MISGUIDED

Why did you buy a ticket for the guided tour of Antalya, my love? Why?

Of course, I was selling those tickets, but then again, that's what I do. You think I sell them at a fairly decent price? They cost more than you'd ever dream, my love.

I'm glad of what I do. Some misguided people need these guided tours.

But you... I thought I saw something different in your eyes. I thought I saw the power of an inner gaze, a power which when looking outward sees through and beyond to what is really there. I saw you had a power for seeing past sight.

Then why sightsee, my love?

Your spirit is far too free, your bodily posture too dignified to be made to sit for hours, bent forward on the furthest eager edge of our tour-bus seat that's riveted to the floor, chain-ganged there in line to go exactly where the other seats go.

Of course, I could be mistaken, but I see your nose is superbly formed for sniffing at the inner fragrances of things. It's far too fine to be pressed with other tourists' noses in indiscriminate awe against a dirty tour-bus window, nostrils steaming glass with a visual greed no handkerchief could ever wipe away. Your jaws are relaxed and far too content with your share in life to be squeezed together in the tourist's perpetual silly smile, rewarding in advance whatever might appear in view.

Who can know what will appear as the bus pulls away?

This tour, my love, has been carefully arranged for those who look only outside their lives - for those who leave the centers of themselves and prefer to set out to see elsewhere a grand magnificence. It's designed for those who look elsewhere for their wonders. It wasn't designed for you.

We send the tourists first to Hadrian's Gate. Those marble-friezed triple arches were raised to honor Hadrian. Of course, through the centuries, they honor most those who built them well. However, miming Turkish eyebrows which when arched say "No," they chide those who waste their modern time and Kodak film on crumbling ancient feats of skill long dead - while much they themselves could do lies unphotographed. Undeveloped. Undone.

The next stop is a magnificent waterfall, giving freely all it receives without worry, unwearied and without greed. Flowing, gurgling, it mocks the idle spectator with nothing better to do than stare at it.

And then we go to the ancient ruins of the city and offer a multi-lingual spieler to preach details, anecdotes and facts of what lies there, as if the site really were some ancient city in ruins, and not a heap of shattered mirrors resembling toppled stones to match the visitors' inner ruin reflected there.

We will take you there, too, my love.

You're afraid? You throw down the ticket and begin to walk away?

But I've only described some of the sites!

No refunds, love. We hold the power now. Admit you'd hate to lose the money. Can you forget you paid?

You keep walking? You don't turn around? You don't even look back?

Right move, my love. Right move. I hoped you'd do just that. How I hoped...

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