The guidebook says that Bozcaada Island is a place just to hang out and relax, but my experience was more like an absurdist, existential play. With the town center on the East side of the island and popular beaches on the South, I could not figure out how people, without their own car or scooter, got from one to the other. Most of the play consists of me, dressed for a day at the beach, walking for hours along lonely roads through empty hills and farmland, looking for the beach. I’m following a map with roads that have no names, just a dark line for asphalt and a thin line for dirt. Cicadas buzz in bushes as the sun beats down and I feel every rock through my flip-flops.
Other acts in this play include witnessing a midnight wedding procession led by a horse and carriage and marching band; meeting a man claiming to have been a pirate who calls the Elif Shafak book I am reading “postmodern bullshit”; and hitching a ride from two middle-aged women traveling with their kids in a hatchback jeep who take our coconut-scented protagonist wine tasting. Eventually I found the minibuses that go between the town and beach, and had a great time swimming in the Aegean, but those long walks gave me lots of time to think about my feelings about the city and the country.
I’ve always lived in the city. My family isn’t the outdoorsy type. But when I think about myself playing as a child it’s always outside. My earliest memories of Chicago are playing in driveways, backyards, public parks or overgrown lots. When my family moved to Albuquerque, I was spoiled to have the almost undisturbed Sandia Mountains literally butting up against my friends’ backyards. Up until the age we learned to drive I remember spending as much time on rocks and hills as indoors. Because of this I don’t make the typical separation between city and country. I like being outdoors, but whether it’s a hiking trail or the stoop of an apartment building doesn’t make much of a difference to me.
So, while I enjoy camping and swimming at the beach, when faced with 4 days on a quiet, relaxing resort town like Bozcaada I can’t help but feel anxious. It could accuse its overpriced meals, or that I don’t really get wine tasting, but I think it’s more my fear of settling down. Since moving out of my parents’ house I haven’t lived in the same building more than 2 years. It’s not a conscious decision, but it has happened. The fact that I’m drawn to megacities like Shanghai and Istanbul might say something. In those places I feel like people are working, and often struggling to achieve something, whether it’s material or personal. But on Bozcaada Island people seem to, having attained enough, want to let go of those struggles. I guess I’m not done struggling. I changed my hotel reservations from 4 nights to 3 and, with that done, started to relax.
