybe, but he was a young man of poor judgment in seemingly every region of his life. I am trying not to look back in anger on it all because I must focus on trying to make a living in an economy gasping and on the verge of death; I must write and express myself, play with words or "die"; and I must hope that though we are severed again because I ran out of money and lived on broken promises too long, I will once again be re-united with my sevgilim (my beloved) in the coming months. Both of us need to regroup, so it was the wise thing for us to separate until we could get some matters organized in our lives. I am the more practical one. He is even more of a Romantic than me, almost seeming to think that people can live on love alone in this world. I wish things were that simple. There might be a few more happier people in the world now. However, like a friend of mine said last summer, “Money is the god of this world.” Anyway…

I will be back here blogging soon once I have overcome jetlag. I arrived home early last Saturday morning, so the tentacles of jetlag are still grabbing at me. Jetlag can be painful at times. Then there is not only jetlag, but I am also dealing with the pain of leaving my students and the one I love. Still I had to. There comes a time when a person knows that what they are hearing on a weekly basis are empty promises.

My journey here will continue in a few weeks. I do have something to say that two or three might want to read.

I leave you with some love letters and my friend Emma's Spring Landscapes.