Leaving Istanbul...I'm prompted to write. What a happy, generous, forgiving and life affirming culture. I feel so incredably thankful that i have met my favorite Turkish beauties; Sena - wonderful, genuine, patient beauty! I stayed in her extra room, in heat quite unfamiar to my Swedish skin... The running joke from college coming up again, how us Swedes are cold loving, strange-speaking elf-like creatures wjile the life-loving Turks are like the "live for the moment" hobbits. Generally speaking we brought up a slew of positive attributes of both peoples.



As i landed, my hopes for a sunny vacation (I had already made peace with the fact that I wouldn't have a warm vaca...) were dashed with every heavy flurry that flung itself at the taxi windows. The morning was beautiful, but I'll admit my goals as a travellor changed quite a bit.
Lately I have been daily meditations, finding joy in the moment and trying to keep my skin aware and my mind in the now. That became my goal for the trip.



I headed first to the Istanbul Modern, an industrial and simple museum only recently opened with the goal (it seems to me) of presenting the artists and art of the East-west synthesis that is so characteristic of the city of a hundred names.

NEW WORKS, NEW HORIZONS
"The museum is a home for art. It serves as a host to art las an alternative to all the production and consumption relations we experience."

The piece that welcomes you to this exhibit:
Hallac-I Mansur, 1987
"...has produced responses in his own visual language to the East-West synthesis that has become one of the fundamental problems of artists ever since the process of westernization."