Light

I’m sitting in my apartment, writing, writing, writing. Chloe is sleeping at my feet, at the foot of the bed. The sky is bright, clear blue and the light is luminous. I’ve opened the cream colored drapes but the sheers are pulled and they blow in the breeze and it is perfect. This is the kind of light that makes things glow. It’s almost brighter in here when I close the sheer, white curtains than when I open them. The walls are bright white and all this light makes me want to paint my new apartment white when I finally find it instead of the saturated colors I’ve been using for the last few years. This is water light. I keep expecting to look out the window and see an ocean or a sea. I have always thought of the Bosphorus as a river, but it is actually a strait connecting the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea. Now that I live within sight of it I’m starting to understand the Turks’ fixation with the Bosphorus.

The view out my window is sort of urban-Mediterranean. Bright light. Sand and tobacco and grey-blue buildings sharp against the clear blue cloudless sky. The buildings are four to six stories, plain, boxy, and they climb steeply up hills away from the Bosphorus, and are interspersed with trees. Laundry flutters, satellite dishes perch, birds fly and horns honk. Now and then I hear the voices of men conversing outside their shops, talking in the streets.

I hear the sound of the guys across the street playing backgammon and I rouse myself to make lunch—tuna and the best tomatoes I’ve had since I was 10-years-old.