Hagia Sophia

Like most men, I suppose, I rank things, which is different than making lists. Women make lists - men construct Top 10 lists. It probably relates to our fascination with sports, especially baseball, which are driven by standings. Following this logic, then, as participatory sports became more popular among young girls then women should have started constructing top 10 lists as well (but maybe this is actually all genetic). So ask any man a question like "What are you top five cars?" they would not hesitate for a moment, and could give you the list, and, more importantly, in order. It could be top five or ten cars in the world or that they had personally owned, but they would have a numerical list. It doesn't matter whether it is favorite professional athletes or teams or classes or best kisses, but they would have a list ready. Now, why am I starting a posting about Hagia Sophia with this odd preamble? As I walked into the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul I had one of those moments when you find yourself sitting there like a dope with your mouth hanging open - and this must have lasted around five minutes. I came back to the real world as if from a dream, and I also was delighted/horrified to discover that I was fighting back tears. The experience was that overwhelming. Now, it relates to the initial point because I had one of those realizations that I've been so remarkably fortunate to have seen so much of the world and to have had other moment like that. Then, of course, being a guy, I ruined it by thinking that I should really construct a list of the Top 10 most amazing, jaw-dropping, tears-inducing places I had ever visited.

Every so often I will scan through the over 450 posts that make up this silly little blog, and it's funny how many times I will write "if you ever visit ________, and every one should visit ________, then you should . . ." OK, if you ever visit Istanbul, and every one should visit Istanbul, you have to make a pilgrimmage to Hagia Sophia. Or, more appropriately, if you ever go to see the Hagia Sophia, and every one should see the Hagia Sophia, then you should see the rest of Istanbul. It is staggering to think that the building itself dates back to the 300s, and it reached the form we recognize around fifteen centuries ago during the time of Justinian, the greatest Byzantine emperor. For over a thousand years the dome, which ascends more than 180 feet in the air, was the largest dome in the world. It was a church for a thousand years, and then a mosque for around five hundred years (after the conquest of Constantinople by Mehmet the Conqueror in 1453), and it has been a museum since 1935 (as part of the secular modernization that was so much a part of Ataturk's dream). I one time opined that you recognize true genius when two seemingly contradictory things happen at the same time - you become both bigger and smaller. You become bigger in that you share some profound truth that connects you to a larger intellectual or spiritual or creative universe - but you also become smaller in that you are dwarfed by the enormity of that vision/truth. Hagia Sophia was that - it lived up to its Greek name, "holy wisdom."