Ulus Club Scene

I came across a story in the NYT today about a hot new expensive trendy fancy pants nightclub in Istanbul called Ulus 29. I lived in Turkey for a year, teaching English, finishing my little opus, A Century is Nothing, making images and staying alive to tell the tale.

In Ankara there is an ancient part of town called Ulus. The excellent Museum of Anatolian Civilizations is in Ulus.

Ulus was my favorite area in the cold boring government city filled with Russian hookers, Mafia, faceless paper pushers and friends. Did I mention the well adjusted people and anxiety ridden urban population wearing huge watches to tell time something important and popping pills to relieve themselves of anxiety, passionate guilt, remorse, loss and fear? Probably.

I went to Ulus on my day off to sit with cafe owners, carpet makers and dealers, ceramic artists, painters, booksellers, antique junk sellers and the working class. Here are nine images.

These people probably have no idea there is a club named Ulus 29 in Istanbul and they could care less. You may as well be talking about extraterrestrial life in a distant galaxy.

Metta.

Mud

Young men and women haul mud from an excavation site where the owner will build an extension to his home.

One man chops it with a shovel, a girl grips a severed block and dumps it into a bucket. Another girl carries the bucket through mud, handing it to a boy who dumps it into a cart.

Women do the heavy work. Lifting and carrying and pushing.

He pulls and she pushes the cart down a narrow alley, turns right and maneuvers along a narrow potholed road jammed with motorcycles. Beep-beep. They get it to a central dumping zone filled with discarded bricks, debris, plywood and used mud. They dump it. Their return trip to the excavation site is light. They repeat the process.

Metta.

Balloon people

You'll be pleased to know the sound of jackhammers, chisels and motorcycle beep-beep music fills the air.

The poetics of balloon men and women walking world streets hawking air filled color. One old grizzled man in Turkey existing in a boarded up concrete cave below a domed hammam did his daily work to get to one of life's little intersections where he would stand and wait.

A young balloon boy in Indonesia did the same, following his plantation dirt trail through fields of discarded plastic bags, garbage, chicken bones, burning refuse, and broken dreams under construction by teams of hammering no-name boys stranded in a gated community to stand and wait nearby air-conditioned malls and choking vehicular streets.

Here, a woman and girl stand and wait and converse late on a humid night at a roundabout, their purple, green, orange shimmering air toys playing above their muted voices as cycles, cars and people traverse their destinations. Beep-beep.

A man pushes his balloon bike cargo down a narrow street. Excited kids run out to see all the colors, shapes and floating dreams.

The poetics of balloon love.

Do what you love and love what you do.

Metta.