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 through a jungle of apartments and stores I felt lucky that I took a taxi cab because I felt lost right at 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 into different thoughts. I used to pass about four historical mosques, a few libraries from between the 17th and 18th centuries, 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. Another couple hundred historical buildings and modern monumental buildings would take this list to the bottom of this page. The idea of investing for the long term was built all around me. "This is not a temporary stay, I am going to live here, I possess 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 through. "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 into the interior? I still use my computer on my mother's hope chest, which was made by my aunt's husband out of walnut wood. I could easily buy a computer desk made of chipboard and painted a walnut color. What else can I do to make my home look like it is 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 already set low by the prices. So is my self-esteem, but that will be discovered later. I cannot complain about the quality of that coffee table because I will already dislike it before it is 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 is given. But still, there has to be at least one—not a Van Gogh, but a nice painting. There has to be a monument in my home. If not a painting, a second-hand piano for twelve hundred dollars, although I cannot play it. There are already so many hands of daily life in my pockets for the little money I did not want to spend, so I cannot whine about this one...