URBAN LIFE, ALIENATION, INTERIOR DECORATION

When I was a little kid I used to think how useless clock towers were. Everyone had a watch anyway. So useless were public fountains and monuments.

Recently I had to pay a visit to one of the new suburbs of Istanbul. During my long drive trough a jungle of apartments and stores I felt lucky that I took a taxi cab because I felt lost right on the beginning. I could never find my way back around here and this could be any city in Turkey. There was no outstanding building, bridge, park or monument which I could take as a reference.

I gave up and dived in different thoughts. I used to pass about four historical mosques, few libraries from between 17th to 18th century, some byzantine columns indicating the marketplace, at least four plane trees from the 16th to 17th Century, the historical book market and the grand bazaar on my way to school. Other couple hundred historical buildings and modern monumental buildings would take this list until the bottom of this page. The idea of investing for long term was build all around me. "This is not a temporary stay, I am going to live here, I posses this environment, I am no stranger, and I like myself".

It was very bitter to compare this feeling to what was imposed by the mass of concrete and tin I was now driving trough. "I do not care about this neighborhood and nobody cares about me. I am just an alien trying to consume the days of the rest of my life as fast as I can".

Do I exaggerate? I hope I do.

So I checked the taximeter and started knitting another pessimistic idea. How do I carry this to the interior. I still use my computer on my mothers hope chest which was made by my aunts husband out of walnut tree. I could easily buy a computer desk made of chipboard and painted to walnut color. What else can I do to make my home to look like not my home?

If I lack the imagination there are enough catalogues, advertisements and billboards out there.

Furniture is offered for less than I would want to pay. Prices are designed before the product itself. They all look nice because the bar of my taste is set low already by the prices. So is my self esteem, but that will be discovered later. Can not complain about the quality of that coffee table because I will already not like it before its broken.

But I should not really worry much about this. My income has always been far less than my desire for nice furniture, paintings and books.

So I have to compromise with what's given. But still, there has to be at least one, not a Van Gogh but a nice painting. There has to be monument in my home. If not a painting, a second hand piano for twelve hundred dollars, all though I can not play it. There are already so many hands of daily life in my pockets for little money which I didn't want to spend, so I can't whine about this one...