Turkey 2024: Sultanhani Caravanserai (I)

The Sultanhani Caravaserai, built in A.D. 1229 in Konya, is a rare instance of a Seljuk building which remains intact.   The Seljuk Empire, as you might recall, had an inland empire in Anatolia prior to that of Ottoman Turks, reigning over a large area of the now Middle East and Central Asia from A.D. 1037 to 1194, reduced in size from A.D. 1194 to their final defeat in A.D. 1308.

The purpose of the caravanserai was to encourage trade - in this case, trade along the Silk Road that led from China to the Mediterranean and eventually Western Europe and Africa.  Many traders did not make the entire trip across Asia; they would stop at trading posts like this to exchange goods for certain portions of the route.  Thus, the caravanserai became a meeting point of different cultures and peoples.

A caravanserai (or caravanseray) was a sort of roadside in for traders and travelers.  In the case of the Sultanhani Caravanserai, strong walls made both for protection from the elements as well as protection from potential thieves and robbers.

(One of the entry gates)

The Caravanserai was divided into two main parts, an outer part consisting of an open space, an arcade on one side and a series of small rooms on the other, and a small building in the center (below) which was a small mosque.

The arcade:

An entry door to one of the rooms:

An interior room.  These could serve as storage rooms, quarters, or work areas.

Another view of the mosque.  This is the oldest square mosque in Turkey.

Another interior:

Do Right, The Rest Lies With God

Re-reading a history of The Crusades of the Middle Ages, I was struck by the great and often vast chasm between what Christians say that they believe and what they actually sometimes do.

The Crusades in what is now Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, and Syria were a combination of many factors coming together including Byzantine need for troops, commercial hunger for markets, a sincere faith and belief that heresy needed to be combatted, and some element of an outlet for channeling elements eager for war to other lands (instead of next door).  The City of Christ was in the hands of the Infidel (said the apologists); how could that be allowed to stand - ignoring, of course, the fact that it had been that way for 450 years or so prior to the First Crusade (A.D. 1099 - 1100) and even in the time of Christ Himself had been controlled by a foreign power, Rome.

And so, the Crusades of the East (not to be confused with the Crusades of The Reconquista of Spain or against the Balts in Prussia), 200 years of what essentially became a thin layer of Western Christian civilization (the Eastern Orthodox had been there all along, of course) punctuated with war an occasional bloodbaths (in the taking of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, the slaughter was so immense of Muslims  that "...when Raymond of Aguliers later that day went to visit the Temple area he had to pick his way through corpses and and blood that reached up to his knees." - A History of the Crusades Vol.1, p. 287. Steven Runciman).  

It is easy to look back on such things and realize that if spreading Christianity was the goal, perhaps that was not the way to do it (although arguably that was not the only point of The Crusades if you look into them. There was a lot of land and power and politics involved).  It is harder to look at ourselves and realize we can have the same tendencies.

For myself, how often in the past have I thought to do something "for God", when I was either pushing my own agenda in His Name or seeking to succeed on my terms in such a way that I took moral or ethical shortcuts (it is more than I care to admit, honestly).

That is where Lewis' comment hits the hardest. Our job is not to succeed - a great temptation in a society and culture where success, especially measured in the world's terms - but rather to do right, to be a credit to God and to His message and His morality. 

Should we work hard?  Of course.  Should we put our best foot forward? Absolutely.  But we should never confuse our goal as that of first and foremost being successful.  Our first goal is to be God's representatives on earth.  "God's work God's way", as the saying runs.

The rest, as they say, is up to Him.

 

A Bit Of Good News

Apologies - due to a combination of work, Iaijutsu training, and travel preparations, today's missive is brief - but at least happy.

As you may recall, my Aunt Pat was diagnosed with cancer in late October, and in mid-November had gone into the hospital with a reaction to the chemotherapy.  She was able to return home but was put on hospice.

We received an update from my cousin last night.  She is doing well - so well, in fact, that she may be able to "graduate" from hospice (this is not unknown to me; it happened to my father's elder brother as well).  It does not change the underlying situation of course, but it is good news and will enable her family to have a much more merry Christmas than they otherwise might of.

Thanks for all of your prayers, kind thoughts, and well wishes.

One old-time radio preacher, the name of whom escapes my memory now, always opened his program with "God is still on the throne, and prayer changes things".  

Thank you for your part in "changing things".

An Elegy For An Automobile

Next week we are donating TB The Elder's car.

The car - a 20XX Ford Focus - has made the rounds of our family.  It originally was purchased by my Aunt J and driven by her for years, until it was sold to The Outdoorsman, who gave it to his son (my nephew) to drive.  It then went to my niece, then back to TB the Elder who drove it for many years until 2021, when the driving stopped.  The car then came out to New Home, where it became Nighean Dhonn's car from high school. It went away with her to college last year, then came back this year.

Unfortunately, it has reached the end of the economic value line:  a major freon leak which would require getting under the dashboard to trace and repair and a broken window mechanism means that we would be putting more into the car than likely it is worth (and Nighean Dhonn has other options now:  The Master Sergeant's car, long undriven for many years prior, has now made its own way to New Home to begin a second life).  Add to that it will not immediately pass the emissions portion of the testing (or at least without difficult) and the expense of a car that we do not really use on our insurance, and it was clear that something had to be done.

There were two options of course, sell it or donate it.  I am terrible at selling cars in person (and it stresses me out), so donation seemed like the more easily accessible course.  And the fact that I would be back in town next week to finish the transaction made things all the more handy.

I find myself surprisingly sad about this.

I have written before that I tend to invest things with personalities and emotions; my ability to get rid of  things has always been weak at best and it is simply better for me to not have things than to have them and then try and get rid of them.  Things are invested with memories to me, having almost a sort of conscious existence in that they represent something:  a person, a place, an experience, a moment in time.

The car - for all I have not seen it in the last seven months and did not use it the previous three years - represents - is another tie to my parents, a tie that is now disappearing.

This was the car that for years in which my father would take my mother for drives because that is what my mother, in her increasingly forgetful state due to Alzheimer's, liked to do.  Every day they would take a drive around the back roads of the county they lived in, roads that my father knew well from years of living and working in the area and that my mother always saw as fresh because she never remembered them from one day to the next.  They would stop for lunch somewhere - fancy places like McDonald's or Chick-fil-A. Maybe they would stop for a coffee on the way out or the way home (my mother loved stopping for mochas).  And then they would head back, ready to do it again tomorrow.

But those now remain only my memories, and perhaps the memories of my sister.  My parents - at least here in this world - no longer remember.  And the car, for all of the emotion I invest in it, is a combination of metal and plastic and vinyl and cloth and pieces and parts.  It, too, has no memory.

So next week I will be home, sign the title, and watch it get loaded up for a tow away. I will sign my declaration of non-ownership and wait thirty days to duly remove the insurance.  At some point  I will get a letter thanking me for my donation.

At that point - like so many things in life - the car will pass into our family lore, the grey small car that lived with us and in a way, shared our own adventures and life.  

But perhaps that is enough - in my children, the car will live far longer than it probably was ever designed to.

The Collapse CLXXII: Changing Seasons

 03 Oct 20XX +1

My Dear Lucilius:

Fall is in the air.

It has always been indefinable to me, that last moment when one season turns into another. Occasionally abrupt, there are years where the season is something on one day and something else on another day: the day that careens from the cool of Spring to the heat of Summer or contrariwise, the last day of Autumn that suddenly turns to Winter with a quick plunge in temperatures and precipitation that will not end until the following Spring.

But more often than not it remains a soft sort of thing, something that is more perceived than grasped: the tilt of the sun, the sound of the birds, the change in the behavior of plants and animals long before something as noticeable as the weather starts change. Perhaps it is more noticeable to me now as I have a great deal more time to pay attention to it.

The past few days (and the next few) have been consumed with scraping off the last gleanings of Pompeia Paulina’s and Statiera’s garden (now Statiera’s and Young Xerxes’) – a handy thing, to have two gardens to comb through. Pompeia Paulina and I rise, take care of our own chores, and then walk the half mile to their house to work in the garden there as well starting to prepare their house for Winter.

From what I can see, the street they live on remains maybe 75% occupied now, likely from those that have picked up and aggregated at other locations (there have no further deaths that I am aware of). Walking down the street is a somewhat eerie experience, the houses sitting empty and staring as one passes by.

In some ways you would not know that they are empty – after all, in a community which has a combination of year round residents and Summer residents, one becomes used to the fact that some houses always look unlived-in for long portions of the year. And yet there are signs – the local flora that grew up and was never cut back, small maintenance items that would have been attended to in years past but not now, the absence in many driveways of motor vehicles (that now go nowhere of course), the ubiquitous indicator of life in the United States.

There are still noises – we are not the only ones preparing for Winter of course – but it is much less than it would be for this time of year. It is more of a background sense of presence than an active sense of others nearby, the much more quiet sounds of a non-mechanical society punctuate only very occasionally by the sound of an engine performing a task that once was taken for granted.

Young Xerxes and I cut and dig and pull in this silence, passing our yield to Pompeia Paulina and Statiera, who figure out what is to be done with them. Likely today was our last day in the garden; like ours, theirs is now stripped of anything remotely resembling food, their greenhouse (like ours) holding the promise of whatever can be grown in the Spring.

A quick meal with them (black eyed peas, boiled potatoes, and greens) and then Pompeia Paulina and I make the trip back across the streets with their slight cracks that will only get worse with this Winter and the occasional sound of a bird overhead.

In some ways, Lucilius, it is the last dying silence of Autumn before Winter. The fact that it feels like it is last dying silence of a civilization that may very well not be at this level next year haunts my steps as I walk home.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

2024 Turkey: Tomb Of Rumi (IV)

 Originally the tomb of Rumi served not only as a tomb, but all as a religious center where the sufis would live in isolation (in some ways like a Christian monastery. The out buildings - like the kitchen we saw last week - have been preserved with exhibits.

Instruments for the sufi ceremony of dikhir:

Ney, the flutes used in the ceremony.  This sort of flute has been used for 4500 years.

Kudum.  Small drums.

A book.  I failed to note the marker.  

A calligrapher's set of pens.  19th Century A.D.

Calligraphy tools, 19th and 20th Century.

Mevlana prayers.  A.D. 1880, Ottoman.

Bonus round:  Dinner, dessert, and breakfast.

2024 Turkey: The Tomb of Rumi (III)

 Along with the tomb of Rumi itself, the building also had a collection of ancient texts.

It is me.  Of course I took pictures of them.

A copy of the Mesnevi, A.D 1278., Seljuk.  This was written within 5 years of his death.

Koran.  15th Century A.D., Ottoman.

Koran.  A.D. 1296, Seljuk.

Koran, A.D. 1314, Karamanid

Koran, 9th Century A.D.  Written on gazelle skin.

A book of collected poems of Hafix-I Sirazi.  16th Century A.D., Ottoman.

Subhat-ul Ebrar, A.D. 1492.  Ottoman

Subhat-ul Ebrar, A.D. 1492.  Ottoman

Miniscule Koran, 16th Century A.D.  Ottoman.

Miniscule Koran, 16th Century A.D.  Ottoman.

December 2024 Grab Bag

(Picture through the other bedroom window.  I kind of like the contrast of the window screen)

Winter is in fully swing here in New Home 2.0

I am reliably informed that the "bad part" of the year is between December and February; the comment is just that one just "bears with it", gets the appropriate clothing on, and goes about one's business.  The weather outcomes generally seem to be three potentialities:  clear and cold, overcast and cold, or rainy and cold.  A fourth combines all four of those elements into a single day.  A fifth possibility, snow, has yet to present itself.

Ah well.  It is quite lovely and green here, which all comes at a cost.

---

The Ravishing Mrs. TB was here this weekend for a visit (departing the day of this publishing), both to bring another load of things to the apartment as well as to attend our company Christmas party (see below for more details).  Any trip now has two to three full suitcases that come with her (as well as with anyone coming with her, as happened with Na Clann and Thanksgiving).  Even with her "final trip" early next month, she will still be shuttling back and forth for a bit due to engagements, the fact Na Clann are still there, and looking after finishing up on working through things at the house.  At this point, she is planning on bringing her car out in April or May with a last load - what that means, of course, is that for three or four months we will have one car between us.  I cannot remember that happening since I was a very young child growing up.

A follow-on note about her job:  her employer has extended the part time work to 14 January 2025, or just before she flies out.  There is a certain amount of sense to that of course - with the year end and the transition, it will help to close out their books.  It will also be nice as that is now an additional two weeks of income we had not anticipated.  

Suddenly, the one unused benefit in my relocation package - job search assistance for one's spouse - comes in handy.

---

This year, for the first time in more years than I can remember, I was part of both a department holiday party and site holiday party.

(From the department party.  As delicious as it looked.)

I honestly cannot remember the last departmental party I was part of; the last formal Christmas Party (it was that long ago they called it that) was 2015. Both were delightfully enjoyable.

The departmental party was a combination of a shared activity (making and eating pizza) and a party games/good gifts white elephant exchange (out of which I got a bottle of wine and three chocolate bars; it pays to draw the first pick and then be able to re-choose at the end).  The Christmas Party was the sort of event that, once upon a time, used to be the typical year event: nice venue, semi-formal dress (or more, seemingly for the young people), reasonably good food, drinks, and music for dancing at the end (which, given our age, we bow out of and head home).  

It certainly built a sense of shared experience in a non-work setting, something that has been sadly lacking from my last few jobs.  It was not just the companies themselves either:  The Plague stripped so much from our social experience that really does seem gone in so many ways.

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The year end speeds on from this point.

We have one more "official" full week of work before our vacation starts.  We get a long one this year, from 24 December 2024 to 01 January 2025 (yes, I suppose I could have extended it even more, but I am very close to the upper limit of how far I can go into the hole for vacation).  The intent is that I will fly back to New Home on 24 December to be home for Christmas, then fly back to New Home 2.0 on 28 December and have some time back here prior to having to go back to work - so in a way, I almost have two separate tranches of time off.

Given the way Christmas falls this year, what has become my usual "posting schedule" will be a bit off, and my responses may be delayed (for which I beg your pardon).  I am sure the fact the schedule is "off" will bother no-one but me:  I am, if nothing else, a creature of habit.

---

Even as I have been writing this, the sun has been doing its best to make its appearance.

It is never bad to be grateful for the briefest and most evanescent of things.

Humble Yourself

(Helpfully, God keeps providing me with these "gentle" reminders of humility in my Social Media feed.  Almost as if He was trying to help me along with my inner work.)

One big step I am reminded of (again, this week - God giving opportunities to practice and all) is simply working  to keep my mouth shut.

For me, one way my pride manifests itself in is in my reactions to suggestions I do not like or projects I have no interest in.  My initial reaction when this came up years ago was when a then current boss said I essentially needed to completely redo a part of my work. I gave reasons why I thought it did not need to be done and even got to the point of saying "No".  I was corrected that he, in fact, was my boss and that in fact I would be doing the work again.

That lesson stuck with me and I became a great deal less verbal in my disagreement - which, in light of my career, was probably a good thing. What it was replaced with was much less of a direct disagreement and much more of a sort of slow roll where 1) I silently listened and then groused about it outside of the presence of those people or 2) slow rolled things until they did not get done.

(I am not proud of this of course, but there it is).

Perhaps not surprisingly, this worked no better. Word travels in the oddest of ways and flies back to the very people you do not want to hear it, and some people are terribly patient about seeing something through to its conclusion, to the point of making sure there are daily check-ins and updates until the thing is finished.

It works that way in other places too.  How many times have I confidently professed an answer that was clearly not based on facts?  How many times have I "known better" than people who actually knew better?  How many times have I put myself forward when really I should have stepped back?

Now, I am much likely to just sit and listen and then do things to the best of my ability. to speak only if I truly know and have real information or simply step back instead of stepping forward - although not nearly where I should be.  It certainly does not make the doing of the things any easier or necessarily make the doing of the thing any more pleasant, but "easier" or "more pleasant" may not be the point.  And staying silent and behind is no way to attract attention to one's self.

I need to simply learn the lessons I should have remember from long ago:  be quiet if you do not know, do the work you are asked to do without grumbling or complaining, and be content to not be in the front of the line.  Because if I fail to continue to practice them, the reminders will continue to come - in ways I will not enjoy.

Of Background Noise And Sleep

 I have been experimented with background noise generators for sleeping at night.

My sleep pattern, which for years have never been fantastic, is something of a bit of a frustration to me now.  I am not sure if it is due to the change in location (it gets darker much earlier here) or a general sense of being away from my family, but I end up sleeping in one of three camps:

1)  Sleeping through from within 5 minutes of hitting my pillow to when my alarm goes off;

2)  Waking up in the night, missing my window of falling back to sleep (it is two minutes or so, much like Seneca's), and then being up for at least two hours before I can go back to sleep;

3)  Fitful waking up and falling back asleep that is restful.

Add to this that no matter which of these options I get on the "Nightly Wheel of Sleep", I seldom feel rested - even if hit Option 1 above and get 7 hours a night.  

In general, the room I sleep in has blackout curtains with minimal light (that was a problem when I first moved in).  There is a local light rail that runs nearby from 0400 to 0000, so that is a factor (for which I had been sleeping with earplugs).

One of the things that The Ravishing Mrs. TB has taken to over the last year is a background noise generator to help her sleep - in her case, due to tinnitus.  I was complaining about the sleep I was getting last week, so she suggested I try it.  And, as it turns out, the I-phone conveniently has an entire app dedicated to background noise generation with many selections.

How is working?  On the bright side, I can report that I have not had the experience of waking up and then staying awake for two hours as apparently the noise is enough to fool my mind into going back to sleep, and I can scarcely (that I recall) hear the early morning train.  On the less bright side, I do not know that I feel any more rested per se, and in some cases my mind feels like it has been active all night.  I will also note my dreams have been extremely vivid (and rather odd to boot).

My options for "noise" are Balanced Noise, Bright Noise, Dark Noise, Ocean, Rain, Stream, Night, and Fire.  I am trying a different one every night to see if there is any difference in my ability to sleep or how rested I feel when I wake up (so far, none).  And my intention is to try this out, then try another night with just the earplugs and see if there is a noticeable difference.

Do I think it will really help the issue?  I am not sure; the fact that I still do not feel truly rested is a bit bothersome (but maybe I have not let the experiment run enough).  The next step would be to try to expand my bedtime by another hour to see if a set aside full eight hours helps at all (which would be a drag in some ways to my mind, as I really would like to use that time doing something else).  

But some progress is better than no progress at all.  And besides, maybe this teaches me more about sleep that I really need to know.

Hammerfall 3.0: One Year On

 Due to what has become the typical schedule for posting here, I note that the anniversary of Hammerfall 3.0 occurred this past Wednesday, 11 December.

In general I do not specifically mark my three Hammerfalls (other than my failure at The Firm of course, which resulted in the firing of myself by myself and gave us the Annual Day of Failure every 02 August) as I found for such things that maudlin recollections of the events year after year is neither good practice nor a good use of time.  Given the fact that it was the first anniversary though, there is likely no harm in just reflecting for a bit.

If I had to look at the year since that event, I think the hallmark would be "change" - change in ways that I could not have imagined on the 10th of December last year.  Life is like that sometimes, month or years where nothing changes at all and then - suddenly - the world seems to shift out from under one's feet.

One thing that strikes me in a dark humour sort of way is that this was the sort of thing that I had been asking for, in a backhanded sort of way.  We had wanted to move closer to Old Home and had made a passive go of it through occasionally looking for a job, but was always somewhat hampered by the fact that we had commitments (largely Na Clann, to make sure they got through school).  Suddenly, dramatically, we were given the ability to relocate - might I say "pushed" - in a way that was both unexpected and for which we had to pay nothing.  But it was only after going through all the possibilities of either finding on-site work or remote work in New Home that this happened - in a real sense, at the end of the rope.

The second major thing that strikes me is the fact that in almost every way, my life was upended.

I have written on this before, but the fact was that I had a very well developed schedule in New Home.  I had my activities and my participations and - for a time - a second job at Produce (A)Isle, with every day mapped out to the activity.  I had no "free time" to explore new things or do something different because my schedule was so full.  Miraculously with the move, all of that was instantly cleared away (but with a twist of course; for example the ability to still train at a dojo in my martial arts style or have an ability to engage with other rabbit rescue organizations).

The third thing that comes to mind is simply the evidence of God's hand in this.

It has been evident in every Hammerfall I have experienced:  In the first Hammerfall, we were relocated at the company's expense and I started the month before we would have had serious financial difficulties.  For Hammerfall 2.0 I had plenty of warning and was provided with a job within six weeks of my departure.  For Hammerfall 3.0 - which to be fair was no longer in duration than the first Hammerfall - we again were relocated at the company's expense and started with an income not too far before it was truly needed.

If , to the Christian, these sorts of provision do not blatantly show the hand of God, I have no idea what does.

Change is never easy, and sometimes the change we need to make is the hardest of all because we become comfortable and ensconced in our daily lives.  It is at times like that, it seems, that God can move most readily and effectively simply because, with the stripping out of all the security and sameness of what we have known, we have nothing but Him to rely on to make a way.

And He does indeed make a way, if it is not the way that we always anticipate.

The Collapse CLXXI: Insomnia

01 October 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

Insomnia. It comes for us all.

My insomnia started well before The Collapse, a remnant of a career that never seemed to provoke massive amounts of stress but also never was completely stress free. Then, it was just an annoying outgrowth of work and concerns I could never really rid myself of.

Sunday nights before the work week were the worst. I would inevitably wake up sometime around 0200 – well before my actual rising time – and just lay there in bed. There was always a two minute window where, if I could manage to quiet my mind, I could easily make my way back to sleep. But if that window passed, I was easily up for two hours or more. And then, of course, spent the rest of the week catching up on sleep.

The habit, once made, seemed impossible to be rid of, and so it simply became a way of life. At best I could exhaust myself into sleep; at worst I went around for days on the edge of zombiehood, prone to almost falling asleep in meetings if given a chance.

I had quite forgotten that was a thing – until my marriage some months ago. Suddenly I was reminded that we do not all suffer from insomnia, and being in a small living location makes it all the worse. Now, I try and ease my way off the bed and come to the living room where I mostly sit in darkness and look out the window or, if I am feeling lucky, try to lay on the futon to sleep.

The stove is certainly warm enough in Winter to make it a pleasant experience of course, but given the proximity of the bedroom to the living room – literally a door away – any chance of doing anything other than sitting or lying down is at the risk of waking up Pompeia Paulina.

Sitting on the futon against the back wall, I can look out the side windows (once I open the curtains, of course) or even get a view out the window above the sink in the kitchen. There is not much to see usually – even before everything happened this was a quiet burg with little going on after the sun went down. Now with life at the pace of sun and moon, there is even less.

If I stand at the sink and look out, I can see across the pasture to the main road out of town. It looks ghostly on moonlit nights, the rays picking up the imperfections of the pavement and the trees on the other side of the road as silent dark sentinels, brooding under starlit skies. The windows on the dirt road from the living room are at least more personable, looking out over our log fence that keeps nothing out but sightseers at one time to the dip beyond the road hiding the creek, brush and reeds indicating its perimeter by their presence. These, too, glow in the night but are even more ethereal when lit by moonlight and blowing in the wind.

I could, I suppose, meander out to the greenhouse and sit, even taking a headlamp to read – but that defeats the purpose of me attempting, vainly, to pretend that somehow just by sitting or lying here I will go back to sleep.

On my better nights I make lists of things to do. Sometimes, I just sit with my memories.

The silence in the house is much less noticeable than the silence outside, mostly because the house was almost always silent when it was just me living here. The silence outside often seems more menacing to me, a sort of melancholy reminder of times past that very well may be gone forever.

Outside, the reeds and brush begin to move with a breeze under the almost past full moon that I cannot hear but only see.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

2024 Turkey: The Tomb Of Rumi (II)

 Forewarning:  This is going to be a great many pictures without much commentary, because I do not have much to add.  This was by far one of the most beautiful places I visited in Turkey.

Entrance to the Tomb:

Various calligraphys:

Interior Dome.  There were several:

A door:

Tombs:

Outside of the Tomb of Rumi:

The tomb of Rumi:

Another interior dome: