Brothers gone Turkish

Apparently my brother and I used to fight like cats and dogs, squids and whales, birds and bullet trains, though I barely remember any of that. But we’re in a good patch lately, a streak of getting along that’s lasted about, oh, a quarter of a century or so. But through the demands of modern American life, where geography and occupation insert themselves like bossy uncles into the affairs of our days (or like bed bugs into a traveler’s sheets?), we haven’t actually spent much time together since Clinton left office.

Turkey's past, further past, and present

All of that’s about to change. On Monday morning I’ll head towards Turkey, and on Thursday my older brother will arrive in Istanbul. We’ll pitter patter around that most layered of cities, clicking cameras at ancient angles and trying to espy the currents of culture and history that flow through the streets, with their Byzantine memories and Alexandrian heritage. Or maybe we’ll just eat a (metric) shit ton of good Turkish food. That sounds alright too.

What will we do in Turkey, a land that hosts such a surplus of stupendous sites? That encompasses a mass of contradictions and a horde of cultural candy, with relics of ancient ages and promises of future delight? The plan is to do something that spans all of that. It has the potential to be amazing, the obligation to be beautiful, and the capacity to be excruciatingly uncomfortable. Will we roast and burn, freeze and blister, starve and devolve into animals prowling for sustenance and warmth, seeking survival on the fringes of communities we cannot touch? It’s possible.

Turkish countryside from last time, I'll see you soon

But in my present haze of excitement, trying futilely to leave expectations behind, I am going to leave things mysterious. So for right now, I’m focussing on the Family FeelGood current, which will flood out in diluvian splendor to a FeelGood April (unless we do that whole freezing and starving thing). Because travel to foreign shores is a well established love of mine, but to do it in the company of family? That’s a new version. A new perspective, and chance at clashes and harmony, growth and remembrance.

Looking across the Bosporus to Istanbul's Golden Horn

So I’ll be incommunicado for the rest of April. I hope you can connect and share this spring with your family and loved ones, and I look forward to hearing about it in May.

Wishing you lavish travels and familial fortune!