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Book 7: ASHES OF ROSES

YAMANE

1 August 2000 — We went dancing with Yamane & had a fabulous romatic time… with this Chaplinesque droll dry pixie —

PICNIC

Everyone but me washing salad at Selale- oops- Ceğlale Falls —- 2 August 2000 — & next day a picnic — Nizam – Trici – Gabriela – Cengiz – [all names in Japanese] Yamane wrote all our names in Japanese & laughed & capered but would not buy a carpet.

THREE SILLY DRAWINGS

Nizam’s drawings of Yamane — Yamane’s retaliatory drawing of Nizam (signed)—— Yamane actually got away without a carpet. Clever fellow!

BABY DRIVER

The youngest employee at the carpet shop – The lowest in the pecking order & the most computer literate – Will llkely end up owning them all. ERHAN, Hacker—— And I hope he did!

 TATTOO

Oskar Kaucic – Spanische sailor from Sicily – Italian Navy — On his back are dolphins——All his tattoos were of ships and sea creatures. He posed for 25 minutes but declined to let me draw his back. I never saw him again but I have him forever.

 OUR FEET

5 August 2000——

RAGE

Drunk & insanely jealous, he is the living embodiment of my alcoholism which wants to rob me of friends, warmth, creation & everything else that could make me want to live, everything that makes it possible to live without it, without him— “Why you break my life? Why?” — 2 frightful nights with Nizam — Downstairs at Kleopatra at 4AM, with Ayvan, wrapped in a sheet waiting for the madness upstairs to subside — But he demonstrates often even when drunk a generosity of spirit I have seldom seen – which is why I bothered —What if it had been my eye?—— He put out a cigarette on my face. I should say I was decades sober but mental alcoholism never goes away. Why pull up all this horror out of the past and post it? Because I can. I made art out of it because that was the best I could do until I could free myself. I drew this later, reliving it.

SIDE CITY GATE

Entrance to Side — Drawing this hot day in a kind of daze of stunned horror – too exhausted to leave—— in the aftermath of violence. The City Gates in Side look to have been cobbled together by Romans using bits of Greece. Note the columns laid in at lower right like carrots in a casserole.

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