rebecca soble

The weekend was mostly grey and cold, not really encouraging me to go outside.  But on the 2nd afternoon at 3pm the sun appeared and I scampered out.  I stayed in my neighborhood but walked on a new route, on Eski Bağdat Caddesi, just above the train tracks.

I turned a corner and my heart leaped with green pleasure when I saw this little path.  Probably a dangerous place at night, but in the sunlight it felt like the closest thing to a stroll in the woods I would find in Istanbul.  My joy was muted when I realized it was just a one-block-long dead end, but it was still a nice find.

Next to the fence by the train track, a tree was blooming.

And a lovely overgrown garden filled with little purple wildflowers.

And something that looks like forsythia except it has pink flowers.  Maybe it’s quince?  It looks just like something in my mom’s yard, but I can’t remember what it is.

I’m really enjoying the warm spring weather (despite the almost nonstop rain) and new plants I see peeking out everywhere.  During the winter I reaaaallllly missed the smell of green, and didn’t even get the smell of white to make up for it.

total fantasy:  I wish there was a way to take pictures of dreams.  In my fantasy world I will even settle for still images, no video necessary.  I’ve had a few really detailed pleasant dreams lately that I’d like to remember.

I think it’s due to sleeping better recently than I have in many many months.  Why, I wonder.  It could be the new medicine I’m taking for my newly diagnosed hypothyroidism, it could be that I turned my bed around to a different wall, it could just be that I’m working longer hours and thus am more tired at night.  I fall asleep much earlier these days, and sleep sounder.  Sometimes I still need the drone of a news podcast to push me over the final edge into slumber, but these days I’m generally conscious for only ten to fifteen minutes of drone instead of thirty to forty.

Some recent dream images I’d like to remember:

In a villa, apparently in Rome, with mom and Emrah.  All the rooms are sunken off a main hallway, there is lots of tiling on the walls and floors, the place feels old and there are dust motes floating in the streaks of sunlight in the air, coming in through heavy curtains.  It’s ours, at least temporarily, like for a summer.  I comment that it’s much cheaper than Venice (how do I know this?  the omniscience of dreams) and am thrilled to have my two favorite people there with me.

I’m in an old building which is like a one-room schoolhouse and I’m testing young children on their spoken English ability (a task that I actually do with adults quite regularly in my waking life).  One of the children tells me her name and her last name is the same as a very old friend from high school (who I just recently reconnected with on Facebook).  I was so excited when I heard the name, I repeated it in disbelief and was so excited at meeting a relative (child?) of my dear friend and possibly getting to see the friend herself.

On a farm that I should know in detail because I used to work there, but there are new things that I never noticed before:  A National Park Civil War Historical Site, with people gathered around reading the brown placards.  And an outdoor zoo – wild animals like giraffes on an island in a lake that is visible from the land, and dolphins swimming in the water.  The animals and surroundings look like cartoons, all smooth edges and smiling and peaceful on bright green grass and clear blue water with a cartoon sun in the sky.  My mom is there with me.   Only problem is some soap suds in the water from a woman washing her hair, and I worry that the dolphins won’t like the soap.

Somehow I played in a scrabble tournament and my rating jumped to 1973!  I am the 3rd rated player and I’m ecstatic even though deep down I question whether it could really be true.

Other vaguer images: a library, old dusty bottles of expensive liquor, friends around me.  It’s kinda interesting that except for Emrah being in my dreams pretty regularly, everything else in my dreams seem very very far away from Turkey.