Manifesting Destiny

It took a random trip back to Istanbul in 1998 for me to recognize that I could create any kind of life I wanted.  I didn’t have to follow the American Dream to ‘success’:  the corporate high salary job, a big house, the nice car with the hefty lease.  I was living a good life in Los Angeles, but one that felt directionless and shallow.  

I was in a multi-cultural city, but that place did not reflect me.

A friend asked me if I wanted to travel with her to Turkey and Greece. I immediately said yes, since I rarely turned down a chance to do my favorite thing – travel. Istanbul had been my favorite place to work, the business trips I’d made there several years before.  The Turks I’d worked with had quite unlike the Japanese, the Chinese, the Indians, the Italians and other nationalities whose offices and factories I’d done business with as a clothing designer.

My agent and his employees in Istanbul went out of their way to make sure I saw their city, whirling me through Sultanahmet, along the Bosphorus, taking me to the latest hot restaurants and nightclubs. I didn’t realize that the agent’s wife Asli was one of Turkey’s top fashion designers at the time, until we were followed around one night by paparazzi and appeared in the local gossip pages the next morning. I was suddenly the ‘famous American designer’ gracing Turkey with my presence.

One afternoon, Asli took me to Pandeli in the Spice Market for lunch. But not until I’d visited the vast closet in her home with the Bosphorus view, donning heels, flowing silk, and a fur coat, since it was late November. Clearly my casual American work clothes had not met with her chic Istanbul standards. Cinderella stories like that never happened to me in the US, even in the fashion business.

With great memories of that amazing city that reminded me so much of a far more colorful and infinitely more social San Francisco, we planned our trip to Turkey and Greece. But just before we were about to leave, my friend went cold on Turkey.  She was afraid to travel the Western Turkish route I’d mapped out, though perhaps Istanbul might be safe enough for her to see before we left for Athens. We agreed to meet on a certain date at the Empress Zoe Hotel in Sultanahmet, near the Hagia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace.  

Once on the road, I was happy to be on my own.  I’ve lost friendships with people who were fine at home but could not handle the daily stresses of travel. I’m most alive when I don’t know what’s around the corner, or where a fork in my path will take me. Traveling with someone who wanted to plan every move would have been agony.

Turkey solo was a challenge.  I’ve never talked to more strangers in my life! By the time I got to the small Aegean town of Selcuk, next to the Greco-Roman ruins of Ephesus, I was talked out.  I’d over-shopped too, and was cursing myself for lugging an over stuffed duffel bag as I struggled up a small lane from the bus station after a bus ride from Pamukkale. Why do Americans think they can see half of Turkey in 1 week’s time? I’d barely scratched the surface in three.

I’ll save the rest of the story for my book. But that day in Selcuk, I met my husband Abit, who has called Selcuk home since the age of 13, though he’s also lived for 10 years in Istanbul and in Belgium for 3. If I’d turned down another street, we never may have met. I might have returned to California, settled back into my life. The life that was comfortable, but didn’t quite feel like mine.

I did ultimately meet up with my friend at the Empress Zoe Hotel, that trip in 1998. As kismet would have it, the narrow wooden building on Kutlugun Sokak, Auspicious Day Street, where Abit and I lived and had our textile shop this past summer -  is right next door. 

Grist for the mill

SFO International Terminal. The flowery taste of jasmine tea takes my mind back to those years I spent traveling to Hong Kong, Osaka, or Seoul from this very airport. 16-hour slogs across the Pacific, flying most often into the old Kai Tak, coming in so close between the highrises you could almost see what families were eating for dinner. Today, I’m also headed back to Asia, but to the other side of that vast continent. No, wait. I’ll only be seeing Asia at the end of this journey, 14 hours airtime, inshallah and volcano willing. I’ll see it when I look out the windows of our new apartment in Istanbul’s Old City. After years of living in Anatolia, technically Asia, we’ll be living for now in Eminonu, near Gulhane Park and the Topkapi Palace, at the mouth of the Golden Horn. Technically Europe, within the 3% of Turkey that sits on that continent. Within sight of the massive San Francisco-style bridges that span the narrow waters between Europe and Asia. A more profound concept than merely connecting San Francisco and Oakland, though visually there’s not much difference. Another six months spent working away from Abit behind me, with any precious downtime spent plotting our next move, I’ve plenty of grist for my mental mill. Inexplicably tethered to another winter toiling amid the grapevines of Napa’s lovely valley, I constantly found myself drawing comparisons in appearance to our Aegean valley. But I realize now that both valleys, while enticingly full of comforts, offer little in terms of long-term sustenance. I’ve determined to leave them both behind, to pursue a vision that better suits us. No more skimming along the surface of our creativity…time to dig deep in a place that better provokes our muses. No more half-years tending to the whims of clients, no matter how spectacular those before-and-after interior photos may be. My interior renovation, another new space that Abit and I will create together, may be a work in perpetual progress, but it’s work that is so much more satisfying. So, after one last sumptuous almond croissant at Bouchon, and a few macaroons for my family, who are the major bright spot of any time spent in California, I’m leaving this golden state with its current economic woes. Like that old song, I do leave my heart here when I go. Or maybe I have multiple hearts, because high on a hill in the Old City, that one’s calling me back to Turkey. More than one heart, more than one home, more than one way to live. Seeking out places where parts of me blend, yet other parts don’t. Instead of viewing it as various parts of me though, I’d rather see myself as being a cultural chameleon – having the ability to recolor myself, wherever my heart takes me. And to keep building bridges across continents, and between cultures.  What interior renovations have you made recently?