Imagine Istanbul

In Galata I saw a man who sat alone while the city of Istanbul hurried madly on around him. The ships sailed, the traffic roared, the pigeons rose up in quick escape and the millions of humanity of the city of Istanbul on their errands of self-importance had left this man alone. I have stolen words from my own poem, am I a thief?

In watching people, I sometimes imagine their existence and create a story around this existence. I think this man takes a moment in solitude to feel the melancholia of his life. He has lost the bright innocent joy and the optimism of childhood which can often be found when we are very young. Life did not give to him all it had promised so richly in the fairy tales of childhood. He had paid and paid and not received. Things were not as they appeared to be and most had been, under closer inspection, an illusion. The possibility of purpose and meaning were not found in work because there was no work to be found. Grownup children and love, if it had ever existed, had disappointed.

The hours and days he spent in coffee houses, slowly nursing a cup of tea, smoking cigarette after endless cigarette while chatting with other men in the same circumstances as he, became a habit which bored him in its endless repetition. He had searched and failed to find the meaning of life and took a moment of self reflection. And this is the moment when I found this man sitting alone in Galata and our lives crossed paths for a few brief seconds in time. When he looked back over the fleeting years, life has passed so quickly and time waits for no one.

How do we escape the empty void, the great abyss of despair to make that leap of faith to find joy and the will to create beauty in our lives?

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