Nomadic Tribe Soup

I recently sent cut-copy-paste messages to a number of my girlfriends, begging them to forgive me for having lulled them to a chain e-mail spell. Like a well-meaning Pied Piper von Facebook, I quickly picked fifteen women who would be creeped out by such correspondence but knowing that I have a knack for oddities, should excuse me. I  set out without thinking twice. I was not my cynical self. For once. I was not dismissive. With a straight face and a heart in place, I blew the dandelion puffs of love and prosperity across the internet. Day 1 - you will wake up to the biggest shock of your life. Day 2 - you will cross paths with an old friend you have missed. Day 3 - you will find yourself with a lot of money. Day 4 - your day will be perfect. Day 5 - the love of your life will kiss you. I am onto day three and can't wait to toss some cash in the air like Donald Duck. Donald Trump. Donald Sutherland in 'Fierce People'. The most pat-myself on-the-back side effect of my n...

My mother has a look on her face when she walks by herself in the park. I know cause I spy on her sometimes. I watch her watch TV. I watch her do things her way, like pouring palmfuls of water on the handle of the faucet, one palm after the other, a splash to a last soapy spot. In the past eight months I had more occasion to observe my mother than the first eighteen years of my life when I lived with her lastly. She picks flowers, always. She's a kleptomaniac of pretty things that grow on soil. No stroll ends empty handed. Lilacs now in Istanbul and before I left the house there was a tea glass on the coffee table with a sprig in it. A baby tulip on the kitchen table. Dried twigs in vases. The only time she visited me in Montreal last May she scouted for species she may not know. Together we stole from chez les neighbours if the precious was irresistible. We left a bulb with Masoud as we drove to the airport. Maman walks in tiny Chinese lady steps. She has sway. Swing. Undulati...

There is only one person in the world who calls me annecim (Turkish for mommy). This overgrown baby of mine is almost six feet tall and looks nothing like me. She has long auburn hair and a Strauss nose, the trademark of her family. I think it was round the time of a night of drunkenness at Chez Baptiste I chaperoned her home or the time I tucked her in when she was staying overnight at my place whilst commuting between Montreal and Sherbrooke that Marianne started calling me annecim. Though I failed to phone her when she sent me her baby's very first x-ray and I arrived a little too late for her wedding ceremony at the city hall...I make a perfectly imperfect mother. My baby lost her baby. We buried a tiny coffin holding Laeticia on August 8, 2011 at Cimetière Mont-Royal, on Marianne's birthday. On July 29 I got a text message that said 'Bebek geliyor annecim!' (The baby's coming, mommy!) She was going into labor. "à l'Hôpital St-Luc. Je te tiens au ...

I'm listening to ByteFM, a habit from the time when Julian was on good terms with me and I was allowed to go through his wallet and laugh at his ID pics. Do I dare say Julian's last name is his nationality? That is where this "gute" music comes from. On air Nina Simone, "Gimme Some"... wait now Booka Shade "Bad Love"... What is this.. European electronic music? Why does Europe feel like the eighties from across the Atlantic? Like everyone is still wearing sweaters over their shoulders, tying the arms in a knot over the chest. Like all the girls are Nina Hagen. Like everyone vacations in Ibiza. Can I have my melancholy in one shot, on the rocks please? A jolly good time I'm having. My fortune cookie number two from Chinese New Year foreboded: "Enjoy your own company. If you don't, who will?" I like myself in now-playin' sweet melancholy mood. There are many other moods in which I find myself intolerable and have to have the c...

Sunlight has a way with kitchens. It bathes everything in dazzling surrender, sweeps the unswept floors, swallows bothersome details in sleek minimalism in hues of bright. Dishes in the sink? No worries! Pour a little sun! I think our dishwashing liquid is actually called "Sunlight" but we see no use for it. A winter's morning or afternoon is never complete without those rays that assure us all's just swell. There is surely some action out there in the world but here inside we are safe, reptile-like, gladly missing out. This kitchen hails me when I greet it in sweet and sour moods. It speaks Portugo-Italian cockney and knows how to handle a fussy Mediterranean. On its walls are tubular tape-drawings by Coco. They exhale a collective human angst in red, the untold stories of the Spanish Civil War. The ceiling is tilted, to gently sleigh away the snow accumulating on the top of it. There is a gas stove, a concrete counter top, hardwood floors, w...

I'm having a hard time waking up. My roommate Zoya, volunteering to get me on my feet no matter how foul tempered I may be for the next few hours, pulls the duvet, tickles my feet and threatens me : "This is the third and last warning: next forty five minutes I'm doing qi gong!" (Note: I'm observing some serenity and movement involved. To me it's all yoga and scenes from Karate Kid.) When I finally descend from the heavens to our shabby-chic-rustic kitchen with a sloped roof and no heating, I feel in my bones that I need to be hibernating instead. Grind beans, whistle the kettle, sniff, slurp, sniff my morning coffee. In slow motion I climb back the stairs and Zoya is already in our study/art room at the desk, next to the plastic leopard on the windowsill. I tell her I still have a soft spot for the beauty of a man who, like mercury, fills the cracks of my psyche and leaves without a trace. I mutter classic proportions, universal beauty...takes nanoseconds...

"I love you!" comes from a the backseat of car pulled over in front of a King Street West theater. It is 9:49 pm and I am on my way to a screening that started four minutes earlier. Walking hastily to the TIFF Bell Lightbox, a chic movie complex that honors its patrons by a wall displaying the precise amount of money they donated, I overhear the soft words roll like a red, velvet carpet. It is not a designated lovey-dovey day and the street is particularly deserted. As I'm in full throttle I think to myself "How nice, someone is in the middle of loving." The words resonate a sincerity. It must be a mid-length relationship. They must have known each other for long and one day it must have manifested itself: love. "Hey! I love you!" This time it is louder. I turn to see what is going on. The back door of the car is half open, I see a young man waving his hand, one foot down on the sidewalk. I smile. I return to my business of being eternally late and h...