These Turkish promenade-placed shrubs are like a cross between egg-dyed romaine lettuce heads and those trendy crocheted broches found at Urban Outfitters . . . .

From the Esisehir-to-Afyon bus. As a farmers daughter, I’ve been there before.

I’ve been looking for an antique-white, cherry-themed serving plate. Um, no. But if I was, I could find one in Turkey. The grocery stores here have just as many wicker cd racks, painted teapots and Elv?s twizzler sets as any Safeway. Ack. More stuff.

After much mourning I had accepted the fact that we would be traveling when the next season of Lost came out . . . .but can I help it if Sawyer is following me around the world?

When you think of Turkey what comes to mind? Prison? Constantinople? East Meets West? The toilets? Well. . .it sure seems more like P-R-I-D-E.I’ve never seen so many flags at once. Even after 9/11.

Turkey flies their red and white with side-of-a-building-sized gestures and in the strangest spots. Everywhere. Which, to be honest, makes everywhere feel just a little bit more festive. As if you might run into a pageant, parade, or cotton candy stand around the next corner.Thing is, I’m trying to picture, say, New York like this. A flag at Macys. Dozens more from East side apartment balconies. Stars and stripes down the Empire State Building. Strung in tiny triangles from telephone poles in the village. In the back window of taxis along fifth avenue. It’s probably Old Navy’s attempt to make the flag a fashion statement and the lack of support for the current administration, but this vision seems both impossible and cheesy. And American gets so much shit for being patriotic—especially from the Brits! We’ve got nothing on Turkey!

But the flags are only a beginning. Turks actually “scurry” to find someone who speaks English for us. They walk us to where we want to go. Invite us back to their place for beers. Carry our bags. Pay for our tickets. Give us extra tea. They are the most hospitable people we’ve ever encountered and we get thefeeling it’s because they are proud. They want us to leave their country andspread the love. Who are we to say no?

A vingette of our two week stay at Yakabagh farm. It only scratches the surface.

Unfortuantely, many of the still images in this clip are quite blurry. I haven’t been able to determine why yet, but I’ll repost this video when the problem is solved.

Wait, where are we going again?A tribal circle. In honor of the full moon. To pray for world peace. Right.I saw a bad moon rising. Earlier.That day. After picking olives and finding the abandoned, hard-shelled houses of turtles and snails in the earth. Scraping my skin against the metal of the tree markers. Combing the tree as I do my hair, tugging at the knots of olives and waiting for the satisfying plop. Smashing olives with my bare feet. My purple-tinsel scarf wound around my head like a gypsy.

But trouble was not on the way. Tonight there will be nothing but a tribal circle in the round, stone wall dwelling in the orchard. The smoke of burning sage will be tossed into my fleece. I will sit, unspeaking, on a mat, staring at the well-tended fire for hours. I will meditate. I will struggle to get settled-I mean situated. I will see faces in the coals.What do you see?

There was no earthquake. No lightning. Not nasty weather. Nothing all that dramatic. But there was the sound of palm to drum and a child’s cough. The rhythm of shoes in the dirt. The music of a far-away Turkish wedding. The rooster’s insistent cockadoodledoos. The sound of Michael’s breathing.

Don’t come round tonight. And I didn’t. Not there. It wasn’t my time. I had both feet on the ground. No floating or zoning or rising. I was merely an observer, looking in. Others stared into their own possibilities. I just kept staring at the moon.

It’s bound to take your life. No, but I can see how they thought the moon might. I was giving it power with my own energy And receiving. . .something back. Staring like I’d never seen it before. It was no longer the moon, but the perfectly round polka-dot-on-a-dress sized window to another world. The pure white light of another galaxy. I felt so small, but part of something so big. Humbled and empowered. In one moment. And the gravity of my thoughts drug me to the ground. Kept me there. Clutching the earth.

There’s a bad moon on the rise. It was still going up when we left the circle and held each other’s soft, gloved doll-hands down the orchard path at 1AM. That’s when we saw the Yakaba horse. Calmly eating grass in the moonlight, shimmering olive branches between its head and the sky. A creature of the universe. Like me. Like Michael.And I. . kkkkk. . .kkkk. . . . I felt the energy kick in. The connection. The current through all of us. For just a few seconds. Before it slipped through my fingers once again.

We are now in Syria.Although there were stories or interrogations and bright overhead lights, none of that happened. But we had our own initiation–we were taken “hostage” by an overly hospitable border family for 36 hours in what we’ve come to call the Will of the Collective.It all started when “the girls” put us on a dolmush (a minibus) headed for Reyhanle, a Syrian-Turkey border town, with instructions that the family of their friend, Guler, would help us get on a bus to Syria. In Reyhanle, we were intercepted by a guy who we could only assume was the right one. Hussein led us away from the bus stop to his home, where we were served breakfast of bread, olives, jam, cheese and tea in a carpet picnic with the rest of his family staring in awe. It was 9:00 AM. Two hours later we learned that we would be sleeping there and tomorrow we’d go to Syria.

Mmmmhmmmm.

But this kindness killing was nothing new. And these days we were choosing the shabby, often neglected door marked “Time” over the hundreds of fancy French double doors marked “Money”. So it was okay.

Sort of.

The rest of the day, we were treated like a mix of celebrity, toddler and Christmas toy–never left alone. We were explained how to wash our hands, taught to dip our bread in our cheese and told that we definitely wanted another cup of tea. Hussein repeated to us in VERY minimal English, roughly every seven minutes (I say roughly because it felt like every four seconds), these three messages: 1) that we were all one–that Hussein’s father was our father, his sisters were our sisters, his brother our brother 2) that we would go tomorrow to Syria and 3) that all of us would chat via Windows Instant Messenger so we could continue these fulfilling conversations beyond today.

There was a village tour, a bread-making demonstration and a lot of Arabic music before it became apparent that I was to hang out in the girl’s bedroom with Fatmah, 25 and Selva, 19, and somehow find conversation even though neither of them spoke any English. Michael’s place was on the couch next to brother Ali, Hussein and their father or in the computer room, using the translation software to have very caveman-like conversations. That night I stayed with the girls and I’m still not sure where Michael slept. The next morning when we hugged in a relieved embrace, the show of affection was a spectacle. Luckily, they all thought it was really funny instead of really disrespecting.We finally made it across the border that day. Although the three men’s presence (there was no bus, we were forced to hire a taxi) helped hurry the border patrol along with their tapping fingers and Arabic jabber, we had no idea what they were explaining about our visit, our visa, anything–and we didn’t like that one bit. How, we thought, could it be possible that getting by in a foreign country could be so much more stressful WITH help than WITHOUT?But mostly, we are puzzled by what seemed, regardless of culture, a complete lack of respect for our own schedule or preferences. We were never asked if we wanted to stay over. We were told. And a few days ago, the hotel clerk, Ahmed, a nice guy who we’d become friends with over the past few nights of wine and conversation, did not invite us to his home to meet his family for dinner, he told us we would be going.Let’s be clear. I am very appreciative of this hospitality. But I’m still curious about its roots.In both Turkey and Syria, the dinner table is one big appetizer platter. Almost all food is communal. One or two water glasses serve a group of seven. Bedrooms, due to energy costs and space, are divided only between sexes. The idea of privacy. . .of the individual. . .is missing. These people assume that because we have no friends or family, we will be grateful for the “comfort” of a group. No matter what.

It is simply the Will of the Collective.