Sunday 25 November 2007

Shit happens

Last Sunday, an hour long downpour was enough to swamp the lower parts of the town, where the insufficient or not existent canalization could not absorb it. The biggest supermarket, really a big one, was flooded and won’t open in three weeks.
Our studio, also downtown, was flooded as well. Many pieces got damaged, some of them beyond repair. Shit.


(gardenpainter4)
In such situations, I have the greatest admiration for the Turks. They are stoic and laconic and convinced that some good will come of it.
If you travel through the poorest parts of Turkey, you can find always some little old man in rags, obviously at the end of his tether. If you ask him, as is the custom, ‘uncle, how are you?’, he will smile a big toothless smile and answer, ‘very thankful’ (to God). I am always moved by this faith, by the ability to find thankfulness where there is nothing to be thankful for.


(ratsliveonnoevilstar)
I simply envy the ability to disconnect reason and simply believe. We, the infidel, can only say, well…shit happens.

Saturday 17 November 2007

The mail blues

I think I could write a book about the Turkish mail services. I imagine the main post office in Istanbul as a big, crumbling, ill illuminated building. Well, that ill illuminated is probably inspired by the fact that I am writing this post by candle light on my laptop. It is rainy weather, and when that is the case, we have no electricity, sometimes for hours at a time.

Well, in that big darkish building I imagine an enormous pit, where the sacks mail coming from the plains are emptied. Once in a while, a foot dragging, tired civil servant, grabs some mail and put it on the bus to some remote destination, for instance, Marmaris, the small town in the outmost South West, where we live. There in the post office, big baskets filled to the brim wait the whim of another bored civil servant to be distributed. This is no fantasy, the tale telling baskets are in plain sight. The post office employees drink gallons of tea in the mean time and hope that the mail evaporates.
So, it should be clear, that receiving mail is erratic at best. The record of tardiness rest with a post card coming from Holland, that took a year to arrive. Of course other pieces of mail unbeknownst to us could be still very well at the bottom of the pit gathering…experience.
But, because of this, you are grateful and pleasantly surprised with any small mercy coming from the post office. The post office makes you humble and teaches you not to take any thing for granted. Did you know that the post office could do that for you?



(kateblack)
We rent a P.O. box in the main office in town, not to over work the mail man. Seldom any thing ever lies there, but once I found the box overflowing with mail. Briefly I thought the improbable thought that we had won all of a sudden a popularity contest. But of course, it became very soon clear that it was wrongly delivered post, puzzling enough it was outgoing mail, that the tourists in Marmaris had written to home, in the United Kingdom, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, etc.
I queued in the post office and tried to give the mail to the employee, telling him it wasn’t mine. His baffling answer was: we have a margin of error of five percent. And with these words he refused any farther dealing with it, leaving me with almost four hundred post cards in my hand. I told you, life is never boring, here. Routine? ...never!


Sometimes, mail do arrive, and brings wonderful things, like these unbelievable little mermaids, a trade with a lady on Etsy that makes this delicate little gals full with great details and grace. You can find them in her shop, along with other whimsical jewelry for a steal. Go quickly and shop!


Tuesday 6 November 2007

European Dream list!

I'm so happy to be among so many talented European artists in our Street Team at Etsy! Altought we laught alot I'm sometimes sad that I can't buy everything I want...
Here are some of my favorits, they fit perfectly together and are so beautiful on there own!
If you would like to see more of there work you can click on the link below the pictures or you can visit our European Street Team to find many more talented artists!


Karlita

Kreativlink


BabaStudioPrague



Lapomme