The Hell With Perfect

I picked up my shirts and jacket at the dry cleaners yesterday. I had to remember where the place was so I could get back there. I don't always count on my memory. (no laughter, please) I write things down. What it's next to, across from and if it's up from the park or down from the park, or on the same road that has trolley tracks.

It felt good to walk in the door and act like it was no big deal I was able to pick up my clothes. But, then I remembered when I got up to the counter I didn't bring the receipt for the six items I left. There were two men there and when I looked in my purse and showed them the, “I-forgot-the-receipt-look” the man at the counter sighed loudly as he looked at the other man. I was able to tell them six in Turkish. That's it. Just the number of items. They each started looking around the small establishment to find my things. They were not hanging together. I didn't really figure out what was the rhyme to where they put things. The pink and blue blouse were with other white blouses. My white blouse was up high on another rack. (they showed me five white blouses before they found mine) My black blazer was with some other dark clothes on another rack.

I saw them looking inside for a tag and thought, “Ahhh, they're looking for the type of material the clothes are made of. They must have sorted them by how they would clean them.” Then I saw that my name was written very small on each tag inside with pen......“Margaret”. This must happen to them a lot.

Everything looked great. The shirts weren't buttoned up, which I wasn't use to. But, there must be a reason for that procedure, too. I won't question it. I don't know anything about the dry-cleaning business.

They put some clear plastic over the clothes, I paid them and left. Not until I got up the steps and on the street did I feel conspicuous carrying clothes home. It was about 4:30 pm and the streets were starting to get quite busy. I've never carried clothes on hangers outside before. (just from inside the dry-cleaners to outside in my Trailblazer to hang inside the door.) The walk I had ahead of me was a 20 minute walk through the town square (there's a little park there), down a long hill and through a neighborhood to my apartment building.

To hold the clothes, you have to hold them up, or they'll get dirty! I wasn't about to split them up and put three pieces for each hand, so I had to keep switching hands because my arms were getting tired. The sidewalks were busy. That means when someone went by me I had to hug the clothes next to me so they wouldn't bump into them and knock them out of my hands.

I think every person I went by or who saw me walking with the clothes was looking to see what clothes I had and how many. The pink and blue were quite obvious and I had no place to set them down so I could put the black blazer on the outside facing all the nosy people. The other embarrassing fact was--- I was a woman walking in broad daylight with clothes washed by someone else besides me! AND I paid to have them washed! I may be wrong but I think they had me pegged as an idiot and I felt like one. The next time I'll pay a few extra lira to have them delivered to my flat.

I love thinking about these things. It puts life and living in such a different perspective. I've prided myself for years about not caring what people think about me and what I do. Being in Istanbul I look at it differently. I don't want to stand out unnecessarily. I want to fit in to Istanbul and be a part of the community, not separate. I realize it could take a long time.

Natalie Goldberg writes in Writing Down the Bones, “It takes a while for our experience to sift through our consciousness. For instance, it is hard to write about being in love in the midst of a mad love affair. We have no perspective. All we can say is, 'I'm madly in love,' over and over again.” She goes on to say, “We don't know our new home, even if we can drive to the drugstore without getting lost. We have not lived through three winters there or seen the ducks leave in fall and return to the lakes in spring.”

Goldberg calls this “composting”. She says, “Our bodies are garbage heaps: we collect experience, and from the decomposition of the thrown-out eggshells, spinach leaves, coffee grinds, and old steak bones of our minds come nitrogen, heat, and very fertile soil. Out of this fertile soil bloom our poems and stories. But this does not come all at once. It takes time. Continue to turn over and over the organic details of your life until some of them fall through the garbage of discursive thoughts to the solid ground of black soil.”

I don't agree with the part about not being able to write about love until you are not mad about it anymore. I think the passions we have burning are good fuel for writing. I think just writing is good writing. It's out, it's not meant to be perfect. If we wait too long for perfect we will have waited too many winters and our writing will never happen. The hell with perfect. (sorry, Dad) I say write now, take those clothes and walk them through the streets and if anyone gawks at you, smile and suck in a deep breath and be humble.