Day 18 – September 18 2024 – Selçuk – İzmir
[considering another must-see that we didn’t, Pamukkale, was it wisdom or wilfulness? I mean, it’s easy to grow a little complacent and congratulate oneself on one’s own, our own, eccentricity and thereby miss out on what everybody else for ages has known is simply the bee’s knees. (I’m thinking of writer Daniel Handler complaining that nobody had told him Paris was beautiful!)
[In this instance, Pamukkale, which we could’ve driven the 2+ hours to see, several factors decided us against: that 2+ hours travel, there and back was one; then, the research, up-to-the-minute reports, that is, those more recent than some I looked at in Tripadvisor dated 2014, were that the photos used to promote the natural wonder are old, that it doesn’t look anything like that, the pools are no more than ankle-deep, the glare and exposure on the white terraces, plus the heat, make for an uncomfortable experience, plus the throngs of those others trying to enjoy themselves (smiling selfies in spite of the discomfort), amount to an enormous put-off (Hierapolis was judged by one visitor the superior attraction, but we didn’t feel we needed more of the Antik); and finally we don’t like crowds, particularly those out to enjoy themselves, who, in hyper-industrialised orgies of touristic consumption, stimulate each other into loud raptures like American porn-stars, who don’t actually need the site or sight, just the rub of each other’s egos.
[You can perhaps see if you have been reading this travelogue we are thinking about Antalya.
[Privacy is perhaps a failing, we would sooner have a beach with noone but us on it; and, as a result, we don’t so much live in NZ Aotearoa as in a house there.]
[What might also be said, in our favour there is the looking-out for those bits and bobs which chance throws our way: I am thinking of adding an episode to our day of migrating from bench to bench in Eskişehir on the day we left there; a chance encounter outside the Typewriter Museum. It seems we had occupied a babaanne’s bench. She approached and complained, about her feet, about the changes to this part of the old town, life, who knows what else, all the time to J, not me. She complained in such a generous way, despite her not understanding a word, as if J was in agreement all along, patting her knee, so that all she could do was in fact nod and smile in agreement.
[this encounter, like so many, is inexplicable and indescribable; essentially it cannot be conveyed but by an act of incommunication, that is neither intermediate nor immediate, like a poem or piece of art or writing which although it may have description in it does not set out to represent the encounter or event, or even present it in or with an encounter with itself, but something else.]
After buffet kahvaltı, omelet for me, olives, tomatoes, cucumber, bread, chilli, breakfast paste stuff and rehashed veges, then baked cheesecake with yoghurt so good x2, çay & kahve; J boiled egg, tost, fruit, yoghurt: Mary’s House.
The road wound up into the hills behind Ephesus. We paid the equivalent of NZ$50, parked and walked down to the rows of buses and the entrance.
A mass going on (did I mention the Italian tour guide at Ephesus with a priest’s dog collar? we decided it was a fake. A good ruse to encourage the Italians).
Entered the house, ugly office furniture on either side, an altar in the last of three rooms with elliptical dome rooves; but all sort of cheapy and lacking all aesthetic discrimination; and yet also sucked dry of any spirituality. Near the exit, a framed stone in the structure of the building with a Byzantine depiction of Mary’s face, worn almost to nothing. Out the doors. Ever feel like you’ve been had?
Is that it? asked J.
A sign read springs. We went down a level.
An Italian tour was drinking the water from spigots set in the wall, filling water bottles, splashing water in their faces. The guide flicked water onto some old guy going Para Para Para like it was an abracadabra. And I took a mysterious photo of the last spigot.
…
Here’s the ‘para para para’ guide, and some details of the prayers and requests,
a cool symbol, Mary’s brand, and a group-spa sized baptismal pool,
Out of there, we took the coastal route. And would’ve arrived at Büyük Konak İzmir earlier but for having turned into the old part of town by the bazaar, going one-way, one-way, blocked forwards, blocked left, taking the only road possible, blocked at the end; checking the options, a shopkeeper pointed to the sign above, no entry. Backing up, scooting around. Forward. Mercedes coming the other way had to back on out to let us through. Swinging round, like Tetris in a car, backing up, going forward. And much to our disbelief getting out with car whole and intact.
12 at BK, met by Gizem (as in Konya), and told to come back in an hour or two. Tis rather a virtue of the midday checkout than a crime.
Steep stairs down to the bazaar. Lunch among the pests locals accommodate, pigeons,
with pigeon-food sellers (not singing tuppence a bag) and rose-sellers who also read palms, all in cahoots … into the bazaar. Soon deep in.
note the red ruff of the gills, pulled out to show bloodflow and one imagines freshness,
Room ready, we returned up the steepest steps, up to our room, with views over all of İzmir. And a kitchen. And space … and,
a note on the toilet
I've only just got used
to the cold jet of water
hitting directly my anus. Some
come provisioned with a
nozzle so that you can alter
the position of the jet.
For women I imagine this is
particularly important.
Men have only to cope,there's
a tap and you can control
the throttle, with the cold jet
hitting the back of one's
ballsack. From a Western point
of view, it's curious,
a civilisation that invented
plumbing discourages the
flushing of paper, as we are
so used to doing, and
provides a lidded rubbish tin
for the collection
of soiled paper, which has here
anyway a drying and a wadding
purpose, not a cleaning and a
rubbing one, but is not
for all of that of higher quality
and, disposed of in thick wet
soggy wads, has, when it comes to
lifting the lid of the rubbish
bin, usually fitted with a useless
pedal (the cack left hand and
clean right, the watering can
of the crouch toilet, being
familiar to everyone) its own
difficulties of handling.
We didn’t stay long but went down to the bazaar again, shopping. A new bag we’d bought on our first visit, for ₺650, to… if not fill, then, top up. It was fun.
next door,
Then on to Migros, checking out also Bim, which was useless for what we wanted–pasta, sauce. The thousand steps to mount, this time laden, with cake also, from the bazaar, honey-soaked.
The city is purring and growling beside me as I write, and scintillating off the harbour, site of many tragedies, and against the horseshoe of mountains that ring it around.
