"Turkish Bath" by Eileen Mayo

Women, white and powder pink, perhaps washed out by the flash of a camera, moving in and out like cats in between naps. A woman-with-a-confrontational-stare's breasts demand attention, but the longer I look at the entire scene, the more I am lost in zigzags, stripes, and black cracks. Until finally I remain most taken by grey squares that seem more like shady openings into some cavernous unknown.

That woman's eyes, too, are grey.

"Cats In the Trees" by Eileen Mayo

Are we one or two as we slink around the trees?

Up one, down one. Where is sky and ground? I cannot see. The leaves obscure our vision. But gaze on, we do, as if we have a view.

Shadows patch the branches like floating ghosts or overgrown amoebae. And as we move, our stripes slither as if they are their own living beings.

"Morning Tea" by Eileen Mayo

I'm not a morning person, but every once in a while, for no particular reason at all, I wake up early. I'm not referring to the mornings where I get up early because I have an appointment. I mean the rare occasion when I make a choice to stay awake, despite the early hour. I am so well acquainted with the cool and haunting colors of the night that morning colors strike me as garishly vivid. Not necessarily in a bad way, but rather surreal. It is as if visiting some bright and cheery parallel universe. Just as quiet as the night, but in a different way. The chirps of birds, not crickets. The fresh smell of dew instead of musty fog. The coffee is freshly brewed, rather than stale and re-heated in the microwave. And while there are as few people out in the very early morning as in the night, the morning crew is clean and chipper, wearing smiles and greeting each other with a heartfelt "Good morning!" People of the night are typically cast in anonymous shadows. I imagine this experience for me is something like the reaction of a morose, east-coast intellectual visiting optimistic and quirky California.

I sit in a nest of warm, rumpled sheets and blankets. I feel so happy and relaxed that instead of my morning jolt of coffee, I've made a pot of peppermint tea. I even slowly sip the fragrant beverage from a proper teacup, complete with saucer. In these hovering moment before the day really begins, I question, why don't I get up early every morning? And the answer comes to me slowly, but clearly: Some places are very pleasant and beautiful to look at, and as tourists, that is all we notice. But as the cliche goes, the grass is always greener on the other side, and deep down we all know who we are and where we belong.