And speaking of Jeremy Angel, it reminds me of an old friend of our's. He had gotten involved with a woman who had caused all manner of trouble in her wake-- back in England.
Dumping our friend, she had run off to marry a rich Turk. He had been wild about her and so was devasted. How could we ever comfort him? Except to say that the no one could ever resist the allure of Turkish delight.
The woman had gone on to open a wildly successful-- high-end and totally ritzy boutique selling turkish delight right smack in the middle of Istanbul. And I mean it was really fancy (Jeremy and I could not resist the allure of seeing with our own eyes this shop of her's selling Turkish delight)
There were chandeliers and a string quartet in the alcove. Not always strings, though, sometimes horns, sometimes a harpist, but always the same song again and again: a myriad variations on the same tune on different instruments, by different musicians.
Her shop was famous from Venice to Baghdad.
And, she became immensely fat.
For everyone knows that while one bite or two is enough when it comes to icecream and chocolate cake, not so with Turkish delight.... A woman could sit and pop them in her mouth-- one after another-- for an entire afternoon for weeks on end,
weeks
on
end
So, Jeremy and I told our friend: she is there now, plump and gobbling up all the profits....Isn't that worth something to you, man? Just to imagine it....
**
Does this not all remind you of Voltaire and his rich Turk who had famously said, one must cultivate one's garden. And so people argue back and forth about what he meant.
Was Voltaire implying a passive retreat from the outer world to cultivate one's inner Self, or was he instead advocating productive occupation and engagement (in the form of gardening) with the world-- that is working to improve the world through metaphorical gardening.
Our lady in Istanbul, of course, was engaged in both, I would argue. To have a heart's occupation-- for whenever I think of her in her legendary shop in Istanbul, I do think she has lived a Good Life. Her passion for Turkish delight always reminding me of those words of Hannah Arendt: that the heart must go visiting.
For more see:
Jeremy Angel Part 1
Turkish Delight Part 1
The Autotelic Personality
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