poem/couple things in istanbul

here's the poem i wrote on the way back from kayseri:

barbed-wire barricaded churches
broken, crumbling walls
winds whispering through forgotten hills
roads un-traveled, fields un-tilled-
in many ways the trip is about loss:
confronting it, facing it, staring it down
and refusing to forget.
loss, made tangible
provides the impetus for memory.
only a place, a building, or a mountain
we bring the meaning to it,
and loss, bare, ravaging against us
shades and colors lines sketched by history and other tales.
villages where there were Armenians
vacated patriarchates
grand cathedrals growing grass,
the painted saints their only worshipers.

basically didactic bookended by a bit of imagery, but it gets at my thoughts after going to çomaklı.

and, here for your pleasure is the 'what i'm up to in istanbul' in order to make the next post much shorter:

the museum i went to after the last post was the museum of turkish and islamic arts. lots and lots of carpets, with a smattering of tiles and other interesting things. in addition to the usual anatolian rugs/carpets, they also had a collection from persia (iran) and the caucuses, although im pretty sure things from karabagh (which they mentioned on a display panel) were labeled as azerbaijan. oh well, what can you say.
that was wednesday, and that night, i went to see a relatively famous turkish/folk/gypsy artist whose name i am blanking on. i went with nicolai and some of his friends, including mustafa, whom i had met before. we were a pretty eclectic group (three french, one italian, one american, one turk, one german-born turk) and we really enjoyed the music (which sounded a lot like richard hagopian's band, for those that are familiar). we ended up going to a couple bars after, and i'll leave it at 'we had a great time' and the fact that there is nothing to note from thursday and let you make you're own inferences.
today (friday) i went to the istanbul archeology museum. wow. i think i took over 100 pictures. extensive, three buildings, some incredibly exciting things. im not usually one to really get excited about classical era things, but man, some of the sarcophagi and statues of gods were really incredible. maybe its because i've started reading the illiad in order to prep my trip to troy. i spent about 3 hours there, and really just breezed by the last collections on byzantium. really, really, cool.
plans for the weekend: nicole and i are headed to 360, a very chic restaurant/bar that comes highly recommended from the 'istanbul encounter' guide (its one of the top 10 things to do in istanbul apparently), with some night-life after, and the new bob dylan movie as part if the istanbul film festival on sunday.
okay, home with me- nicolai showed me a park near our apartment, and i swear im going running today.