When you blink your eyes...

Alice with a broken leg. Crystal Castles @ Terminal 5 - March 18, 2011.

When thinking of the title it reminded me of this old great on Live at Leeds. Possibly the originating track of rock opera, A Quick One, While He's Away.

I went to the MoMa on Saturday and saw the abstract expressionist show. One of my favorite parts was the entire room filled with Rotko paintings. I felt inspired but didn't do anything with it until Sunday night. It wasn't anything that looked at all like Rotko, but I have been wanted to use the scanner more as a tool for artwork. I had done it once before and enjoyed it.

This time I wanted to start from an original drawing. The first worthwhile subject that came to mind was Rotko's only self portrait. I did a quick rough pen sketch based on this painting, probably less than 5 minutes. Then, used a sort of similar technique as I had done last time, move the paper around while scanning. However, this time I got the idea to scan it multiple times. I printed the first wobbly scan and scanned that one, the above image as the final result. I did my best to keep the eyes in focus which I felt helped add to the final composition.

Here is the image I originally drew from and a comparison of what Rothko actually looks like.

More from the hot air balloon ride over Cappadocia in Turkey.

I noticed these trucks in a parking lot in Selcuk after walking through the weekly Saturday farmer's market. I'm pretty sure they are used to haul in produce or other goods to the market.

I'm sitting in the Istanbul airport waiting for my flight home this morning. Its already been a long day getting up at 3:30AM to get to the airport. Found a quick WIFI spot so I'll put up a few more photos while I can then add some more when I get back.

The last several days of the trip we did a lot of riding in vans to different locations. We had flown out to Nevesehir but after a few days in Cappadocia we drove to Konya the home of Rumi then went on to stay in Pamukkale. Checked out some ruins and the calcium pools there. Then drove on to Kusadasi to look at the sites around there including Selcuk with the supposed place of The Virgin Mary's death, the farmers mark in Selcuk and finally the best bazaar we'd seen in a small town called Sirince. The place we spent the last few nights before leaving for the airport was kind of a tourist resort beach town called Kusadasi.

Hotel in Pamukkale

Bazaar in Sirince

Kusadasi

I’m drinking an automatic espresso overlooking the Aegean in Kusadasi. I had to move into hotel business center and hijack their ethernet cable as they have no wifi. Back to a few things I didn’t have a chance to write about from Sunday.

On Sunday evening after we took a short rest from the marathon we took the tram to the area where the spice market was. There was somewhat of an outdoor restaurant area near the water that had quite a few people in it. TJ said Rick Steve’s said there were good fish sandwiches here. There was a queue of about 5-6 people in a fast moving line where 2 guys were quickly building fish sandwiches so that looked as good as any. They cost 5 Turkish Lira. They turned out to be pretty tasty. I was so hungry after the marathon I could have eaten about 3-4 of them right then but decided to wait so I could try some other food. The only thing that could have added more to the sandwich was some kind of tartar sauce or mayonnaise. The only condiments I saw were salt and lemon juice. Right by our heads while we were eating where a long line of fishing lines of people fishing from the level just above. A few times I saw weights fly inches away from people’s heads next to me as they were casting out.

We then road the tram several stops to the Taksim district. It seemed less touristy overall and where young people who lived in Istanbul may actually come to hang out. It was very busy. We walked past groups of people just leaving soccer matches as we came in with light red Turkish Telekom jersey’s on.

One thing I noticed is that there was no Western music here, for that matter most places in Turkey in general. Also the music sounded good. Seemed like modern Turkish music. Mainly acoustic guitar and a man singing. We went into some place someone in the group had read about. It had mediocre bar food, the usual kebap's and meatballs with Efe's beer. There was a guy singing in there with a deep voice. Something that kept making us laugh was before every song he kept saying "seh, seh, seh" or something like that. We later found it meant what we thought it was. "test".

Monday morning we took a flight out of Istanbul airport further into the interior to the Cappadocia region where we would be for the next few days. I hadn’t done a lot of research ahead of time so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. The flight was comfortable and short and we landed at Nevesehir airport within a few hours. Its pronounced like “Kapadokya” and was spelled that way on many signs around the area. The geological structure and colors were an obvious change from Istanbul as we flew in. I was pretty sure I could see a volcano as well. It turns out the volcanoes are what creates the unique rock formations.

The hotel we stayed at was in Goreme. It was called The Sultan Cave Suites and actually rather nice. Much more comfortable beds than the previous place and cooler at night. It was kind of up on a hill and did seem to be at least partially built from a real cave. Cave dwellings are very common in the area as I would find out over the next few days. A man named Mustafa welcomed us and advised us on what to do in the next few days while we were there. He was a great salesman and spoke English very well. He said he had just returned after living in Nova Scotia for 5 years selling Turkish rugs.

We got up at 5:30AM the next morning in order to do a hot air balloon ride. This was one of the highlights of the trip so far for me. The balloons seem to be a big revenue source for the area, there were about 50-60 in the air at the same time we were up. At first the wind was too high so we had to wait, they actually inflated the balloon 3 different times before we went up. The third time we went even though the wind was a bit strong. The balloon pilot’s name was Mustafa as well. He said he’d been doing it for 7 years and was from Goreme. He had a sarcastic sense of humor. It lasted almost exactly an hour, just the right amount of time.