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Ink Artwork by Endre Penovác

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12 hour bus, everything turns funny. every three hours we pile out at new weird spaces to stand in the non-hours, smoke a cigarette and wait for the luggage to unload as the wind rips through. At some point the sun comes back.

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Trying to take a moment away from the violence of borders i hiked past fethiye into the first run of the Lycian way. of course, avoidance is a circular game. I stumbled into Kayakoy, the ghost town which hovers above the coast. In 1923, it was abandoned as part of the finalization of the greco turkish war, a line drawn by those far away in pursuit of an ethno state meant the town was abandoned by both its 6,500 Orthodox and Muslim inhabitants in a population exchange meant solely to concretize the narrative of homogeneity. As always the spectre remains.

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Ephesus; the birthplace of Heraclitus, one of the seven churches of Asia cited in the Book of Revelation. There were more cats than people as the day fell on the 100 year anniversary of Ataturk proclaiming the turkish republic, and no cruise ships were allowed to dock. Good riddance!!

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Selcuk in November.

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visiting st jean's basilica, where he finished writing his gospels and sheltered mary as Jesus was crucified.

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i ♡ Türkiye

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I crossed the bosphorus once the guardians left and fell from the craze of galata to the ease of Kadıköy. I stayed two weeks, frequenting dinos, peeling garlic for zelda and bretts fermentations and attending Monday morning turkish lessons. I grieved in the most motley of company and reconsidered the assumption I walk with, that I am not someone who makes someone feel safe or warm. I left after the perfect evening as not to spoil the whole affair, or take up the offer of a room above füj with promises to all of my return.

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Istanbul with peta and george

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Knossos

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Freddie and I in the perfect home in Zakynthos. We frequented a bar owned by Socrates. I toiled over the silliest of essays, rewriting line after line until even my fair tempered companion told me to pull it together. We swam in the bluest of waters and every morning ordered two freddo espressos and two coke zeroes.

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Lecce with Freddie.

The library was very welcoming, a great imposing building, full of italians working harder than I know how as I wrote about the symbolism of hunger strikers and the gendered politics of Irish Nationalism.

a sweet analytic philosophy student that I fought with for the first half hour we met (He laughed when I said Merleau Ponty) drew me on the library steps and wrote his number on the back. I lost the paper, as i tend to do.

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I tried to explain to someone the other day that I would be far more likely to court spirituality if gods were still weird, faillable. My preference would be polytheism, a pantheon but I would perhaps concede to the crazed, inconsistent nature of the Old Testament god. For a perfect Father reflects nothing visible in our world, he is not a compelling myth.

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So here is a zany although not particularly compelling saint, Agatha. Patron saint of Sicily, Earthquakes, breast cancer patients, rape victims, bellfounders and nurses.

Here is her story from Britannica online:

"Although she was one of the most-venerated virgin martyrs of Christian antiquity, the traditional particulars of her martyrdom are of little historical value. Palermo and Catania are both mentioned as her possible birthplace, and tradition holds that she was born to wealthy and noble parents. Having consecrated her virginity to God at a young age, she resisted the advances of a Roman prefect sent by the emperor Decius to govern Sicily. Her profession of faith and rejection of the prefect resulted in her brutal torture, during which her breasts were cut off (a condition often reflected in her iconography). During her imprisonment, she famously had a vision of St. Peter the Apostle, who is said to have comforted her and healed her wounds with his prayers. She was sent to the stake, but, according to some accounts, as soon as the fire was lighted, an earthquake occurred, causing the people to insist upon her release; she then allegedly died in prison."

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Now on her saints day people make Minne di Sant'Agata. A sweet obviously shaped like breasts and made from rosolio soaked sponge cake which are then stuffed with a variety of chocolate, candied fruit and different types of mild ricotta.

one catanian baker can be quoted on the veneration of making the treat, "It's not just a dessert. Preparing minne represents for me a real act of gratitude and respect for the courage and determination of Santuzza.”

we missed the feast day so did not get to partake in the ritual, maybe we shall return one February.

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These are not the two cats that marked our time in zakynthos. Ernesto was the most important, a fantastic grumpy old thing, he came with the house. We had two kittens also make appearances, one alone and meowing on the side of the road- we checked in on her every few hours, and gave her a terracotta bowl of water and one with fish meant for our meal, repurposed all mushed up and awful. The fact she could eat it made us feel better for she was so small I was worried she’d still not been weaned. Later we couldn’t find her in the same spot, a valley of long grass that marked the edge of the road. Freddie spotted her with a gang of cats, one which looked optimistically like her mother a few days later. We felt proud.

The other appeared by the steps of our place a few days before we left, far less distraught than our first child the role of this kitten seemed to be purely terrorising Ernesto. An absolute brat, she would steal his food, scream for more and dived like the best Italian soccer player there ever was- but at least she gave him something to do.

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I think we had this meal every single evening of our fourteen nights in Zante. A greek salad, whatever mezze called to us, a kind of bread and most importantly a lemon coke. It was perfect each time.

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In Sicily

We ate on towels much too small to be plates purchased for three euro and sourced by mia. Hitchhiked from paradise each afternoon, picked up by a Sicilian woman who spoke through the grumpy translation of her son, just done with his daily shift as a lifeguard. She’d turn to him whenever the word university came up. Freddie found the best cafe run by punks. I got drunk on aperol (as one must) on our first evening in ortigia, and fell asleep on the rocks looking over the sea. I fell sullen when mim and freddie woke me up, but I knew it was for the best.

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Mia and I are currently fighting Lufthansa

They left us in sun dresses in a storm and stuck in Munich

I got carded at a bar

It was cold but the hotel was so hot we both had bad dreams

Don’t fly Lufthansa

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I 🤍 Krakow