<< well don't _brag about it >>

i went to see a mosque today but wasn't in the right frame of mind to get it. sam spade saying, you _are a liar.

last night who did i let down?

and there i was standing in the Tocakepe mosque which is ankara's finest but mostly made out of white concrete, and wondering what i should feel under the expansive dome --

-- before realizing of course that there is nothing i _should feel, i feel what i feel but i didn't feel much, that clenchiness in throat.

i went up to the second level. you can walk up the steps to the first walkway that runs around the edge of the open central space, and from the first up to the second, where the ceiling over your head is arched. the wide open space is palpably close and the smallest domes start overhead and just beyond the marble railing which was cold to touch.

from up here you can see people praying. many of them pray facing the large supporting columns. one man checked his watch before starting. and across the space, at eye level from me, girls, thin girls, but i mostly imagined them to be thin, they were a long ways off, and i also imagined their prayerfulness, they took pictures of each other with their cell phones too.

i had to make myself notice the closer little details. like the tiny imperfections in the boundless painting, the woven patterns of vines and bulbs that covered the mosque's entire inside surface, and for the glory of g-d. it looked almost like tempra on the grainy concrete, blue, red and turquoise, with thin black lines to delineate. sometimes the colour did not touch the line. sometimes the line strayed too close and the colour showed on its other side. painting done by people like me. i know how these patterns work.

i rested there. it was nice, quiet, and for once you did not hear cars honking. stepping outside the afternoon sun reflected full off the white of the steps, made me flinchflinchflich. spotlights aimed to light up the minarets by night.