Pigs’s Bay Camp & Memories & Melancholy…

Hikmet Temel Akarsu
Istanbul, July 12, 2009
htakarsu@gmail.com
http://www.myspace.com/hikmettemelakarsu

Translation by Emre Karacaoğlu
Istanbul, October 2009
emrekaracaoglu@hotmail.com
http://www.myspace.com/emrekaracaoglu

The middle-aged man in Pig’s Bay hesitated for the first time before lighting his cigarette. He had spent his whole day watching the glow at the tip of it burn the paper and crawl closer to his fingers heedlessly. In such a period where melancholy seemed just about the most appropriate feeling, he had made countless promises to himself for weeks not to indulge in it. Thus, he fooled himself with the idea that the tears built up in his eyes were the salty remnants of the blue world he dwelled in the whole day.

After weeks of pressing the gas pedal of the car passionately as if he were pushing a tampon on a gunned-down body, he descended to the Mediterranean in a flurry of dust like defeated safari men and unlike one would expect, he did not go searching for his secluded paradise to soothe his soul. Because he knew where to find it. Just when the moon had appeared to ascend in the sky, this man, who had already grown accustomed to the exhaustive muteness of solitude, was brought alone to this bay on a boat named “Domuzcuk” (“Piggy”) since the bay had no road ties. He entered Pig’s Bay, which had no electricity, through the beach lit with torches.

This man, who looks estranged even to me, was me…

While the guests of this unannounced party were sipping from their drinks quietly among arbors, I remembered that night in the Carribbean islands where I had fallen asleep in a black woman’s arms. At that moment, I felt my lips curl like malevolent cowboys. I felt ashamed, but meandered to the bar nevertheless. At the bar built only of reed and a few wooden sheets, a few men who obviously took the Full Moon Party a bit too seriously were in the middle of a feverish preparation. By “feverish preparation”, what I only mean is that they were setting up a clover-shaped stage decoration between two trees. This way, this stupendous part of nature would be put under boundaries and designated as our chosen spot, the focus of the party or the center of this wild discothéque.

At that moment, a woman as cool as an ancient Scandinavian queen asked the swarthy barman the most absurd question:

“How many more liters of oil do we have?”

I found the question odd. In spite of my puzzlement, I chose to remain silent. Why would a woman ask such a question on such a pleasant night?

To my surprise, I noticed her question was answered by the barman with such a serious tone as if his life was at stake.

“I believe the songs will be with us for a few hours more…”

“Glad to hear that!” said the gloomy blond.

Then I understood what was going on: the last few drops of the generator’s oil had been reserved solely for music. I was delighted for this scarcity. I ordered a Scotch on the rocks while the music appeared in the background. The young man shamefully uttered that they did not have any. So in turn I asked him to give me something with ice. He shamefully uttered once again that they did not have any ice either, since they had not started the generator any time during the day not to use up the oil saved for music. They had not frozen any ice and what they had had already melted.

I smiled to myself. I embraced this state of scarcity with delight. I could drink anything now, as long as there was alcohol in it. I asked for a shot of rum, a mohito and some tequila, one after the other. Would not matter if they were warm. They did not have any of it. All they had was warm beer that would seemingly last forever and some hard raki brought along by a familiar man from past times.

I asked the barman if I could have some of that raki.

“Why not?” he replied. “There seems to be no other option apparently.”

I could not help but grin. I took my raki neat and turned around. I wanted to speak with the Scandinavian queen, who I later figured out from her humorous statement that she was the owner.

She was gone.

I turned back. A whimsical song in English about past time lovers took my attention. The system was working just fine. Along with the last drops of oil, last bits of money and the last throbs of the generator, faces dipped in warm drinks began to appear. Some lights here and there went on. I was happy. I took notice of the little number of people that gathered for the unannounced Full Moon Party and I was even happier. When a tall, slender, young man with a Caribbean shirt, dreadlocks and the attitude of a sophisticated musician entered the bar, I knew for certain that reggae would be up next on the playlist. However, I hesitated at the thought when I spotted the glow of a laptop under his fingers. He began playing some new-age and I must say…it was celestial. I turned back and walked slowly through the torches to the dock. Now that I had left it, the party looked deserted.

I was enjoying every minute of this paucity.

The full moon was rising in the sky and a few guys from the city laid under an arbor reviewing their thoughts on life. The white-skinned German woman with a Bavarian trilby hat on the beach had found a new occupation to engage her Siamese lover and herself in: she was collecting pebbles under the moonlight. The French woman, too, who had left her body to melt under the sun all day long, was here under the moonlight to pursue her solitude. The English man asleep on the hammock was clinging to his beer bottle as if to prove a point about sleeping and holding onto a bottle. On distant part of the beach, I could also catch a glimpse of young boys and girls around a bonfire sharing kisses. “Why would someone light a bonfire under the full moon?” I muttered to myself. Through the flames of the bonfire, I also caught sight of another German woman reading poetry to the dark sea and swinging her arms like she was delivering an oration to the waves. Amongst all things, it was nice to see poetry return to humanity. The wiggles of the sleeping bags on the beach were reminders of the hippy age sensuality.

I remembered everything one by one… How everything got to this point…

How everything turned sour… The Valley of Butterflies in the 2000s, Olympos in the 90s, Iztuzu in the 80s, Mocamp X in the 70s, Sultanahmet in the 60s, The Pudding Shop… And the road to ruin…

The invisible dances of the party guests and the new-age melodies from the last few drops of gas oil lingered in the air.

“Why is life this way?” I pondered to myself, to be answered by the silence of the waves that did not hit the shore.

“Then what do I want out of this life so shamelessly?” I asked this time, to be answered by the kissing sounds of absent lovers in my ears.

“Then, all is hollow!” I asserted to myself.

Strange. I must have said that out loud. I heard a woman’s voice behind me:

“Are you all right?”

I did not turn to look. I did not want to know who the voice belonged to. Reality was the last thing I wished for in that moment. I only yearned to spend the following few days painlessly with the images invoked by that voice. Because I was not well. And no one ever asked me if I was all right when I was, in fact, not. Out of bad luck or for some other reason, I was asked that question whenever I was perfectly fine. But those times seem so remote now… Doubtlessly, along with those women who asked. Anyways… Not the right time for these. This is the time for watching the full moon among the silent passings of boats in July sensibility. The time to get lost in the full moon abyss.

I got on my feet after young men and women in our deserted natural tavern had picked up their warm drinks and withdrawn to their hammocks and sleeping bags. They were watching the full moon with eyes enchanted and wide open. I climbed the dock. With little and slow steps, I walked towards the edge.

“If this man, worn from desolation and disappointment, is going to end his life some day, why not this place and this moment frozen in time?”

I took a few more steps forward. I heard the music change and felt steepening rays of light behind me. I turned back to see the Scandinavian queen doing a Shaman dance on the sand. The flames at the ends of her revolving canes created symbols from a dead language, as if telling a cryptic tale in the darkness of night. I tried to work it out, or at least some meaning of it, but to no avail.

Maybe it was better this way: to know that there was something behind them and to never be able to work it out.

I put my hand in my pocket and took out a cigarette. I picked out my lighter with my other hand. I was about to light another one, like I had done the whole day. For a moment, I hesitated. I despised myself. With the full moon above my head, the cryptic symbols of the Shaman dance behind me and the busy lights of locusts all around, I was probably the only loser in this world to think of smoking in that moment.

I wished for the oil to run out in that moment.

The generator to die.

The music to stop.

The time to literally freeze.

I only wanted the flames. The glowing lights of the locusts, the full moon and the words of the dead language on the flames of the Shaman dance…

Memories and Melancholy… Summer 2009, Pig’s Bay