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(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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