31 May
Walt Whitman’s birthday reminds me to shut the virtual reality of the phone so I can see the faces on the tram. I admire the eyes of the human family here in Gaziantep. Somnolent and anxious, shameful and judgmental—I see all the faces, and in these faces I see my own. Once I saw a middle-aged woman whose veil could not hide her beauty, and when she wept alone on the crowded train, my eyes welled up with tears but my alienation subsided for that moment.
No return home is possible once upon the global trek. Hometowns change in our absence, even in provincial places: Bowling Green, Kentucky; Charlestown, Indiana; or a borough like Staten Island. Antep is not mired in a static path, despite her instincts. She is a sensuous city and a complicated maiden. Her precincts crackle with vibrancy and evolution. Turks come for work from all over Anatolia. Turks marry Kurds, and Kurds marry Arabs, and everyone survives and strives to thrive. All of Asia and Europe arrives, for pistachio baklava or the logistics of industry. Africa, east or west, comes to teach, tutor, or matriculate. The currency inflates, but production and learning perpetuates. Even the Americas mark this place. Look at my face.
Let London and New York connect the Atlantic across the Whale Road. Let Paris hold up her nose like the Eiffel Tower. Frankfurt is a hop to Istanbul, and along the Silk Road you will see humanity in the carpets of Antep woven with Chinese machinery, and on to Hawaii goes the world-bride’s golden belt. Let a network of eyes multiply. It is more than a virus. It is rhizomes of vision across the sky. It activates the satellites of love. We see the flocks laying in the grass on hillsides under the stars. Our eyes are the smallest planets shining with insight, craft, and discipline. The authentic intelligence remains the analog for the artificial one.
I am far away in time and place from Walt Whitman’s Brooklyn Ferry. I miss the seagulls flying past the torch of Lady Liberty, though I can search this image on the internet. My hair is still curly and my eyes are still blue like Hank Williams. I woke up alive again on New Year’s Day. I see this world, depth and fathom, with vision gathered from the body and the tools of technology. I see it from boats, buses, trains, planes, and even horseback. I see everything, even wearing smartass sunglasses.
Flood tide below me, I see you face to face. My friends all over the world, my lovers and companions, and my antagonists too, fear not the evil eye. For that leer can not discard the lover’s looking nor the revelation of books. My eyes do not covet or envy, but cry and empathize. My eyes are not jealous. You and I have nothing the other does not own already. All creation is on loan from the Creator and from this lease continues to create. The People love, love for people propagates within Nature’s unfolding. Life’s poem always grows. We were born for abundance if only we will see it.