Haibun
not quite yet
summer weekend
whap whap whap chirp
chirp
birds and ladies punishing new wool
all up so early this morning
Well before summer,
after the first shearing, ladies get the new wool and beat it
all fluffy and fresh after washing and drying it, and then make
Turkish futons, stuffing the fluffy dried beaten wool into
mattresses which get folded and stacked away during the day and
line all the floors at night
my neighbor's
mulberry
purple fruit drops one by one
into the empty lot
ripe white dut
our slippery street
smells so sweet
The Turkish word for
mulberry is dut [umlaut U pronounced with pursed lips]. Two
kinds of dut are white and purple: they make sweet syrup, dut
molasses from the fruit.
boys' stretched out
arms
belly buttons showing
picking low hanging berries
ooof no water today
thank god for mulberries
smell so sweet squashed in the street
doorbell
means
too warm to keep on punishing wool
Istanbul regularly
cuts off the water to neighborhoods for several hours up to
several days. This year there has been so much rain the
reservoirs are full so I imagine it is maintenance. This year
it's seasonally warm, summer weather a couple of months early,
interspersed with winter rains for a couple of days. Very
strange. Cities overflowing with tourists, but all on tours.
Small shops and B&Bs suffering. Cyprus was mostly ghosts.
Restaurants full of young waiters waiting.
My new friend,
hyphenated-Lebanese hyphenated-American my new friend, h
International NGO conference at the Swissotel. I'm invited to
its
unbelieveable concert of Armenian, Turkish, Mozambiquan,
Finnish, West African, Morrocan, European and who knows where
from musicians rock the house, and stuffy foundation bureaucrats
are made to get up out of their seats and dance. I can't believe
I am watching a Turkish bureaucrat suit and tie mamba with
another in suit and skirt. He's not bad either. I can't not
dance all night, camera in hand trying to photograph in a light
show deliberately designed to make taking pictures impossible,
and pay the price the next day, laid up in pain and agony unable
even to get as far as the front door. It was more than worth it
for that music. The light show? Its
creator could find work in Guantanomo.
midnight and more
scrumptious fish
penthouse Cihangir fish house
great food interrupts good conversation
[I know that last
one isn't even vaguely haiku~quip maybe?] Cihangir is were James
Baldwin lived and work and learned to be whole and human. Now
all the "ladies" of the night he knew have been yuppied,
upscaled, and turned into restaurants. Some of the S-workers
managed to make a ton on their small "worthless" Cihanger
S-shops, and one I happen know at age 60~70 still has his
breasts under his business shirt. [He showed me them once to
shock me with an evil grin at McDonald's, where he holds court.
Still nice. Today there is more tourist money in macho, and
McDonald's seems the appropriate place, I guess.]
on a Friday morning
breeze
chanting floats in
noon prayers soon
Isa in Istanbul
