"love comes to you and then after
dream on,
on to the heart of the sunrise.
sharp distance!
how can the sun with its arms all around me?
sharp distance!
how can the wind with so many around me?
i feel lost in the city"

so sang yes back in 1972, in the heart of the sunrise, last cut of the fragile album, one of their best, definitely. i was a city boy with spoilt child access to "nature", and though i liked the song very much, had not put much philosophical stock in its complaints. however, in those years, i used to live in ankara and the capital of turkey respired such low quality air that snow would turn black, not just grey but black, in one night and if we missed playing snowball the first few hours, forget it till next time. so, the suffused breathing space often did make me empathize with yes anyway.

i spent the longest stretch of my life in bodrum, or on the mediterranean sea, to be more exact.
i guess i can claim that i know what it is to feel the wind play around your body, how to listen to the water, watch the dance of the changing lights like looking at your favorite daughter sleep and all that romantic stuff. i'm still like a duck in water in any big city anywhere but the thought and the sense in the lines "how can the sun with its arms all around me, how can the wind with so many around me" never leave me alone in istanbul. i never liked this overgrown, filthy, oriental village of false sun and false lights and please don't come up and say "but it is beautiful". beauty is hardly ever a reason for love or liking, maybe infatuation.

besides istanbul, now, is only as appealingly beautiful as a 95 year old elizabeth taylor.

in these days of lovely sunshine, a prolonged and prolonged, much welcome midwinter spring, all i wish is to jump on the saddle and ride aimlessly around, toward any place that sounds or feels attractive. to roll on the throttle, watch the scenery float by, totally alert, totally in tune with the moment. but alas!
dream on on to the heart of the sunrise
sharp distance!
how can the sun with its arms all around me
sharp distance! how can the wind with so many around me
i feel lost in the city

and how does that mood leave me feeling:

midwinter spring is its own season
sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
(t.s. eliot, little gidding, I)