the sourcerer: I like it. What is it?

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

I like it. What is it?

This thing I like doing: going to the supermarket in a foreign country and inspecting everything. Seeing what the locals are buying to cook with. There aren't any supermarkets in Beyoglu, but wandering around Cihangir yesterday, I came upon two. Happiness.

Spot doubtful Christmas party dresses on 2nd floor.

So many different kinds of eggs and lentils! I left with a litre of cherry juice and some almond body lotion. I will be back.

Further down the road the Muezzin started his noonday call to prayer. I was so close that it reverberated against my heart. So passionate and plaintive. I had to lean against a wall until the end.

Saw some ladies up ahead - they were laughing at me. The minuscule old one walked up to me, gas canister in hand and we had a long chat. Didn't understand a thing. But it was full of goodwill and laughter. She crossed the road and walked to her house. Turned around and waved. Oh this world we live in. ❤ ❤ ❤

7 comments:

mike berg said...: I told you so ....get down to those little side streets.look for the multi story antique market...fairly interesting stuff...great building.; December 14, 2011 at 9:15 AM
D said...: Nice. My favourite exotic supermarket find was a shelf of canned Pocari Sweat in Malaysia. Sadly it turned out to be an isotonic drink, not bottled sweat from a hairy variety of wild pig.; December 14, 2011 at 7:18 PM
tanjawilmot said...: ah, that call to prayers. you describe it so well.; December 15, 2011 at 1:03 AM
Marie said...: Jis, ek wens ek was daar. The muezzin, so many times a day, that sound I love. Have you heard the singing gas truck yet?; December 15, 2011 at 6:17 AM
the sourcerer said...: D - they advertise pocari sweat over and over on Etihad, with whom I flew. It took me a while to realize that it wasn't a joke...
T - I think of you around every corner!
M - no singing gas truck yet, but singing scrap men with beautiful old carts.
xxx; December 15, 2011 at 9:10 AM
Karen Bekker said...: Faan says to tell you he LOVES your pics! and I'm very envious -happy shopping x; December 15, 2011 at 7:27 PM
the sourcerer said...: Thanks Karen - you know we have a mutual admiration club! thought of you today whilst perusing elegant hosiery...; December 15, 2011 at 7:47 PM

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You could tend a garden at night, only at night, pouring dark water onto leaves, and into the earth, like pouring midnight onto midnight. You could hold your soil-stained hands up to the moon. The stars would gleam on the bottom of the shovel. It would smell the same as a daytime garden - it would smell green, violet, red, white. But come back, in daylight. Come back, to see the colours without closing your eyes.
- Sean Michaels. Accompaniment to the song "Immune" by LOW. Said the Gramophone

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."
Jim Jarmusch (1953- )

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you smelled and saw nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought that Cézanne was probably hungry in a different way.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) - from A Moveable Feast.