Tiles and City Lights

Just by looking at the titles, I hope you realized that this isn't going to be a very well-organized post. Although, unfortunately, it was a bit more planned than I am willing to admit. Organized chaos, maybe? Not usually my style, but I like these photos a lot and wasn't entirely sure where to put them amidst the jumble of photos I'm trying desperately to organize. So it begins. 

If I'm remembering correctly, I took this photo inside a mosque in Istanbul that was famous solely for the tiles that covered the walls, some of which could be dated back to the Middle Ages. 

Turkey, but Iznik, more specifically, is especially famous for its tiles. Just start to Google "Iznik" and your first suggestion will be things like "Iznik tiles" or "Iznik plates." I often like to say that some things are cliché for a reason, and I firmly believe that paying attention to--or at least being aware of--stereotypes and the like is extremely important, mostly because there must be some legitimacy behind the fame. Hopefully. With these tiles, though, there is no doubt that every ounce of fame is well-deserved. Some people might be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of detail and intricacy that prevails every tile, but I think that is, essentially, what makes the tiles, unified, beautifully unique. 

All of these tiny, stunning pieces fit together so wonderfully. If you look at them too critically and separately, they can seem to clash, but that's not the intent, nor is the overall effect if you choose to take a step back and admire the simple, yet dumbfounding intricacy that conflicts but somehow does not collide.

Why is it that I feel like Western architecture severely lacks detail and symbolism? All of the work I saw was consumed by both, and I could not help but be thoroughly moved by it. So much love and pride so obviously went into all of these works; how could someone not treasure these small details and, in my opinion, gifts?

These were shots I literally took from my windowsill in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, where we only spent one night. 

Since my own words seem to be failing me, I have to be banal (but poetically so, yes?) and quote the words of T.E. Lawrence:

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes to make them possible."

So go, then, and dream by day. But after that is done, stop for just a moment and gaze into the night sky, whether it's cloaked by stars or doused in fluorescent city lights, and learn to love life and all it has to offer. Make those dreams reality and obliterate vanity and simple possibility; instead, make it definitely.

Museums of Turkey

Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.
-Phillips Brooks 

Statues and pictures and verse may be grand, 

But they are not the Life for which they stand.

-James Thomson

The monuments of the nations are all protests against nothingness after death; so are statues and inscriptions; so is history.

-Lew Wallace

                                                                             Artemis

Your work is carved out of agony as a statue is carved out of marble.
-Louise Bogan

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. . . . Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you."

-from J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye

History is representational, while time is abstract; both of these artifices maybe found in museums, where they span everybody's own vacancy.
-Robert Smithson

If I'm remembering correctly, this is a statue that used to reside in the ancient city of Ephesus. Legend has it that it stood (or lay?) outside a brothel in the city. Young men were supposed to compare their foot size to the statue's; if it was smaller than the statue's, they were too young to be going to a brothel.

A skeleton in the floor of the archaeological museum in Istanbul. There was no description, no placard indicating why it was there or who it was. There was only a two rather morbid lights shining on it: blue and yellow.

One of the few pre-iconoclastic mosaics still intact. 

One of the many representations of the Mother Goddess, though this one is perhaps the most famous.

                                      Another representation of the mother goddess.