Remembering Tia

Those of you who know me well know that I love cats. Always have, always will.

When I was a child, we always had cats in our family. We had one dog as well, but the cats ruled. We were especially fond of Siamese cats. We had Tiki, and later, when I was a teen, my mother got a new Siamese kitten, and we named her Tiki (2). She was a joy to all of us, and was my mom’s constant companion right up until her death. Tiki 2 died at the age of 16, only a month after my mom passed away.

In my own adult life, I’ve had several Siamese as well. There was Jaydee and her kittens, Spassky (named after the Russian chess master) and Stonewall. In Japan, we adopted an adult Siamese tomcat and named him Tayka.

For a long time after that, my lifestyle didn’t really accommodate having pets, but then I agreed to take two young kittens, a brother and sister pair, that were part of an abandoned litter. Nekko (cat in Japanese) and Koshka (cat in Russian) were with me for 12 years until Koshka mysteriously disappeared and Nekko died about five months later of what I believe was a broken heart. I wrote about Koshka and Nekko in an October 2013 post entitled, A Sick Cat.

Enter Tia

Several years before Nekko and Koshka were gone, a new kitten entered the scene. One of my daughters moved in with me and brought a little black ball of fur she had rescued in Arizona. She named the kitten Tia. And she fit in immediately.

Although Nekko and Koshka were starting to show their ages, they were still pretty active, and they were used to having new kittens in the house. A few years earlier, my other daughter decided to move in with me for a while and brought her little gray tabby, Chili Gizmo, with her. Sometime after that, a girlfriend moved in with me for a short time and brought her kitten, Kisu (kitty in Finnish).

Cats usually find it difficult to adapt to a stranger in their territory, but Nekko and Koshka seemed to accept new kittens pretty quickly. They got along well with Chili and did the same when Tia appeared. Sometimes they were not in the mood for a kitten’s antics, but more often than not having a playful kitten around kept them a little livelier as well.

Eventually, my daughter got her own place in Boulder, and Tia went with her. But she moved around a lot in those days, and it wasn’t always convenient to have Tia with her. So on several occasions, Tia was back at my place in the suburbs south of Denver. It was always a pleasure to have her, especially after Koshka and Nekko were gone and I needed another soul in that big house.

The Hunter

One facet of Tia’s personality that soon became apparent was that she was a superb hunter – better than any other cat I had had. Koshka and Nekko were housecats whose outdoor experience was generally in a fenced backyard. But Tia, despite being a very warm and affectionate pet in the house, was a well-honed predator.

One particular spring and summer, she became the scourge of the local rabbit population. When I first moved into that house, I installed pet doors that allowed the cats to go from the house to the garage (where I kept their litter box) and from the house to the backyard. When Tia moved back in with me, the dead rabbits began to appear.

There was a pretty sizeable rabbit colony nearby, and despite her relatively small size, Tia became adept at catching the small ones and bringing them back to the house. Like most cats, she would “play” with her catch for a while before finally administering the coup de grace. It wasn’t uncommon for me to come downstairs in the morning and find a bunny carcass on the carpet.

But rabbits were not her only prey. She brought in small rodents, birds and even a snake. One time, I found what appeared to be a dead bird under my kitchen table. I brushed it onto a dustpan then carried it outside to toss over the fence. When I tossed it into the air, it flew away. I was astonished.

Finally, I had to lock the cat door and limit Tia’s access to the outside on an “ask for permission” basis. It worked – there were no more dead critters in the house.

The Mountain Cat

Eventually Tia went back to live with my daughter, and a while after that, I decided to move from the suburbs to a home in the mountains southwest of Denver. I had been there for just a couple of months when Tia came to live with me again. It was good timing too: I had a few mice in the house, a problem that was permanently solved after Tia came.

Tia was with me in the mountains for the three short years that I lived there, and it was during this time that we really bonded, and she found a special place in my heart. She was still the super predator, but she was also very affectionate and a great companion.

She came at the end of the summer, and for the first few weeks, I would not let her outside, no matter how much she begged. I lived in a forest, with foxes, raccoons, coyotes, and even bears and mountain lions. I was not sure that this little black cat could survive for long out there with all those critters. But she did more than survive: she thrived.

I knew that eventually I would have to let her out, but I wanted her to get accustomed to the house first, to understand that it was now her "queendom." Eventually, I started to take her out with me during daylight. I would sit on the porch while she explored the front of the house, then walk with her around to the back and watch while she explored.

Eventually, her exploration took her further and further from the house. And soon she was staying out at night. And I worried. But she knew where home was, and she always returned. She knew how to take care of herself, and she never came home with even a scratch to suggest she had a run-in with another animal. She knew how to avoid the dangerous animals, while being a danger herself to the local rabbits, rodents and birds.

There was no pet door, so she had to let me know when she wanted to come in. I had a pile of firewood stacked on my porch so that the top of the pile was even with the bottom of my bedroom window. Tia would jump up on the pile and tap or scratch at the window to let me know she needed in. Sometimes, when I was home, I left the window open just wide enough for her to go out or come in on her own.

Always the Predator

As at the other house, Tia tried to bring her hunting trophies into the house. I was usually successful at keeping her from bringing them in, but she did manage to sneak a couple of them past me.

One summer evening she had been out quite late, so I left the window open just wide enough for her to pass, and I went to bed. At some point, I heard a sound on the woodpile, and sure enough she came in, jumped over my head and onto the bed, then jumped down and went into the other part of the house. I figured she went to her food and water bowls, and I closed the window.

A bit later, I was awakened by the noise of some commotion downstairs. It sounded like Tia was running around, and I thought it was strange, because I was sure she would have wanted to sleep after being outside for so long. Suddenly I heard the telltale scream of a panicked bunny, and I realized what was going on: Tia had brought a rabbit into the house – carrying it in her mouth right over my head – and was “playing” with it downstairs.

I realized she was in the process of killing it at that moment, and I did not want to deal with it, so I closed my door and went to sleep. In the morning, I went down and cleaned up what was left.

Besides that rabbit, she managed to bring in a couple of birds and a ground squirrel. And I have no idea how many she caught and did not bring in. I was never angry with Tia for these episodes. She was a cat doing what comes naturally.

Affectionate Housecat

Despite being an efficient predator and successful forest cat, Tia was also comfortable as a housecat and was a very affectionate companion. She learned that in the dead of winter she could not go outside because of all the deep snow, and she adapted just fine to being a full-time housecat. But when the snow began to melt, she was more than ready to get back out. 

Even in the warm parts of the year, she enjoyed her indoor time. Her favorite place to sleep was on my bed, usually against my leg. Whenever I sat in an armchair or sofa, she was immediately on my lap, purring and wanting to be petted.

In the early evening when I returned home from work, I would unlock and open the front door to find a sleepy Tia sitting in the middle of the living room and greeting me with a yawn after her daylong nap (she had heard my truck pull up to the house). When she saw me, she would meow and then flop over onto her side and roll onto her back so that I would rub her belly. Then she would be out the door and ready to explore, except when we had several feet of snow everywhere.

Sometimes, she would meow for me to come outside with her, and we would take a walk together. When I was with her, she didn’t feel so much of a need to be stealthy and careful. She felt protected and knew that she could run where she wanted without having to worry about attracting the attention of a dangerous animal.

Living alone in the forest house was a little lonely sometimes, but having Tia there made it a lot less so. She made a big difference in my life in those days, and I was always grateful to have her there.

The Leaving

After I made the commitment to move to Ukraine, I had to sell the house. It was very, VERY hard to give up that idyllic home in the forest, and one of the hardest parts was having to take Tia away from it. When my daughter came to take her, Tia knew that something was happening that she would not like, and she did her best to avoid being taken. But we finally got her into the cat box, and they drove away.

I was sad for myself to lose the companion I had had, but I was sadder for Tia to lose the home and lifestyle she had come to love.

Tia lived in several different circumstances for the next few years, not always able to be the outdoor cat she was used to being. Finally, my daughter got a place on the prairie outside of Boulder. There was a horse property nearby and room for Tia to wander. But Tia was older and not quite as alert as she had been. And the property didn’t have the plethora of trees and other cover that the forest offered. And there were coyotes.

One time, Tia went out, and she never returned. We never knew what happened to her. My heart broke a little at the news, but this is the way of pets: their time in our lives is short. When we take them as kittens or puppies, we know we will outlive them, and we know we will have to deal one day with the sadness of them passing out of our lives.

And so it was with Tia. Technically, she was not my cat, but in the ways that mattered, she was mine, and I was hers. And I still miss her.

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I am not sure why I thought to write about this. It just came to my mind the other day, and I started writing. But sometimes it is good to remember – and write about – such things.

The Bike Path of Life

This weekend I got out on my bike for the first time in weeks. The vacation in Turkey burned a couple of weekends, and last weekend, frankly, I just didn’t feel like it.

I rode alone, which has been a little unusual this summer, but probably something I should get used to if I am going to keep riding. Saturday I rode mostly on the street, but today I returned to the forest park near my home, which has been where I’ve done most of my riding this year.

At one point, after I had ridden about five kilometers deep into the park, I stopped to just listen to the sound of the wind in the trees and try to enjoy some much-needed serenity in this little forest oasis surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the city. It was a warm, breezy day, and the leaves above rustled as a light wind moved them to and fro. There was the occasional sound of a tree trunk creaking or dried leaves falling to the ground.

Even though I knew the city was still all around me, it was nice to imagine that I was really far away in a forest and able to take in some calm power from the trees, the wind – from nature itself.

Such moments often inspire me to think beyond myself. For a moment, I thought about riding alone and how it felt sort of odd. Then I put that thought aside, and something else came to me.

The Path of Life

As I looked at the path straight ahead of me, I realized that at some point, the path seemed to merge with the trees at the end of my field of vision; I could not see where it ended. I turned around and looked behind me and noticed the same thing. Then it occurred to me that the bike path was a lot like the paths we follow in life.

You can only see a certain portion of the path ahead of you, but you have no idea what lies beyond what you can see. It’s a mystery, and the only way to find out what is there is to keep riding until you reach the end. It’s sort of a metaphor for life: you can only see or predict a small part of the future, but to find out what lies ahead for you, you have to keep going until you reach it.

And the path behind is a similar metaphor. You can recall well much of the recent past, but beyond a certain point, you tend to forget things that happened. Only truly remarkable or important things remain in your memory.

But the bike path resembles life in other ways. Some parts are rough and difficult to ride, while other parts are easier. Much of the path I rode today had only about a two-foot (65 cm) strip down the middle that was navigable, and there were deep ruts on either side. Veer off into a rut, and I’d find myself flying off my bike, possibly into a tree. Life is often like this.

And there were a number of obstacles along the path. In about five places, deadfall trees blocked the path, and I had to get off the bike and either go over the tree, under it, or around it. In the past, we’ve encountered places where the path was filled with muddy water or even impassible. And life often throws up obstacles to block your path; you either find a way around the obstacle, or go back and find an easier path. I suppose some people just stand there waiting for the obstacle to remove itself.

There are places where you can pedal along at a fast pace and make good progress. But in other places, the going is slower. Maybe you have to climb a hill, or push through muddy ground. Maybe you have to take it slow because the ground is irregular, with a lot of dips, holes and rocks. Life too has its times when you can move quickly and make good progress, as well as times when you find yourself bogged down.

Which Way to Go?

The forest park is crisscrossed with paths of various types, widths, difficulties and directions. There are no markers to tell you which path leads where, and there is no good map. You often come to crossroads and forks, and you have to make decisions about which way to go. A wrong choice can send you far from your intended destination and make your ride a lot more difficult. Sometimes you can make a good guess based on the position of the sun or by using a compass; other times you just have to use your intuition.

That is very much like life. In a post I wrote almost two years ago, called Decision Points Along Life’s Path, I wrote extensively about the forks and crossroads we come to during our lives and how these choices affect how our lives turn out. In that post I imagined how making different choices at those decision points might lead to entirely different lives and wondered whether all of those possible alternatives might actually exist in some kind of mirror universes. And I thought again about that today.

People and Messages along the Way

As I rode, I came across several people. One biker was coming the opposite direction very quickly and nearly caused us both to veer off and crash. But at the last moment, we were able to get control and pass each other safely. I came up on several pairs of people walking in the forest, slowed down, and politely thanked them when they moved to the side to let me by.

At another point, I came upon a man with a dog. The man was on a cross path coming from my left, and he asked me in a friendly way if I knew where the path that I was following led to. I told him that I thought it led to the golf club property, but he replied that the golf club was to my left, along the path that he had just come from. Since that was my goal, I went that way.

The man had a message for me that I needed at that moment. We often encounter people in life who have some message or knowledge for us at the right time.

More Thoughts

As I continued riding, I thought about change, about how none of us is perfect (some of us, in fact, are exceedingly imperfect), and how our life’s path should be about improvement, about learning how to be better people. It occurred to me that we should grow to be stronger of will, but at the same time more understanding and accepting of others, and more caring and compassionate.

I started my Sunday ride feeling a bit depressed that I was riding alone. But as time went by, that depression faded and was replaced by the exhilaration of hard peddling, a quickened heartbeat, and just enough sweat to know I was working hard. Even more, it was replaced by some valuable life insights that I would never have gained if I had sat at home or met friends in a café.

It was a good ride, and a great day.  But all in all, I’d still rather not ride alone.

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Turkey Part 4 - No Serenity for You!

(Note: This is NOT an actual photo from Le Jardin, but it could have been.)

One day at Le Jardin, while I was waiting in the reception area to register us for a special dinner, I noticed an electronic sign above the entrance that showed photos of the resort with single words to describe various features. One photo showed a woman stretching before exercising, and the word shown was “serenity.”

Serenity?

While the resort had many nice features, serenity was NOT one of them. The hotel is listed as having 308 rooms, and in August – the height of the tourist season – I suspect there is never an empty room in the place. There were many families there, so if you figure an average of three people per room, that’s around 900 people on the property at one time.

That’s hundreds of people crowding the dining areas, the pools, the beach, the garden, the bar, and other places. Hundreds of people grabbing lounge chairs and trying to get the best places. Hundreds of people walking or running by as you try to relax in your spot or walk from one area to another. Hundreds of people talking, laughing, yelling, screaming, and – yes – smoking.

Noise

Besides all the people, there was a constant beat of music, some of it nice, but most of it rather annoying due to the high volume and overuse of bass. Sometimes the music would be muted and fairly peaceful, and it wasn’t bad. But then, without warning, the volume would get turned up (along with the bass beat), for some kind of announcements or events around the pool.

And sometimes it wasn’t music at all, but that appalling bane of real music lovers everywhere: rap.

Accompanying the loud music was an even louder MC yelling into his microphone in multiple languages. At 10:00 every morning they broke the relative peacefulness for a repetitive “Good Morning” song followed by more loud music and a bunch of announcements (most of which were, admittedly, helpful). Then the volume would get pumped up at various other times of the day.

And there was competing loud music and other noise from neighboring resorts (they are all nestled rather close to each other). Each had its own programs and events, and they wanted to make sure that their people could hear their sounds over those of the neighbors. Depending where you were on the property, the result could be an aggravating cacophony of noise.

All of this would go on from mid-morning until late evening.

So much for “serenity”!

Droned Out

The sea was mostly calm, with almost no surf. So we didn’t have the soft thunder of waves pounding the shore, that inspiring sound of the power of an ocean. But there was one enjoyable, natural sound in the garden area, and this was the chirping of cicadas in the trees. All day long they made a never-ending chorus that could become mesmerizing as you sat on your lounge chair and let your mind wander. But most of the time, the song of the cicadas was drowned by the manmade noise all around us.

It occurred to me, however, that without the human noise, the sound of cicadas could have been a perfect mantra to induce great meditations. I would love to find a spot someday where all I could hear was the song of those little bugs in the trees.

Giving Customers What They Want     

Probably I am just a grumpy old guy for wishing to have peace and quiet, and the ability to get lost in my thoughts in a beautiful, natural environment. But I understood that that was how it was, and I adapted.

Most likely the management of the Queen’s Park chain of resort hotels has researched their customer base and concluded that the music and other noises are what their visitors want. They have probably determined that their program provides a feeling of excitement and fun for most of the guests. And they are probably right.

So I don’t really bemoan the practice of keeping the place pretty noisy. It comes with the territory of such a resort, and you should understand and accept that if you go there. And I did – mostly. After a while, you become able to tune out most of it, and you hardly notice it at all while you are swimming in the sea.

There were moments, when trying to relax on a lounge chair in the garden, when the pumped-up volume was a little annoying, personally. But if the great majority of guests liked it that way, then the feelings of a tiny minority – perhaps of only one – don’t really matter. And that’s how it should be. I get that, and I enjoyed my time at Le Jardin immensely, nevertheless.

Seeking Serenity

Still, I came away from that vacation realizing that real serenity, perhaps even some natural solitude, is something I sorely need. I need the opportunity to spend time in a natural environment, without a lot of people, without unnatural sounds, without Internet or other distractions. I need some serious alone time, not in my city apartment, but with the peaceful energy of nature around me.

In January, I wrote about the need to get away, and at about the same time, I wrote about the beauty and necessity of having silence from time to time. In “Getting Away,” I wrote about how, at times, a person needs to get away from daily routines and all the problems and issues in his or her life and just be.

There are times when we need to forget our daily concerns and replace those thoughts with the feeling of just being a part of nature, of being one with the universe. We need to find some peace for a while and let the accumulated stress drain out of our cells. Then we can start to come back and address the important issues with a mind toward making the right decisions going forward.

This is something I need very badly. I have decisions to make, and probably changes to put into place. I am not equipped to do this properly now because I haven’t given my soul a chance to speak through all the mental noise. I need to get away.

At Le Jardin, I did not think about work at all, and it was nice. I did relax to a point, and I enjoyed swimming immensely. But I was not able to find real serenity, and I was not able to expunge all my current life concerns. Even at such a resort, certain thoughts and issues continued to dominate my thinking, and at times, it made me less than an ideal companion. It was not good. So while Turkey was a great vacation, it wasn’t exactly what I needed.

So now I am thinking about another vacation, perhaps soon. It would be nice to go someplace far away where there truly is serenity in a natural environment. Somewhere in the mountains would be perfect. Perhaps I need to go alone.

What I don’t know at the moment is when or where. Summer is coming to an end, and autumn will be upon us soon, so there is not a lot of time. And autumn is an important and busy time for English teachers. I don’t want to spend a lot of money on travel for a while, after already having taken three trips out of the country in 2015. I need to save up for future plans. Maybe Western Ukraine is an option.

At any rate, as I said in closing the post, “Getting Away,” I know what I need, the trick is figuring out how to make it happen.

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Turkey Part 3 - Smokers

It was our first day at Le Jardin. Arriving in the early afternoon, we had settled into our room and then made the most of the remainder of the day to swim in the sea and the pools, and to generally get the lay of the land. Then it was time for dinner.

After surveying the amazing variety of options and filling our plates, we found a table in the huge dining room and sat down to enjoy our meals. Then we were hit by that unmistakable stench that absolutely ruins a nice meal: cigarette smoke!

I was shocked to see the people at the next table smoking away while we and others around us were eating. Then I realized that there was an ashtray on our table, and more on adjacent tables. Every table in the room had an ashtray, and I noticed smokers at some other tables as well. For me, the enjoyment of that first meal was definitely dampened by the wretched smoke wafting around us.

At the moment we went in for our first meal we were not aware that there was another, equally large, dining area for nonsmokers. As we left dinner, we spoke with an employee who told us where the smoking and nonsmoking areas were.

For our other meals, we used the nonsmoking area as often as we could. Unfortunately, they usually did not open it for the first hour of breakfast, so if we were early, as we usually were, we had to deal with the smoking area. We would try to find a table close to the open windows and hope that no smokers would crowd us.

The smoking room had all the windows removed so that air could move through the room, but this didn’t really help keep the smoke away from you unless you were sitting by the windows and had the air blowing in, not out.

The nonsmoking room, on the other hand, had almost no open windows. They seemed to believe that the air conditioning was sufficient to reduce the heat and humidity and make it comfortable. But it usually wasn’t. Sometimes it was just a bit too hot to sit comfortably in that room. So we were often faced with a choice: deal with cigarette smoke or with the heat.

Smokers affected us in other ways as well. Normally, we kept our room air-conditioned and the balcony door closed. While this made the room nominally cooler, it did make the air a little stale after some time, so occasionally we wanted to have the door open for a while, particularly first thing in the morning.

But on either side of us, we usually had smokers, and sometimes they would be on their balconies at the same time that we wanted to open the door. The result, of course, was having their noxious smoke waft into our room from time to time.

And the same sort of thing happened a few times when we were relaxing on lounge chairs in what we called “the garden.” It wasn’t frequent, but even a bit of that stench blowing your way can bring you down. And there were many times when walking around the place, I would get a nose full of someone’s secondhand smoke. I hated that!

I Just Don’t Get It

To me, cigarette smoking is one of the most disgusting things a human being can do. I truly do not understand why people would want to poison themselves with something that smells so obnoxiously bad, makes their hair and clothes stink, blackens their teeth (and lungs), and has such a negative effect on people around them.

I have a few acquaintances who smoke, and while I like them very much (they wouldn’t be in my circle if they were not good people), I have never been able to understand why they need to pursue that habit. One thing I must say about the few people in my circle who do smoke: they understand that nonsmokers generally dislike it, and I appreciate their efforts to keep it from affecting me when we are together.

But the majority of smokers don’t seem to give a damn about anyone else, and it is this attitude that makes me feel so negative toward them. Now, I am not perfect, and I have my weaknesses too. To some extent, I’ve probably had something of a food addiction for the past decade or so, where food becomes a kind of sedative or relaxant to make you feel better.

But that affects only me; I don’t generally throw food at other people. Cigarette smoke, on the other hand, DOES affect other people in the vicinity of the smoker: by breathing it out with impunity, it’s like “throwing” a gross-smelling, cancer-causing poison at other people. But, as I said, most smokers could not care less about how their behavior affects others.

For the most part, Ukrainians, like Russians, are heavy smokers. It is almost impossible to walk the streets of Kharkiv without having someone’s putrid smoke make it’s way into your nose. To Ukraine’s credit, smoking has been banned in restaurants and other public buildings, and things are improving here. But for a committed antismoker like me, it’s still a little tough sometimes.

With so many Russians (and Ukrainians) at the resort, I wasn’t surprised at the amount of smoking going on. And I fully expected that smoking would be pretty much uncontrolled in Turkey. But I was a bit surprised at how much of it was done by other nationalities. In a number of cases, there were parents raising a cloud of smoke with their poor children right next to them, having no choice but to suck in their parents' odious fumes.

I knew that the French have had a long tradition of poisoning themselves with cigarettes, but I sort of thought that they would have come more into the modern age and smoking would be on the way out.  Silly me! Very often, the heaviest smokers were French. Germans didn’t seem to smoke as much as the French or Russians, but there were a few.

It’s Just My Chance to Rant

Lest it seem as though the air at Le Jardin was just a cloud of cigarette smoke, I have to say that it wasn’t that bad. Most of the time, the air was clear and clean with sea breezes and such. But the occasional issue with smokers, while not a major problem, was one of the few small drawbacks of our time at the resort.

This has just given me a reason to rant about smoking in general. It’s something I’ve been meaning to blog about for a long time. And now I’ve gotten that off my chest, so I can move on to more positive impressions – next time.

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Turkey Part 2 - Nature's Light Show (and other entertainment)

“When you wish upon a star,
makes no difference who you are.
Anything your heart desires
will come to you.
Like a bolt out of the blue,
fate steps in and sees you through.
When you wish upon a star,
your dreams come true.”               - Jimini Cricket, Pinocchio

The first few days at Le Jardin, we were treated to a special kind of evening entertainment, courtesy of Mother Nature: the annual Perseid Meteor Shower, which peaks on 12 and 13 August. I had not had a chance to watch the August sky for years, as Kharkiv is not the kind of place where you can easily see stars at night. But looking out over the Mediterranean, we had a wide, clear sky to watch for “shooting stars.”

Tuesday evening, 11 August, after the sun went down, we sat on beach chairs at the water’s edge and just looked up. We saw a few faint streaks, but then, around 9:30 p.m., we caught a bright streak of fire across the sky. And we all made wishes.

The next night, 12 August, we again settled on beach chairs and awaited what we expected to be an awesome show. Like the night before, we saw a few faint streaks before being again treated to a brief, but very bright, red streak of light across the sky. And we all made wishes.

We expected more that evening, but it wasn’t to be. Later that night, however, I had trouble sleeping. So around 3:30 a.m. Thursday morning, I got out of bed and went out on the balcony to just sit for a while and watch the sky. Sure enough, I was rewarded with about five more obvious meteors. And I made wishes.

Why Wish Upon a Star?

Legend has it that the practice of wishing upon a shooting star originated in ancient Greece. The philosopher and scientist Ptolemy suggested that the gods occasionally peered down at the Earth, and when they did so, it caused a gap through which a star could fall. He reasoned that this indicated that the gods were paying attention to people on the Earth at that moment, so it was a fortuitous time to make a wish.

We make wishes upon stars, when we toss a coin into a fountain or well, when we blow out candles on a birthday cake, and in many other situations. In such instances, we feel that some kind of special magic is at play that can make our wish come true. In Istanbul, we came across a place where you are supposed to insert your thumb into a hole and turn your hand in a complete circle while making a wish.

While there is probably no special magic in stars, fountains or holes in columns, there is the matter of belief and the power our beliefs can have. We WANT to believe that some kind of power can make our dreams come true and help us achieve our desires. If we believe that some external thing or event has the power to help deliver our wishes, it gives those wishes strength, at least in our hearts and minds.

I think this is related to Power of Intention, which I have mentioned occasionally in previous posts. The idea is that we create our lives, manifest what we want in our lives, in cooperation with a creative, universal intelligence (God, if you prefer). What you think about and talk about the most, what you give the most energy to, is what you manifest in your life, whether you realize it or not.

While wishing on a star might not be the most effective way to put the Power of Intention to work for you, it certainly can’t hurt.

Human Entertainment

Those early morning streaks that I saw from the balcony were the end of nature’s show. So for the rest of the time, we relied on the resort’s entertainment crew to do the job. For the next several nights, after our regular post-dinner walk, we enjoyed dance shows in the resort’s amphitheater.

The first was a dance troupe that performed traditional Turkish dances. This group was probably the most technically talented of the lot. They included a dance of whirling dervishes, as well as some delightfully wicked belly dancing.

The next night featured a group from Cuba that performed salsa and other Cuban dances. They were entertaining, but not as good as the first or third groups.

The third night featured a drum and tap-dance group that was supposedly from Moldova. This group was easily the most creative and unique of the three, and I enjoyed them a lot.

Other nights featured live music, beach parties, and other kinds of entertainment. But we were not much for late-night parties or shows because we were generally exhausted from our full days of sun and sea.

Throughout each day, the resort’s entertainment crew (animators, as they call them) provided games and activities for all ages. We liked doing aqua-aerobics in the sea, and there were other kinds of fitness activities, daily water polo games in the big pool, football (soccer) kicking challenges, and many other activities.

You have to work really hard to be bored at such a place.

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Here is a short video of the 2015 Perseid meteor shower (not my video):

Turkey Part 1 - At the Resort

This is the first in a series of posts about a travel experience. It’s kind of similar to my Swiss Journal and American Journal posts from the past, except that this time the impressions will be spread out in different, individual posts, instead of collected in one (I have already posted one entitled, The Loss of Dance). This time, it’s about a vacation on the south coast of Turkey. I returned just a few days ago, and it’s time to write.

Le Jardin

The resort where we stayed is called Queen’s Park Le Jardin. Located in Kemer in Turkey’s Antalya district, it’s an all-inclusive resort hotel, which means you pay one price for airfare, ground transportation to and from the hotel, room charges, food, drinks – almost everything.

Of course, they still find some things to entice you to spend extra money – like spa treatments and day trips to places like Istanbul, Israel, Cyprus or a number of places within Turkey. And if you really like spending money, the street outside the resort is lined with shops where Turkish entrepreneurs are ready to take tourists’ euros or dollars for various trinkets, most of which are probably made in China (isn’t everything?). You can walk and walk and walk in either direction from the resort, and there seems to be no end to the shops.

I was not sure what to expect from this place. Most of the photos we looked at on the Internet made it look glorious, but that’s what marketing propaganda is supposed to do. We saw a few photos of dirty rooms in poor repair posted on some third-party travel sites, but I think these might have been posted by one or two disgruntled guests. We saw nothing but a clean and very well-maintained facility.

Our room was a bit bigger than we had feared, which was a relief for me. It was a two-person room with an extra bed added for a third: me. The third bed was small and a bit uncomfortable with a support bar under the mattress pretty much where my hip needed to be, but that didn’t really affect my sleep. If my brain wanted me to sleep, I slept. And after full days of sun and sea, I was usually able to sleep pretty well.

One of the biggest parts of the experience at such a place is eating. There was a large restaurant that prepared meals in an all-you-can-eat, buffet format. The food area was connected to two huge dining halls: one for smokers and one for normal people. In addition, there was a restaurant located between the beach and the pools, which served a nice buffet-style lunch for those who wanted to have a quick lunch in their bathing suits.

Getting your food to the table safely in the main dining halls was a challenge as you had to navigate the chaos of hundreds of other people doing the same, most of whom didn’t pay attention to anyone else as they scurried from point to point, checking out the food and loading their plates. Little kids were a particular hazard.

The food quality was excellent! I especially loved being able to attack the salad bar, which had a mesmerizing variety of veggies already cut and ready to just be placed on your plate. It points out that I would sure eat a lot more salad at home if I didn’t have to buy and prepare all the vegetables myself. Yes, in this regard I am lazy.

The workers at Le Jardin were mostly Turkish with a few foreigners (Russian, German, etc.) in the entertainment crew (they call them "animators"). They were outstanding and mostly very polite. Almost all of them spoke some English and Russian. Many were fluent in Russian, and there are also many who could communicate in German and French.

The best attraction (in my opinion) was the beach area and being able to swim in the very warm Mediterranean Sea. It was my first time visiting the Med, and it seemed much saltier than my previous experiences with the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; I read later that the Med is, in fact, saltier, especially in the eastern part. The resort also had several pools, water slides, a popular poolside bar and another bar inside the hotel, a nice spa, nightly entertainment, and other attractions.

Le Jardin is just one of a string of hotel resorts that line the seaside in Kemer. At any given time in the summer, there are thousands of tourists from countries all over Europe and elsewhere. There were LOTS of Russians there as well as tourists from Germany, France and other countries. Often we heard languages that we couldn’t place, perhaps from Scandinavian countries or Finland.

We knew that there were other Ukrainians there because at least two from our plane were on the same bus to this resort, and several families made the bus trip back to the airport with us for the flight to Kharkiv. But the few Ukrainians who were there were greatly outnumbered by Russians.

We heard English spoken, but not by any native speakers. Apparently there were some South Africans there, but we encountered no Brits. And there definitely were NO other Americans there. I was an anomaly at Le Jardin, and drew attention from some other guests for our conversations in English and Russian: we seemed to confuse a few people.

Heat and Humidity

You come to a beach vacation spot like this in summer because of beautiful weather and warm water. And we had those things here in spades. But along with that comes intense heat and, in many places, high humidity.

The temperatures were in the mid-to high 30s (Celsius) by day (that’s low to mid 90s F), and it rarely got below 25 C at night (77 F). The humidity ranged from around 30 percent, which is not too bad, to 100 percent, at which point I pretty much just melt. All in all, it sort of reminded me of my long-ago days on the island of Guam.

The sun was really intense from mid-morning to late afternoon. Despite liberal (I hate that word) use of sunscreen, I got sunburned by our second day, but it passed. We got into a routine of having lunch and resting a bit during the hottest part of the day, then returning for more swimming when the sun got a little lower in the sky and less intense.

And we also established "our spot" each morning in a grassy area with lots of trees for shade. While some people preferred to be poolside or right at the edge of the beach all day, we opted for what we called "The Garden," where we had shade for resting. We figured we could spend as much time in the sun as we wanted while swimming, and in fact, we spent much more time away from our lounge chairs than on them. And "our spot" was equally convenient to the beach and the pools, as well as to the hotel itself.

What got to me the most was the humidity. It just soaks into your clothes at certain times of the day and makes you feel really uncomfortable. Combined with intense heat, it can also make you feel sick. I have never liked high humidity, which is why I love Colorado and don’t miss the Eastern USSA.

For me, humidity also had other effects. It made it harder to sleep (although we did have mediocre AC in the room), and sometimes it just totally zapped the energy out of my body. Without the sea and pools there, I would have perished. After a while, it also gets to your mind and affects your mood and reactions. I found that I had to take extra care with this, especially in dealing with people from different cultures.

I had never appreciated cold showers like I did there. I wound up taking at least three, and sometimes four or five, showers per day. Mine were cold in order to pull the heat out of my body. I found it especially necessary to have a good cold shower before going to bed.

On the plus side, with beautiful weather combined with all-day swimming, you spend most of the day in bathing suits. And this means that your other clothes last longer (even underwear).

The Results

With the exception of one daytrip to Istanbul, we spent the entire 11 days swimming, eating and just relaxing. I had been told that it is impossible to go on such a vacation and lose weight, but that had been one of my goals. And I had pretty good success.

I returned home about three and a half kilos (more than seven pounds) lighter than when I had left, and I found that I could fit into several pairs of jeans and shorts that previously I could not wear. That was pretty encouraging.

The main reason was a lot of physical activity each day and very little sitting. We swam in the sea at least four or five times each day, plus there were pools and a fair amount of walking. This more than made up for the eating we did.

But even the eating was good. I ate fruit, salads and prepared vegetables at almost every meal, and the meat I ate was mainly grilled chicken or turkey. A couple of times I relented to stuff like hamburgers or pancakes, but this was the exception, not the rule. I probably could have done even better, but all things considered, the result was great.

In addition, in such high heat and humidity, you have to drink a LOT of water, and the resort bar always had plenty of bottled water available. So the combination of high activity, good eating, and drinking lots of water really had a positive result. My challenge, now that I am back in Kharkiv, is to keep it up and not regress. And this is a BIG challenge!

I also came back with the deepest suntan I’ve had in many, many years. I had not spent that much time by the sea in decades, and my shoulders, back and stomach had not seen that much sun for equally as long.

Perhaps most important of all, I did not think about work or similar concerns for almost the entire time. Except for some personal matters that I couldn’t shake entirely, I was able to let my mind take a real rest. And that is the purpose of such a vacation. The only problem was that the time was too short and went by in a flash. I would definitely go back and do it again.

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I have already posted some thoughts about dancing that came to me at one point during the trip. In the coming days, I’ll add a few more posts about this trip; I have already started on several. Some of the topics include the light show we got from the Perseid meteor shower, some further impressions of the other nationalities with whom we shared the place, smokers, being in the sea, my impression of Turkey, and more (I hope).

The Loss of Dance

Dancing is one of the most beautiful, fun and soulful things that a human being can do. Dancing brings out a person’s inner joy, gives it physical form and expression, makes the body feel lighter and, in turn, lightens the mind and spirit. I don’t know how anyone can live without dance; I don’t know how I can.

Throughout my adult life, I have loved to dance. From the first awkward steps in junior high school, I began to discover that I had a little more rhythm than a lot of other guys, plus I loved good music, and the music of the day was perfectly suited for dancing. So I took to enjoying dance early.

At first, of course, I didn’t know any real steps – no one did. It was all freestyle, but it was fun. We just moved with the music (however spastic we looked) copied what others did or what we saw on television, and slowly developed our own moves.

Disco gave us the Hustle and the Bump, which were great fun, and having some real form made dancing even more enjoyable. I remember some of the best times of my early life that revolved around dancing: clubs and parties in New Jersey; Guam; Norfolk, Virginia; Monterey, California; and Japan.

When I returned to college after my Navy days, going to the local dance clubs was a regular weekend (and sometimes weeknight) routine for my friends and me. I still have vivid memories of dancing with friends in Washington’s, Fort Ram and other places. And I remember compliments I got about my dancing from onlookers in those days (especially one particular evening in Washington's).

Later, there were clubs and parties in Denver, and when I began taking business trips to South America, my feet got happy in a number of great Latin clubs in Lima and other places.

The Studio Experience

For a long time, I wanted to take dance lessons and learn real steps to couples’ dances. Finally, and with some urging from my daughter, I did it. I ponied up the bucks to take lessons at a studio in Aurora, Colorado, and I loved it. I learned Swing and Latin dances, as well as some Waltz.

I had the opportunity to apply what I was learning to amateur competitions, called Showcases, organized by the studio. I won a lot of first-place blue ribbons at the showcases and did “show routines” for fun.

Apart from those organized events, my studio friends and I went to local dance clubs to practice and have fun. It was a great time, and the moves I learned for couples’ dancing also helped me to add even more panache to my freestyle dancing.

For years before I started dancing at the studio, and throughout that time, I had been a committed workoutaholic – spending between four and six days a week at the gym for aerobic work and lifting. I was fit and my legs were strong; my gym “hobby” supported my dance hobby perfectly.

It was the peak of my enjoyment of dance – and life.

Slowing Down

They say that all good things come to an end. There is some truth to this, I suppose. Eventually, I just couldn’t justify the expense of my studio lessons. Over a period of several years, I had spent thousands of dollars. Toward the end of my studio dancing days, I started a new job. As my work became more demanding, particularly with extensive travel, I quit the studio and dancing fell into the background.

To make matters worse, age was nipping at my heels. Old injuries were reacquainting themselves through increasingly sore joints, and a few new injuries to my back and legs set me back further. I fell into a bad routine where hours of sitting replaced real physical activity. Working out became something I aspired to in words only, rather than a staple of my life. I gained weight – a lot of weight, which made it harder to get either to the gym or the dance floor. All of that combined with the Internet pushed dancing even further into the background. 

But I never thought it would be something that would fade out of my life completely.

Realizing the End

Of course, when we are young and enjoying life, we can never imagine the things we love fading out of our lives. We can never envision actually growing old. We can never imagine the changes that are inevitable, the limitations that grow larger and stronger as our bodies stop performing the way they used to.

This hit me last night when I was at a beach party watching other people enjoying dancing and realizing that I just could not do the same. My back, hip and knee just didn’t want to cooperate. They couldn’t.

At first, I tried to move with the music the best I could, to at least get myself swaying with the rhythm and get close to something resembling dance. But it just wasn’t happening. I couldn’t even get my sense of rhythm working enough to sway with the music properly. The spirit was willing, but the body wasn’t.

I felt very embarrassed to be there.

Maybe it’s my own fault. More than a decade of sedentary sitting in front of a computer, not exercising much, and eating way too much crap has added a lot of bad weight that destroys balance and weakens the muscles and joints that are so essential to enjoying dance.

Finally I decided to just sit and watch others, rather than stand in one spot looking either spastic or like a statue. And as I sat there, watching others revel in the joy of dance and remembering how I would never have let such an opportunity pass me by, I became sad. There was no anger, no envy, no bad feelings for those who were experiencing that joy of movement – I was glad for them.

But I was sad in the realization that I have lost something that had always meant a lot to me, and I never saw it leave. I neglected my body, the years took their toll, and my ability to dance was gone. I fear that it is gone for good.

Three years ago I tried to participate in a Tango class, and found that I had some of the same problems with balance and leg strength. (Blog post Beware of the Dance Floor Hazard.) But I still felt that I had my sense of rhythm and that it could be possible to lose weight and get back to some level of dancing again. Now, I don’t think it’s possible – it seems that I have lost it completely.

Even if I lose all the excess weight, keep exercising, and regain some of my lost strength, I don’t think I can ever get it all back. My back and knee are shot, and I don’t have that flexibility in my lower back and hips that is so essential to good dancing. If I could ever dance again, it would be only a shadow of what it once was.

It’s age, I guess, and I can’t help but wonder how many more cherished abilities will fall to the wayside in the coming years.

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The point of this post is that if you love dance or any other kind of special physical activity, don't take it for granted. Take care of your body – now! Keep it strong enough to be an able partner for the joyful willingness of your spirit. Don't let it rot to the point that your spirit can only sit and sadly recollect what used to be.

Idiots on Bikes

In one of my speaking groups we recently discussed a topic called “Stupid People.” It’s sort of fun to think about and discuss the idiocy that we see all around us on a regular basis. It’s also insightful sometimes to realize that there are times when each of us can be guilty of a little public idiocy ourselves.

I see a lot of idiocy around me each day. I notice things here in Kharkiv that generally would not happen in the USSA, but it doesn’t mean that there are a higher percentage of idiots here; it just means that in some countries, natural stupidity (especially the dangerous variety) has been better identified and sanctions put into place to bring it under control.

In other countries, like Ukraine, progress in changing the culture to reduce idiocy and increase public responsibility and mutual respect comes a little more slowly. Ironically, it seems to me that American culture is becoming courser, shallower and more self-centered, thus causing the level of public idiocy to increase. If I were in the USSA, I am sure I’d still have plenty of fodder for a blog post on idiocy.

Idiocy happens everywhere, all the time, and in the course of just about every activity. For this post, I am focusing on bicycle idiocy. I’ve been riding my bicycle a lot this spring, and there are some things I see routinely that drive me crazy. So, here are five of my pet peeves about mental midgets on two wheels.

1.   Riding while wearing headphones. Riding a bike safely requires you to be fully aware of your surroundings, especially if you are sharing the road with a large number of mostly incompetent, mentally unstable and borderline homicidal drivers (like in Kharkiv). You can’t be fully aware of your surroundings when you have heavy metal, techno or rap crap blaring into your ears from a set of noise-canceling headphones. Idiocy in its purest form.

2.   Riding in the wrong direction. Bicycles are basically supposed to follow the same rules of the road as cars, although cyclists everywhere seem to eschew the rules defiantly. That said, it should be a no-brainer to realize that a bike should ALWAYS be ridden on the right side of the road, in the same direction as traffic. Unfortunately, some small amount of brainpower does seem to be required to ride correctly, and it’s apparent that there are a number of cyclists peddling around without any gray matter at all. It amazes me that there are still people who are stupid enough to ride on the left, against traffic, and right toward me as I am riding on the correct side. Makes me want to kick them as they go by (but then I’d be an idiot too). Complete morons!

3.   Speeding and weaving around pedestrians on busy sidewalks. Bicycles should be ridden on dedicated bike paths or lanes, or if such lanes are not available, on the street. Too often I see monkeys masquerading as people zipping along crowded sidewalks, using the pedestrians as a kind of fun obstacle course. It’s all fun and games until some pedestrian – without the benefit of eyes in the back of his or her head – turns suddenly into the path of a speeding bike. They are potential hazards to people who walk where they are supposed to be walking. Please don’t let these ignorant airheads drive cars!

4.   Talking on mobile phones while riding. It’s bad enough that people distract themselves with phones while driving cars (more on that in another post), but to try to talk on a phone and ride a bike at the same time is the ultimate in cycling idiocy. Let’s not even get into biking and texting! To keep yourself and others around you safe, you need TWO hands on the handlebars. As in cars, phone chats should be taboo while in motion; shouldn’t this just be common sense? Only an absolute pinhead would do this.

5.   Riding to the right of a bus that is discharging passengers. The bus pulls over to the curb at a bus stop. There is usually between one and two meters between the bus and the curb (on the right). The doors open (on the right). Passengers get off and others get on (on the right). And some bicyclist with the mental capacity of a retarded goldfish spins past the bus (on the right) precisely where the passengers are disembarking. I’ve seen one instance where a cyclist hit a woman getting off a bus. They would rather risk hurting a pedestrian than be bothered to check traffic and pass the bus on the left as they should. This surpasses idiocy; the appropriate word here begins with an “a” and ends with “hole.”

There… I feel better now.
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Yes, that last photo of the idiot talking on his phone is Alec Baldwin, who is a renowned moron for more reasons than can be related here.