Gateway to Dawn

The moon has been following us from it's newness on into its waxing. As a witness to our love, Serkan will say, and we'll laugh, because it's true. It feels like our moon, even though every one across the Earth is seeing the same phase of the moon, at slightly differing hours, taking time zones into account. But not everybody is seeing the moon. Either they don't look or, in Patagonia for example, clouds cloak the moon or it's too damn cold to frollick around outside all day in a bikini. I can't remember the last time I was so aware of what shape the moon was in, every day, every night. We're outdoors all the time and the sky always near cloudless clear. In the afternoon I point it out: there she is. At night risen higher in the sky, it lights our night walks to the beach or to the Chimera natural fires always aflame in the mountains outside Olympus.

I am sitting crosslegged in the matins on a huge deck of a climber's bungalow in Geyibayiri, outside Antalya. (It sounds like Gateway to me... though that's not exactly right. The canyon is wide, but in some places you can see both sides of it simultaneously and view how, one day long ago, the cliffs fit together. There are hundreds of climbing routes only a stone's throw away and no other houses for acres. The bungalow sits among olive trees, citrus and green plums. Pomegranate trees blossom red blooms for springtime. In a few more months, during the climbing season, climbers will take pomegranate breaks.

The moon is already hidden in rotation, so that the stars actually pop. They all seem to be moving and sending their thousands-year old messages, which only the crickets can decode. But they decipher it all in cricket language, and I don't speak cricket. As the night softens into dawn, an owl scatters its coos across the valley. Somewhere a river rushes and the limestone cliffs blush with the coming sun. The crickets give way to noisy birdsong and flies like aeroplanes have already begun to jet around my head.