Dispatch From LA

today

the sun shone into the apartment this morning.

i woke early itching to climb aboard some form of public transportation.  i went off in search of le marché aux puces de vanves.  a flea market in the 14th arr.  thanks for not making me show you the ropes since i don't know where they are.  also next time you might want to leave the booth i'm at when you see me ready to ask a really dumb question, or when you see me knock something over.  twice.  

there's a lot to see.  of course there is.  

there are watchdogs to guard it all.  the french pooch let me rifle through the box.  i selected a dozen lovely postcards.  most had writing on them and were addressed to paris.  also found a cool old letter and other assorted ephemera to use in my travel journal.

 green leaves unfurled while i watched.  daffodils held their shining faces up to the sun.  trees blossomed.

carousels spun around.
 

By 2 pm I was home for travel journaling and napping.  you were tired too, but fell asleep with a smile on your face.

We went for dinner on ill saint louis, a lovely island in the seine.

It began to mist, but i didn't care because i'm the owner of a lovely lilac umbrella bought at BHV.  you told me to get the one with the ruffle.  so i did.  i've never had a ruffled umbrella before.  it's pretty, but you keep trying to take it from me.

here's the cheese plate we shared with dinner.  an enormous basket of assorted salamie and a giant knife came before dinner.  i did not embarrass myself or you with my cutting technique.  but i almost did.  also i used a public toilet today and almost got sprayed with disinfectant, but then i didn't.  

I made a little video.

 

Martha Rich

Martha Rich is so awesome & strange I can't stand it!  She is one of my favorite painters.  Just caught this great interview with her on Vimio and wanted to share.  

 

More of Martha's coolness HERE.  Check out her sketchbooks HERE.

Where My Sister Comes For A Visit

Did I mention that my sister is visiting for a few days?

We're just up to our usual tricks.

Oh and..enjoying my respite from cat herding...

Where My Arse Says Thank You

I debated long and hard over buying these chairs, but my arse won out in the end.  And my back.  I know you won't school me on the foolhardiness of having white chairs in a room where I'll be slinging paint.  It would make my arse sad, and its so very very happy. 

And my ears... Oy my ears!  Knock Knock Knocking on Heaven's Door. 

 

Old songs!  I missed you.  I'm listening to the Bob Dylan version, but this one is REALLY good.  Sniff sob.  Thankfully BIG LOVE is reaquainting me with some fabulous music.  I am 100% hooked on BIG LOVE.  wowza.  Mary Kay Place, I forgot how hilarious you are!

Okay, and in between all that I finished one classic and started another.  Bram Stoker's DRACULA.  A real page turner.  Unputdowndable. And free on Kindle!  Don't say I didn't give you anything for Christmas.  Just don't.

Have you heard THIS 3 year old boy reciting Billy Collin's Litany?  I have listened to it 768,456,456 times in the last year and have kept meaning to share.  Clear your calendar it's sort of addicting.

Wanna Dance?

Sunday morning.  There's Groove Armada, there's me, there's hair sticking up.  There is the braless hustle across my wood floors.  That's just crazy stupid wonderful.  Yes it is.

I'm grateful for the dazzling sunbeams on my wood floors this morning.  A flotilla of clouds making their way across the sky.  The air that was cold even in the sunshine.  In Treatment Season 2.  Trader Joe's pumpkin bread mix.   All the big and little trees fluttering outside my window.   Reading.  Listening to the clicks of the hummingbirds.

I'm finding velvety grey so intoxicating.  I stopped in the middle of journal work to translate an idea over to a wood panel.  I don't know how well it will translate, but the process is satisfying.  I will show it to you when I'm finished.  I have the entire week off!  The. entire. week. Wanna dance?

 

Someone Told Someone Who Told Someone

Here.  Have a gander at a few more travel journal pages.  I think I've mentioned...sometimes I like a page with just a photograph.  Plain & simple.

Or an oddly sketched distorted foot.  In a shoe.  With extra toes.  On a plain background.  I need to sketch more.  I look at this and time travel.  Back to the day I was sitting on a hill overlooking one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world - the Temple of Artemis (what's left of it).  It's just my sister and I up here.  And it's cool in the shade.  I can hear drumming in the distance.  It's the last day of Ramadan.  Carol is sketching the hills in the distance.  Olive groves, grape vines, a small fertile valley.  A bucolic scene and I'm right there sketching my foot.  Right there.

Did I mention we swam in the southern Agean Sea?  Sigh.  I want to go to there.

~

Thank you to the nice person who took their ROD journal to Squam By The Sea!  Someone told someone who told someone else and all those someones registered for class this week.  

I mentioned it a few posts back, but it bears repeating.  REMAINS OF THE DAY is officially open indefinitely.  No closure or change of passwords coming down the road.  Your video/class blog access is permanently O P E N.

 

p.s.  someone just walked down the street whistling "I Got A Brand New Pair Of Roller Skates."  i love that!

 

Still lingering over Istanbul.  Sitting tonight in my little cottage in LA thinking about another city and a ride along the Bosphorus with my sister.  Here, this is my favorite video of the trip.

 

 

...the Bosphorus, glimmering like a mysterious sea, changed color with the sunrise.  On misty spring evenings, when not a leaf in the city is rustling, on windless, noiseless summer nights, when a man walking alone after midnight along the Bosphorus shore can hear only the sound of his own footsteps, a moment will arrive... when he hears the happy roar of the current and notices with apprehension the gleaming white foam that seems to have come from nowhere, and he cannot help but wonder whether the Bosphorus has a soul.

 

from Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul:  Memories and The City

My Big Fat Turkish Travel Journal

I've been absorbed back into school life this last week.  Reacquainting myself with the secret lives of six and seven year olds.  One foot still in Istanbul, the other planted firmly in the classroom.

Which is to say I abruptly ended my travel stories.  And you know I am nothing if not thorough, with a compulsion to conclude everything I start.  Which is to say, I'll return where I left off.  Probably.  Eventually.

Because there are some things I still need to tell you.  About our unorthodox car rental business in Izmir conducted on the trunk of the car using sign language.  About the South Aegean Sea where we swam for 2 days in a row and rented chairs from a man named Rambo.  About a drive we took at sunset up a narrow mountain road into a lovely village in our swim costumes.  Or maybe I'll just post all the travel journal pages and let you puzzle everything together.

 

It's all folded in between these pages.  The ordinary and extraordinary.  Small compartments of magic that a line or an image carry. 

 

I added quite a few full page photos when I returned home.  The majority of the journal was completed in Istanbul, but I leave blank pages for the pictures, which I print out on Office Max thin double-sided matte photo paper on my Canon MP 620 printer.

I'll include a video from Sister.  Who is much steadier with a camera that I am.

A couple more videos to deepen your armchair travels. Thanks for taking this journey to Istanbul with me. Your comments and emails are very dear.  

Travel Journaling At The Apartment In Istanbul

A Leisurely Day Of Small Adventures

We are taking the day off from hustling up and down the Cihangir hilltop.  Sister woke up with a brilliant idea to go sit at Cuppa and work in our journals.  So here we sit surrounded by grubbers and chatters.  How divine.  I'm sipping my 2nd iced latte and just finished a ham & cheese french toast sandwich.  I could be in Los Angeles except for the Rose of Sharon trees, the draping vines, tame cats, and all the people speaking Turkish.   Digging in.  Soaking up the neighborhood.  Bliss.

 

Woke up this morning at 9 am to a bright blue day, blue water as far as the eye can see, sky like faded denim.  We rearranged the patio furniture in a more pleasing configuration and lazed about till noon.

Made the acquaintance of 2 fine gentlemen from Montreal sitting at a table across from us.  Mercan Dede and Jarret.  They engaged us in a conversation about our journals and were very curious.  I let them look through mine and stood chatting at their table for awhile.  Mercan Dede (turkish) mentioned he was here in Istanbul with his band and handed me a cd on his way out the door.  I thanked him.  Music to journal by later.  An entirely delightful encounter.

I loved the 800 cd so much a few days later we went into a music store and a knowledgeable clerk led me to the Mercan Dede section where I bought 2 more cds:  Breath and Su.  What an incredible discovery.  The nay is an instrument I'd never heard of, but now that I've heard it played before I don't have words to describe how evocative and deep it is.   I've added the music to my sidebar along with a video down below.

On our way home we stopped at the mosque down the street from our apartment.  Closed, but we peered in the windows and saw the whole place filled with light from its large south facing windows.  Dappled tile and chandeliers warm with the sun.  There is a tiny park with an overlook here.  Jaw dropping views.  We're getting used to these, but each one still impresses.  We sit on a bench and watch the boats go by.  A leisurely day of small adventures.

In the evening we walked a short distance from the apartment to Kat 5 a splendid rooftop bar and restaurant.  5 floors up by vintage elevator then a spiral wooden staircase up to the roof.  Somehow we got in without reservations.  Scenic doesn't begin to describe the navy water of the Bosphorus,  twilight sky, and the Boğaziçi Köprüsü suspension bridge whose lights change colors every few minutes.  "Look,"  we tell each other, "ASIA!" 

Far across the water the white buildings with their amber lights are twinkling.  A whole other Istanbul to explore.

 

A Walk In Cihangir

A stroll through our neighborhood in Istanbul anyone?  Come along for a minute and a half jaunt through the streets.  

 September 1, 2010

Last night we ate our first Turkish meal at White Mill.  Even though we were drunk with fatigue the garden setting and hanging lanterns did not go unnoticed.  Magical.  From the street this place looks ordinary and empty, but then you walk up a flight of stairs down a passageway and descend into a garden lush with trees, vines, green.  Not a single breeze stirred the air.  No cooling for me yet.  At this point still wondering how I will possibly survive this deep penetrating heat.

Walked up to Taxsim Square.  We left Cihangir and climbed steadily up the slight incline and entered another world.  Dark, sooty, noisy, horns honking, what seemed like thousands of people milling about.  Carol used the payphone and called Verizon to get her global phone figured out.  I waited next to Carol who was next to a man wearing worn leather dress shoes who was taking deep puffs off a cigarette and exhaling clouds of smoke.

 

 

Her phone recovered, we climbed into our first Turkish cab for a quick ride home.  23 turkish lira.  I gave him a 50 TL note and he returned only 20 TL change.  A gross overcharge.  Too hot and too tired to argue.  We got out and found to our dismay we had been deposited at the wrong address on the wrong street.  $%$#@ Our search begins for Osmanbey Apartment #3.  Eventually we find it, but not before buying beautiful peaches from a tiny produce store on the corner.  The fruit and vegetables lay gleaming under the shopkeeper's lights, spread out like a buffet in their crates and baskets.  Wind blew giant sycamore leaves down onto the street.  It's midnight.  We're in Istanbul.  And it finally feels cooler.  I bend down and pick up one small yellow sycamore leaf to put in my journal.

 

After finally sleeping Tuesday we woke up super early.  The weather has changed dramatically!  The air is chilly with skies the color of pewter.  Rain is falling.  We flopped back in our beds and slept until 2 pm ish.

 

~

p.s.  While I was off exploring, the cat posse was lovingly cared for by the kind and wonderful cat nanny I found right here on the blog.  She went very far above and beyond in doting on Buck, Wyatt, and Corky.  I loved getting daily reports of their hijinx. 

 

Istanbul is a city of cats!  This one found a drink from a wash basin outside of a mosque.

 

 

Where I Copy Directly From My Travel Journal...

I'll be quoting liberally from my travel journal.  It's the easiest way to tell the story.  That writing will be in italics.  Real time writing will be regular.  I'll switch off.  You'll get confused and curse me.  Ready?  Here we go!

August 31, 2010

...eventually we landed in Istanbul.  I was shocked by the HEAT.  The air was thick and humid.  Fortunately the airport is a model of efficiency.  Obtaining the visas then getting our passports stamped was a breeze.   Our driver Ramazan was waiting with a sign, "MARIANNE"  He whisked us to our apartment in Cihangir on a breathless and daring ride through Istanbul's crowded streets.  We bumped along faster than seemed possible, swinging around corners, careening down hills, then finally screeching to a stop in front of our apartment.  Elif stuck her head out the window and motioned us up.  Unfortunately the ride from the airport did not include Ramazan hefting my bag up the spiral staircase.  Shite.

The apartment is smaller and slightly shabby, not quite like the photos, but the view...the view is undeniably magnificent.  In one sweep of the eye you take in Sultanamet across the Golden Horn and looking in the other direction across the Bosphorus, to Asia. 

Yes.  We're here.  The long long journey across 2 continents has ended.  After an entire day of having my extra large body squished into an extra small plane seat I can finally stretch out and MOVE.  I need a shower, but my eyes feel like they've already been washed staring out across the Bosphorus. 

Water, water, water as far as you can see.  All the way out to the Sea of Marmara.   We have landed somewhere new.

 

I'm worried about the heat, but we've stopped moving and after a cold shower I'm sure to cool down at least a few degrees.  After being in the apartment less than an hour we heard our first call to prayer and rushed out to the balcony.  Oh, oh, oh.  A more beautiful sound I can't remember hearing.  A droning warbling melody that reaches in and presses something on my heart.

I made this short video while at the Blue Mosque one day.  In each part of the city the call to prayer is slightly different depending on which mosque you are nearest.  One night we saw the actual muezzin going into the mosque down the street from our apartment to sing out the call of prayer.  He disappeared inside the closed mosque and 1 minute later the call began.

 

 

When I Close My Eyes I See Istanbul

If you have to get delayed, the CDG airport in Paris is the place to do it.

Lemon Tree

Another beautiful movie, this time from Israel. Netflix instant watch + my Roku = a match made in heaven. Make an icy glass of lemonade, get a few tissues, and put your feet up.  Happy Sunday!

For those of you who asked about my Kindle cover I added the link to yesterday's post. I still prefer an actual book, but for travel it can't be beat. Not so good for travel guides though!

Everlasting Moments

I've sailed for Sweden on my foreign film vessel.  A lovely touching movie.  And best of all a formula-free ending.  "Like having your eyes washed." as one reviewer put it.  I concur!   Instant watch on Netflix.

p.s.  I just read Stockholm was the Venice of the north...someone's ears and travel heart came alive when she heard that.  This is how it starts.  How the tiny seeds begin to sprout.  Just so you know.

Watching More Poetry

Another poem for you to watch. As someone who loves aloneness and solitude and thinks being alone is really normal and wonderful...I saw this and cheered.

Foreign Films On The Fourth

Seraphina. The latest Netflix film to download to my Roku. While booming firecrackers rained down all around Moss Cottage I sat transfixed by this beautiful movie.

And this Greek film...A Touch Of Spice Cooking, spices, astronomy, love, Istanbul. It's all in here.

 

 

 

 

 

2 Minutes In The Back Patio

Spend a couple of minutes with me in my back patio. This is where I'll be tomorrow too. Come on.

Morning Sounds from MAM on Vimeo.

Izamal

Izamal is bathed in a delicious yellow the color of ripe mango.  Coming here it is easy to see why it is deemed magical by the Mexican government.  We hailed a cab and our quiet gentleman driver whisked us here across miles of  scrubland forest and deposited us in the center of the yellow town.

 

We wandered hither and yonder picking our way over cobblestone streets, drifting in and out of stores, mostly taking photos.  I was lost in a trance.   Like me, my travel partner Suzanne prefers keen observation to talking.   An invisible tether kept us connected even when our roaming took us out of sight of each other.  

 

Once during the day I discovered a vast pyramid structure behind a museum of folk art.  Like a magnet I was pulled alone to the back of the building and out through an open door, across a courtyard, up some crumbling stairs, through dense undergrowth,  obvious ruins, and to a clearing of wild pink flowers and curling vines.  Sometimes storybooks that live only on the inside make their way to the real world.  That's what happened to me.  I could have kept going, but my invisible tether brought me back.

 

Back to Izamal.  Back to the Santo Antonio de Padua Convent, bulit atop an ancient pyramid where  I was set loose again to comb the halls.  This time the pre-columbian story replaced by 16th century Franciscan monks.

 My imagination gallops across either terrain with quiet enthusiasm.  My eyes registering shapes and colors I won't be aware of until months or years from now.

 

I want to stop and bow to each chair, each doorway, each peeling wall.  And in my mind, that is exactly what I do.

 
 Mérida is a lovely place.  I'm so glad I came.  I'm so pleased to have found an alternate travel partner for times when my sister can't tear herself away from her day job.  My vague lackadaisical travel style would annoy most people.  I'm pulled along by an invisible compass, the needle of which does not always point north.    Fortunately Suzanne, doesn't seem to mind.

You knew a video was coming.  Naturally it has nothing to do with my post.  It's of yesterday's adventure.  If I haven't already extolled the simplicity and ease of a Flip, I'd do it again.  If you prefer convenience over quality,  a more perfect travel video may not exist.

 

 

january 12, 2010 from MAM on Vimeo.

The Dancing Star of Mérida!

Want a shot of pure joy? Click below and get your fix.

Love blooms in Mérida from MAM on Vimeo.

A Town Of Yellow Houses

Lovely experiences are happening here that I don't have time to write (blog) about.  Every available word today going directly into the travel journal, which is growing fatter by the day.

 

Yesterday my eye caught and held each aqua and yellow door & wall.  So many luscious textures and colors!  Each one shabbier and more beautiful than the last.  A wall.  A floor.  A door frame.  Locks.  Iron bars.  Handpainted letters and numbers.

 

Only a small bit of dancing in the video below, but I'm working on a longer one with my STAR.  A fabulous hip swinging latin dancer in white pants with  a grin on his face.  See if you can spot him!  Yesterday while walking we turned a corner and right there in front of us a stage of 60-90 year old latin ballroom dancers!  

 

It is late.  Or I would tell you about the magical town of Izamal where all the buildings are yellow.  Every one.  I would tell you about the lovely Mayan woman who came to our home today and cooked dish after dish of Yucatecan food.  I would tell you about the latin ballroom dancers from yesterday that made my heart expand so much it hurt. 

 

I have a lot to say.  But tomorrow we leave early for another adventure after which I will have 2 lovely empty days to sit and write and think.  I need that time to absorb the streets, the people, the things I have seen.  I fall in love with places as though they were people.  And Mérida is no different.  sigh sigh sigh...

Look for my friend in the white pants.  I have a much longer video of him to share!

january 10 from MAM on Vimeo.