Istanbul Cont'd

Mission accomplished on the first head. I had the bath. It was relaxing, no nonsense, and it made me see that the bathhouse in Sana'a had an Ottoman precursor. The same vaulted dome with small, tubular skylights bored out of the stone roof, allowing light to cut through the steam and play on the water and walls. There really isn't to’ much to report. Though (shucks) I suppose it does bear mentioning that there was a bit of pain involved. At one point my masseur Ahmed crossed my arms over my chest, bore down on the elbows, and managed to crack the cartilage between several vertebrae. There was also some painful, if not very thorough, leg massage.
I might add, with reference to an estate which I am fortunate enough to have seldom affected me to my detriment, that Turkey has just passed a parliamentary motion authorizing its troops to attack PKK rear bases in neighboring Iraq. The practical meaning may or may not be near nil. but the symbolic echo of our own unilateralism is unmistakable, and gives little comfort. It also makes it tempting to play on my Swedish identity as needed.

There is a phenomenon I often experience when walking around unfamiliar urban spaces. It goes a little something like this: I am walking along when it occurs to me that I wish to sit down for a coffee or a sandwich. There are many options available. But instead of inspecting them and settling on the first one that meets with my approval, I can't bring myself to stop and inspect a single one. Whenever I think about stopping to inspect a menu or poke my head through a door, I am gripped by a kind of horrible, self-loathing inertia. Why is this? One reason is the self-awareness that comes with being on display to the residents of an unfamiliar place. I don’t want to be seen hesitating. So why then do I not simply make for the first place that catches my eye? Well, because that would be impossible. It’s a matter of atmosphere, you see. When in unfamiliar places I am nearly always trying to think about them actively, or write about them. To make up for the soporific dazzle I feel New York sometimes imposes on mind and pen. So while I cannot risk ridicule by stopping at one bill of fare after another, nor can I hazard the frustration of wasting my time where, due to poor service or the presence of too many cretins, I cannot think. The alternative is to wander around for miles or hours with seeming purpose, while ready at any step to concede, to deflate in a heap of defeat. I start to feel I would have been better off staying at home. It started happening to me in Istanbul today, but I was fortunate enough to hit on a solution that I hope will not seem too creepy. This is what I did: As soon as I felt the onset of my purposeful indecisiveness, my eyes fixed on the form of a female pedestrian in front of me. I fell to following her, almost without thinking. After taking about 3 of the turns she had taken, I decided that if she entered a café or a restaurant within a few minutes, so would I. It seemed likely that an attractive young woman would lead me to an attractive place. And if she didn’t enter one within a few minutes, I would step into the first one she shot an appraising glance at. And that is exactly what I did. I am now sitting at the intersection of two narrow alleys under the high and watchful eye of a minaret. There is music, and a little bit of street life, but at the tables I am alone. It is perfect—even more so because I ended up here a function of someone else’s whim. Yes, I rode the waves of fate to get here. Not bad. I’d like to try this more often, to unburden myself of as much of the responsibility of choice as possible. Will that mean that I will end up behind a white picket fence, or behind bars? I just hope it doesn't get me into too much trouble!

~

In Darren’s harbor there are many boats seining for bluefish, mackerel, and I believe turbot. These vessels ply a fading, outmoded and unproductive trade, and form the foreground to the constant stream of container ships and tankers, the standard-bearers of globalization. Their boats are overstaffed, the waters overfished—although the currents flowing in from both the Black Sea and Marmara have kept them at this game of diminishing returns to date. The Black Sea offing has been cleared of smog by the bluster of this day, with ships at its very limit issuing a vague and blurry challenge to the uniformity of the horizon.
Just now there is a tanker passing called the Aegean Angel, its name writ small on the prow, its font size in sharp contrast to the huge emblazoning of the line’s name amidships, Arcadia Hellas, as if in challenge to the Turkishness of these waters, which of course have flowed and scintillated and been plied under the auspices of many different standards in many different times. And now to do a bit of fishing…