Collecting Moments

I draw with a charcoal, play my jaw harp, write poems, read and walk along the fields with cows and sheep. TWO YEARS AGO when I left my computer programming job I couldn’t even dream of such luxury. During this time I wandered around abandoned villages in Cyprus, said hello to wild donkeys in Karpas peninsula, got to a Phoenician island with no phoenicians, tasted the best olive oil in Sicily, enjoyed Frida Kahlo art in Rome, explored a huge abandoned factory in Greece, showed my face on security cameras of all the synagogues in Istanbul, tasted an Armenian lavash just from the oven, got robbed and got my money back in Georgia, saw all Armenian monasteries from the Parajanov’s movie, got into every derelict cottage in Ireland, got my unemployment benefits in Israel, survived Ramadan in Kurdistan, sneaked into an abandoned amusement park in Berlin, visited Basque Country (neither Spain, nor France), learned basic Spanish, got lost in the Love Valley in Cappadocia, hitchhiked around Cauc...

Ani is like a battlefield where instead of wounded and killed there are stones. Piles of stones. Thousands of stones from a thousand and one churches that used to stand in that ancient city. They keep eternal memory for this place. And blind faces on the walls can still talk and tell the history together with the birds flying around the roofless ceiling...

Остров Ахтамар на озере Ван - Это родина наших предков. Моего деда убили здесь неподалеку. Очень больно. Очень! - Десятимесячного брата отца застрелили турки в их доме в Ване. Отцу было шесть лет, когда его родителям пришлось бежать из родного города в восточную Армению. По дороге у них родилась девочка. Все говорили, что ее надо бросить, что она все равно в пути не выживет. А бабушка сказала “нет, это мое спасение”. В этом году моей тёте исполнилось бы сто лет...

Вчерашний день как жаркий вязкий сон — Персидские ковры, Афганские наряды.    - Откуда ты? — Ирландия. — Ирланда?    - Да. — Глазго? — Даблин!    - (Тель-Авив, Израиль. Но это про себя...) Турецкие слова сквозь плотный липкий дым. 'Чи кёфте', 'мерхаба'... По-курдски “Спас” — “Спасибо” — как по-русски. Чай с вкусом табака, Иранские маршрутки. Мне в Грузию. Я ниоткуда. ** Чи кёфте — турецкое блюдо Мерхаба — "здравствуйте" по-турецки

I’ve been dreaming about this place for fifteen years… A 20 km hike in the Cappadocian mountains through the Pigeon and Love Valleys. Human history carved into the natural beauty... I fell in Love with this Love Valley :)

She’s a little girl, a hippy, Dreadlocks, tattoos. They had a fight a minute ago And she is still confused. There are no sheets And the carpet is full of cats’ hair. It is easy to leave this place But it is not fair. It’s dark and filthy And smells like shit. She struggles to smile But she can not quit. She moved in with him. It was five months ago. She’s trapped in his flat With no other place to go. There’s no fresh air It’s impossible to breathe. But she will not go out To feel the breeze. She’s just a little girl, A hippy with sad eyes. It’s easy to leave this place But there's no disguise.

Before the ancient Greeks and Romans, christians and muslims in Anatolia there were the Lycians. They loved freedom, carved tombs into the rocks like the Nabateans and worshiped a mother goddess. That’s how Herodotus (I, 173) describes their matriarchy: “Their customs are partly Cretan and partly Carian. But they have one which is their own and shared by no other men: they take their names not from their fathers but from their mothers, and when one is asked by his neighbor who he is, he will say that he is the son of such a mother, and rehearse the mothers of his mother. Indeed, if a female citizen marries a slave, her children are considered pure-blooded; but if a male citizen, even the most prominent of them, takes an alien wife or concubine, the children are dishonored.” Plutarch gives a mythical explanation of this tradition in his book “Bravery of Women” in the chapter dedicated to the Lycian women: “Bellerophon killed a wild boar which was making havoc of the stock and crops in ...

Rivers running into the sea...

A PRESENT FROM ISTANBUL Yesterday we spent a beautiful day on the green island of Burgaz, half an hour by ferry from Istanbul. I meditated on the sea and walked along the rocky coast. As usual, my souvenir from that trip was an abandoned historical building I found somewhere in the middle of the island. I marveled at its decaying beauty and at the lack of interest from tourists passing by. On the way back I was feeding seagulls from the boat. As my friend put it “Now you are really Turkish!”. When we returned home it turned out that the same day and night in Istanbul the police had dispersed Pride Parade on Taksim square with teargas, water cannons and rubber bullets. Today I met a girl who was there. She was dancing in the street when the crowd suddenly started running towards the metro station. She couldn’t get into the train because it was full and stayed alone on the platform. And the police were firing pepper spray inside the station… She survived and didn’t even get to the hosp...

Разноцветный яркий район Фенер-Балат на берегу Золотого Рога. Греко-армяно-еврейско-турецкая палитра :)