The theme of Topkapi is seclusion. A graduating depth of shadows. Deeper shades of obscuring darkness. Privacy nestled within privacy like Russian dolls, visible in the layers of courtyards and iridescent tiled chambers. Each layer of rooms contained its own household of secrets that transcended and included the rooms that surrounded it. Only those at the centre knew all. The innermost rooms were...
My latest magazine feature just hit newsstands across Canada and select international magazine stores in the United States. It’s the main feature of Outpost’s 15th Anniversary issue: a story of mystery, myth and our search for the real man behind the legend of King Arthur. I learned that a journey through Wales is a lot like waking up in a detective story. And in this episode we were traveling...
The theme of Cappadocia is Seclusion and Fear. Isolated by its arid emptiness, its people sought further seclusion by digging vast cities deep under the ground. They tunneled to escape invasion, military recruitment, and puritanical government attempts to control the distillation of raki. The rock is threaded by rooms in which thousands of people could live for 4 or 5 months without ever coming...
To me, Dylan Thomas has always been a monumental figure. The sheer originality of his word usage was intimidating and sometimes difficult to approach. He was also a poet whose facade of unruly drunkenness could overshadow the importance and originality of his work. So much of his life was shrouded in “official myth” that it was difficult to see the person behind it. Thanks to our friend John...
Writing well is a lot like photography. It involves staying in a place and opening your aperture wide for a long exposure, so that you can gather the most light. The longer you sit at that cafe table or mosque or mountain peak, the more grain and detail will begin to come clear. Focused time allows deeper impressions and images to form on the surface of your mind — but like a camera lens, you can...
Me and the puzzled travellers We searched the ground for wealth And scoured the dreaming valleys On days where shadows melt Digging for the blue and the green Constant in opal or ultramarine If you could only find yourself that way… Steve Kilbey, The Church It’s a lovely fall day on the Bosphorus. Sunny with a scattering of cloud, and the water heaving with steady chop. Asia’s over there...
“The entire Mediterranean seems to rise out of the sour, pungent taste of black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat or wine, a taste as old as cold water. Only the sea itself seems as ancient a part of the region as the olive and its oil, that like no other products of nature, have shaped civilizations from remotest antiquity to the present.” – Lawrence Durrell...
One evening Colin and I hiked up Cave Hill to take in Belfast at stereoscopic scale. On our way back to town, we paused to slake our thirst at a pub called The Front Page. It’s close proximity to the offices of the Belfast Telegraph and Irish News had reputedly made it a hangout for journalists and newspaper workers. While I tend to avoid other writers, Colin, a photojournalist by profession...
It was Notte Bianca this past Saturday in many European cities. An all-night street party where the centre of town is turned into one massive public art display, and where buildings that aren’t normally accessible to the public throw open their doors in a late night architectural peep show. Everything’s free — and it feels like everyone in the country comes out to take advantage of it. The...
Colin was mesmerized by the steady geometry of the rocks backed by grassy coastal cliffs which looked as though the land had been bitten off and then softly eroded. But for me the Causeway was just a strange pile of stones on an inhospitable day. I couldn’t buy into its myth. I only sensed something when I picked my way out to where the slippery stones were surrounded on three sides by the sea...