Day 13 – September 13 2024 – Konya – Antalya
In the Otel of books (Hich, heejhh) after dreams of VR start-ups, curiously detailed as they all have been recently, awakening to our light-filled room. The best kind. Like that in Stockholm some years ago where I finished writing a paper for the conference, the light streaming in.
J’s expression is due a burst of second sight. She can see not the accommodation we are at but the accommodation we are going to.
Kahvaltı under the vine-covered pergola, brought to the table, with,
And then to Karatay Medresesi, Museum of Ceramics, walking distance. About the portal,
Looking down,
Looking up,
John Ash writes “It is an interior that seems to mirror, with absolute calm, all conceivable intricacies of thought.”
I chatted for a time here with a Chinese lady, an enthusiast of history, who was setting out for Göbekli Tepe. At around 12,000 years distant in time from when it was inhabited, it is more than twice the distance from us of Stonehenge, which, although many differ, gives it little to say to us.
The blue and turquoise of the ceramics on display here however, as well as the tiles and their intricacy, were outstanding. Sirens. Figures in stripes. Lions. Rhinoceri. Gazelles. Dragons are in the courtyard …
And the kiln which we must try and build on Waiheke,
The dome above the tomb of the Medresesi’s patron. He’s still there, a huge turban on his tomb, its numbers of twists expressing his high degree of enlightenment.
… but I was distracted, after last night’s dinner, and found relief in the ücretsiz tuvalet.
The courtyard,
running angels, wonderful,
architectural reliefs from the facade of the Seljuk Castle of Konya, 13th century,
a Barbary lion,
Then over the road to the Alaeddin Mosque, the Alaeddin Camii, completed 1220, the oldest known Seljuk mosque in Türkiye, which 30 years ago when John Ash visited he despaired of ever opening since it had already been closed for restoration several years. Unfortunately restoration and preservation of a working religious site don’t go in the direction of favouring antiquity as if it is synonymous with antiquatedness and disuse. Catholic sites do the same. Spoil.
The mihrab here is remarkable. Tiles, as in the medresesi. J remarked on the carpet of mosques in its tactile yumminess.
Back to the Hich,
Rumi’s place once more, which as a place of worship we didn’t attend, possibly as Rumi’s own advice was not being attended to, in particular as regards intoxication but here also,
Sometimes you get frightened
as a camel.
Sometimes you get stuck in the mud
like a hunted prey.
O young fool,
how long will you keep running away
from yourself?
In the end,
the thing will happen anyway.
Just go in the direction
where there is no direction.
Go, search there.
…
Back to the Hich, and to the Clio,
and out towards the coast. We didn’t expect a mountain range inbetween, but there was, awesome in scale. Cresting one ascent, another would follow. Excellent road. Sweeping curves down off the plateaux. Broken by çay houses. We wondered about the people operating them. Their lives were spent on the high passes serving çay and had been for how many years?
… goats, signs on the road for boar and deer …
At the bottom of the mountains, a breathaliser stop. The police said where you from?
New Zealand.
He gave a look like too much to process and said,
Go! Good-bye! with a smile.
J came into her own in the competitive driving scene down on the coast, the route seeming to draw out like elastic, the time increasing accordingly. A van flashed its lights behind us, we pulled aside and it passed because that’s all it had wanted to do, so J gave chase. We dodged from lane to lane. Sometimes the van roared off down the road-siding. Local knowledge. We didn’t but there suddenly again it would be, ducking and diving. Then, no matter how we did, G-maps took off no more than a minute or so from our arrival time which would soon be lost again. So, we arrived in Antalya at a few minutes after four.
And the next trial, parking, began. Surprisingly, soon accomplished. Humidity, stink, 33C. A smell like shit and catpiss and bad parties came in waves.
Atici (Atee-j-ee) Hotel smelt of bleach like a morning brothel.
The room as rudely appointed as it smelt, but still, clean.
We dithered. Asked about upstairs. Were shown a room with balcony but a shower-toilet combo so small that neither function could adequately be served. And returned to the family room which might have doubled as a surgery or asylum. At least it had sufficient space for either function.
And ventured out into the afternoon, rediscovering the European beach, a private rather than public enterprise, entailing recliners and the demarcation of a net to catch adventurous swimming or recliners which might be washed away.
Most surprising, when each thing, each place we have been has been unexpected, are the mountains rising so close to the Eastern Mediterranean. It can be understood why Marmara and İstanbul has been considered gateway to Asia. You wouldn’t get far coming ashore along this coast.
after-party vibe, the flowers plastic, the furniture thrown around, bust, yet still there were people here enjoying the park,
minimalist urban bar,
… made some notes in the clean room, from a conversation in İznik, that later came to this,
How often was everything destroyed
and how often were we told
it was not
was it each evening? every morning
we awoke and it was like 1910 all
over again. Rooms that were
built for our comfort now
had angles and we were left
nowhere to sit. Without
anywhere to settle we drift
-ed from room to room. The
windows would not open. And
the air was filtered as if
this is what ideology meant
not the air we breathe but
a certain colour,
certain smells were gone but
we were not told we should not
smell them and, they said,
ideology has ended ...
just like people we will
not see again
they had
been disappeared . In fact
each time — but how often? —
the timeline for destruction
was not withheld only
falsified — so often we
actually believed, bringing
about a change in human
character, as it was ad-
vertised to do, it happened
every generation. This
wasn't true except
that each generation should
take it up as if it were;
that is to take up the
cause of the reconstruction.
the timeline was deduced from
the passion of new makers
those it seemed who in some
collective dream had decided it
(and I am writing this from the
dire hotel in Antalya, I am, as
they say, far enough away) not
a programme but a dream.
and in that dream were collect-
ed dreams accommodating not
the slightest ambiguity, which
perhaps is a feature of the
waking world. The ones who
cared for power, who stroked
it like a cat, are forgotten,
reviled, wrongly, again as if
bad smells attached to the
cologne they wore, the rings
on their fingers, their
schools of thought; although
how can they be accused as
Epicureans, Cynics, both
at the same time? of decadance
and ruthlessness at once?
Being cold or hot the rest
I will spew out of my mouth
but these new ones don't go
by the book or any books, it
has come to a new destruction
of books and they are innocent
of ambiguity. In a spirit of
Innocence and longing, the
Spirit of those who want to be
Innocent and are as a result
Shameless. To catch the past
You can move slowly, chasing
Byzantium or even the Ottoman
Empire (not walk one-legged,
one-eyed through the civiliz-
ations of either the West or
the East); to catch the future
You must move very quickly And
they are quick to be offended
As if to be alive were to be
Offended And the destruction
of everything offensive is
adjured. but something
has gone wrong They
have not washed their feet,
they have not observed the
rituals and they have
no regard for what will do
just for now There
they go,
dragging their feet
through the wreckage, damp-
ening the hems of their coats
wiping the corners of their
eyes all bound for Morn-
ingtown, as if it were not
grit (and the Sandman rings
his bell) but sleep and all
this, who can say? the
prospect before them
destruction in broad daylight
neither Xanadu nor utopia, and
the strangest thing, the
old songs that keep on
coming back, is, pursued
by the young with new
vigour, it is all so old-
fashion. And the young
help the old from their
graves as if time were
just a building that
had fallen down each dec-
ade, was it? and the lib-
erals, you can see I'm
back, everything is so
luridly close, jealous
of the government, which
although reactionary,
like a dog on a leash,
finds power easy as a
walk in the park, not
wanting to know
they have been worried
about the wrong thing
keep their focus ent-
irely on something
very far away. Far a-
way, you have to be
asleep not to know
when your mother hugs
you it's because you
won't come back and
then, you are free
to leave and
not come back.
The country I have
returned to after
a long journey
spanning several
thousand years
is not like others
in this respect. Here
only the month of
September has passed
and already
everything has had
an upgrade.
…
Hunger, thirst, heat and exhaustion catching up with us, we found, what else? a place calling itself a pub, playing Lana del Ray and ate pizza and something calling itself Havaii salmon salad. And could still say, çok güzel, because the ingredients, locally grown, are all so tasty.
My companion is a dribbler,
Several bizarre scenes unfolded in the short time we were here. Seeing a pretty young woman, all dolled-up (Ottoman style–to which in large measure is owed that tastegroup called Eastern European), a photographer approached to take snaps. Looked like he worked there. J surmised the joint was working on its social media presence, showing the pretty ladies as collateral.
Companions of said pretty lady, both jetset circa 1980, both, although one older than the other, old enough to be their consort’s father, although it appeared that one was her boyfriend (but by the hour? then why introduce her to the father? which the older seemed to be), said companions intervened with photographer. Angry. Whereupon the latter went and started taking photos of walk-ins like us, to make it look as if he was altogether inclusive in his choice of subject; I warned him off us, resting my chin on my hand, middlefinger extended towards him.
Then dawdling the way home …
