I was really moved by how welcoming the caretakers of the mosque were when we politely and carefully tread into the awing, majestic, mesmerizing space. Not knowing the customs and rules of respect is always daunting as an outsider. But they showed us that we were allowed to take the stairs to the upper levels, and the silence of the dome shaped place of prayer, honour, and rest, with its soft velvet carpet beneath our bare feet - all the formidability and grandeur of the colossal columns, the dazzling colours and infinitely repeating, unfolding, kaleidoscopic patterns of the mosaics, the spaciousness and intense awareness and calm - everything morphed together to create a spiritual space unlike any other I’ve experienced before.

12 days. 4 cities. Countless moments of kindness from strangers, monumental or minute, recorded on camera or only briefly in passing. Musicians or bus drivers or grocery store cashiers. Sounds of different instruments we’ve only heard on YouTube. Familiar melodies we’ve imitated thousands of times on cello and piano now sung live by locals called together by the sound of a saz playing Âşık Veysel’s “Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayım”, crescendoing into a melancholic yet celebratory chorus as people gather to chant, laugh, and dance.

“Everyone knows these songs.
You could begin the melody anywhere, and even a baby will know it and join in.”

“Are you having a party?

Yes.
It’s called
’the rest of my life’”

Every place that I imprint on has some memory of someone.
Someone known. Someone remembered.
The feeling that I have been here before, and I was not alone.
Here, it was you I think. What a privilege to have felt that with you next to me.
We have been here before. In another life, we are still there.
I think we are happy. In that life too.
And it's a privilege to know, that in another reality, somehow loosely tethered to this one, we love each other too.

To the endless realities.

It’s funny. Looking back, everything fits on two pages. The bullet agenda, not the journal. Colors, tasks, tiny drawings.

And then there are all the moments in between that didn’t make it into the agenda or journal. The tastes and smells and images and ancient languages that we can feel but not speak, that we can only remember, almost, barely, when we hear it, notice it, in between fracturing colliding realities, universes, dimensions.