Turkey doesn't have a non-smoking section....

Everybody smokes in Turkey, whether they want to or not.

I am not one of those reformed smokers who thinks everyone would be better off if they quit.  I do not see it as my mission to stop others from smoking.  Once I quit, I figured I no longer had a dog in that fight.  "Smoke all you want," is how I see it.  As long as I don't have to smoke, who cares what you do?

Here it is different.  If someone offers you a cigarette, or a narghile (water pipe) or a cigar, they are extending themselves to you in a really intimate way.  Smoking isn't a dirty habit here.  It is a way of exchanging confidences, of indicating that this is no longer a casual conversation we are having, we are now friends, conspirators, even lovers.  So you have to kind of take it seriously when someone offers you a smoke.  You have been provided an opportunity to come inside as it were, to be one of us.  It isn't really shameful here the way it is in the US.  

Plus you add to the fact that the coffee here is universally terrible.  I know, you think that the silk road and coffee exports coming through Turkey and Turkish coffee and all that hoo ha.  Let me tell you something, it's OVER.  When you order coffee here, your server responds with "Nescafe?"  That's right, Nescafe. Instant coffee. One would have hoped that instant had passed but not here.  If you order kahve, which would be Turkish Coffee, you would also be disappointed. Contemporary Turkish coffee is make in about 45 seconds using grounds, an espresso roast, hot water and a butane torch.  The stuff is very hot and very sweet and very strong, but it is not flavorful.  It certainly gets the job done, but it is more for effect than taste.  Turks don't really drink coffee.  They drink tea, and lots of it.  

Still, I have not had a puff of anything at all.  I have learned that the offer of a cigarette is a kindness here.  I explain my deficiencies in not being able to smoke.  I usually get a laugh.  "Then you should smoke," my new friend says.  "It will improve your health."

Sketches....

I have a sketchbook that I take with me everywhere.  I really pride myself on having a daily practice, but I gotta say I have not made a single drawing since I have been here.  I have been so completely overwhelmed visually that I can't even conceive of how to make a image right now.  I think I am intimidated by the glory all around me.  My friend Linda tells me that I have to let the experience sink in - that I should not be too hard on myself.  For a workaholic painter like myself, that is easier said than done.

What I have been doing diligently is making notes in my sketchbook.  Writing things down as they occur to me or so I do not forget them.  It has been a useful practice for me.  

I stress that I do have to start trying to draw while I am here.  I have taken a lot of photos (so many that I had to buy a portable hard drive to keep from crashing my Mac), but they are no substitute for the drawn experience.  The ability to translate what I am seeing to a painterly realm is only available through my eyes, not through a lens.  The lens is democratic - it includes everything - the eye does not. 

• The "Splendid Door" at Hagia Sophia is a character in its own right. I want to make a painting called "Boys at the Splendid Door."
  
• I understand the effect the bleached marbles of Turkey (Ephesus, Afrodisias, Pergamon) had on LeCorbusier (Chromophobia, chapter 2), but the fact that he found an absence of color is truly astounding. 
• The grid can be divided endlessly.
• Pattern works because you see the pattern before you see the individual elements that make it up.  This leads to hidden meaning in patterns that become clear through longer term investigations.
• Simple tessellation results in complex patterns.
• Reconsider blue (Aegean, Iznik, sea, sky, ocean, salt, heavy, hard, electric, air, invisible, protein, mavi, denim, headscarf, endless).
• Intersecting patterns look more complicated than they are.
• Iznik tile is impossible to replicate but I have to try.
• If a pattern has an effect on the viewer, does the viewer change because of the pattern?
• The amount of ornament is secondary to its absence.  (Palace vs. Mosque)
• Is ornament a sign of overindulgence?  Amazing design show at Istanbul Modern about this very issue.  Adolf Loos Ornament and Crime is noted and I haven't read that in years.  I don't even think I can remember reading it.  Did I read it?  Well, now I have to read it.
• If the grid can hold anything, what does it hold?  
• Can the grid hold anything? Does it have to hold anything?
• I want to paint the light from the chamber of relics at Topkapi.
• "The Arm of the Baptist" is a great title for a painting.
• I want to remember that a photograph is just an index.  I have no responsibility to the photograph.  I am responsible to a painting.
• The grid is the situation.
• Small things in a big space can be as awesome as the space itself.
• I want to make paintings of tourists looking at nothing.
• I want to make paintings.

No picnic this Labor Day....

Let me reiterate: cops are the same all over the world.  My friend and colleague, Noel Ignatiev says "All over the world cops beat up poor people; that is their job, and it has nothing to do with color."

I spent the majority of the day in my hotel room yesterday.  In every country that is not the United States, May Day is International Workers Day.  Here in Istanbul, there was an attempt to hold a rally in Taksim Square in honor of the union activists who were killed there in 1977.  Every year they try to do this and every year it is squashed by the police.  This year was no exception.

I went for a brief walk and was confronted by the image of amassed firepower across the street from my hotel.  Suddenly I understood why the cop was being so aggressive yesterday; he probably thought that I was some sort of agitator for the rally.  The rally was set for Taksim Square about a mile from my hotel, but the cops were EVERYWHERE.  They were decked out in full riot gear with shields.  I thought better of taking a walk and went back into the hotel.

Now to prevent people from getting to the rally, the Mayor of Istanbul effectively cut all transportation to and from Taksim Square.  That meant there was no way to get here, but really also no way to leave unless it was on foot.  And since many of the roads were blocked by the above referenced police, you could get to a point where you were allowed no further.  And there is no point trying to explain something to a teenager with an M16.  

So I sat in the lobby of the hotel and looked at the news and saw all those images that everyone else saw.  I am not remotely interested in seeing people squirted with fire hoses, so I did not go down there to take photos.  Also a foreigner in a situation like that runs the risk of being misunderstood by gesture or presence.  I am not a photojournalist and I am not a hero.  I did feel my heart break for the people as they were hosed down.  I wished I could do something.

The police presence was reduced in the evening and I had to get some dinner.  I went to a place for a kebab sandwich and saw the school buses that they used to round up the protesters.  Some of the people detained had been on the bus since the beginning of the day.  There were armed guards protecting the buses and the same massive police presence.  I ate really fast.

Today, May 2, it is a different story.  It is really as if May 1 did not happen and the city was not occupied for the entire day.  The Turkish people seem to have taken all of this in stride - something akin to the running of the bulls in Pamplona.  It happens every year, some people get hurt and then we move on.  

We moved Labor day from May to September in the US.  Most people don't connect this change with the Haymarket Massacre, the Wobblies or Eugene Debs.  We don't really think about solidarity with foreign workers or unions.  We take the right to assemble for granted (even when it is denied like at the Republican National Convention in NYC).   It really made me think about how precious it is to be able to walk down the street in solidarity with others.  All over the world, even at home, this is becoming a harder experience to have.

Arms and the man....

Let me say that first of all, cops are the same all over the world.

There are a lot of different people in Istanbul.  You hear a million languages when you walk down the street. 

 I am in Beyoğlu, not in the tourist area of Sultanahmet where all of the historical sites 

are.  People here refer to Sultanahmet as Old Istanbul.  So much of it is overrun with tour groups, huge air conditioned buses and people with the audio guides that it can be a little overwhelming.  But we are all here to see the same things, so I guess that makes it easier.  Sure I could be a snob and say I am an artist and I have a better view of things but who wants to hear that, in 30 different languages no less.

So let me get back to the cops, or the polis as they are known here.  Like the police at home they carry guns but unlike the police at home they carry assault weapons.  Out open.  In the streets.  It is very intimidating.  You add to the fact that there is a very close relationship between the police and the army - essentially, they are the same thing.  So they walk around like they own the place because they kind of do.  The army has taken over the country to restore democracy a couple of times.  You really don't want to mess with these guys.  So when they ask you a question, you answer.

So I got up pretty early yesterday with a bad case of shin splints from walking the entire city over.  I was a little occupied wondering if I had sold some paintings to give me some additional scratch for my trip, which I may have to cut short because of finances.  I also was having some buyer's remorse about a rug I had bought.  I thought I would go for a walk and clear my head a bit.  I got a coffee (Starbucks IS everywhere) and a simit from the seller on the street and walked to Taksim Square.  The photos show Taksim, the Opera House and the Monument to Ataturk.  This is where I had a seat and started to eat my breakfast.

These two cops come up to me and say hello, in Turkish and I answer in Turkish.  Then one demands to see my passport.  I tell him I left it at the hotel, I had just come out to get some breakfast.  He tells me I don't have a hotel.  I ask him what he means and he looks at my outfit and grunts at me.  Granted I am not at the height of fashion, but it is 8 a.m. I have my mouth full and he is asking me questions and I am covering my mouth so I don't spit food on him (and I SO desperately want to spit food on him) and he begins mocking my gesture.  So I say to him, "Look, my name is Professor Steve Locke, I'm eating breakfast, I left my passport in my room at the Grand Hotel de Londres." and I smile that grin that every black man learns when a white guy with a gun is giving him shit.  It worked of course.  It always does.  Then I went back to my hotel, changed, and got my passport and my faculty ID.  Of course I didn't see the cop again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah he's just doing his job and I should have had my passport and all that jazz.  All that is true but riddle me this: If he's just doing his job, why is he making fun of the way I talk?  Public servant or prick, you decide.

After this I was very happy about the rug I bought.  At least I wasn't frightening people with guns.

Cause I'm a wanderer....

This is the view crossing the Galata Bridge looking back at Sultanahment.  That is Aya Sofya on the right on the hill.

Today I walked for about 10 hours and I did not get tired until I put the key in the door of my room at the Grand Hotel de Londres.  It was amazing today.  I have never seen such a place and I have never ever seen such things.  You see these things in books, or in the collections of a museum, but to see them in context.  It completely boggled my mind.  I found it very hard to take photos today because I did not want to distance my self from what I was seeing.  I heard someone say, "Wow, that's a great photo," while he was looking at something.  I thought, does he even see it?  It is right in front of him. (In this case, the "it" is the mosaic of the Archangel Gabriel in the secondary dome of Aya Sofya.)  At that point I really tried not to think about documenting or preserving.  I just wanted to look with my eyes.

I developed this plan.  I would take the time to go through a situation twice. Once without taking my camera out and the second time I would allow myself to take as many photographs as I wanted.  

So many different things today.  The mosaics at Aya Sofya and the Kariye Museum were astounding in their visual power, even in their ruined state.  The massiveness of the Aya Sofya on the outside compared to the empty soaring space on the inside.  The building is like a huge balloon.  I will go back and see it again (and again).  You cannot imagine the airy feeling of the place.  And it is made of ROCKS; lots of them in the Byzantine fashion.  The tomb of Suleiman the Magnificent and the mosque that bears his name.  The courtyard of the Blue Mosque filled with people answering the call to prayer.  Eating on the street just like I do in New York because the food is so good and so cheap.  Tea everywhere and every language spoken all over the place.

I got very lost and I did not care.  I crossed from my neighborhood in Beyoğlu into what I thought was Sultanahmet and got promptly lost in Fatih.  So many full sized billboards of women in headscarves and fashionable clothing that covered their entire bodies.  It was amazing to go from that to the stylish and beautiful women in other parts of the city.  

Tomorrow I have no idea what is to come.  I am thinking of having a tour, but it was so much fun and thrilling to get lost here I may do it again tomorrow.  I think I will stay on this side of the Golden Horn tomorrow and see what my neighborhood has to offer.  Although, I do want to go see the Basilica Cistern tomorrow, since the Blue Mosque is closed.

Leaving the Hippodrome today, a carpet seller chatted me up.  I told him I am from America and he laughed and said that he could tell.  He wanted to know if this was my first time in Turkey and I told him yes it was but it won't be the last.  He said I had a very kind and happy face.  I thanked him and told him that while I would love to see the carpets he had, I unfortunately had no money.  "No money, no honey," he said.  And we laughed and parted.

I think this might explain the staring.  At dinner at an AMAZING kofte house a number of people where staring at me through the window.  The waiter even commented, "Do you know them?"  I told him no, but maybe they want to know me.  He laughed.  Living in America, I am always on my guard against people looking at me the wrong way.  Maybe now, far away from home, I can walk around with a smile on my face and people respond to it.  Go figure.

Troy...the book is a LOT better

Anything would be a let down after Epheseus, but man, Troy is really hard to take.  First off, there is a huge wooden horse inside of the entry gate to Troy.  It is filled with laughing school children running around it and climbing inside it.  Parents surround the thing to get a photo of their moppet inside the Trojan Horse.  If you were expecting something regal and solemn (like Epheseus) here you would be sorely disappointed.  It is a theme park grafted onto a major archeological site.  It does not sit will with the visitor at all.  The entry is like Homericland at Turkey Disney.  It is a strange thing.

The archeology of Troia is amazing.  There are at least nine cities on top of each other and each one is built on the remnants of the one before.  It is not easy to believe what you are seeing is important since most of it is dun colored stone.  But they do a good job of explaining what you are looking at and there are a lot of artist renderings of what the site looked like through the centuries.

Our tour ends tomorrow.  We were supposed to go to Gallipoli, but our time here coincides with Anzac Day, which is becoming a larger and larger show of Australian nationalism each year.  The hotel we were supposed to stay at is overbooked so we have ended up in a hotel 50 kilometers from the town of  Çanakkale.  We are supposed to leave here at 6 am to go back to Istanbul.

I have grown quite fond of my companions.  The children actually behaved themselves quite well overall.  It is hard because they are the only kids on the trip and their mother (who is strikingly beautiful, I forgot to mention) has her hands full with wrangling them.  She does a good job with them.  I forget sometimes how an education can be a hard thing for the teacher and the student.  As much as it hurts to be asked some questions, I know that it is better that they ask me than someone else.  They have a fierce intelligence these two kids.  They are fortunate to have the parents they have and the brains they have.  I hope they look after each other.

As much as I will miss them, I am looking forward to Istanbul alone.  I want to know about the city as much as I can.  I just want to look and look and look.  I find myself getting caught up in figuring out tours and all that stuff.  Tomorrow I am just going to get lost and see what I see.

My city of ruins....

Nothing prepares you for Epheseus.  

It really is a place that seethes with life.  Not just the thousands of camera-toting, sunblock-applying, child-chasing, photo-opping, cell phone-chatting humans around you.  You are really catapulted into the past.  You walk the same marble sidewalks as people thousands of years ago.  You are under the same hard cerulean sky.  Your eyes hurt from looking at so many beautiful things.  Every time you turn a corner something more incredible awaits you.  You think, "Well nothing can be better than this!" and then you turn the corner and see Trajan's Gate, or the Celsus Library, or the Agora Gate.  It is hard to believe that one can see so much and still remain standing.

Turkey is essentially an open air museum of culture from major periods.  It's truly astounding to be here and to see these things.  The thing of it is that there is a strong presence of the Republic here.  You go into Epheseus and the two things that greet you are the Turkish flag and a picture of Ataturk.  You realize that you are in an Islamic country (secular, true, but you do hear that call to prayer, don't you?), that is the custodian of places sacred to the Christian, Pagan and Antique.  The Turks are clear on this: every sign says that this place is being maintained by the Republic.  It is a really interesting way to diminish the power of what you are seeing.  Even our tour guide sort of made fun of us for coming all this way to see stones.  I said to him, "Omer of course you must think it is beautiful."  He smiled and said that they are just stones but "these stones, unlike the ones we will leave, tell of the history, the personality and the mythology of a people."  I wonder what people will think of the ruins of the Trump Taj Mahal?

We saw the House of the Virgin Mary today.  Strange being there.  I went through quickly and was going to make my way back to the bus.  Then I started to think about my Mother and how she would have loved to see the house and how happy it would have made her.  So I went back and got in line to see it again.  I was going to light a candle for her, but I felt very awkward and stupid buying one, as if I was trying to look like a pilgrim.  There was a Christian Turkish woman and her children and she was explaining things.  I sat in a chair in back on one side of the door.  On the other side was a friar (a Franciscan I think from the robe).  He looked at me and nodded and I sat on the straw seat of the chair.

I miss my mother desperately.  I wish I could have brought her with me on this trip instead of bringing her memory and half of her DNA.  I tried to say a prayer, but it all felt rote and stupid, like I was trying to prove that I could.  So I just sat there and thought about my Mother in the house of Jesus's mother and started to cry a little.  It never really leaves you, you know.  It just gets smaller and more intense, like a mushroom cloud inside of that tiny silver ball.  She would have really loved being there so it was the least I could do to sit there and be a little uncomfortable and miss her with my whole heart.