Learner therapist (24)……A little rewiring!!

Learner therapist (24)……A little rewiring!!

Torrey Orton

Oct. 01, 2012

 

Rewiring, or experience-dependent brain plasticity

The experience

Ten days ago I tripped on the 6 inch front step at the Fertility Control Clinic as I turned from a delivery guy holding a 2 litre milk container and a ½ kg. loaf of bread in my left hand and the day's newspaper in my right. Refusing to let go of the goods, I fell forward catching myself with my full hands. This went fine on the left with the cushion of the milk and bread (which came out of it unscathed) but my right thumb was severely scrunched, still bluish five days later though somewhat less swollen (it still had a bit of bee sting-like puffiness).

I had made two mistakes: starting to move before I had the stuff safely in my grip and preferring the goods over my safety (a bad application of the good training which makes me agile with packages) as I started to fall. This mistake is similar to one 10 years ago when I passed out in a local street, realising just before I did that I was going to do so (that fainting feeling you may have heard about if not experienced) and wondering to myself where I could sit down. By the end of that wonder I was out cold with major skull fracture and headed for a visit to the ER. Should have just sat down on the spot and saved the concussion. Wondering instead about where to sit was habitual action taking over – the latter a pattern dominated by my sense of public propriety not of safety, to my surprise after the fact. What a dumb thing to do.

Rewiring, type one

My present re-wiring focusses around various highly repeated everyday activities like tying shoes, buttoning shirts, writing by hand, opening doors, opening keyed locks, shaking hands and a host of fine-tuning applications which require thumb to index manipulation of objects (winding a traditional watch, opening cardboard milk boxes and chip packages for example). I now know why European door handles are superior to our globular ones. They do not require thumbs.

As the days have passed since the accident, I try the more difficult right-handed tasks like unlocking our keyed front door with a thumbed grip to test the pain involved. Same with shirt buttoning and pants zipping (you can do a calculation of the daily number of events for a man from this list).

Then, there's the clumsiness factor. Winding my watch left handed was impossible from the first night. As a result of my clumsiness, coupled with incapacity (try turning a firmly closed screw top on an unopened, pressurized jar without a fully working thumb), I developed work-arounds like avoiding some tasks requiring a normal right thumb. One set of these was various ways of achieving a near thumb effectiveness between the four fingers of the same hand. For example, turning a door key by gripping it between index and middle fingers. Testing when the lock is sticky! Fall back position: use my left hand.

Do not mistake this for a merely behavioural activity. I have to decide each time what to do…to press on with the left hand cuff button or leave it undone because my thumb's too stiff that morning. Notice, I might get away with buttoning a shirt left handed after a while, but left cuff left handed – not likely in this life. Similarly with fly zipping, door handle turning, sock-pulling (on, up or off). Sometimes I can go for the left hand (door opening especially).

These are all internal negotiations. Over the time since injury I notice that I'm increasingly approaching repeat usages with a pre-emptive awareness – that something (maybe) to be worked around is coming up and I should get ready for it, consider an alternative 'technology' to the old right hand thumb driven one.

Rewiring, type two

As for combination internal and external negotiations of my world, there's the socio-cultural domain of hand-shaking. Shaking hands is a core part of my professional life, done with every patient (until now!) at start and finish of sessions. I find myself breaking this golden rule to avoid the explanatory caution at first encounter (that my thumb has to be protected from shocks) or the experience of a partially withheld shake by someone who knows and unconsciously expects my normally firm, full grip. This simple matter invokes a series of barely registered reflections like:

• I shouldn't impose my unavoidable shortcoming on the others.
  
• The injury draws attention to me rather than where I want it – on them.
  
• It's too clumsy (that word now describing interpersonal perceptions and intentions) to mention or do, so don't do it at all.
  
• Oh, I forgot to offer my hand…
  
• Try the left-handed shake!!
  
• ….
  

Rewiring unstrung

Then, there's accidental re-wounding, the reopening of old wounds perhaps. I did this, too, a few days back by theatre parking under pressure (self-induced more than situational), missing the bay on the first go and retracing my path three meters to have a more direct go, turning the wheel with intense focus and caught my already offended thumb on the wheel's cross strut. Just a little rap, but right on the most injured 2 mm of the first joint which roused that unrelenting, rolling pain which you have to wait three minutes to subside. A morphine worthy event if it had continued.

On the other hand, a nothing event compared to real long term trauma, but instructive for another take on what sustains trauma: accident as much as intent – or, rather, in this case overwhelming of my self-protective intent (stop pain) by my personal achievement intent (get the car in the spot meeting some timeliness and beauty of execution criteria both of which are automatic and were functionally irrelevant at the time)!!

Plasticity is one thing, competence another?

Is it any wonder that all really "hard-wired" habits, those acquired over years in the crucibles of life - family, schools and clubs – are resistant to change even with serious application of focus and energy?? They are really complicated, complex and multi-domainal; they touch most aspects of the patient's life. They are constantly reinforced in everyday relationships which reproduce even the merest inkling of the originally compromising formative experience(s).

A thorough description of the detailed actions of thought and feeling required to relearn to button a shirt effectively (a measure of time, completeness and pain factors all occurring intertwined, not in sequence) could take a page or more. Those of you who recall the history of attempts to completely analyse the process of learning to ride a bicycle may remember that the researchers gave up after they got to around 350 pages of documentation. For an alternative access to these phenomena, watch your child learning such things for the first time, to the point they can successfully dress themselves in one of their normal dress styles. Analysis won't help you or them, but application will and does lead to learning, eventually.

Incongruously, this may be why successful survivals of long term abuse(s) have trouble getting their whole lives together, especially in the relationship domain. But then, who doesn't have this trouble ? I still haven't managed a Windsor knot after all these years, or to successfully avoid self-damage in the pursuit of truth, beauty or justice. I did wind my watch right-handed after one day by finding a purchase on the stem which just hurt a bit, valuing the propriety of wearing my watch over pain reduction. On the other hand buttoning my top shirt button under a tie is still off limits 12 days later.

 

Appreciation (47) – A bridge too far??

Appreciation (47) – A bridge too far??

Torrey Orton

Sept. 29, 2012

 

In the middle of nowhere…

 

The brilliantly new warning sign said "Narrow bridge…Do not pass…one lane only" with the standard converging diagrammatic in case you missed the meaning. There should have been a real old wood from top to pilings one track country bridge on the slightly renovated country track (dirt all the way with more or less grading to distinguish the in-use parts). Instead, in the middle of nowhere there appeared down the hillside run of the track we were walking a bridged creek - newly paved, edged and cambered. And what a bridge: two real enough lanes that farm trucks could pass each other at the same time, if they could get there, or leave once arrived; concrete and steel from abutments to shiny traffic barring guard rails along its edges.

The track leading down to the bridge could carry a road grader and a half, but the track up the other side dwindled quickly to the remnants of a gold field era cart track, now rutted and fallen tree-blocked and barely micro size four wheel driveable, leaving the tree aside. The classic once was a road that now is to nowhere. Said shiny signage actually was on this remnant track side of the bridge, not the graded stretch we had in initially come down…a track you can now see couldn't have supported any traffic for the sign to inform. Amazing.

It left us wondering what was in somebody's mind to not merely repair but totally replace the original crossing…replaced with a structure of such monumental wholeness that no imaginable rain could wash it away (which is probably what happened to its precursor…an unimaginable rain that is, whose remnant evidence lined the narrow gorge spanned by the bridge). We thought maybe it was a requirement of someone to keep fire access open, the countryside being that Brisbane Ranges scrub which has often gone in a flash, though not recently in this area (Spring Creek). What were they thinking?? Whatever, its realisation has been complete. One could only dream of such efficient road renovation in more populated areas.

Learner therapist (22)……Telling people what they “need” to hear

Learner therapist (22)……Telling people what they "need" to hear
Torrey Orton
Sept. 9, 2012

"What you need to do is…"

A friend challenged me a while back with the proposition that "you can't tell someone something they don't want to hear". So I started on the spot (at the time in an Art Nouveau café/bistro frequented by Collette in Besancon, France in the early 1900's) to demonstrate how I could do that. My first move was to contradict her assertion, which got her attention, so to speak…the rest I want to explore somewhat more systematically as an approach to patient education / awareness in therapy.
The methods / techniques of confronting must vary with the vulnerability of the patient, the therapist and the present state of the therapy relationship. The principle form of variation is the intensity of the truth claim made for the conflicting opinion on offer from the therapist. Truth intensity is expressed, apart from non-verbal components (volume, pace, gesture) by choice of modal verbs – could, should, must, might – and the level of truth claim: e.g. I guess, I suppose, I imagine, I believe, I'm sure, it is the case that, and so on…ascending to scriptural or other canonical claims of irrefutability.
Variable vulnerabilities
These variations are the 'how' of telling someone what they do (may!) not want to hear and are more important than the 'what'. The what provides the conscious motive for taking action. There are three easily assessed and communicated whats: (a) a patient's emotional misalignment with their present concerns, (b) a misapprehension of what's happening – the facts, and (c) inappropriate beliefs or values for dealing with their concerns about what's happening.
On the whole, the success of any effort to tell somebody something against their immediate sense of need for an offer will fail, no matter how relevant, shapely, timely the offered information is. This is because the offer has to be perceived as an offer of help; that is, as arising from the therapist's positive intent towards the patient. This is the primary motivation of an offer, not the 'what'. If positive intent is in short supply or at the time not in view, then the patient will perceive the offer as a preface to a manipulation and back off as much as they can.
Don't ease in
This fact is the background to the idea that a difficult conversation can never be "eased into" successfully. The effort to ease in will be perceived as what it is – not the real message, just making small talk when big talk is expected and necessary. Rather, the patient will perceive a cover-up, a deception, occurring. Therein lies the undisclosed vulnerability of the easing-in therapist, signalling the therapist's doubt about containing the consequences of the confrontation. Doubt is what patients already have plenty of themselves.
The overall aim of therapy I understand to be the building of a conversation which is a normal, effective adult conversation with appropriate turn-taking, etc. I give patients various kinds of evidence which they can use to test whether they are getting better, and to mark eventually that they are finished with our work. One kind of evidence has to do with jointly conducting the agenda and process of our therapeutic conversations.
A simple, learnable system for effective therapeutic conversation is the three step chunking device of Entry, Action and Close with Checking for effectiveness at each step along the way. This system is a means of engaging any kind of actually or probably or possibly conflictful context. For example, see The Negotiator (1998) for an extended example of walking along the fringe of violence without either denying its possibility or falling into it (a fantasy we may have about all perceived conflicts). Every time one side or the other picks up the phone to initiate a call a new entry has to be created by the person calling. This is often pro-forma, but if matters are emotionally dense, for whatever reasons, some attention must be paid to details like acknowledging the existing feelings.
The whats of therapy
Back to the whats mentioned earlier. I'm going to focus on confronting patients about (a) their personal (in)congruence, (b) their (mis)understanding of "the facts" and (c) the beliefs (including values) through which they interpret the world. These are the 'what' of confronting, the reasons I would want to confront a patient – that they do not know what they feel, that they do not have the facts in hand and/or that they hold incorrect beliefs about the world (and so miss some of the facts).
The system in brief – a short example
This example will show a different what in action in each step and the movement from one step to another through engaging the whats of the discussion. This is merely a sketch. Each chunk might take more time to work through.
Entry
– the entry step seeks to make reliable contact with the other person, set a notional agenda for mutual attention and make the first move into the action step; it establishes the imagined interaction's purpose, process and outcome.

1. their personal (in)congruence:
   X had been talking about his childhood abuse by a family friend in a calm and fluent manner with lots of detail about time, place and action. We'd been working around his anger and overpowering anxieties for some weeks when this story came up. It was almost scripted. Subsequently it turned out he'd told the story to other therapists and a psychiatrist without the feeling of the event getting through, nor being asked for.

After few minutes I said:

I'm not sure where you're going with this, why it's important to you…your expression is a bit blank but the story is a major trauma. Can you tell me what you're feeling now?

Check* - Does it feel right to look into this now?
Action – action is where the work proposed in the entry gets done, or at least attempted;
to continue this example:

1. (mis)understanding of "the facts"
   X identifies a little distress after telling the story because he's not too sure if what he said is true, if it really happened exactly as he said…maybe even it didn't really happen?? No one else who knew it happened has talked about it– not his grandmother, nor his parents, even to this day 30+ years later. (This family silence becomes the near source of his continuing trauma, the engine of repeated doubt and anxiety of catastrophic proportions.)

So I said,

No, you're wrong about that. Memory works like this…. Memory is never perfect. In addition, your difficulty with the fact of memory's fallibility is magnified by your family rule against exploring it, which among other things may makes you feel it is wrong of you to want to clarify the memories….we've talked about your parents active resistance to such exploration often over the last months….

Check* - Is this matter clearer than it was at the start?

Close
– is when a clear end to the action is achieved, for the moment. Possibly a new entry is proposed either immediately or at some specific time / place in the future. Doing so provides continuity and, more important, evidence of commitment to the relationship (appearing above as "positive intent").
Finally X said,

1. the beliefs (including values) through which they interpret the world –
   Yes, it's clearer and I think I now see that expecting perfect facts is one way I hold myself to ransom with my fallibility and guilt…it's hard to see clearly, but that abuse was not my fault...I'm caught in a system of denial…

And I replied,

So maybe we can look more deeply at how that system is spread throughout your life, not just your family of origin…

Check* - Is what we've done so far moving in the direction(s) you want, need…?


There's a start on telling people things they may not want to hear. There's a host of fine points for different situations, vulnerabilities and relationship statuses. You may have noticed that Checking could have the result of stopping a step in its tracks and forcing a return to the previous one. That's the price of effective communication. Knowing that itself can help bridge steps which feel like they are moving back more often than forward. I've been working with X about this for 18 months.
Maybe next round I'll provide a few extended vignettes of confrontations which have been extremely high volatility and also resonating effectiveness for their participants…both me and them.

*Checking is a sub-step throughout usually made by the therapist to ensure a good fit of process and content is maintained. Patients can be expected over time to provide checking themselves, too. It should prevent misunderstandings or misinterpretations, and consequently reduce unintended deceptions both ways. For each of the three domains of confrontation ask things like:

(a) their personal (in)congruence,- How does this feel to you now? How's your breathing, tightness now?

(b) (mis)understanding of "the facts" - Is this matter clearer than it was at the start? What do you see as the key facts in your struggle now?

(c) the beliefs (including values) through which they interpret the world - Is what we're doing now moving in the direction(s) you want, need…?

 

 

Learning to act right (30)… I did do something, really!!

Learning to act right (30)… I did do something, really!!
Torrey Orton
Sept. 4, 2012

The nuts are cracking…

Two weeks ago I wrote: "I did see something, really."


Four days ago the following happened on the same stage: The police were called again for an act of mine deemed assaultive by another of the regular Saturday HoGPIs*. I was reported to have badmouthed one of the priests on duty at the clinic by calling him a paedophile. The policeman (one of another bunch of two) said I did not have to comment on the allegation and I was not being cautioned. So I said nothing.


At the time of my notional assault not one of the non-religious HoGPIs had objected to what I was saying, nor said they did not want my commentary on their work, and nor did the supposedly offended priest. That is, they did not establish the condition for a harassment allegation. Nor had they two weeks previously. The priest in question, one of the trench-coat-masked pair who show up regularly, refused to pursue the matter when the investigating officer asked him what had happened. Perhaps he was surprised it had anything to do with him because the complaint had been made on his behalf it seemed.


For the record, what I had said was that the priests present were accountable organisationally for the church's paedophilia problem and maybe they should be doing something about that since they couldn't guarantee the safety of the children being born now. I've been saying this in roughly this form for months now. And, I say it to the assembled HoGPI multitude of the day, not just the priest(s). They gather under the umbrella of the church's dogma so they can live with its results as a whole.


All the evidence is that they do not like that connection to the whole of the Church's sexuality struggles. One priest (the other of the trench- coated pair) has actively dissociated himself from the struggle by claiming accusations of paedophilia are a matter for the police. Victims should contact the police, he said on another day to the security guard who was pursuing a line of thought like mine above. The same priest subsequently saluted my contributions to their work one morning with "Sieg Heil", a perspective on me I'd not imagined before. Guess it goes with "devil", "Satan" and "murderer" that are typically cast on me by HoGPIs.


The parishioner protestors (the larger part of the HoGPIs) are often even more incensed than the priest to be compromised in their absolute virtue by its undeniable roots in the priestly corruptions (don't forget gay priests and married priests for two other reality assaults on the Papal Bull).


One side effect, I noticed afterwards, has been a reduction in my normal response to authority figures – a feeling of generic guilt which produces a tendency to offer information that's not been asked for and generally to behave collusively. This day I felt less shaky. The slight bit I did feel dissipated in a half hour or so. I take this to be a result of my professional development program in conflict management – our counter protest. It followed a session in which I had made various remarks on the HoGPIs activities (which were not subject to police complaint, but were of similar character to the paedophile accountability ones above) in a coherent way, with low anger and little disturbed thinking on my part (usually the main product of high anger).


Perhaps I'm getting closer to cracking the nuts by being less cracked myself?




*HoGPIs – Helpers of God's Precious Infants - Google for details



 

Learning to act right (29)… I did see something, really!!

Learning to act right (29)… I did see something, really!!
Torrey Orton
Aug. 23, 2012

How close are the nuts to cracking?

Six weeks ago I wrote: "I did not see anything I could swear to in a court of law" about a missing, believed to be stolen, cross out front of the Fertility Control Clinic.


A few days ago the following happened on the same stage: The police were called for an act of mine deemed assaultive by two of the regular Saturday HoGPIs. I had held up in the view of them and their associates the front of THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIANMAGAZINE August 04-05, 2012. The cover story was a self-outing by a Catholic priest of his married status while an active pastor. Its title was: "Sins of the Father - Why this Catholic priest got married – and kept it secret from his flock".


While holding it up, I also mentioned that there was another front page story in TheAGE that day of yet another unreported sex abuse by priests in the 1990's. This presentation took about 10 seconds, twice. Once to show it to a group of 3 HoGPIs gathered at one end of their prescribed protest ground and the second time to the lone male at the other end of their ground. He said something at the time about calling the police, and he did so, but did not specify what prompted the call. He was more than his usual angry self at my perceived disrespect for their enterprise.


A two officer divvy van showed up from the nearest station about 30 minutes later. One male, one female in their early thirties. The woman conducted the formal discussion with the complainants and then came over to see me, which was the moment I discovered I was the object of their complaint. I acknowledged having the allegedly offensive magazine and that I raised it in front of them, along with a remark about the morning's front page revelations in TheAGE of 18/08/12 about priestly misbehaviour with children. Such news seems to me germane, since the HoGPIs are claiming an absolute high moral ground for their objection to abortion. For me, their ground loses some altitude in the light of the Church's failing, so I have been making this point regularly over months, but not so effectively it seems.


Their reported complaint was that I had provoked them by raising matters that were not germane to their self-appointed task of "helping" patients at the FCC. Hence, I had assaulted the complainants. Of course, it is a bit of a wonder that something un-germane should have been so provoking, but then I quibble. I offered not to do it again. I was not commanded not to, nor formally cautioned against doing so. The door is open to argue that it is germane, and that might well be worth doing sometime if we have some cheap legal service with which to pursue the issue and make the total behaviour of the Church germane to this part of their suite of offers to the local world!!?


One side effect, so I'm told, has been to have my image raised in the FCC security community for having lived down a "we'll call the police" threat from the HoGPIs. Didn't even know I was lifting my profile. Since I didn't know what I was doing, I can hardly claim any honour for it. Maybe effectiveness is more important than intentions. It's often unclear how many things come to be.











 

Travel funnies 2012 (6) – Istanbul items

Travel funnies 2012 (6) –
Istanbul items
Torrey Orton
Aug. 22, 2012


One background thing of note
Istanbul was a much better event than I had ever considered it could be. My expectations were discoloured by my resistance to new major cultural differences, mixed with a sense that I already have enough such differences well-lodged in various parts of my being. This is not new for me in relation to travel options going back years. My China world started this way 35 years ago. The only really foreign place I ever spontaneously chose to live in was France 40 years ago, and of them all (visited and inhabited) it's the most unfinished for me, so it's always on the annual travel list.



Shoe shine guy
On the afternoon of our last day we were returning to the digs we had occupied for five nights to do a quick shower and final pack. At the top of the hill we climbed to the hotel we started passing a shoeshine stand – a guy a bit younger than us perched on a small stool purpose-built for the height requirements of shining a shoe on his polish box foot step – and he offered his services for the third or so time in our five days in the area. He was certainly right that my walking boots were more dust than polish and more scuffed than smooth. Jane and I did a quick visual negotiation and I agreed. The polish was the best I've ever had, commercial or self-applied. Along the way he talked about his present life, numbers of children and grandchildren, enquired after ours, and went back to the life of a lifetime polisher…not at all good that day; nil clients until us.


Back to the box. It was an art work in its own right – each polish container topped with a well buffed brass mini-minaret and set in a wood-framed tray. The whole box was carefully oiled, modelling the service on offer.


The melodious muezzin
On our last day about 1:15pm during lunch at Pandeli in the far southeast corner of the Spice Market the call to prayer broke out with penetrating power from the nearest minaret (all projected with full volume loudspeakers) in the finest of the 10 or so such events we'd heard in five days…a tuneful and peaceful rendition of a routine most locals would know, of which the most we could pick up was the "God is great" punctuations for completed phrases… but the guy could sing a chant in tune and in time. Plato was right – music is the voice of the gods, or was it the demons?


Magna chartas at Asa Sofya
This grande dame of churches was taken into the Moslem fold somewhat after the conquering of Constantinople in the mid 1400's. She had already been in service 700+ years by then. Her conversion was simple. Declared Moslem it in the name of Allah, add some minarets and de-decorate and counter-decorate a bit. Now a museum, its history is all on view. Apart from some mosaics defaced and partly reconstructed, there was a stunningly large series of what would pass for billboards if they were promoting local fabrics or eats rather than the Koranic phrases they contained - massively larger than the same kind of verbals to be found in the purpose-built, much younger Blue Mosque just across the plaza.


Touts with taste
More than once I had the almost joyous experience of seriously competent salesmen of fabrics or edibles or visits to parts well known or post card representations of what I'd missed or seen but not noticed should be signalled to others. Many of these guys (a pretty men-only scene, the streets of Istanbul) had perfect first moves which personalised unintrusively what we all knew was a commercial dance. For example, the café owner who remarked, "Nice shoes", as we padded by his establishment around dinner time, directing my attention to their aged colouring (NOT the boots of the polishing encounter above!). There followed a three or four step natter about the virtues of shoe aging which tailed off into a pleasant reiteration of his unspoken introduction to dinner services and untroubled acknowledgement of our not being quite at the dining time ourselves. A really striking characteristic of the tourist area touts wherever we went…just plain competent and human(e). A case of an unexpected personal truth as the medium of relationship building


Afternoon at the baths
The baths we visited were 500 years old give or take a few decades. The marble floors were smooth and slightly carved out from the passage of feet all those years, much as the portals of the Aya Sofya and Blue Mosque were …smoothly rutted like an old unmade road on clay based soils, with something like the same danger of slip-sliding around when wet. I'd never had a Turkish bath experience and wouldn't have on my own initiative. Like most things I do under some duress (that is, because I can't be bothered otherwise), I find interesting and enjoyable. Such it was with this. The heat was dense and carried in all the media supporting our presence – floors, walls, humidity… Relief was startling. Water at 20 degrees is a slight slap in an ambience of 40+C and 95% humidity. I'll be looking for its equivalent in Oz, but preliminary searches are not encouraging.


Driving in alleys – everyone's cutting it fine
About the only scary thing in the whole Istanbul experience started and finished our time here – driving. Taxis are chauffeured with a manic intensity ramped up by two entwined factors: drivers' need for speed and proximity of collision opportunities. Around the central tourist parts where we mostly were, streets mostly dated from a horse-drawn era. Mostly one way and mostly bordered on one side with parked cars and 3 foot wide footpaths and packed with wandering masses of other cars and pedestrians, a fluxing tapestry of moving metal and bodies, the latter flowing in all directions across the roads with a minimalist approach, from our Melbourne viewpoint, to personal safety.


You know that experience in Melbourne of people who step off a curb to the edge of traffic and start moving into the space which hasn't yet actually appeared in the traffic, failing which they will be scrunched by the same actuality? Well, Istanbul was that multiplied geometrically. I'm sure locals learn to judge where the pedestrians are going by those slight twitches of preparation for movement. They take a lifetime to learn to the same level of unconscious competence as the pedestrians, usually by early pedestrian experiences of their own. Remember learning to look left first when you are used to looking right? That's the level of the challenge.


Being on the starting edge of that trajectory was not entertaining. For us here, it's usually a simple 90 degree crossing of our direction of movement. There it's a 360 degree potential. The people we could see, and those who hadn't yet appeared in view, could go in any direction at any time and come from any direction at any time. Or, so it seemed. I haven't done the Istanbul road accident stats research yet to see if our apprehension in the act of travel was warranted, for our sake or others'.



 

Travel funnies 2012 (5) – Cat City, Jetonsmatik and such…

Travel funnies 2012 (5) –
Cat City, Jetonsmatik and such…
Torrey Orton
Aug.1, 2012

 
One thing of note – Istanbul is cat city

 
Just outside our hotel – the slightly overstated Ottoman Imperial at the side wall of the Hagia Sophia mosque/church – a squad of local cats of various ages from 4 months to indeterminate, but nothing looking over 5 years, hangs out. They are not alone in feeling they own the place, have no fear of humans or anything else and no obvious reason to. Their only possible natural enemy, us, are at worst indifferent and best vigorously supportive, running feeding campaigns on the mosque enclosure wall tops or from concerned local eateries around town. There's only been three dogs in sight and they were moving on thru the square between the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia at a moderate pace. Cats, on the other hand, snooze pretty much anywhere including a stool almost obstructing the passage of mosque visitors ambling into the Blue Mosque yesterday. And given a small chance they'll schmooze up to passers-by, when awake and feeling needy, with normal head-butting moves. Cat heaven or haven?


Background note: my understanding is that dogs are conceived as impure in Islam, hence the cat heaven milieu in Istanbul, perhaps! Google says: there's a history of cats in Istanbul. Even Obama scratched one on the Hagia Sophia pathways a year ago. That I would discourage, but then I'm probably an emerging animal disease vector kook…And, on the other hand, cats have a more promising history in Islam. Google "Aya Sophia Cats" for a sample of who we saw daily, including the mosque enclosure feeding grounds. We saw at least three dead ringers for members of our historical cat menagerie. Now that's genetic constancy for ya.


Jetonsmatik
There's a quite well done tram network which joins the tourist centre of town with neighbouring touristy areas. It looks a bit French, an impression amplified yesterday on the other touristy side of the water (the Golden Horn) as we were gearing up for a return from an arvo at a Sufi "Whirling Dervishes" event. There in the access path to the tram stop was a large cabinet boldly labelled Jetonsmatik, which clanged my French bell with authority. A jeton is a token. So, our hosts have a token-mediated payment system, as did NYC for years in its massively less salubrious subway system
.
However, as you've been expecting, there's a hitch. The jeton cost is Turkish Lira 2 for a ride to anywhere on the line. TL come in 1 and 2 TL denominations. But, the TL2 jeton can only be bought with TL1 coins. As I was trying to follow the obvious path of using my TL2 coins unsuccessfully a guy came along and said clearly "Nyet" when I held it up helplessly. Thank gods for other foreigners. They often have an intuitive understanding of gaps locals can never perceive.


"620 kgs gods"
A nice language twist. The Danes are just a few breaths away from English in many ways, and here's one. Looking at the guidelines for usage on the door of our hotel lift in Copenhagen I noted daily the limit of 8 persons but not the alternative 620kgs gods limit until the last day of 5. I'm still wondering about the weight of gods given the known weight of a soul (21 grams isn't it?). Or, how many gods does it take to make a good? Or goods to make a god? Eight guys or girls my size would sink the thing, being neither gods nor goods.
Stop it!