How can I be over here having such an in-depth experience of something that another person cannot imagine? My first real experience of totality occurred while I was wearing dirty shoes. I find this detail devastating. It stands to prove that no one really cares about appearances as much as you do. My two front teeth are darkening, and the only issue is that I don't care much about it! It is comforting to know that I have a blemish no one else has got. It sets me apart from the mundane.

I'm eating an oatmeal cookie while wondering why Emre won't sleep over. He has some discomfort around this, and I can't reach into him to feel for the reason. This fact I do care about, more so than my dead teeth. Today he told me my text messages were too tall to translate, and I replied that I didn't care if words didn't flow as easily between us. There's more to a relationship than the constructs we create through verbal language. If I can't unravel my philosophical desires with him, it will force me to write my thoughts down for someone to read who has chosen to show up for my idle musings and reckless banter. I've had many partners who did not understand what I said and who spoke perfect English.

All my girlfriends have left Antalya, so I'm drinking a sour lemonade alone in the cafe. It is delicious. This moment of solitude and the drink sweating in my hand. The people across the street are watering their gardens with a long green hose. The earth is split in many small angles, and the cleavage into the ground looks shallow. Remember that things are never as they appear. Georgina fell into a hole while hiking because of how dry the ground had become from the heat. The top of the trial was moist to the touch, and it looked solid. She sunk it to her waist, and her husband pulled her out. Watching the woman water her cracked lawn makes me lick my split lips. They're burnt and bleeding.

We're running out of Ojas, and I believe it's because we don't love each other like we used to. It's a bit upsetting to step back and see how cruel life is, and we absorb it like the moss drinking the dew of the stream. It's impossible not to be a bit mean sometimes. The trick is to not take any of it personally.

I am writing a novella about all of it. The Ache. The terrific pang of terror creeps in when you realize how utterly evanescent this all is. I miss my body, and I'm still inside of it! How can it be that I long for something I already own? When I shake my head side to side, sometimes I hope something extra shoots out of my ear or nose. Nothing new ever happens on this island.

Do you ever get sick of waking up inside of yourself? Sometimes I wish I could open my eyes, and they'd be a different color looking back at me in the mirror. I can change my introspections faster than I can change my appearance. In this way, I am unique. I understand the efficiency of mantras. I am working with the one thing that has the power to transform who I am, no matter how I appear to others: my thoughts.

I am learning how fragile the mind is. Sometimes my ideas feel slippery, like noodles between chopsticks and a dexterous hand. Whatever the effort, it doesn't matter. The pasta slides and flicks across your cheeks, and it's messy, right? I ordered ramen on a first date once and immediately regretted it. I don't often feel remiss about my actions. In this case, the broth covered my white blouse from the damn noodles flopping about. I picked out all the vegetables, mostly carrots and broccoli, then slurped the noodles while holding the bowl under my chin. My date said it was one of the most disgusting things he'd ever watched. It didn't deter me from finishing my meal. I never heard from him again; that part did not bother me.

Sex is disgusting in the same way slurping noodles is disgusting. He was probably very polite during intercourse which is not exactly what I'm looking for in a lover. Or in life. I am sick of being polite, and most times, my conversations with myself are far more educational than anything happening around me. I enjoy my own company. I like to be alone. I don't offend anyone when I'm having this trite conversation within myself, and when people interrupt, I find it irritating though I cannot say anything about it.

What would I say? You interrupted my internal monologue. This never-ending, exhaustible ping-ponging discussion I constantly have with myself? Jessica B. and Eva, and now there is Stephanie now that I'm Seraphina. It's a bit much with four people, and it also makes sense. I am the first of four girls. Three is a crowd, two is a pair, and four is a party. My mother used to say something like this whenever we complained about each other to her.

A little girl in an orange jumper approached me this afternoon with one little finger held up for me to look at. She barely walked and could not speak, but she was adamant about showing me whatever she had. The object in question was a squished ant that wriggled just a little on her index finger. She looked up at me with these wild brown eyes, and I knelt to tell her it was a bug. His father approached me, not entirely kindly, and nodded. Merhaba, I said. I also smiled. He did not. I stood up and smiled at the little girl, who now looked like she would cry. She did not like the bug, and I understood and wanted so badly to take the twitching ant from her fingertip, but I thought that touching her would pass a boundary her father had drawn. So I left it, and she started to cry as I felt she would, and her father didn't understand any of it. He picked her up, and she kicked her legs and waved her hands, and he said, Shhh!

How often we misunderstand each other and cause these little calamities.

I asked Emre why he won't sleep over, and he said it's not a problem. I read into a little thing that was actually a non-thing. And now he is sleeping over.

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