art and fried chicken

After breakfast we wandered off in no particular direction.  Gay had some sights listed on a map, and our choice was fortuitous – the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art.

Our whole morning and early afternoon became kind of European, except for the unintelligible language describing some of the art work.
The Hara was all about seeing and not seeing – blindness.  Most of the  exhibits were the French artist  Sophie Calle . . . her first exhibit was videos of people she had found in Instanbul who had never seen the sea.  She took them to the beach and photographed their responses.  Some silly, some pretty, some moving.  The best was an old man who stared in impassive bewilderment, even disbelief.  Some children clowned (but didn't dare go farther out than ankle-deep).  One picture was the back view of a woman; after a few minutes she turned around and we could see that she was holding a baby.  She licked her lips and her eyebrows went up in surprise.
A startling and sometimes brutal exhibit was "The Last Image," where blind people were asked to recall the last thing they ever saw.  One was such a dramatic narrative I have to reproduce it here.

Blind with revolver

19:10, June 9, 2008.  I am thirty-nine years and nine days old.  In Guiltepe, two women jump into my taxi.  On they way they keep shouting, 'Faster, faster!' I flash my lights, I honk my horn  This maddens th driver of a metal gray Megane II on my left.  We trade insults.  We get out of our cars. The stranger is five feet and nine inches tall and must weigh over 220 lbs.  He socks me one then gers back into his car.  My head is spinning, but I do the same.  Further ahead, on Yahya Kemal Mahallesi Square, he has stopped and is blocking the road with his car.  I note that the number VE 2106.  I am slightly higher up because the road is going downhill.  I stop and get out  The man calmly gets out of his vehicle.  First I see his left foot.  Then hs left hand, which is holding a revolver.  He turns around.  He walks towards me at an unhurried pace, calm and determined.  I can't really make out his features because his face is so fat.  No expression. As if he's just been pulled out of the freezer.  The top four buttons of his shirt are undone.  He is wearing jeans.  He has a ten-cay beard, chestnut hair.  Our eyes meet. His are brown or black. I see no sign of hatred, anger or joy. We don't say a word.  He grabs my head, holds it against his chest with his arm, and fires a bullet into my left eye which comes back out above the right eye.  Since then I have forgotten my wif's face, my children's… Everything has gone. But I can still clearly see a man getting out of a car with a gun in his left hand.  Maybe one day this image will disappear just like the others, but it will never be replaced. All that's left will be black.  Until that day, it’s the last one and the only one.
I lost my trial.  The man is a Mafioso, he threatened my passengers, they refused to testify. As for me, I'm unable to identify him.

Whew.  Life in the big city.  Though I guess Guiltepe is not so big.

There was a nice park behind the museum.  We had a glass of wine and watched kids playing.  I like these small art collections.  They have coherence, and you can spend plenty of time on each piece.

Walked back into town, stopping at a random hotel for a late lunch, small servings of salad and grilled salmon with home-made bread and olive oil.  (Continuing the accidental European theme – no rice or chopsticks.)

Most of the afternoon was given over to moving from the urban hotel to our exurban one, more than an hour away by fairly fast train.  Our expert guide in this transaction was Kyoko Ogushi, who picked us up at the hotel and walked us through the high-speed bustle of the railroad station and several transfers, and then made sure we were settled in properly.   So now we're in a rather larger motel room, about the size of a Holiday Inn.

We had a lovely dinner last night, at an unprepossessing place across the street.  It was decorated with amateur paintings of sea creatures, so we went in.  No English nowhere.  On the menu I pointed at two small fishes that looked kind of like baby snappers.  To my delight, the waiter brought out a small brazier and lit a fire in it.  Two little fish on a platter, headless, scales scraped off.  I had metal tongs to put the fish on the fire and turn them as they cooked – gourmand heaven!  We also had bowls of delicious pickled vegetables.

Gay got fried chicken!  It came out in one deep-fried mass, and the waiter cut it into manageable pieces with shears.  It was great, spicier than KFC.

There's not much to this little burg, Urawa, Saitama, but we know we'll eat pretty well!  We're also next door to a supermarket, where I got a big waxed carton of okay red wine, a liter for about nine bucks.  If you don't find me online, look for me relaxing in an alleyway with a paper bag.

Joe