>> Is the dying fish part of the religious experience?
Thanks, Vincent, for such a full rich vibrant picture.
>>
>> (A snap newly refined from my journal en route in Turkey)
>>
>> Monday, June 4, 2012
>>
>>
>>
>> The
>> intense presence of Istanbul as a vertiginous space – particularly so as we
>> walk &/or take the “vehicular tram” down the steep hill from the Galata
>> Tower to the Galata Bridge. The walk across the Golden Horn, the name for the
>> extended body of water between the old town- the Faith District which is full
>> of ancient churches and mosques – and the Galata neighborhood which was once
>> the home of Christians, refugee Jews, other tribes and criminals. The Bridge's wide east side pedestrian walkway is crowded; young and old,
>> fishing rods in hand, shoulder to shoulder, including a few women friends or
>> family among them, hold their rods out or prop them on the side edge of the
>> protective steel rail; occasionally they variously break to lean over the
>> walkway to prepare their hooks with fresh bait. This constant visual presence
>> of people fishing – as we discover - can strike one as almost a religious rite.
>> The waiting at what is now the darkening edge of dusk, waiting, the pulling
>> back on the poles in response to a nibble, the occasional catch of a fish,
>> their singular silver bellied dark bodies dangling through the late light,
>> lowered on to the sidewalk, then released into a white bucket. They may be
>> sardines or small bass, I don’t know. Most fascinating is, pole in hand, the
>> intense focus, and among some, the deep quiet of the waiting. A kind of
>> secular prayer. It’s as if to get a nibble or to hook an actual fish
>> is to confirm the existence, the vital living existence of one’s soul. Looking
>> here at Istanbul’s citizens, stretched out across the bridge one might imagine
>> that each was filled with an isolated interior darkness without a connection to
>> anything. The loneliness that accompanies the quest to make contact with a
>> fish, and the sense of desire that accompanies it, is practically palpable. Vertiginous.
>>
>> Stephen Vincent
>>
>>
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