The Art of Decay

Today is the day I decided to procrastinate the procrastination on starting the footnotes. This was meant to start 3 years ago when I first moved back to this city with the idea of building this virtual box for myself to throw ideas in as I am on the go re-discovering the city I was born in. The city is Istanbul. It is wonderfully chaotic, so layered that in every step something calls your attention. Then something else does and thoughts that spark one minute dim quickly in the next in the junk-collector-web of one's memory. So these footnotes were going to be the tags for my dimming thoughts before they are forgotten in forever. Brief notes for buried thoughts. Just to be collected in a form to return to and hopefully find a pattern or a story. So here goes the first one "the art of decay":

This starts with one of many abandoned buildings in my neighborhood which are in total decay. They have some historic value (which means the owner cannot demolish them, but they are too expensive to be restored to their original form, so they are left to be) which allows them to stick to life. And as life is it ages everything. First things start to build up then they start to fall off. As much as decay evokes trash or death in many ways, if one looks close enough, there is a chance to see something really beautiful. As in people, aging changes the original form of everything, the smooth finish gets wrinkled, cracked and stained. But once you take it out of context for what it was and see it as what it is - the cracks and the stains and the surviving pieces from layers of years in color jump off as a quite joyful thing to look at, almost a piece of art; A surprising combination of abstract color and random pattern.

(Apologies - the images are not well placed in the layout, as I haven't figured out how to format it)