One Year Later

It has been one year since I had left home: a humid, crowded airport; the dogs in the street; Diwali crackers like machine guns; hell swarms of mosquitoes; the fortress in the sea; the Tower of Silence, the city being built; the cheer at the end of the powercut; desperate lessons; war; the goat in the taxi seat in the rush to depart; struggle; order; a bicycle and a coat; Nudelhaus; the transformation of places; the toy ship I meant to buy for Fredrick; discovery of Lübeck and the terrible airport meal; beautiful, lost Stockholm; the empty haunted Dance Museum; shelter; the frost fields; my German friend apologizing for World War II; a bottle of glögg for the Minister of Finance, and his run-ins with the Russian secret service; miscalculated currencies; falling off the planet; hunger; Eva and the pogrom; a true friend; a bus into the inkwell; RIX; the first city to which I had ever returned; the first home to which I had ever returned; a long walk through Sugar Hill in the winter night; "Oh my god!"; the high-pitched whistling language in the alleys of Harlem; poverty; joining the circus; the birdhouse; Noel as I walked Broadway north; heartbreak; rediscovery; a new forest in the woods; Diego; Bastille Day; love in the mountains; fears for my family; the transformation of places (2); a secret city; Q58; losing grapes and strawberries at the Astoria Pool; autumn together; a family business.

I told my aunt that for the last few years, the perception of the flow of time has become something that I am much more mindful of. When you are 10, another year is 1/10th of your life, months are eternities. Now a year feels the way 3 months used to in the speed in which it passes by. She laughed, saying, "Wait til you're 60!"

It has taken the full year to understand, to be able to gain perspective on, any of the things which have happened over the past year. I don't know if that perception of the passage of time helps mull over things faster to learn their lessons. Maybe it makes it feel like less time, even. All I know is that while it feels like it was so recently that I was boarding airplane and disappearing, I can hardly comprehend the compression of those events into 10 years much less the one. It feels like just months ago that I was in Romania, much less Bombay, much less Amsterdam.

That said, this next year shall not spare me from, I'm sure, just as much new adventure. Let's just be done for good with the heartbreak though, okay? I think I can write good enough stories without that angle. I'm looking forward to writing some with happy conclusions.

And war, too. No more of that.

Zing!

Today I made the most erudite graffiti alteration that bathroom stall has ever seen!

Originally scrawled on the wall was, "OBAMA IS THE WORSE IN HISTORY!"

Someone had crossed out "Obama" and written above it, "YO MAMA"

My alteration was to cross out the "Y OM" and make it read, "AMADINEJAD IS THE WORSE IN HISTORY!"

The Lost City of Armenia

I think I have talked in the past about wanting to see Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. But other than that, besides a joy in the proper pronunciation of "Ossetia," I don't think I had thought much about the Caucasus region until I met my wonderful girlfriend, Victoria, whose family background is Armenian.

I hope you don't mind indulging me as I take a look east at some fantastic history that, until now, I have been unaware of.

Armenia has existed for a long time. It is one of the world's ancient nations, though its modern borders are diminutive compared to its former imperial grandeur.

What I want to talk about today is the lost city of Ani, Armenia's medieval capital, which is in the modern Turkish state of Kars right along the border. Kars was ceded to Turkey by the USSR in exchange for Adjara in modern Georgia in a pretty significant emotional shortchanging of the Armenians. But let's look at Ani. If you want to play along, open up your Google Earth or Maps to 40°30' N by 43°34' E and switch it on to Satellite view. I recommend Google Earth though, because you can see some of the topography that plays into the layout of this incredible, doomed city.

These are my interpretations based upon information at hand and my experiences in wandering around medieval citadels. I haven't been to the site, though I'd someday like to; the photographs are via their respective artists on Panoramio, which I link to in all cases.


I've enhanced the image to show what I imagine to be city limits and bring out the contrast in the foundations of the buildings (which, below, you'll notice are harder to see). I'm basing this on the remaining ramparts that surround the north of the city and the topography around the rest of it, which shows up to a 200ft drop into the river valley on the eastern side and in the gorges on the western side. I hope the contrast shows gives you a better idea of the road layout, which I'll make some assumptions on later.

The Lion's Gate is the centermost point on the top of the map. This, I believe, is the traditional gateway and main entrance to the city. A triangle of main streets leads between the Lion's Gate, the Manuchehr Mosque, and the badly-damaged Church of the Redeemer. Further from the southern tip of the triangle, the road leads up a hill 60 feet and winds in a spiral around the hilltop where a massive structure once stood, probably the palace or administrative stronghold of ancient Ani. Between the Mosque and the Church of the Redeemer is the Ani Cathedral, the most complete structure in the city. Down directly south from the Cathedral are the ramparts of a former bridge across the river. On the other side of the city, the western side away from the triangle of main streets, another wedge of the city is abutted at the city wall with the Seljuk entrance, within the wedge is a circular ruin of the Church of St. Gregory. As far as I can assume, it appears that the rest of the area around that church is civil use.

I want to show you the extent that this was a living, breathing, functioning city that hosted a population of 100,000 and was said to have been a peer to Constantinople. How about some town squares and open spaces?


Let's label these spaces starting with the topmost first (1), then mid-left (2), mid-right (3), bottom left (4), bottom right (5). Ani was known as "the city of 1,001 churches" and it can be seen within the city plan that there was, like in most if not all medieval cities, a focus on the church as the center of civilian life. No matter the individual's place in society, the church was where everyone gathered. Most of the town's squares are functional around these churches and the mosque (1, 3, 4, and 5). Another point of fascination for me is the open spaces at (2 & 4). I believe the boulevard leading between them to be the central market of Ani, lined with hardy shops whose foundations are the most visible from above, only after the churches and the fortress. At either end is an open square, perhaps the grandest at (2) with a chiefly secular function, and maybe an open bazaar from the Silk Road trade. The space at (4) ends the market but serves as an square to the Manuchehr Mosque. There are other various courtyards, but these are the key open spaces.

How about a road map, and then maybe some zoning districts? This took a lot of work. Please click them to open them up in large view!


The above is a high-resolution satellite image of the city of Ani.


The above is the same high-res image with my interpretation of the city's roads and zoning. I can't figure out the use of that long strip down the center north of the market (orange). Any ideas?


And the above is my overlay only.

KEY:
Magenta: Roads
Yellow: Religious Structures
Blue: Residences
Orange: Commercial
Green: Open Space/Courtyards
Red: Other (Palace, dock)

I believe, also, that within the residential districts you can determine that the poor district is the area to the east of the Lion's Gate. This would be the area most susceptible to attack, as the only real approach to Ani, topographically, is from the plains to the north. It is crowded against the wall in ways that other areas of the city are not.

The majority of the residences within the city are standard, but the southern row on the way up the hill to the palace I think would be the housing of the city's elites.

I also want to point out the dock on the river, where I would imagine the city's shipping and receiving to take place.

I hope that through this I've been able to breathe life back into this ruin. If you haven't been clicking through the links on notable places, those are photos. But to put this all in perspective, have a look at what is left of the city of Ani, as it stands today (courtesy of Adelade on Panoramio). This is the view from the Palace.


And now, Ani rests.

Hello again, Wren

It has, obviously, been far too long since I have updated. Life is good and I'm being productive and active, according to some accounts, and this is hardly the substantive post that I should break a month.5 silence with, but I thought it was a great discovery.

From wikipedia:

Like all the other republics of the Soviet Union, Armenia had its own flag and coat of arms. The latter became a source of dispute between the Soviet Union and Turkey in the 1950s when Turkey complained as to why it contained the image of Mount Ararat, which held a deeply symbolic importance to Armenians but is located on Turkish territory. Turkey felt that by having the image on the flag, the Soviet Union was making a territorial claim against it; Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union at the time, responded by saying: "Why do you have a moon depicted on your flag? After all, the moon doesn't belong to Turkey, not even half the moon ... Do you want to take over the whole universe?" The government of Turkey dropped the issue after this.

Khrushchev was such a baller.

Interestingly, I can't find a picture of any Armenian flag that shows Mount Ararat. None of the flags used by the republic (1, 2, 3, 4) have the illustration. The Coat of Arms does, though.