they don't show you this on youtube.

i had an about hour to kill after visiting the church of saint nicholas in demre last week, before i had to catch the bus to tekirova via finike. i wandered up the street keeping my back to the bus station and found a park that caught my eye for having an as-yet-uncorroded bronze statue that i decided to go check out. then i noticed that the tile patterns in the park's sidewalk were interesting in their own right and sat down on a bench to copy some of them into my notebook.

up to me comes this kid with a monkey face and he starts making monkey faces at me and running around me and saying things. he was maybe five and had his shirt tucked into his pants. and then a girl of maybe six came over, and another girl of maybe seven, and they stood there, and the younger of them said:

"where are you from?"

"canada," i said.

she stood there and kind of shifted her weight from one foot to the other, bouncing her head side to side with it, and the monkey kid kind of danced around, and a few more kids drew near. and as the two girls talked to me i could see kids in the playground start drifting over.

the smaller girl reached up to me with a sesame seed in her fingers, twisting back and forth on her feet. i took the seed from her, still in its shell. knowing what i was doing i put the whole thing in my molars and crunched it and swallowed it. she and her friend squealed, causing more kids still to gather and chatter in turkish. and the girl stuck her chin out with a sesame seed crosswide in her teeth to show me that you had to bite the shell away first, then you spit the rest of the shell away, pta.

"it's perfectly good cellulose," i explained.

"where are you from?" said one of the boys.

and the girl kept handing me seeds and i'd eat the whole thing and then some of them started handing me just chewed-open seeds, damp.

and all this caught the attention of the older boys on the basketball court and they started to come over too. the one that carried the basketball as they started to come over was fifteen, maybe sixteen, into puberty at any rate, and caught my gaze with his and i panicked. nowadays you don't just have to worry about being swarmed: they record it on cell phone cameras and post it to youtube.

"where are you from?"

so i told them and told them and one of them said, "football?" and i said, "no, hockey," and they started listing soccer players one by one and asking me if i'd heard of them, which generally i hadn't.

"paris hilton?" said one from the back.

"oh yes," i said, "paris hilton."

they wanted to know: how old? married? children? fenerbache?

and all the while the monkey kid kept dancing around and poking at me until finally i grabbed him by his belt end and everyone else laughed and the kid pulled back and i pulled until his belt buckle broke and he fell flat on his can, and everyone else laughed more, and monkey boy got up and picked up his belt, shouted some rude-sounding things and gave me the finger and left.

but he didn't leave all the way: he just stood off at a distance and circled and kept looking and me and gesturing. i kept trying to coax him back and finally another kid chased him down and brought me the belt and i tried to fix it: it was fixable, you just needed pliers to do it. monkey boy's dad would be able to do it. i gave the belt back. i said i was sorry. soon monkey boy was patting me on the shoulder, no harm done. his pants had an elastic waist anyways.

the older kids showed me their english books and pointed to the questions they'd been assigned that day. and they asked me what i'd been drawing and so i showed them and they started trying to read the pages, and one of them came across a sentence describing the statue of mustafa kemal attaturk and one of them pointed excitedly and said, "mustafa kemal!" and asked me if i knew about him.

"cumhuriye," i said, which means republic and which strangely is one of perhaps 50 turkish words i know, and they liked that.

they asked where i was staying i showed them the stuck-on olive oil labels on the front of my notebook -- "Laleli: Burhaniye, Balekisir." and they asked where was i going tonight and i told them i was catching a bus to Finike, and they discussed, and next thing i knew it was decided that they were going to walk me to the bus station and soon.

so we set off towards the bus station and one kid of maybe thirteen kept tugging at my sleeve and saying, "time, this way," and he kept tugging at me when i would stop to write bits of poetry in the others' school textbooks. the bus station was about five minutes away. it was dark by this time and only the older boys were left. when we arrived the oldest talked to the owner of a nearby candy stand and procured for me a chocolate wafer bar, which he handed to me after pulling open its wrapper.

"turkish," he said.

then a bus arrived and the boy who'd tugged at my sleeve pointed to it and read for me: "fi-ni-ke." i hustled to give about three of them my email address and one of them took a picture of us all with his cell phone camera, and each one of them shook my hand and i stooped to let them kiss me on both cheeks. i got on the bus.

the same kid as before yelled at the window: "paris hilton! paris hilton!"

the bus pulled away and the kids all waved from outside, as the people on the bus looked at me and out the window at this gaggle of turkish schoolchildren in school uniforms. then to finike down the long black road. when two buses pass each other here on the highway they flash their lights and honk their horns.

easter greetings

easter greetings to my loyal fans.

grandma, this one's for you :


this is the first picture you see when you go into the church of saint nicholas -- very impressive. it is painted on the inside of a stone arch about six or eight feet across. this painting is from about 300 AD -- very old. over time many of the paintings of saints have been vandalized and had the eyes scratched away. but that is life as a saint for you.

rojine, this one is for you:

overnight there was a foal born here, a baby horse, un petit cheval. horses have their babies on nights of the full moon, when there is more light. this little guy does not have a name yet. ce petit cheval n'a pas encore de nom. but he was able to walk and run as soon as he was born. mais il a pû marcher et courir depuis le moment de sa naissance. i remember when you were as tiny as this little foal. you kind of still are. this little baby horse is big enough to carry you on his back. ce petit cheval bébé est assez grand pour te porter sur son dos. that's his mom, with him.

there are about eight horses here -- you can see two more in the distance -- and there are hoofprints set in the poured concrete floor of the stables where they eat.

mehmet, my friend in turkey, is gone from sundance now but ruchan has just arrived, who i met during my very first days here. that seems like a long long time ago. the black cat here is his cat and it's very touching to watch them say hello. the cat has moved now to sleep by the stove -- he gets as close to it as he can and stretches his paws underneath the stove belly where it is warmest. then when he is warm he goes over to the cushions where it is soft.

life is good for many of the creatures here, and i hope the same is true for everyone back home. i will see you soon.

skylar

OH! i nearly forget. there is a word "rojine" in turkish! maybe there is the same word in persian, i don't know, but in turkish rojine means the first light of the day, right in the morning when the sun is still hiding over the horizon. the sunrises here are very pretty.

just the facts, ma'am (2): demre

day 2: demre, or kale.

when i got back from demre, birthplace of saint nicolas the miracle-worker, mehmet said to me, "now you are a pilgrim."

i surprised myself by answering top of my head, "dude: we are all pilgrims."

the church of saint nicholas at demre dates back to the 4th century BC. it has been wrecked, ruined, ransacked, and rebuilt. it is small and architecturally mismatched. my guidebook said it was a plain disappointment compared the the magnificent mosques of turkey.

but i did not think so at all. it was understated.

it was about faith. the church is a dim, cold little building, now mostly dug out from underground. the floor tiles are crooked. there are chunks missing from the walls, and columns that go to nowhere. it gives the impression of greyness, not colour, and stone, not precious metals. but it made me say wow: in particular the serenity of the faded colours, paint directly on grey stone and crumbling plaster.

i said to myself: unless this place was severely more impressive in the past, you must have had to have faith to come and worship here. it was humble.

faith is strange. faith can be used to keep the bottom on the bottom while the top stay on top. but you can also think of faith as being just one part of a triad -- faith, doubt and determination.

they keep the saint's earthly remains in this church. is that faith? everything in nature indicates that when you die you become food for the worms and the millipedes, and the trees that grow over you and the birds that live in them. here was this dusty grey box filled with sand and bones, with a stinking ashtray next to it.

some of the stone walls were painted, the colours faded now. to see the sad faces of the saints: is _that faith? islam does not allow icons.

there was an inscription in Russian: oh measure of faith and image of humility, oh teacher of abstinence, reveal to thy flock that which is the truth of all things. is _that faith? there is a saying here that to enjoy sweets, not to abstain from them, is a true sign of faith. meanwhile the sculptor was unfamiliar with the russian alphabet, the carving rife with spelling mistakes and malformed letters.

the walls were made with long thin red bricks and mortar spread between. there was almost more mortar than brick. the plaster was falling away although every now and then you'd see the scratched-in outline of what looked like a greek cross, and that hinted that once maybe the whole wall was painted. but mostly the decorations were simple.



outside in the courtyard, stone carvings, broken, collected, piled up:




and this carved stone in greek:



most interesting to me were the tile mosaics in the floors:



and this unexpected pigmented motif:


all told: morbid, dusty, dim, cold. in that way it was just like churches today, just more ancient. and i don't know why anyone would risk persecution to go there and believe. except, i suppose, faith -- and that itself was impressive. the sarcophagus was not. i am not sure i'd ever want to venerate some relic, although, that said, these days i'm finding it hard to leave some things behind.

from sundance to finike to demre : sketch

demre, day trip two of three, is the other way up the highway from tahtali.

i had to change buses in a little town called finike. i sat and waited for my bus while people loaded cargo onto the bus -- plastic bags stuffed full, duffel bags, plastic crates, propane tanks, baskets, a splattered painter's radio. the bus was full, even people standing, though i imagined demre to be quite small. going down the highway the sea was to my left and the mountains were to my right. the highway went right along the water, precluding any beaches or swimming holes except one tucked under the guard rails: a small pebbley beach, a shabby looking restaurant with a new cooler that said pepsi, old pallets stacked, deck chairs and umbrellas, a decrepit looking shower. further up the mountain, power lines followed the road.

where the earth had been cut away to make space for the highway you could see the layers of soil slanting down to the sea. the stoney loose earth was reddish brown like cinnamon. the rock was white like dirty salt. most of the trees were olive trees, which i can recognize, now. the rest were some kind of bright pine with upturned needles. every now and then, a citrus orchard. the water on the other side was very blue beneath someone's very grey battleship.

the hot sun made me sleepy. i awoke in demre.

i found the town square easily, with its slightly larger than life gold statue of mustafa kemal attaturk, on a tiled pedestal with wreaths in front. there was a central traffic circle. nearby was a little tented shop that sold rubber boots, hinges, bells for cows and sheep, the metal ends of shovels, collars, bridles, tool boxes, steel clamps, iron pans, little barbeques, stove-top toasters, carabiners, metal hooks, sawblades, woodworking tools... and a double boiler of tea and bowl of oranges. there were jewelry shops with english signage.

some of the buildings in the town centre needed a fresh coat of paint. others had huge, perfect murals of attaturk in a fez on a red background.

up the brick street it became all tourist shops. a man called to me when a hexagonal nazar caught my eye. and everywhere kitschy portraits of saint nicholas in the reds and golds of orthodoxy, always with ring finger touching thumb. the tourist shops sold not only trinkets, but also sunglasses, watches, and leather hand bags.

the men wore suits, jackets, vests underneath, wool hats and leather shoes. often you heard the sound of a low-tech engine sputtering, or the sound of a public address system. many people rode bikes and a man came to get one from the rack where he had not locked it up. children all seemed to wear the same school uniform, with green crested shirts. a handful of them played volleyball with a rubber ball so light the wind would move it. men with canes walked unafraid, worry beads in hand.