I Took A Trip To My Own Bedroom

I am about to tell you a story that lived in my heart for more than eleven years. It still inspires me to think and to write today.

It was 2009. I was on a book, The Art of Travel by Alain De Botton. I was very into traveling. I looked for ways to connect. I wanted to host people, so I could be hosted. CouchSurfing was popular back then. I received a request:

Hi Gozde, I am cycling from my home in London to Australia. I am in Iznik today and passing through Eskisehir on Sunday. If you have a couch I would be really grateful. -Oli

Oli arrived on his bike and stayed for five days. We hardly understood him. We hardly spoke English. Maybe that's why I'm not remembering conversations but I'm remembering feelings. I remember him doing the dishes, singing I am Not Crying It's Just Been Raining by The Flight of Conchords when our bathroom's ceiling starts to drip, listening to I Don't Like Cricket I Love It and Where Do You Go To My Lovely When You're Alone In Your Bed.

Then, there are the feelings and memories that lived with us after he left.

*It took Oli 412 days to make it to Australia.*

He was on his way to Brisbane right from our tiny apartment through our tiny street. I met someone seeing many, many new places, meeting many, many new people everyday. That would be the same scene if I left for Australia one of those days, too. Oli didn't inspire me to see new places or to meet new people. Instead, he inspired me to look at my own whereabouts, to my own bedroom, to my own tiny apartment, to my own kitchen, to my own life and in the end to my own self. It was the beginning of many, many new things.

Around the same days as I was reading The Art of Travel, I searched for another book that was cited by Alain De Botton: A Journey To My Own Bedroom.

I think that Oli and Alain De Botton co-seeded the internal traveler in me then.

I travelled to places a decent amount of time for artist residencies, for going to school, for visiting people or in the sake of taking trains and buses, but that's not my everyday life. My everyday life is taking trips to tiny towns made by colored stones inside my neighbors' front yard, stepping on wrongly carved signs my streets, saying hi to passersby, and seeing a new thing in them the next day.

I tear things down and build things up. I turn things upside down. I construct and deconstruct the world around me like every other artist everyday.

(trying to figure out a way to connect this article to Covid-19 so i can use all the hashtags)

Let me give it a try:

Changing the way we see, do, live, discover and experience is an everyday practice that saved, save and will save us.

Did that work?

-

Here are me, Deniz and Oli in front of our apartment right before he left.

Notes:

1. Oli Broom cycled from London, UK to Brisbane, Australia in 412 days. He arrived to Eskisehir, Turkey on December 26th. Here is his book Cycling To The Ashes: https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/1070210/oli-broom.html

Here he is writing about our non-existing oven and us not getting his British accent!

3. A Journey To My Own Bedroom

What do you do when you find yourself imprisoned in your room for 6 weeks? Xavier de Maistre, a 27-year-old Frenchman found himself in this uneasy situation when he was arrested in Turin after a duel, in the Spring of 1790. But with only a butler and a dog for company, Xavier de Maistre managed to fill his time by embarking on a journey around his bedroom, later writing an account of what he had seen.

4. Here are what I've seen on my trip to my own bedroom today, May 3rd 2020 in San Francisco.

with peace,

Gozde