Category Archives: Istanbul

Life in Wartime

June 29, 2016 – 12:22 pm

Turkey has given me a lot. My spouse would be enough; but life in Turkey offers various pleasures, and—for me at least—time to enjoy them. Hard work may be considered a virtue in the United States. Not so in Turkey. I am still driven to do things here, but perhaps only in the way that Thoreau was driven. He was driven to do what he wanted to do. One thing he wanted to do was write as follows.

I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both North and South. It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a divinity in man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night; does any divinity stir within him? His highest duty to fodder and water his horses!

For how many Americans is the highest duty to go to work to pay for the car that they drive to work?

Thoreau’s journal on the beach
Thoreau’s Journal
in the abridgement by Damion Searls
Profesörler Sitesi, Altınova, Balıkesir, Türkiye
Friday, August 28, 2015
See “Thoreau by the Aegean” of the following day

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By David Pierce | Also posted in coup, Facebook, Nesin Mathematics Village, Thoreau, Turkey | Tagged | Comments (6)

Surgery & Recovery

June 13, 2016 – 12:34 pm

On June 7, 2016, I underwent surgical repair of an inguinal hernia. I did not know what to expect. I did not know that I did not know: I did not consider that there was anything in particular to be prepared for. But there was.

Clock tower of Şişli Etfal hospital, from the fourth floor
Clock tower of Şişli Etfal hospital
from the fourth floor

The surgery itself was not such a big deal. It was a fascinating experience, but not one that I found myself wishing I had known more about ahead of time. Recovery has turned out to be something else. If a medical website says of recovery, “You may experience some discomfort,” it is practically lying. Discomfort was what I experienced, waiting in a chair, or on a gurney, for the surgery to take place. What I experienced afterwards was searing pain, at least in getting out of bed, with the rather insistent help of a nurse.

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Nesin Mathematics Village, Pirsig, Turkey | Tagged , | Comments (6)

35th Istanbul Film Festival, 2016, part 3

April 25, 2016 – 11:12 am

Part 1 | Part 2

Between the composing of parts 1 and 2 of this account came the death of Prince, whose work had inspired Rain the Color of Blue with a Little Red in It. Between the composing of parts 2 and 3 came the release of the four Turkish peace activists, whose imprisonment had given poignancy to The Demons and The Music of Strangers. There is a certain absurdity associated with each event.

Photo of book, Shakyamuni Buddha

Nikkyô Niwano, Shakyamuni Buddha: A Narrative Biography
(Tokyo: Kôsei Publishing Co., 1980; fifth printing, 1989)

On the cover, a modern copy by Ryûsen Miyahara,
owned by Risshô Kôsei-kai, of
“The Nirvana of the Buddha,”
painted in 1086 and owned by temple Kongôbu-ji,
Wakayama Prefecture, Japan

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Film, Freedom, Maugham, Philosophy, Plato, Turkey | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

35th Istanbul Film Festival, 2016, part 2

April 22, 2016 – 3:48 pm

Part 1 | Part 3

Book cover: Deer Hunting With Jesus

The Demons

Philippe Lesage. Canada. French. Fitaş, Monday, April 11, 2016, 16:00

Ayşe was teaching, but I was free to see a movie. The İstiklâl cinemas were twenty minutes by foot from our urban campus, or one subway stop, if you preferred. Our flat was one stop in the other direction. There was a festival cinema in Ortaköy, and another over on the Asian side; but without even considering these (which I have never visited), I had a Canadian, a Mexican, a Polish, and a Turkish film to choose from. I studied them on the festival website, though not too intently. You are not likely to go wrong with any festival film. Moreover, the catalogue synopses do not always provide an accurate sense. I chose the Canadian movie out of interest in this country as being both American and not. It is also where Ayşe and I met. Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Film, Music, Plato, Turkey | Tagged | Comments (1)

35th Istanbul Film Festival, 2016

April 20, 2016 – 6:09 pm

After a preamble on freedom, this is an account of nine movies in three parts.

This part:

  • Thirst

  • Rain the Color of Blue With a Little Red in It

  • Fire at Sea

Part 2:

  • The Demons

  • The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble

  • Florida

Part 3:

  • Interruption

  • Under the Sun

  • News from Planet Mars

Photo of books referred to in this article

In the summer of 1994, I was a graduate student at the University of Maryland, and I had lived in the state since 1989. My roommate in a suburban apartment complex was finishing her own degree and moving away. I decided to move across the border into the city of Washington, where I had already become involved in some bicycle activism. I found a congenial vegetarian group house. I would bicycle the nine miles to the College Park campus. But moving to the city raised a moral question: should I really give up my political right to a meaningful vote?

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Film, Homer, overlap of classes, Philosophy, Principles of Art | Tagged | Comments (3)

Kıvanç fêted in absentia

March 22, 2016 – 6:18 pm

The birthday of one of our departmental colleagues was celebrated today, March 22, 2016. We were a day late, and the principal was away. His parents were present, but he himself had been imprisoned without bail since March 14.

MSGSÜ garden, 2016.03.22

The charge against Kıvanç and two others is spreading terrorist propaganda, as reported by Academic Freedom Monitor, Human Rights Watch and Nature. Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Freedom, Philosophy, Turkey | Tagged | Comments (3)

Early Tulips

March 14, 2016 – 5:49 pm

Emirgan Korusu, 2016.03.12

Ayşe was still in Ankara, but I had seen rumors on Twitter that tulips were already blooming in Emirgan Korusu. The bulbs were being dowsed with ice water, lest the flowers be overblown for the Tulip Festival in April. Anyway, I wanted to get away from the crowds of Şişli and Beyoğlu. The morning was mostly sunny. Thus on Saturday, March 12, 2016, I headed out to Emirgan, repeating the trip that we had made the previous April.

Emirgan Korusu, 2016.03.12

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Bosphorus, History, Nature, Science, Tourism, Turkey, Visual Art | Tagged , , , , | Comments (8)

Art on Büyükada

March 5, 2016 – 11:08 am

This is about a weekend in the islands, and contemporary art.

The Fourteenth Istanbul Biennial (September 5 to November 1, 2015) had exhibits or installations all over Istanbul, and several of these were on Büyükada, the Big Island, which is Πρίγκηπος in Greek. The Big Island is the last of the four islands visited by the ferry from the mainland. For easier access, Ayşe and I stayed on the second island, Burgazada, the night of Friday, October 23, 2015. We caught the ferry from there to Büyükada on Saturday morning. We visited all of the venues of the Biennial on the island. Illustrating this article are photographs from some of these venues.

I supply some information about the artworks from the Biennal guidebook (which can be downloaded as a pdf file). This was the information that we had at the time of visiting. It turns out that there is more information on the web, sometimes a lot more. Some of the works, at least, do not stand very well on their own. One needs to be told what one is looking at. Without this, one may still look and figure that what one is seeing is meaningful to the artist; but that may be all. In this, the works in the Biennial differ from the photographs and paintings of Emine Ceylan (born 1955), which last month (February, 2016) were on display at my university’s Tophane-i Amire Culture and Art Center. I give one example, from an album of my photos from the exhibit:

Emine Ceylan (title and date unknown to me)
Emine Ceylan (title and date unknown to me)

This seems not to be the kind of thing that the big names in art today are interested in doing.

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By David Pierce | Also posted in History, The Islands, Tourism, Visual Art | Tagged | Comments (0)

Pictures

October 13, 2015 – 2:02 pm

This entry features assorted photographs from recent months, along with my reasons for taking the photographs in the first place.

Devices for taking them

In a tweet there was a photograph of a crowd of excited people, all brandishing cellphones, except for this one old woman. Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Facebook, History, Nature, Tourism, Visual Art | Tagged | Comments (2)

Nicole at the Golden Horn

October 7, 2015 – 3:47 pm

The setting was gorgeous. We were atop a hotel (and former convent) opposite the compound of the Italian Consulate—the Italian Embassy, in Ottoman times, before Mustafa Kemal founded the Turkish Republic and moved the capital to Ankara. We looked out over old trees. The street just below us was closed to cars; off to the right it became a stairway and a narrow passage up to İstiklâl Caddesi. Beyond the trees of the Consulate were the Golden Horn and Seraglio Point, with the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara beyond. As night fell, electric lights illuminated the Seraglio itself—Topkapı Palace—along with the Hagia Sophia.
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By David Pierce | Also posted in Bosphorus, Collingwood, Plato, Principles of Art, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)