Off again!

Midterms are over! worked harder then i needed to for a kind of half-rate project... we're working on a competition in studio, and the final submission has to be digital, so i thought i'd get started correctly and do a flash movie.... ouf. very time-consuming and hard to get write... and not very much gets conveyed anyway. oh well, it was kind of fun. and long enough... whatever.

Pleasant walk with the boys from studio to Gare L'Est last night to buy the tickets we'll use this evening to go to Munich for the weekend. Rather procrastinating we made our way to a nice french restaurant and had a very french meal - it was great. typical stick-skinny french waitress, my food didn't fill up half the plate but the honey and thyme sauce was so rich it was quite filling enough. mmm so good. nice to do that once in a while, as long as we're here. not putting too much hope in fancy german food, i'm excited for real bratwurst and apparently excellent bread. This picture is from a while ago, but it's part of a bridge over the canal we were walking around to find food. so it relates hehe.

Schedule for the next two weeks.... I will probably write in between there, this is a class = WORKing vacation, hardcore, and i'll have my computer with (bleh). Night train to Munich, Sunday morning to Stuttgart, Monday-Thursday in Dinkensbuehl, Germany.... (good luck finding it on a map...). It was our professor's home for awhile, so he got the local government excited to have us over and um, do work for them? sort of continuing our studio projects here, cumulating in an open house/gallery exhibit of our work. I'm ambivilant, it could be kind of cool in that producing work (and for an exhibition!) type way, or just boring.... hmm we'll see. will try to have fun. it's a small town so there's apparently forest to get lost in, and verygood trails...ee.... gonna bring my skates, if i can skate a couple times it should make up for nearly anything else.... sounds like fun there... Anyway, Friday to Nuremburg in the morning, then continue the trip to Prague for the weekend. Dkb for mon-thursday again, thursday night gallery opening reception party thing, later that night to berlin :) or friday morning to dessau to see the bauhaus if that sounds better. weekend in berlin, back to paris monday or early tuesday morning :). I'll be in Berlin for easter, hopefully german chocolate bunnies are as good as the cake.

Going to watch the movie Hostel tonight, to get properly freaked out for the 2 weeks we'll be staying in them.

workweek....

nother fairly boring standard couple'o'days.... again, a bit of fairly nice work to show for it, so it's all good.... supper on monday was a bit of a quest, wanted to have a picnic in the newly gorgeous weather... walked all the way up pigalle to get food, presumably on the way to sacre-couer for the but were to stop at an ever-present boulangerie for bread... and there weren't any up there! paris disappoints.... er whatever, maybe we have an overly idealistic view living near a main street plus a market street.... so back to studio and spread out over the main tables... hehe. pickles here are good. nother studio picture, a little ipoddish, but not too ugly. tuesday was a good day :) woke up REALLY early with a good/crazy idea that just needed to be written down... i can write with no lights, kinda cool (or it just doesn't get dark in our apartment). but had to get up and go skating - wonderful skate, again, i need to go more often.... out to gare lazaar and back across the town on grands boulevards out to oberkampf... and back... not that far on blades, leisurely fun with nearly empty streets. i had no clue of the time when i started out, at the far point of the skate there was a bank board saying 5:59.... rather bizarre how lit up the city is... it could have been any time from 2 until sunrise, i honestly couldn't tell... 6 seems about the time for a city to be waking up though, rush hours started in chicago by then, but the streets were quite empty. lots of storyboard work for studio after that, started a productive-ish day. fun to wake up early, i might try to more often. 

lazy weekend

or really productive, not too much to write about though. appreciated being able to lay in bed/sit on futon and work and not go outside much.... got some stuff done for studio, got good sleeps in... and stuff :) watched a movie sunday night, chinese-wierd, subtitled in french.... hmm in a really cool movie theater, 2 levels of balconies, all brutal black concrete and comfy seats. they did have a concession stand, but there were also vending machines, which i thought was sort of funny.... don't really want to serve you that much.... 

RIOTS!!!

friday was another studio day.... but tony and i cut out early, hoping to catch a glimpse of radical political action of the french sort.... we were slightly out of luck, but it was a nice walk, anyway. walking by the louvre we did watch a large group of students walk past some warily watching police clustered... but it was peaceful, and quiet. travel to les invalides, the golden dome, but we missed the boat on the riots there..... several people hadn't though, as shown by this street of battered cars. very odd though, other then one severe key-ing, the cars were intact, just a polite little rap on the windshield was enough action for the rioters apparently. Over to the latin quatier and we saw more evidence of the disturbance, huge manned metal police barricades with grenadiers flocked around. there was an unpleasant light mist most of the day, could be what kept people at home. so it goes, and possibly for the better.

i have an umbrella now that keeps me from the rain. it makes me feel old, but i kind of like it..... it's very fun to open, cheap 'brella' from a roman street vendor, but so it goes. kind of a pain to carry around if you're not sure it'll rain, but....

People came to see me!!!!

or... i got to run and catch and tag along while they were here... it was good to see family though - Tim and Becky, my mom's cousins.... makes them second cousins, or aunt'n'uncleish cousins, or something.... and Dan and Sara. kind of caught them last minute, forgetting about a cell phone (it's been nice not to have one and i've simply forgotten about bringing it with me) but i still was able to wink out their restaurants from all the streets of Paris.... wee... we had half-planned to go to the Musee d'Orsay, but the taxis didn't oblige. Ended up walking the Champs E'leysee, kind of fun. Gave Dan my camera for amusement, he snapped this picture so I'm in it! in front of an ubiquitous newstand on the Champs Eleysee, with Tim's jacket... walked to the Opera from there, fun to be a tour guide and just know where everything is... everyone should come visit me so i can have that feeling more ;) it was a fun night, and very good to change company for awhile... 

And life goes on in Paris....

Image from my project I've been working on resonably intensely here... well that and catching up, and making all sorts of wonderful links on del.icio.us.... for research purposes. if you want to catch a drift of what geeky me thinks is interesting, click on some of them over there.... fun stuff, all that i think is worth looking at anyway... and that standpoint thing, oh timewasters. has inspired some thought, so a worthy thing. Was pretty unParisien tuesday and wednesday... simple meals, lots and lots of time in studio. It doesn't come across in the image, but it was originally a charcoal drawing (that i still have), photographed and messed with in photoshop.... not the charcoal is pretty much gone, maybe 10% transparency.... the tones now come from 0110001111 binary code in white over the black background, kind of challenging, turned out even better then i expected, yay creativity and expertise with programs.... has much to do with my project, i might describe it here at some point, i might be just sick of it to refrain for awhile ;) and just post happy images created. 

real end of spring break

so the adventures didn't actually end in istanbul, getting home had it's own adventures.... flights had been slightly cheaper and more desireable from amsterdam, which means we had to fly back there.... and we got to the airport just to late to catch the last train home to paris. so..... since it was 11 already... and the train was at 7.... we decided the logical thing to do was stay up all night and walk? cause getting a hostel sounded difficult and expensive and icky after our reasonably nice and really cheap istanbul place.
killed time indoors as long as we could on a monday, fortunately amsterdam is pretty night-oriented, and it wasn't a problem finding establishments to hang out in until 2:30-3. there was a famous/well-published (same thing?) MVRDV project way out in the boonies of the city we had wanted to see. we wimped out on walking there, but after a long COLD wait for the bus and falling asleep on the ride keeping inm motion seemed good. this was a newer semi-burb, big housing projects lonely to walk by, one light on in each from some insomniac. sight seen and walked around destination without stopping... quite beautiful, wierd with improbably large cantilevers off the sides, and color. pretty. it was cold.... our walk back occupied us from 3:45ish until 6:15ish... it was quite a walk in the dark along a dead highway falling asleep. surreal and long, and quite survivable. they wouldn't let us sleep in the station before we left, sigh.... but then we were home in paris, and that's always quite lovely. although, having skipped a day of class i was obliged to go in right away, and i missed part of a very lovely movie due to hallucinations and microsleeps - litteral hallucinations, i swear a cat jumped through the door behind the screen.... haha. we made it!

this picture is from amsterdam (during the day? yes). and it's my new concept for a skyscraper when it's flipped like this. this was apocolypse spot. hmm going to transcribe from notebook, i didn't get the feeling quite of this spot but i worked at it - probably too hard. impression was formed before the sun came all the way out like it was in this picture, and further back in the walk a little - walking through almost suburban identical... houses i guess, although it wasn't really houses or rowhouse building types. anyway....

Matching footsteps crunching along indefinately, an echo implied in the building canyon, the absense a distrubing misplacement. Wind pushes gently, hoping to misalign the inexorable line, whispering mellow frustration into ear shells, abandoning whining with a turn of my head. the inevitable end of civilization, expected yet a suprse when it lets in the vista overly predicted by the framed vision goal. more space for the air to play idly, fingerpainting sun sparkeles with the water, ignoring bodies and feet for new amusments.
The qualities of pale light streaming through invisibly shifting atmosphere portends the willingness of existance to pause, turn off time to contemplate, unnoticed in the rippling of this second.
Attention captured elsewhere, expectant awaiting of annihilation abandoned, the sky shrugs and drops a snowflake....


it actually felt quite a bit like fargo somehow. 

G'bye istanbul....

Had a bit of time to kill before the shuttle to the airport, rather exhausted we got ourselves up onto the terrace of the hostel and sat in the sun. Interesting waiting time, here's what I wrote:

Up on terrace, enchanting how muffled sound diminishes with distance much the way sight does. Waves facing interference indefinately in both cases, vision leaves you outlines and blocks, sound with indistinct tones but a 360 degree idea. I can tell we're on a high terrace halfway down a taller hill - the horns from above, the foghorns from far below, the occasional power tool, gravel crunch, and wafting Turkish plaint from directly in front and behind. Birds chirping a placeless counterpoint, and generator hum occasionally invasive. 

THIS is spring break....

Finally did get our normal spring break experience, a cruise sitting on the top of a little put-put boat, watching the shores pass by, first european then asian, fun to have effortless travel after so much walking. we had walked a very far ways too, we didn't get too very much further in the boat then we had walking. Stop again on the asian side for a quick lunch... Sulep this time as recommended by a turk, and unfortunate that we hadn't discovered it earlier, but apple tea was a worthy drink to form memories around. Back, stop in the turkish bazaar to buy some turkish delight this time, not just samples.... 

Monday

Other things i left out: a botanical garden with bosphorous overlook, going into the blue mosque and sketching, more mosques, etc. Getting tired. Monday dawned clear and lovely... caught a cab up to a famed little mosque with amazingly preserved, and just amazing, byzantine mosaics. I had been regretting not getting to Ravenna to see the mosaics, but i think i'll be ok. Amazingly real and detailed, while remaining real mosaics, not fake-paintings like the popes. Walk back along the river leisurely and lovely, and we caught a boat cruise later..... 

Sunday 19 Mar 2006 fin

Start reading up from the 'artseyish writing' post - these do want to be in order

Heckling of naive tourists overloaded in Sultanahmet, sketching reminds me that tourists heckle too. The natives hear 'toilets where?' and other culturally and common-sensically ignorant questions good for a lagh and a grit of the teeth. Sketching makes you a bit of a native that way, you become part of the scenery, aware of being a part of the show, while you're merely trying to conduit visuals eye to paper, with hopefully a good bit of fact being burnind into your brain. I have not, however, been driven from a place sketching by a boy inching his way closer to me until i have to leave.

more repetitions throughout the day.... carpet boy returned as a fun chat in the bar that evening, and partner in a walk to the park yet again, catching the blue mosque reflected in the still pool as i had in the morning, both outside the normal time of tourist flocking and fountain energy, both beautiful. Moonlight as clear in evening as the rising sun had been on my rediculously early walk around the palace along the walk. I found out a little more about the tricks of the carpet trade hidden from me in my predatory amble with the two of them - the born-again question is valid because there are a large number of missionaries to Istambul, how distasteful, and the salesman often walk away with pamphlets.... and the hapless missionaries with carpets presumably. The older had thoroughly impressed me by pinning me as an engineer's daughter.... the younger told me he had just shook his head, about 30% of males in the US can pin their job as some sort of engineering... just good odds. Weird after-knowledge, weird experience.

cennet, the authentic place seen on the first day, returned to with a native turk, a worker in the hostel who decided he could talk to me once he decided tony and i weren't a couple. interesting conversation on turkish life and systems, and how a degreed guy came to be working in a hostel. more apple tea, of course, and same musicians parading.

A good day - full - and memorable. Talking to real people certainly adds a lot to the experience, pleasant or not.... enough so that i left out the museum i saw, and the food i ate, and any number of things.

Picture is from the wander on saturday

Vermin of many kinds referenced

I was a heckler today in this park. A carpet salesman, to be exact, apprenticed to a true smarmy cajoling master of the trade. He snared me, not to buy carpets, but to talk, with the bait of a boy from the hostel saying hi and his 'we're not trying to sell you anything' henceforth to always be recognized as a lie.
Disarmingly good english in teh salted-hair man, and the hostel boy looking as Vancouver as possible, just happens to be the owner of the hostel, just happens to think I could work well with him for the summer, and not unwillingly I start walking with them. (You're tired of the heckling? You're not doing much right now? Walk around wth us, no one will bother you...) The accent decent, the sentences that little choppy I associate wtih indian speakers. THis friendly man proved to me he could and did spot Americans a mile away by stopping a few girls - they remain just a short example in someone's story here, odd.
He stopped a group of tourists - Americans really do have horribly taste in jackets - with the alarming phrase 'Are you a born-again?" I would die of embarassment to ask, and possibly smack the speaker if asked, but the 50ish science-teacherish evidently didn't mind the approach - although he wasn't. Warm casual but directed conversation, brought around easily to "You should buy rugs while you're here... I could give you a few tips..." but an easy retreat at some percieved Real disinclination to buy. The ability to know when someone is seakening, when you have a chance to push your agenda through, would be a mixed blessing. All knowledge useful, the ability to manipulation others more consciously a bit alarming and distasteful. Crazy idealistic idea of merit speaking for itself....
Cats here are vermin. Enough caption and explanation, maybe more later. 

Interuption

Sketching, non-original and inaccurate a tool as it is, turned out pretty well today. Celebration of sunlight in its high contrasts and looseness, a happy sketch for a happy morning. Whether anyone would be able to guess - who knows. A sketch of a real location in real time, is an obscure place to project feelings - perhaps it shouldn't ever be the medium, but what way to differentiate otherwise?

Evening now, sun as obscured as it has been since noon, buyt a teasing blue sky laughs and promises an unappreciatedly clear night. Sunset a suprisingly lovely thing, clouds broken shards still refusing sunlight through, mayhaps i'll catch some before I retire. The park is much less hectic now, benches around the fountain still full, but the bottlenecks on every path relieved of loudly-clothed tourists, arteries open for the bands of Turkis males parading slowly, impeccably clad. One just sat down here, conversation impossibly, interesting though. Cute boy, maybe well meaning since he certainly can't sell me anything. His denim wardrobe is a welcome break from the black suits, less well dressed. He's still sitting here, I'm listening to his occasional attempts, but the only words we have in common are 'Turkish' 'English' and 'old'. Sun!

My sitting on this bench tonight precipitated by my wish for a view, my lack of hotel key, and hope that the sun may yet peak. Writing can be accomplished anywhere, perhaps my creation vibes from earlier will transfer to this record, incoherent though it be. At least, minus this shivering boy still sitting here, writing curled over has kept me from the hecklers, from males selling things. 

Turk-boys Gawking sketch

The entire exercize a repeat of someone's actions - the angle directly, the building one that has stood and withstood stares for 1500 years, the bench designed to take the imprints from mine and a thousand other weary or befuddled bottoms. Sketching something every architect or artist or hobbyist should do and does in foreign locales. The tourist supplement of a camera, the excuse for eyes, harshly described as a blanket statement that proving where you've been is more then what gets stuck in your mind from it, slipped out of my bag here and lost a little gidget-piece - nothing essential but annoying. Ironic that the efficient modern non-thought was of capturing breaks during that more ancient intensive means of recording. 

Artsyish writing, with pictures

Beautiful weird day, a little burnt out from the week. rather then boring list of things done, i'll tell it like I was trying to in my notebook... kind of stiff i guess, hopefully comprehensible...


Sitting on this bench for the second time today, in this park that i've visited every day here in Istanbul, this park that every western or Asian tourist spends time in, feels part of an inevitable rhythm. If it had not been me, some other sightseer needing rest without settling for a moment without a view would have sat down happily with their bones, maybe thinking these thoughts, maybe not.

This morning's visit was action-oriented - the perfect place to sketch the Hagia Sofia in the sunshine that finally chose to brighten our path after 5 days without. Our placement by no means original, a timid question and the shy sketching Frenchman moved his bag for another unoriginal sketcher. 

A long and lost wander

Caught the ferry from asia to what we hoped would be some art nuevo palaces.... didn't happen so much.... we thought we saw them (but it turns out we were wrong) and then we proceded to spend a good hour or two thinking we were... not where we actually were.

highlights.... huge overgrown wild park, fun in that it was not really maintained at all, just overgrown, apparently the place to make out for prim headscarved girls.... a real market, not touristy, and we were glad to get out alive, no heckling though... passing pianos... gorgeous dead housing blocks old-style.... gradually realizing we were WAY off in where we thought we were. ended up ok though, saw what we wanted to, stopped to sketch another mosque, stopped on the bridge again for a chill supper, a little disappointing in quality.... got in a call to shane and more reading before bed. a wierd day, not a bad one, but not too much to write about when i'm getting impatient to be done writing. 

A-Z-Ah

We crossed continents today! After boys we walked down to the shore and hopped a boat to asia.... wee! wasn't too much different then the european side (indistinguishable) another long walk through neighborhoods, but steeper..... ran into a park that made for fun walking for awhile, i learned the backpacking term "reststep" for when the hill is so steep your back leg can lock and 'rest'? as your front one steps forward.... used it quite a bit. we planned on getting to the top of the hill for a survey to find a particular mosque - but the top was built up, and no view to be found. so we walked down again. hills that disappear like ski slopes disturb me, it was even more disturbing to see an old bent-over lady start to gamely trudge up a hill we could hardly help but run down.... long walk along the shore and that was asia.... 

Turkish Boys!

I was sketching the Hagia Sofia from the south, with huge tour busses pulling up and discharging behind me very minimally in the back of my consciousness. tony walking up and asking 'has he been watching you the whole time?' was startling, some bus driver was indeed staring very intently at my drawing. had just a little left, and sketching must be fascinating to turks, because two other boys came up as i was finishing and started talking. i figured they would probably drift away and ignored them, letting tony interact, but they were persistant and very friendly and we ended up talking to them for a long time. They were overly anxious to be hospitable and talk up their country, it was a little strange - we definatly wouldn't do that for our country. Maybe our immediate area though. They were generous with their chips (dorito-ish) and cookies! whoa best food discovery of the trip was their little bags of cookies.... they were both ahmets, an english teacher and a math major... the english teacher was rather more confident, although not necessarily better in his english. boys, 18, weird to be running into younger people in travels. drank the traditional apple tea in the traditional tea-cups/saucers.... fun and practical combination. they dearly wanted a picture, so here is perhaps the only posed picture you get.... rather a bad one, shrug. wall in the back is of the hagia sofia's gardens. 

SUN! Sat 18 Mar 05

exciting to wake up and see the sun out our (huge) window. morning prep a good deal faster then normal, we grabbed our sketchbooks and headed for the blue mosque to sketch. sitting on the odd field of benches outside the mosque bench, i decided to finally get that shoe polish i'd been bugged so many times for and badly needed after so many days of wandering through questionable paving/not materials (the wet concrete really did need to get taken off my poor leather shoes). so i got to sit and be sketching while some heckler guy polished my shoes.... quite the queen. haggled him down to 1/5 his outrageous original price suggestion, mostly by honestly not having any more money then that in my pockets.... sigh. can't decide if haggling is more stressful then fun - it's both those things, strongly. well, if you haggle decently it's fun. sketch/painting turned out pretty well, a little lopsided. sun kind of disappeared as i was inking it, made it a lot less exciting. 

sunset and castle

last bastion of the wall - odd to use bastion when refering to a litteral one....

had supper about 3/4 into our long walk at a restaurant by the fish market the cabbie had pointed out to us the first night. very good, swordfish much more edible in whole form then sea bream apparently. we were quite wiped out, lots of staring. we wandered a little bit back to the mosques and the hostel, and i took the evening to read my book "Turkish Reflections" I had purchased after the archeological museum the other morning. It was a very good book, I identified strongly with the writing style, lots of little trivia that stuck in my head as well. So much more applicable when you're right there..... so ended the night. 

GOAT STORY!

haha... this is the famed incident of the goat.

yes. i know it's a sheep.

but.... upon eating a fairly sketchy kabab one of the first days here we proclaimed that it was probably goat. therefore; my new coat is goat-skin, there were goat-heads in the butcher windows all over (gross!), and this is a goat.

k that's all. :)

isn't it a cute goat though? 

Gardening at night....

Pretty sure this lady required the use of this field to sustain herself - pretty cool. these neighborhoods were not very well off, at all. many people were gathering sticks in a parking lot and loading them up - more then the normal amount of wrecked buildings, and even some built-up shanties.... invulnerable us. goat story will go with the picture. We approached the end of the wall and saw a gas-balloon structure tony had wanted to see earlier, strolled carelessly into the compound (the fence was pulled down, probably by a car crash... if you can just step over barbed wire, is it really there) and past the guard dogs that started barking but not standing up.... and carelessly started walking out as soon as a police came into view.... hehe. LONG walk back to sultanhamet, almost gave up and grabbed a taxi, but it was along the river/sea so it was nice. 

Old City Walls

Quite a walk out to the walls, horrifying butcher street (goats, everywhere!) must they display skinned heads? worse then the racists.... a rather imprompteou path along the wall traced after that - it apparently isn't thought of as too much of a destination here, there was a little bit of a park with trails, for a bit... then just mud tracks.... we had to switch sides fairly often to have walking surface. One brief diversion for apple tea after awhile, but we ran out as soon as the late-afternoon sun showed itself, cutting the savoring short (apple tea is excellent, and kept getting better. was served everywhere, drank at least 3 cups of it a day there, the heat of it was very appreciated).

wall got a lot more fun when we started to be able to walk up on top of it in the sun. Many short sections, and overgrown places, and ancient rooms, and broken bottles, and unhealthily steep stairs (less fun then those in amsterdam), and cool overlooks into emptier places then we found otherwise in the city. The wall wasn't singular in many parts, there was a couple sets of walls spanning over 50 feet, and within the walls were urban gardens. It looked like people got some serious usage out of the land, very cool to see. Full on agriculture, see the horse? 

Fatih does not equal faith, beth does equal dyslexic

I actually don't remember where this picture was from - it's very hard to communicate the inside of mosques without a super-wide angle camera (that i don't have). the way the domes connect and fall down is quite unique, and the huge chandeliers making a plane about 8 feet high is an interesting difference to christian churches. I had to decide on this picture showing the elaborate decoration of the dome rather then one that despairingly tried to show more... shrug. looking at a collection of pictures together gives a little bit better of a picture....

fatih mosque, sehzade mosque also this day, i believe this is the sehzade but i won't promise and i don't really remember the difference. repression when i was asked to cover my hair in one... was good obviously about taking off my shoes, but man.... definate repression. a rather foolish-looking arrangement of my scarf (tony was giggling anyway) was enough to let me get a few more pictures and we scurried out. 

Mosque walk

we were to make the blue mosque the second stop, but it was closed for an hour for prayer. we headed back to the mainstreet cafe, then started out on a journey to the city walls without going back. was a long long walk. through the prayer-bead wholesale market to the mosque (beyazit camii) by the university... hit the aquaduct, initially just a fabulously historical backing for houses, we picked it up again in a more dramatically high location with several lanes of traffic running through it. less thrilling then it could have been, just really old and quite intact. 

ooOOOooooo wavy....

the large disks of calligraphy show themselves to be dissapointingly flimsy, but delightfully tacked-on. odd to think this was almost incidentally a church when islam took it over... they didn't care that it had been christian, it may of well had been a stadium (not literally, but the feeling was there). more early mosaics, amazingly expressive while remaining obviously tiles of colored glass (unlike the popehaus in rome). some partially restored, others still preserved under plaster.