The Sea

This was the title of the book from which, more than thirty-five years ago, I first learned what the sea is. In the propaganda novel of Klára Fehér a little girl, thanks to the takeover of the Communist Party after 1945, becomes a successful medical researcher. The transcendental climax of her internal transformation following the external one is when Ágnes first catches sight of the sea about which her grandmother told her in her childhood:

“…And then her grandmother always stood up from the bench, she shuffled with heavy steps into the kitchen, and she lifted down the picture hanging on the wall above the iron bed.
It was an unframed card, a printed color picture. The sea.
A light blue, unclouded sky, a smooth, azure water surface. At the meeting of sky and sea, a snow-white ship, and a fresh green palm leaf emerging mysteriously from somewhere in the infinite blue.
– The sea – the old woman said solemnly. – Look… it nowhere has a coast, the sea is infinite, it reaches the stars…”

“…The sea is green as the molten glass, cheerfully slamming the shore. The children ride its foaming waves with rubber animals. Ágnes runs into the hot, salty water, she is swimming on the splashing waves, she is exulting, she is drunk with joy. Well, this is the sea, then!
Wherever she sees, sky and sea are embracing each other. The infinity is color turquoise, and at the edge of the horizon a little white dot: a ship. She is swimming, swimming on the emerald water, and she sees herself, the image of her childhood, her grandmother, the picture above the iron bed covered with a coarse blanket. The colored postcard: sea, ship and palm tree. If there is happiness, then she imagined it always like this.
…She cannot part with the water. She goes to the shore, sits on the rock, lies down on the sand, and lovingly looks the infinite water. By midday the sea becomes dark blue, a smooth, dark blue mirror, no ripple disturbs its surface. In the afternoon it suddenly starts to wave, it becomes gray-brown, rough, inscrutable. At dusk it is dark green as the rocks, only at the horizon it is red, where it bathes the sun.
What if she remained motionless on the shore, if she kept sitting here on the rock, watching the swaying giant until she would feel dizzy and would fall into it… what if she now set on running toward the depths?”


I thought much about the sea. In the early eighties, during a student exchange program, our university team went to the Netherlands. On a cold, rainy autumn afternoon they took us to the sea. I could not move away from the coast. It really was infinite. Not that kind of stupid infinity like one plus one to the infinity. But infinitely vast, complex, vivid and beautiful. And one could play with it. I went to the edge and at every swell I tried to stand to the farthest point where it would come out. The Dutch did not understand it and they indignantly pushed me, soaking wet as I was, into the bus.


Not long after, my friends from the Yugoslavian Vojvodina took me to the Adriatic Sea. We went to places where there was hardly any tourist. I was lying on the shore of a small island. All was filled with the smell of resin. No person was around me, only the sea. I felt someone watching me. As I turned back, deers were staring at me from the pine groove. One of course knows that the sea is not infinite, but its beauty is so many-sided and so intensive that this knowledge does not matter. This beauty even raises you above the inevitable terror of experiencing your own limitations. And no matter how few you are able to receive of it, by way of that you will connect yourself with the sea.

From then on, I dreamed of the sea and longed for the sea.


Twenty years ago I was converted. The infinity has opened for me. Some years ago I noticed that the sea is not so painfully lacking any more. Nevertheless, the things that refer to the person beloved will always remain dear to us.


These pictures were taken just a year ago on the shore of Port d’es Canonge in Mallorca. Not far from here, in the seashore cathedral of Palma within some minutes – just like every Christmas night since seven hundred years – the medieval Song of the Sibyl will resound.


El Cant de la Sibiŀla, Mallorca. Jordi Savall, Montserrat Figueras, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, 1998 (36'50)

Berlin, Stegliz, Saturday morning

Ion Ivanovici (1845–1902, born in Temesvár/Timișoara, Serbian bandmaster of a Romanian military band): The Waves of Danube, in the Hungarian version by Pál Szécsi: A single bluebell

Game

At the terminus a Gypsy man and woman with three children stood next to me. They were around twenty-five or thirty year old. The features of the thin, small man were so tense and he was so painfully organized even in shorts as a mafioso in an Italian Neorealist movie. The woman was somewhat sloven, already a bit plump, but still girlish. They stood silent, embarrassed. The bus came. The man handed over the boys to the woman and was about to leave. The boys were clasping in their hands the little games they obviously got for the occasion. The woman, still clinging to the presence of the man, threatened them that if they will not be good, she would take their games away. The boys pulled themselves together a bit. – How long must be good? – asked one of them. – For a long time! – the woman replied without hesitation. The little boy looked at her, expecting to know for how long exactly. The woman thought for a moment. – All your life.

Kerchiefs, kerchiefs, kerchiefs ...

in all quantities, sizes, shapes, colors. The very first thing one encounters when exiting the arrival hall of the Istanbul airport is the poster of the Armine fashion company showing a very pretty young woman with a kerchief. And from then on the whole city is full of little, small, huge and giant posters, and on the posters wonderful women with kerchiefs. And not only on the posters. By the time I arrived to the inner city, I was completely enthusiastic. Kerchiefs became a fashion in Istanbul.

Der makām-ı Şūri Semâ’i (Mss. D. Cantemir 256). Savall: Istanbul, 3'33"

Four years ago we set out from here to Persia where I was completely fascinated by what an incredibly sophisticated fashion can be pursued with the strictly regulated black chador. The kerchief costume of Istanbul, on the contrary, had not made any particular impression on me, and it did not seem to be very different from what is usual at us.


Now, however, it is immediately striking how many women wear a kerchief. Not only the elder and the poor, but also the young, the obviously affluent and highly educated women wear it in mass, from the veil covering even the eye to the highly artistic and extravagant compositions. And they seem to find a great joy in it

Among the young people it is undoubtedly the Armine company to determine the trend: discreet, subtle pastel tones and floral patterns, natural, soft materials. They do not sell only kerchiefs, but whole collections, dresses, accessories, everything harmonized with everything.

In addition, there are many, not only young people but also elder women who, taking full advantage of the wide range of possibilities, wear similarly sophisticated, but individually configured kerchief and dress compositions.


I guess I have never ever seen a fashion which would have showed in such a fabulous wealth and diversity in how many ways one can be pretty and feminine.

Sunday morning

Early Sunday morning, the sun just starts to shine in. On the days when it is too cold to drink my tea and pray in the garden, I sit on this bench and watch the garden from here.


This is what I see before me on this Sunday morning.



Opposite, the door to the garden.


This is what I see to the left. Between the two columns, a century old pine chest, and around the door, Afghan kilims. We bought them fifteen years ago in the Afghan carpet shop in Hajós street when nobody was interested in nomadic rugs yet. Probably they are the world’s cheapest nomadic carpet shop: some pieces are cheaper than on the spot, over there. It’s their secret how they do that.


Behind the gallery bar, our library.


The carpet to the left is made of a Qasqai camel foal hair rug and two Bakthiari flour sacks which I sewed together. The Qasqais and Bakhtiaris are two nomadic tribes in the western Iranian mountains, which, just like the other tribes in the area, produce fantastic hand-woven fabrics. We received them in Isfahan, in the bazaar, from the collection of Akbar Keshani with whom we spent a day and who asked us to take care of them as if he gave us his own children. The felt to the right was painted by me. If I remember well, it was in 1991 that we visited the exhibition of the ethnographic museum of Vienna on the carpets of an Afghan nomadic tribe. I wove for years, and I know a little bit about carpets. I was totally amazed by the incredibly high quality of their works. We spent several hours at the exhibition. Before exiting the room, we found a small table on the wall which explained that this tribe does not exist any more, they were destroyed during the war in Afghanistan. I made the felt in their memory, with a motif frequently used by them.


The beam of the gallery was carved by Tamás on the model of a mosque’s beam in Swat, a Northern Pakistani valley famous for its archaic wood carving. And the gallery bar was made by us and painted with medieval Armenian cross patterns.


This is the fireplace with the footprints left by Brumi. I usually repaint it every year after the heating season. I hope that I can do this year’s repainting next week.


The cabinets were found thrown out on the street in the seventh district twenty years ago, the straw hat is from the fair of Csíkszendomonkos/Sândominic in the Eastern Carpathians. The shawl on it from Southern India – Kerala –, where we were scanning medieval Syriac manuscripts in the jungle. The lute on the wall is a short-necked Afghan rubab used by one of our favorites, the Kurdish Kamkars Ensemble, formed by eight brothers. We bought it in the Istanbul Great Bazaar from Afghan merchants who, having seen how good owners of it we would be, gave it for a low price. The copy of a Serbian icon of the Christian Museum of Esztergom was made by Tamás’ sister for the inauguration of our house.


This is the front side of the cabinets found. I painted them over. On the right one there is, instead of a door, a woven katrinca from the archaic Hungarian group of Csángós living in Moldova. The table was made on the basis of Tamás’ designs by the same Northern Hungarian village carpenters who also made our roof, and it was painted by me.


And now the sun is finally out. Have a nice day everyone!