SIMIT SELLER
-A magnificent huge ice-cream peach cloud & many goodbyes to Lewis on the Hiawatha up the Bosporus. Back in Istanbul, and Lewis was being reposted back to the States. We said goodbye to him all that June, but we didn’t lose him. No, I didn’t draw the cloud. Its main attribute was that it was peach colored.
CRAZY EYES
A fast take of a fellow with “The Girl with Green Eyes.”
ADNAN THE DJ
-He say you BRADE RUNNAH, Mr Deckah! – Mavi Bar in Kas – Adnan, the coolest DJ in Turkey. A DJ in Kas who shared my enthusiasm for the Ridley Scott Blade Runner.
MOMO 2007
A nice take on an old friend. Muhammed Rahimoglu, Turkman from Afghanistan, had the best tribal art store in the Grand Bazaar, Ak Gumus. An institution!
PEOPLE ON THE FERRY
-Man with a very tiny head riding the tram…from memory / Riding the tram to work every day in a posh black room- the ferry is the high point of my day. / A man with a bright turquoise scarf wrapped round his cap like the forbidden turban, prayer beads dangling from the side of his pale suit. He looked me in the eye & immediately gave me his seat on the tram. His eyes were rolled up & his lips moving.
SILVER SEA NARGILE
-Immense well-being: silver sea, full moon, silk next to my body, warm night & the first nargile since I-don’t-know-when / July 2006 / Marmara Cafe, above the Boukoleon ruins in Sultanahmet / Chewing on this old dead drawing of a happy time 9 months ago…wretched in this move trying to keep my spirits up / -Will I ever stop screwing up? This isn’t working! What to do? What to do? God? / 9 March 2009 – Call your sister it’s her birthday. That’s Pinkie in the middle of the drawing. Gods, we’ve been through a lot together.
GIRL FRIENDS
-On the ferry- very happy girl with baby & friend.
ŞAFAK
–Elif Şafak: on trial Questioned Turkish governmental policy of teaching the populace to ignore history, especially their own. Şafak is young, lettered, multilingual & pro-Turkey. She writes novels & columns in English & Turkish, teaches in University & is poised, gorgeous & pregnant. Just who is “insulting Turkishness?”
DEAD TREE ON MEIS
-Upper right: Climbed that Stairway to Heaven, now sun & sweat-drenched & my feet are burning black, cicadas like buzz saws & all the colors I love: carnelian rock, bronze & cobalt seas here on Meis- this little Greek outpost at Turkey’s door. Went there on a visa run, such fun. I’m really glad I climbed that path to the top of the world. Did it twice.
WHITE HEAT ON MEIS
-July 2006 Blinding white heat on the mountain path up top o Meis. The ancient Greeks believed that ghosts walked at high noon, when the sun sucks all the color out of everything. That I believe.
CLIFFS AT BIG PEBBLE BEACH
-A sound of castanets as the waves roll in the rocks at Big Pebble Beach in Kaş