The Angel’s Trumpet
The best part about traveling with a diverse group of people is all the interesting tidbits of valuable information you gather along the way. Today was no exception even though one is reminded that it’s important to be discerning in what one chooses to believe or not. Mr. Ripley had it right when he collected his curios from around the world. It may not matter sometimes whether it’s true or not, but you should probably decide somewhere along the way whether you believe it or not.
Take Kevin for instance. He’s been part of AFMC since 2005 according to the official AFMC website. But he’s been a probationary member who has chosen to live in that limbo for fourteen years simply because he has chosen to not adhere to the simplest of conventions of organized society. The fundamental problem has been that he cannot be believed. This is again less an issue of truth and more an issue of belief. We suspect that he himself is a nonbeliever so he does not allow himself to be believable. If you say to Kevin at breakfast, overlooking the Selçuk valley of West-Central Turkey, “what time will be gathering at the vans?” He’s as likely to say 10:00, 10:30 or never and you can be left hanging wondering whether you should gulp down your Turkish coffee or order a plate of eggs. Talking to him is like wrestling with that fictional pig. You get dirty and the pig likes it.
We finally all got in the vans at 10:30 to head into Ephesus. Kim and Ann own the Princess Van, make no mistake about that. This was a hard-won prize that they paid dearly for by token of eight hours spent on Thursday in a big yellow Istanbul taxi with no suspension and even less horsepower. They invited several of us to join them in their van for the ride down to Ephesus. Someone who will go unmentioned (but it might have been me) did the equivalent of fart in a crowded elevator by mentioning an unmentionable topic regarding a controversial tidbit of information from the night before that might or might not have been believable. Ripley was not available to adjudicate so instead we turned the topic to the socially more fluid topics of religion and politics. Kim kept asking. “Are we there yet?”
Kazim, our main man on things Turkish, was still on a pedestal from the prior night’s outstanding accomplishment of getting all of Ephesus to stand at attention to salute the AFMC flag for us. He doubled down by choosing to drop us off at the uphill side of Ephesus so that we could leisurely walk downhill on the Fifth Avenue of the ancient city-state. He has learned a thing or two about a thing or two in the nineteen years he has jockeyed our little band of misfits around the Mediterranean. As they say in legal briefs, he possesses information and belief that American Flyers perform better and with fewer complaints if they are allowed to walk historical sites downhill rather than uphill. Kaz is a veritable font of wisdom on the history of Turkey, Greece and Persia as best we can tell. Whether everything he says is complete truth means nothing to us. We believe in the man so we follow him dutifully through the baths, temples and shopping malls of Second Century Ephesus.
The tricky part of the trek is that everything is paved with ancient worn stones that are quaintly used to cobblestone the roads and sidewalks of this town where each and every stone carries the scars of at least two millennia. When and if I wonder why these advanced civilizations with their terra-cotta plumbing and their ornate colonnades failed, I believe with every step that at one time or another they all had sprained ankles from missteps on their stone-strewn paths in life and just gave up in favor of the next marauding horde that happened by. The history of the world according to Rich.
After walking all the way through what we are told was a mere 15% of the ancient town, we exit past the 24,000 capacity stadium/theater that must be one of the largest that existed. Kaz tell us that historian/archeologists use stadium sizing to estimate population and by using a standard 10X factor, conclude that Second Century Ephesus was 250,000 souls strong. That would have made it the biggest city in Asia Minor at the time, bigger than Byzantium he claimed. Impressive.
Lunch in Selçuk on market day was another treat. The fruits and vegetables of all kinds were on colorful display. Chris showed his Okey roots by being the only one who could identify a wierd-looking reddish green pod as okra. Given that my anecdotal roadside observation is that at least half the towns and businesses in Turkey start with the letter O (perhaps a subconscious nod to the power of their time as the seat of Ottoman rule), I’m rethinking my views about both Okra and Oklahoma.
During lunch, Chris handed me his iPhone which had a Wikipedia reference to a large flowering plant next to our table. It was called the Angel’s Trumpet and it was a much nastier plant than it’s droopy flowers made it seem. Supposedly it’s flower (and any part of the plant) possesses some powerful hallucinogenic narcotics. So far, so good. But those narcotics produce terrifying hallucinations and can lead to bizarre actions by people under the influence, and even death. You have to be pretty desperate to want to escape reality so badly that you are prepared to brave terrifying hallucinations to do it. And the flower is so pleasant to look at and even to smell. Mr. Ripley probably already knows all about Angel’s Trumpet or certainly should.
I’m a little concerned that Chris knows so much about this dangerous plant and I think I want to remember not to mess around with him and do our usual ride tricks like cutting him off or slowing him down. That’s the thing about overly aggressive behavior, you never know what darkness lurks in the heart of man, not to mention what he might know about terrifying narcotics. This concern can rightly be upgraded during a ride in Turkey, given its history as the land of the poppy, believe it or not.
Note to self – remember what Angel’s Trumpet looks and smells like and remember to be nicer to Chris.