Glory Ho

We hitchhiked today.

It was the first time for both of us. Never took more than six minutes to get a ride and four friendly people carried us across the southwestern half of the country. A Turkish bus (complete with wet wipes, tea, juice, cookies and water) is not bad, but hitchhiking is better. It’s cheap, a challenge, and just so much more interesting. Most of all, it’s a move that expresses our comfort in the seat we call the universe. Not every situation, time of day, country and road are right for it, but today was. It’s how we found ourselves learning Turkish numbers while drinking tea in a hospital, a pit stop for two young well-dressed medical workers who picked us up, because you know, in Turkey, a hitchhiker-host just doesn’t think twice about running an errand and figuring you’d like to come too. How the first guy with his shiny SUV and three-year old begged us to come back to his house for breakfast and meet his wife. How we were eventually between the leather of a mafioso’s BMW, smoke seeming to come from his ears as much as his mouth, racing along the mountains to a Michael Bolton meets Oriental kind of tune. But he bought lamb-roasted lunch from his wad of 50s. Delivered us well. Made sure we were comfortable. Like Tony Soprano, he was mad at his boss and his cell phone and his past and his money—not us.

Besides, he was so obviously a blinking neon light: Michael. Andrea. You’re on the right track. Money isn’t exactly the key.

Indeed, hitchhiking is liberating.

But this was only the first half of the day. Then we arrived at Yakabag Farm. Which is basically a commune. For those who like to think of your life as a movie, please picture mine a cabernet-merlot blend of The Tuscan Sun, Stealing Beauty and the Beach, but with more hippies. No, really. I think I saw Ken Kesey in the hall yesterday.

People come and go. You can stay as long as you want. There are few introductions and less instructions. You learn as you go. If you have a question, just ask. The atmosphere, along with whatever tribal rhythms happen to be on, seem to say cheerfully: There’s so much to do but all of eternity to do it in.

You can clean the kitchen. Or not clean the kitchen.

The grape vines which do a shadow dance on my wall will keep growing either way. The pomegranates with their nest of sweet, fossilized rubies stacked inside, (the fruit which flavored my grenadine’d girlie drinks through college,) will keep falling to the ground, ripe and real. This morning I practiced yoga on the roof. I learned to make bread. I met the horse I am encouraged to ride. I saw the complex, olive-smashing machine, which has just now begun working—the one Sinan hired an Italian to make seven years ago. I signed up to make breakfast on Saturday. I was assigned to weed the orchard. I sat on a wooden blue chair and ate olives and tea and oranges for breakfast with nine housemates.

And the scenery. We are in a fabulous fairytale valley of villages, orchards, headscarf-wrapped tractor drivers, stone farmhouses and a lot of chickens and sheep. A mosque’s wandering minaret with its tiny megaphones whose prayers awake us at 6:30 each AM, pricks the sunset. Mountains are every which way but up.

While the attic of this 19^th century farm house is a shadowy, bamboo-sheet divided barn of sleeping bags, blankets and candles, much like the hut where we stayed in Thailand, the only appropriate word for our room is spooky. A fireplace painted with ocean swirls and Hindu temples was painted by someone who, I can tell, might have been, say, a teacher, but just got up one day and decided to paint the fireplace. Two window seats, shielded by satin curtains on one side and Ottoman timber shutters on the other, are a perfect hiding place between worlds. The shelf above the naked black seamstress’s mannequin bust is lined with handwritten-labeled potions and oils. A light bulb cradled by a wide-brimmed hat, sliced to let in the light,  creates what can only be described as an extremely eerie glow. A crinoline mosquito petticoat bustle hangs above our heads. No less than seven swaying dream-catchers are not letting anything, good or bad, out of that room. A red and decadent elephant tapestry, which I just realized I find happiness and safety in, lifts its trunk from one wall. No wonder. Because a Ouija board, patient and perfectly crafted by good ‘ol Parker Brothers, is propped within the fireplace’s forgotten ashes. 

And now, we lounge, a shelf of luscious unread books at my side. I just changed the CD —someWoodstock sounds—and to my surprise, just as we end our umpteenth conversation about our hitchhiking experience, Hitchin’ A Ride comes on. What’s stranger is that my Mom had this 45 when I was little. I can picture the label. It was red. Yet I had always passed it up for Crocodile Rock. I’ve never once heard it before right now. Even on those late night commercials.

I guess it’s been waiting for me to understand.

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