Zencefil
Reminding me of a quiet café I had the pleasure of visiting, if only once, in Bursa, the company of a single couple laughing quietly, idyllic levels of street noise, strains of New Age music in the distance, and a cool afternoon breeze made it—for once—an actual pleasure to dine alone in Istanbul, which is otherwise a city meant for eating in company. Except for a chicken-and-leeks dish, the entire menu was vegetarian, and, somehow, the pairing of lentil patties, ezme, and a glass of good Turkish wine (quite the find!) was so refreshing, it made me wonder—in the last lingering moments of degustatory bliss—whether I had ever really enjoyed a glass of anything in my life.
Maximalist, Minimalist
Andy Warhol at the Tate Modern & John Pawson at the Design Museum
Anish Kapoor at Hyde Park
Notting Hill Noms
Penguin suffered from severe jet-lag, and not even below-freezing temperatures could get him to leave the hostel much. He did, however, come to enjoy a coffee in Notting Hill one morning.
Afterward, a simple but most excellent Sunday lunch: a tuna wrap, tomato-basil soup, and the most revoltingly delicious soda ever.
Can’t forget dessert—a red velvet cupcake with frosting that wasn’t overly cream-cheesy! Possibly the best red velvet cake I’ve had outside Austin — so much so I even went back for another the following night =)
Ai Weiwei at Tate Modern
Sunflower Seeds, an installation of 100 million hand-painted porcelain pieces, organized by Ai Weiwei (the Chinese artist placed briefly under house arrest last year). For the first ten days, visitors were allowed to walk across the installation, though unfortunately that’s no longer possible.
The curator notes ask, “What does it mean to be an individual in today’s society? Are we insignificant or powerless unless we act together?” As I stared across the room toward a fire extinguisher against the far wall, I thought about how we see individual seeds (on top, on the edges of the installation) and we see the textured whole, but there are seeds (buried, in the corners unreachable past the ropes) that we do not and will not see. The ones we see are the ones that we know were walked on, giving off dust; but do we know how much, if it all, the ones on the bottom moved?
As I wandered around the museum, riots continued to break out in Egypt. When we see the community acting together, who are we seeing?
