WATCHING FUTBOL
A couple of Sultanahmet guys enraptured with the game. It made them hold still.
ACROSS FROM GULHANE PARK
Looking up the street that runs next to the wall all the way up to Ayasofya. It still looks pretty much like this.
OUTSIDE THE JUVENILE COURT
I thought these women were waiting for the bus. But I was sitting on the porch of the Juvenile Court Building. The woman on the left end was very angry when the others, all delighted, showed her this drawing. [She angrily scrubbed her hand across the paper.] Then I realized all these women were waiting for their children to be tried, and the woman’s anger was [perhaps] about a stranger witnessing that. When the soldiers came out with her son between them like a criminal, she fainted in the street, and the others revived her, henna-stained hands patting hers——The Juvenile Courts Building has moved & the structure closed but it is still there.
BYZANTINE CAR PARK
Oto park with Byzantine arches – Sultanahmet – Arsenal – Youth Hostel – Active Laundry——I am SO GLAD I drew this. About a year later it was gone. The wall and arches may still be there, but the entire lot is covered by a hotel.
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Easter Sunday 2004 – In my nice clothes I set out on foot for the big Catholic Church in Taksim but was waylaid by this family of headstones, seen through a grille on the trolley line along Topkapi Wall. I see Father, Mother , Children, and Uncles in fezzes, and to the left, someone in a Chinese coolie hat. All in the family – A crowded street. Any people stopped to ooh & Ahh & one guy aught me the Arabic for Allah [Arabic writing]——-Men are turbans, women are flowers, and sometimes, each flower represents one of her children. This cemetery is next to Zeynep Sultan Camii.
THE LAMBFISH
Şahin Paksoy – I am eating part of this big lamb fish as I draw it intermittently while hordes of people amble along between me and the best fish display I ever saw. EASTER BRUNCH! – Fishers of men – A big brown flat monster fish, a brown small version of the one in the final scene of La Dolce Vita—– Şahin Paksoy is an artist I met while staying with a friend in Teşvikiye. Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece La Dolce Vita is an artist’s struggle between necessity and integrity.
GALATA TOWER RIGHT THERE
Galata Tower April 2004——Climbing up the steep street I turned a corner and WHAM, there it was. And is. I learned, drawing this. The windows on the buildings at the sides are not square from this vantage point, they are narrow diamonds. I learned to draw what I see, not what I think I see. Worth the stiff neck. This was done in one sitting on Easter Sunday, 2004. I never did make it to church.