<< she put on her lipstick in the dark >>

hello again. i have a whole story to tell. this is a poem i found when i got home, not by me, it's called << she put on her lipstick in the dark. >> more to follow.

<< i really did meet a blind girl in paris once.
it was in the garden of a museum,
where i saw her touching the statues.
she had brown hair and an aquamarine scarf.

it was in the garden of the museum.
i told her i was a thief disguised as a guard.
she had brown hair and an aquamarine scarf.
she told me she was a student from grenoble.

i told her i was not a thief disguised as a guard.
we had coffee at the little commissary.
she said she had time til her train to grenoble.
we talked about our supreme belief in art.

we had coffee at the little commissary,
then sat on a bench near the foundry.
we talked about our supreme belief in art.
she leaned her haid upon my chest.

we kissed on a bench near the foundry.
i closed my eyes when no one was watching.
she leaned her head upon my chest.
the museum was closing. it was time to part.

i really did meet a blind girl in paris once.
i never saw her again and she never saw me.
in a garden she touched the statues.
she put on her lipstick in the dark.

i close my eyes when no one is watching.
she had brown hair and an aquamarine scarf.
the museum was closing. it was time to part.
i never saw her again and she never saw me. >>

paris -- the sights

paris is a city we will come back to. for now, the sights.

a day in paris

astrid kerr wrinkled her nose when i told her how paris hilton's special home video is for sale on the internet under the title of A Night In Paris;, but that is what we had, one night in paris.

it was raining when we landed which was a shock for me after months in turkey, and we rode in on a wet train where an accordion player walked from car to car playing waltzes. every surface lining the train tracks in to the city is covered with balloony or angular graffiti. really a sense of the republic and, separate, the youth that live in it. arrived in paris via Gare du Nord which has dozens of rail lines feeding in like dirty copper wires on a circuit board and the flow of people like water, stopped up in the train cars, then the gates open and everyone floods out and you can't help but be swept forward and into the rapids of the gare and from there out to open water, to the wide expanse where socialist automated ticket kiosks wait forever to serve you in a dowen languages, beneath the clack-clack-clack of the steam-era digital sign that shows what trains are arriving when using flipdown panels. i love paris. it is a city we will return to. for now simply traipsing around in the rain, enjoying the too-humid feel and tracing flowers in the fogged windows of the metro trains. no way could we ever get on each other's nerves in this town.

i <3 lubljana

after a long night in the istqnbul airport and a rush through passport kontrol, this was the sight astrid and i saw as our plane lifted off to take us east, first, to slovenia, then from there west heading out to france. a little bit happy, honestly, to be heading out from turkey, but also it will be a long time before i have an experience like this again.



exhausted, we woke up in slovenia to feelings of _wow, we are definitely in slovenia.


then right back onto a second plane for a breakfast that came in a half dozen disparate plastic containers (just like the balkans!!!). some samples of the in-flight reading material:


genteel. anyways now i can say i been to slovenia too, even if it was just for one hour in a city whose name i can't pronounce (i <3 lubljana). from what i saw from the qirport and read about it on the airplane, indeed, i <3 lubljana.

<< oh the summer time's a-coming / and the leaves are sweetly turning >>

goodbye turkey -- we hardly knew ye. tonight flying to paris through slovenia.

last day in istanbul (5) : bigcity tiles

last day in istanbul (4) : finally!

<< baby i been waiting,
i been waiting night and day.
i didn't see the time,
now i waited half my life away --
there were lots of invitations,
i know you sent me some --


but i was waiting for the miracle to come >>

last day in istanbul (3) : street vendors

for the last two days astrid and i have been eating by grazing on all the different kinds of food that people sell in carts in the streets in the city here. here is just a sampling. can you taste it? can you hear the sizzle? can you feel the heat from the donair roasters?

(we did not eat the sneakers.)

last day in istanbul (2) : a study in silver

last day in istanbul : << i'm standing on a ledge / your fine spiderweb >>

last morning in istanbul, last morning in turkey.

this morning a blasting loud mambo gave tearing in through the hostel window from the apartment next door, played for five songs, lifting trumpet triplets, bells and drums, then stopped as quickly as it began.

a little anxious to be leaving turkey and to start making my way back home. two weeks left. dreamed last night of cat.

more to follow.

bigcity movement

the ten o'clock clatter as every shop opens its metal rollup shutters at once. the music in this hostel that unfortunately gets louder and louder.

the flesh of oranges and grapefruits being torn in juice presses, vendors misting cucumbers in streetside carts.

fat dripping down rotating donair skewers, the meat cut in a downward wedge to let the fat drip down, the meat rotating on big swords and cut by men with bulging muscles.

buses that drive with the doors open.

the sizzle of fish grills by the waterfront.

midday sun aligning with the obelisk.

people that move through the sidewalks and streets like water flows over stones, tracing a course that will let them move past those who move slowly.

vendors tearing the husks from cobs of corn to be roasted in red carts like theatre popcorn machines.

restaurant greeters who will do what it takes to put a menu in your hands. "yes please! table here! just drinks! maybe tomorrow!"

late afternoon twitching fish in yoghourt buckets at the feet of fishermen on the bridge leading into old istanbul.


by night the circling birds lit up from underneath, the yellow lights that shine up the minarets, and the rustle of cats hunting in plastic garbage bags.

kariye church : mosiacs

in the kariye museum the first impression is of ghostly whiteblue, plaster under dark turquoise frescos and mortar under sparkley gold mosaics all done with tiles the size of peas.

signs repeatedly warn you not to take pictures using camera flashes because the dyes in the frescos are sensitive to intense light, but close and bright spotlights shine on each one. security guards patrol with batons and handcuffs on their belts.







the nave (main hall) is a square configuration done in proportions of four, with sixteen windows in the arch overhead, four cut-in panels of coloured marble in each wall, square and rectangle panels in the floor, and two mosaics that frame the space. it is all done in cool marble, grey and white with coloured ornamental panels framed in pink marble scrollwork.




tile mosaics would have once covered the entire inside of the church, though they are mostly crumbled away now.


impossibly gold tiles.


very neat. got me thinking about letting things fall from use into disuse and what it must have been like to stand in this church when it was new, and things i have no use for now. more to follow.