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¶ … belly was full of, well, cop "i" and ayran, because those are the only two things on the menu at roadside restaurants in Turkey. We call the former shish kebob, and ayran is this funny fermented yoghurt drink. It's an acquired taste. One that I tried, without success, to acquire. What I thought would be a bus station was in fact a bus depot. That means no building, just a couple of stops in the open air. The 100 degree, blasting noon heat sort of open air you never really get used to. I was sweaty. I was dirty. Ok, filthy. Who I am kidding? I was wandering, blowing with the wind, and things like showers were starting to seem irrelevant to me, like something you might remember from back home but now were an afterthought to the great adventure. Or something like that. I was a gross mess, sweaty, filthy, and exhausted. But at least my belly was full.
I dead set on getting back to Istanbul. I wanted only that. To me, that was my ticket back to civilization. Which isn't to pass any sort of judgment on the rest...
I was burned out, that's all there was to it. I looked around for a tree to sit under. I saw one, not too far away. Now, I don't know about you, but I can't tell the difference between cat pee and dog pee, so I don't want to blame any species out of line here, but let's just say the base of that tree was uniquely pungent, and even its gloriously cool shade was insufficient reward for spending the rest of my day with stale animal urine smell on my clothes.
It was only about 100 feet back to the bench where in an hour my bus would arrive. But if I was on my way to my own execution I would not have made that walk any slower. My feet shuffled in the dust, then stumbled along asphalt as unctuous as brie as I was now convinced I was on a death march. I sat on the bench, adjusted my hat, put in my headphones and closed my eyes.
The next time I looked up, there was a bus at the station. I think somebody had walked past me, and that's what woke me. I am…
Sometimes, opportunity knocks, but it doesn't knock very loud. It knocks real quiet. Aleppo of course was a famously beautiful ancient city, the sort of enchanting ancient city with parts that haven't changed in millennia, the essence of travel's romance and it was at my fingertips. Suffice to say, this incident took place before 2011. Before the Syrian Civil War destroyed Aleppo. It was as easy as handing over a few Turkish lira to the driver, and buying a visa at the border. There aren't too many things I can rightly say that I once had the chance to do, and now never will. A city that didn't change for thousands of years changed in the blink of an eye. I missed it.
I asked why, once or twice, why I would have stuck with my boring plan instead of just seizing the opportunity that had so obviously presented itself to me. It's not that there aren't other nice places to visit or anything; I have asked this of myself in order to not make that mistake again. My grandmother passed away last year. But I never passed up an opportunity to visit her. There were even times when it cost me more, or took me well out of my way. But there's just so many times in life when you have the chance to do something, and that chance might never come your way again. You have to take the opportunities that life gives you, because you might never get those opportunities again.
But you know, I'm human, and I still let opportunities pass me by sometimes. I do sometimes think about something that happened, especially if I realize that I missed an opportunity. Was it a good decision? Should I take every opportunity, or not? Is my gut always right? To this day, I still do not know everything there is to know about making the right decisions, but that day under the blasting sun something changed in the way I wanted to approach life, because sometimes there really is no tomorrow, so don't keep waiting for it.
The TieThere was no question about it: he had to have that tie. He justified it to himself by saying that of course he deserved it, since he was the biggest and most powerful and important kid in school and perhaps even in the whole town, or maybe even in the whole state�probably even in the whole world, what the heck. But the reality was simply that he felt special
If this is indeed the case, Leach is within his rights to appeal for an overturn of his conviction. The Fourth Amendment protects travellers from unwarranted police searches, which appears to be what happened in this case. The Fourth Amendment then protects the rights of individuals to reasonable expectation of privacy. While Archibald Leach voluntarily yielded his luggage for investigation, the search itself was not conducted in a legal manner
Down These Mean Streets believe that every child is born a poet, and every poet is a child. Poetry to me was always a very sacred form of expression. (qtd. In Fisher 2003) Introduction / Background History Born Juan Pedro Tomas, of Puerto Rican and Cuban parents in New York City's Spanish Harlem in 1928, Piri Thomas began his struggle for survival, identity, and recognition at an early age. The vicious street