earthquakes.

Merve and I are being uncharacteristically talkative this morning - not that we aren't friendly, usually, but more often than not we exchange a few niceties and then retreat to our rooms and our phone calls or our homework or our friends while we eat our meals, if we cross paths at all.

Today I stand over a pan on the stove while she toasts bread and sips tea, and we talk about our studies and our futures and all the Chicagoans' looming departure this weekend. She grimaces, hopes her new roommates will be as polite. I'm surprised to feel so touched that she thinks she will miss us, and I feel guilty for the few times I've muttered under my breath, in my room, about her friends' loud sing-alongs in Turkish late at night, or her frequent and noisy calls home.

We're both a little bit ready to go home, if even for a visit - she says some students she meets feel that they never want to return, forget everything that's good, but she thinks that's not right. I nod. Home is home.

I ask her about Istanbul, tell her that my friend Jared from my university in Chicago has just moved there. She is shocked. Did he choose that? She tells me it is very dangerous, very big, very beautiful. Eighteen million people. This is not a number I can wrap my head around.

I should visit my friend in Istanbul, she tells me. It is full of things to see, big old beautiful buildings, and cheap, of course, cheaper than Vienna and the Euro. It is half Asian and half European. You didn't know that?

No, I shake my head. All I know about Istanbul is a movie I saw once, on a big IMAX screen, about an earthquake there a while ago.

Her face falls a little. Oh, yeah. The earthquake was in 1999. Now it is my turn to be shocked. I had assumed that this, like most other disasters you read about from far away, was enough removed from me and everyone I know that it must have happened twenty, thirty years ago. Or longer. Somewhere untouchable.

I was at the collapse, she says. She shows me her scars, this little one on her knee, that one on her hand, and another that she gestures to beneath her clothes. Her family was not in Istanbul when it happened, she says, but two hours outside, at a marriage. A wedding at her grandmother's house. The house was destroyed; her grandmother and mother were killed.

We are quiet now, my eyes darting between her face and the floor because the things I'm saying I know are meaningless, and probably not even important at this point. I thought it could never happen, she says, I mean, you don't know what an earthquake is. I was fourteen. I knew what an earthquake was, but it is never something that can happen to you.

I think that's what we always think, until it happens to us, I say. I feel insufficient to this conversation; I wish almost that I had a tragedy to offer up in exchange, not to equal hers, and not to make anything better, but just to be able to say in any small way that I understand. We talk about hurricanes, the closest thing we get in my part of the world, and how scarily unpredictable this earth can still be, sending out storms and opening up cracks that can shatter all our confident cities.

Finally I take my plate off to my room to work on the essay I'm struggling to finish, and she gets up to wash her dishes. Have a nice day, she says. Yeah, I say, you too.

sticky fingers.

and now that you've left i just drink bottle after bottle of that pink wine you hate, cut out stencils of rabbits and carrots to spray around this painted city, ride my bike upriver, against the wind, until my fingers are too numb to move. (there is a comfort, too, in these recollections of my solitary self.)

the secret lies in fingers, and in toes.

all i want is to keep falling into the same armchair as you, hips twisted sideways and feet on knees. i want fake eyelashes so i can flutter them and send out warm teasing breezes, when i feel this perishingly full of love for this whole weird beautiful world.

when we paw through dirty piles of treasures at the flea market the harmonicas keep jumping out. when we slip on icy staircases it just means a better view of the sky.

(the air in this room is humming as if yr fingers had just left the strings.)

one more week.

i can't wait to get back to chicago where i can buy veggies at stanley's and falafel at sultan's and drink coffee from my french press and cook in our kitchen and sleep in a bed truly wide enough for two and snuggle up with friends to watch movies and draw pictures to paste on the walls, and eat tortillas again, and good avocadoes, and read books in english, for fun, not for class. food not bombs and working bikes and the relaxation of friends i've known for long enough to love real hard. i'm ready for bike rides down long long flat streets in the freezing cold until my toes hurt, for ridiculous dance parties and sunday morning coffee shops and newspapers. politics i understand.

i'm going to miss vienna's markets and smiles and invitations. i'm really going to miss the punk scenes and bike scenes and all the people who make it all not even into "scenes", just community. i'm going to miss I:DA and EKH and Rupp's and all-night falafel stands and cafes that let you linger for hours. i'm going to miss the way everyone just lets you be. night-rides and critical mass and graffiti. the naschmarkt, tomatoes, mushrooms, extra-strong garlic. all these other countries within a few hours' reach, transportation systems that actually work. everyone i still haven't gotten to know as well as i'd like, but well enough to miss for sure.

the last week creeping towards that inevitable ending is always the worst time of all. leaving bynum, leaving carrboro, leaving portland, leaving chicago each time. this weird anticipation and the forced importance of everything - each time i see you i have to say goodbye for good, just in case. she asked me if i wanted a farewell party and i laughed a no, but now i wish i had a way to pull them all together now for one last time.

i am the queen of nostalgia and anticipation and that strange kind of longing in the pit of my stomach.

metamorphoses

sometimes the air, like my restless metamorphoses.

tendrils sprouting from between my toes, green leafy ones, vines that grow thick and fast and try and wind themselves around any stationary structure nearby.

the ensnarements of wet skies above dry pavements, and the click of metal on my teeth. (bite down again, hard and cold and familiar.)

a lonely italian cheesemaker in an amsterdam basement. a bottle opener to take back to chicago. a handful of american coins. i think we disappointed him with our sleepy eyelids.

webs between my fingers so i can paddle across whatever seas i please.

my hair is growing arms and legs to wave in every direction like fuzzy antennae trying to sense something in the air. (sometimes the air, like my restless metamorphoses.)

shirts without armpits! or necks! pants without zippers! scarves full of holes! everything falling apart just to soften the edges. attempts at new constructions. etch something into my skin like it's wood or maybe just thick sheets of construction paper in every color you can think of.

our obsessive outputs and the ways we try and control them - i want to hear you tiptoe across taut strings again, that faraway glint in yr eyes. i will always be the sheep who bows out and goes off to bake cookies instead. (i burned my eyelashes half off to perfect my asymmetry.)

the air here is conducive to getting out of tune.

woolly

we sing songs through this echoing building, whistle responses to those sneaky ghosts who surround us. we chase each other down cold city sidewalks in the rain yelling angry desperations, collapse finally into nothing but arms and cheekbones and you so close i'll jam my fingers on yr ribcage, joints swollen for days. (tattoos smearing the sheets.)

recall these things: yr bloody nose. the growl of my belly. the shiver of morning.

we'll play board games in dim places with beers taller than our tales. no, really, taller than you'd believe. fifteen cents back! automated! i can't believe they sell those kits. i can't believe what they allow. (you are a whole lot of promises and curiousity and i am a whole mess of indecision.)

we asked him what to do and he told us it gets harder every year. in his eastern carolina brogue, with his austrian wife.

nothing seems ever better than that first night of headbands, winebottles, short shorts and scrawled ink. flashing lights on my waist. cardboard rackets, and kitchen dance parties, and a giddy disregard for their insinuations.

(it's cold for sure but we've got wool enough to wear.)



halloween critical mass: