Reconstruction, reading slump and old wives’ tales for fighting with herpes
Free dispatch from Istanbul
Tonight’s dispatch ✈︎ arrives at:
22:00 Istanbul | 20:00 London | 15:00 New York | 07:00 Sydney
Inside tonight’s edition: reconstruction, communal poetry, reading slump, old wives’ tales for fighting with herpes, life lately
Reconstruction is everywhere these days. In companies, in our daily lives, and apparently, on every other street corner too. And speaking of streets — urban transformation is still ongoing in parts of Istanbul.
Not exactly the first thing I mention when romanticizing my city to people, but here we are. Old apartment buildings, declared unsafe and “not earthquake-resistant enough,” have been getting demolished one by one for years, only to be replaced with supposedly newer and stronger buildings. Supposedly being the key word here. We are told they all comply with the latest earthquake regulations, though at this point verification feels less like a choice and more like a survival instinct. Because if you remember the horrific earthquake in Hatay happened in 2023, some of the so-called “new” buildings collapsed within seconds as if they had been made out of paper. Thousands of people lost their lives. Maybe some of you still remember watching the footage in disbelief. I certainly do. So yes, in Istanbul, the grand solution to the long-expected major earthquake seems to be: tear buildings down and build new ones. As if that alone could possibly be enough. Alas, everyone knows it isn’t.
Anyway, this is not entirely what I meant to write about today. I mostly wanted to include that newly constructed building that has now invaded my terrace view — the one where I used to peacefully admire the Marmara Sea and my beloved Princes’ Islands from afar.
Horrendous.
Who exactly approved a building that tall in a neighborhood full of low-rise apartments? I would genuinely love to prepare a few carefully selected words for the authorities responsible.
So, while reconstruction is happening everywhere, I found myself thinking: maybe it’s time to renovate both myself and my Stack a little too.
Well, call it herd mentality if you want — apparently, I’ve been influenced. Which is why I’m proud to announce the beginning of Dispatched from Istanbul by Vera Herself.
Dispatched will now be a daily newsletter finding its way into your inbox every day except Saturdays and Sundays. The Writer’s Voice, along with everything else I’ve been wanting to say, is now coming together under this new roof — with one exception: Communal Poetry.
Communal Poetry will continue to be published separately on Sundays, exactly as it always has been, because it is the apple of our eye and I have absolutely no intention of reconstructing it.
And for those worried I might completely flood their inboxes: instead of unsubscribing, you can always turn off my email notifications through your subscription settings if you’d prefer. Of course, the choice is entirely yours.
But I’d be happy if you stayed. Just saying!
So that’s there.
If you’ve been following me closely lately, you probably already noticed that I’ve voluntarily sent myself to the Elif Shafak camp for a while now. What you don’t know is that before this, I had been suffering from a long and painful reading slump — and fought quite hard to get out of it. Yes, really.
I don’t exactly know when or how it started, but I spent a long period barely reading any books at all, hiding behind excuses like attention span problems, “I don’t have time” bullshit, and all kinds of convenient disappearances. And I was miserable because of it at the end of the day.
Because I wanted to read. It was really that simple.
Then I realized something: I was forcing myself to read too many books in English. (For those who don’t know, English is my second language.) And no matter how fluently I can use it, reading in English was still x2 work for my brain. So eventually I decided to read two novels by Elif Shafak in Turkish instead — and finished both of them almost in one breath.
A while ago, I had read a few articles about how to get out of a reading slump and even made a video about it years ago. So here are a few methods I gathered from all that, in case they help you too:
Stop punishing yourself with books you think you should read.
Some books are meant for specific moments in life. If your brain currently wants an easy, flowing novel, let it have one. The literature police will not knock on your door.Don’t underestimate the power of your native language.
Reading in a second language is wonderful, but sometimes the brain simply gets tired. Reading in Turkish again genuinely felt like my mind could finally breathe.Set ridiculously small goals.
Instead of saying “I’ll read 100 pages tonight,” say “I’ll read for 10 minutes.” Most of the time, those 10 minutes pull you right back into the book anyway.Leave your phone in another room.
Unfortunately, it really is partly that simple. Once your brain adapts to TikTok speed, even reading a paragraph starts feeling like a marathon.Give yourself permission to reread.
Sometimes the best cure for a reading slump is not starting something new, but returning to a book you once loved. Because the goal is not only reading again — it’s recovering the feeling of reading.
If you’ve also fallen victim to a reading slump before, please share your experience with me in the comments. I want to know how you found your way back to books again.
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A little bit of old wives’ tales
(or, if we directly translate the Turkish phrase koca karı tavsiyeleri, “large elderly woman advice,” which somehow sounds both threatening and deeply trustworthy...)
One thing that could easily make it into the top 5 things I hate most in life: getting a damn cold sore on my lip.
Thankfully, I’ve become somewhat of an expert at dealing with that. Not through scientific methods, unfortunately. And before I continue: nothing I’m about to say is medical advice, and I cannot be held responsible if you end up in a tragic situation where what I will mention somehow makes your cold sore even angrier. Do we have a deal here? Great.
I don’t want you to feel sorry for me or anything, but my cold sores have genuinely been a source of ridicule for me since childhood. Back in primary school, one particularly shameless classmate saw my cold sore and told me I should stop getting so close to trash bins. I cried the entire day because I thought she was implying I lived in filth.
Now, looking back, it doesn’t even sound that malicious, but at the time I was a deeply sensitive tiny child and apparently ready to emotionally collapse over any comment involving garbage. lol. Anyway, my extensive investigations have taught me that once this lovely little virus called herpes enters your body, it basically never leaves. Fact-checked by my own existence, considering I’m 28 years old and still getting cold sores.
HOWEVER
After years of struggle, experimentation, and trying every possible remedy known to humanity, I finally discovered the ultimate solution. And I’m proud of it:
! ! ! GARLIC ! ! !
So… if you think I’m about to tell you that simply eating garlic will cure your cold sores, not exactly.
What your cold sore actually needs is this: crush a garlic clove, extract the juice, apply it directly onto the cold sore — preferably when it’s still in the “I am about to ruin your week” phase — and then allow the magic to happen. I must warn you that this will be slightly painful. By “slightly,” I mean you may briefly question your life choices for a couple of minutes. However, in my extremely unscientific experience, it has been far more effective and realistic than many of the pharmacy creams sold under the glamorous title of “cold sore treatment.”
So, as you may already understand, I have a very balanced and regular long-term relationship with garlic-never-absent-from my kitchen. I even stockpiled it during the Covid era out of fear that I wouldn’t be able to find any — or worse, wouldn’t be able to leave the house to buy it. Absolute madness!
What I’m trying to say is: old wives’ tales can sometimes be far more useful than you think.
If you also have any scientifically unproven little remedies or habits that somehow work wonders in your daily life, don’t forget to share them with me in the comments. Or just send me a DM. Some things multiply when shared — old wives’ tales included.
Life lately…
is exhausting but at the same time extraordinarily wonderful.
Here are few things I’ve started doing now that the weather is getting better:
1 — Renewing my subscription to STRNG, throwing my mat onto the floor, and getting fully back into my daily workouts.
2 — Since I live in a top-floor apartment that turns into an oven during warmer months, I’ve been looking into getting my cat a ceramic water fountain to prevent him from becoming a tiny dehydrated tragedy. At the moment, I’m having a full-blown love affair with these designs from Alfo Design, but we are still in the decision-making phase.
3 — Now that I’ve finally escaped my reading slump, I want to read much more. The only problem is that I have absolutely no idea who I should continue with next — so I am very open to recommendations, preferably gripping fiction that will emotionally destroy me in the best possible way.
4 — And finally, just like last summer when we fully intended to do it but somehow never managed, this year we are determined to turn this enormous terrace into an actually livable space. And I mean beyond simply throwing a barbecue and a table onto it and calling it a day and IKEA is absolutelly calling for us.
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Thank you for being here, for reading, for replying, for accompanying me from different corners of the world while I sit in Istanbul complaining about buildings, books, herpes, and garlic.
Take care of yourselves, drink water, read something beautiful, and please do not sue me over the garlic advice.
Dispatched from Istanbul,
xx
Yes, I've been in a reading slump for a while. Just like yours. I think I will take your advice and go back to my favorites. On a side note, I remember seeing pictures you took of the sea from your home. It is so sad you won't be able to see that again when those buildings are up.
I share your fondness for garlic. Pasta, chili, curries, stir-fries, and goulash are staple items in my diet, and garlic is a key ingredient for me when I’m cooking. My local grocery store tends to carry Spanish garlic. The bulbs are usually large, which I’m inclined to think makes the garlic taste a little diffused, so I will often add a whole bulb to a big pot of pasta sauce, chili, goulash, or whatever I happen to be cooking. I can’t be bothered setting aside a few leftover cloves of garlic, which will only begin to sprout before too long, or be forgotten if I put them in my freezer. If the final flavour results in the pot are too strong, I can always comfort myself with thoughts of the health benefits of eating garlic.
The main hassle with garlic is peeling off the skins from the individual cloves. I’ve found that frozen garlic peels much easier. All you have to do is cut off the base of the clove and then squeeze the other end. The clove will usually pop out of its skin quite easily. I do wonder, though, whether freezing affects the taste of the garlic.
Rather than finely chop the garlic, I usually add it to a cup or so of the pasta sauce, or the base liquid of whatever I’m cooking, and then use an electric hand blender to mix it all together.
You ask about home remedies, well, one thing that works for me is peeling and eating a whole grapefruit whenever I feel a cold or a cough coming on. I often do this for several days in a row, as long as I think I might be coming down with something. I realize it’s probably only a placebo effect, but something about the idea of absorbing all that grapefruit pulp and juice into my system with the accompanying mental image of the infecting viruses and germs being stricken and dissolved seems to prevent me from actually getting sick. Or if I do get a cough or a cold, I get over it quickly. I like to think that eating hot, spicy food has a similar preventive effect by burning up the germs in my system before they have a chance to take hold. But that’s just my imagination at work.
Also, one idea for your terrace might be to add some large potted palm trees or other plants to block the view of nearby buildings and add some shade and colour. The only problem would be the difficulty of moving these heavy pots indoors for part of the year, because I know Istanbul gets snow and below freezing temperatures over the winter.