BOUKOLEON COLONNADE PROCESSIONAL:
-Boukoleon Palace Colonnade c850 CE -Konstantin City Walls- Sultanahmet, Istanbul November 2011—–A colonnade of marble pillars showing through the Ottoman layer of the Walls of Constantine, once rising out of the Marmara Sea but now facing the highway. This is another part of the Boukoleon Palace Ruin, now backed by a stand of old wooden houses. The Colonnade runs from the Byzantine Lighthouse to the Portals. Istanbul’s walls are like onion: each successive regime rebuilt them, often patching over previous structures and building new alcoves and guard stations as needed.
Without Jeannie and Rhonda I was sad & dispirited. The glorious summer was long gone, the light flat and grey. It was just too cold to continue drawing, but I gutted it out for a few sessions before abandoning this until the weather got warmer. As it turned out, I sold this drawing as is, happily to a good friend.
CORLULU ALI PAŞA: Tree growing out of Ali Pasa’s tomb. All I can think of is Marlene Dietrich in Touch of Evil, saying ‘He must have been some kind of a man.”
GABRIELLE SMOKING
SCOTT’S FIRST NARGILE
-31 December 2011- New Year’s Eve at Bread & Water Cafe Anadolu – Scott’s first nargile—–Scott spent four days touring the Old City with me. He was interested in everything. A talented digital artist and photographer, he was working at the time for the best independent studio in LA, en route from their offices in India. He is also a pagan priest, and had married two good friends to each other some years before. Scott was fascinated by the Temple to Hecate in Istanbul’s Archeological Museum, and by the giant columns in Hagia Sophia, which pre-date Christianity by half a millennium. This was his first time smoking nargile, up at everybody’s favorite cafe in Corlülü Ali Paşa Tea Garden. A fine way to see the end of a gorgeous year.