I strolled down to the Galata Bridge again this morning. As in many cities, the streets are like a gallery depicting the full spectrum of poverty and wealth, of fortune and misfortune, of happiness and despair.
I tried to capture the essence of the city in my notes at the time:
…minarets of many mosques, piercing (or trying to) the eastern sky; blue; Istanbul, …all is one with the blue waters of the Marmara sea, the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus – underground cistern…water seeping through the stone; dripping…the magical flute of the street vendor…the haunting chanting of the worshippers in the mosque, bowing towards Mecca; kneeling, heads to the ground;
My notes then move on to some embarrassing attempts at derivative poetry for my putative muse Judith, as introduced in an earlier post. In the interests of honesty…
If for my gift I gave you thoughts and a library to keep them in; laughing peasant children in ploughed fields holding coloured eggs and wriggling their toes in the earth…
(Derivative source – Gift by Leonard Cohen)
The notes reported above were written in the Pudding Shop – a cafe made famous as a rendezvous point on the hippie trail of the 1960s and 1970s. Online searches show that it still exists, but in a much more modernised style. It also featured in the 1978 film Midnight Express, which some say led to a decline in popularity for the city.
Similarly, the Istanbul of today is vastly different from that of 1973. The first bridge across the Bosphorus was still under construction when I was there – it opened in October 1973.
So, after a reflective Day 25, where will tomorrow find me? It is a market-gardening town on the eastern shore of the Sea of Marmara. See you there!
Psychologist on the Move 