This is a reworked version of a recent entry of mine. I had brought it over to my creative writing workshop for review, and revised it according to the (excellent) comments I received. Now I wanted to have this version up as well, for comparison.

***

I cross the Golden Horn to Galata,  escaping Sultanahmed’s twisting alleys and tourist traps. First thing that greets me is the underground shopping mall, filthy corridors strewn with last night’s garbage, crammed tight with consumer electronics and handguns, one shop next to the other, each proclaiming new sales and new models, just for you. Outside, two young men hawk their services – a shiny new photocopier and laminator, hooked up to a belching gasoline generator and mounted on an old, rusty cart. Further up the street the electronics shops come thick and heavy, one next to the other, with identical signs showing identical products for identical prices. The gunshops are slowly replaced by banks (which are the continuation of violence through economic means, when you think about it) while the consumer electronics make way to to industrial: engines and wires and giant rolls of PVC; green, blue, purple. The streets are very dirty here, flaking concrete houses drab and featureless. One grey beast of a building suddenly sports a wooden extension, like a closed off balcony reaching down all along the side, all built of dark wood. It probably has a name, this structure, but I lack the architectural jargon. The wooden beams are capped by pretty pointy bits that, again, refuse to name themselves. I sit on a concrete block to write this down and a minivan going 40 on the sidewalk nearly takes my laptop and my foot along with it while a passing Frenchman asks me if I got a wireless signal, which I do not.

I need a better way to stream down my consciousness.