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the wooden crates delivered last week contained a collection of artifacts to be used to decorate mo's restaurant. there were vases, water jugs, sculptures, paintings, and serving plates such as this one.

this is the star pattern i have seen all over turkey. you can see it carved into wood doors, painted on the ceilings of mosques, or in tile patterns in the sidewalks.

i spent yesterday and today looking at a book called Sacred Geometry and playing with a straightedge and compass, trying to figure this pattern out and also thinking about bigger patterns in life, and the true deal with airline peanuts.

with your mercury mouth in the missionary times
and your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes,
with your silver cross and your voice like the chimes,
who did you think would bury you?

it is simple, really. you start with six circles around one and from there you build a dodecahedron. then once you see the underlying structure you just start connecting the dots and you can tease the stars out easily.

something i remember from this summer that has stayed with me: the words, graffiti to a lost love but i suppose also a prayer -- i release you from the karmic patterns that exist between us. as in, you enabled my bad habits, i enabled yours, but what is done is done.

it is funny how there are patterns that go one way and patterns that go another. patterns in geometry, math, music, rhyme, these are all one kind of pattern, the magnificent cosmos. patterns of behaviour, tension patterns in the body, learned helplessness, these are another.

today was a beautiful day in burhaniye. the sun the warm and there was no wind. the air was still but clear. the sea was blue like potter's glaze. i heard children playing on the squeaky swings. i heard birds. i was visited by a bee. there was sunshine on my back and on the yellow shrubs in the front yard.

i sat on the porch tracing lines and circles going round and round, and there is a song called Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, a song which seems to me to be about the meaning of life, the boundless sorrow of living out of fear instead of seeing the universe everfreshly -- the sad-eyed prophets say no man's gonna come.

the day dripped slow like honey. i heard the children coming home from the playground, counting as they walked -- bir, iki, uch, dürt, bes, alti. maybe they were counting hopscotch steps, maybe marbles, maybe coins, i do not know. i stayed out on the balcony til it got shivercold, which is does on the waterfront before the sun even sets.