KUZGUNCUK

A lovely neighborhood on the Asian side. Quiet, beautiful and ancient. Its name Kuzguncuk meaning the little raven.

https://picasaweb.google.com/118198168542066911108/Kuzguncuk?authkey=Gv1sRgCIOAlpmpu9OqLg#

QUITTING SMOKING

The mind/will is like a boat in the sea (of both life itself and one’s own unconscious). It surely is a good thing to build a strong one so as not to sink in the first storm. Still better when the inner dynamics are so aligned that there is no distinction and  you ARE both the sea and the boat. The first and last time I quit smoking, I was doing meditation. At one point, I realized that my shallow breathing was hindering me from going deeper. I had to choose. I chose meditation. Quit smoking on the spot and didn’t smoke for 8 years. Wu wei! Waiting for another favorable alignment is my delusion. Instead, I may try to build an inflatable boat and row away from that smoking island of addiction. Wouldn’t it be a nice odyssey toward breaking a deeply rooted routine with all the difficulties involved? The sheer challenge of it would be the incentive one needs when it comes to making a radical change. For we mortals need one. A better tasting carrot or a more scary stick!

Still, the thought of this makes me feel like Felix Baumgartner (as I imagine he did) just before his jump.

LOVE YOUR MISTAKES

I acquired English through its similarities to French and German which I speak. That is, by osmosis. At one point, I realized I was grasping more and more not only individual bits and pieces but the very structure of it and going effortlessly deeper. It was like watching the morning mist disappear, revealing the landscape behind. A pleasant surprise.

Early on, no one really believed me when I said I didn’t know any English, not even my mother who was convinced that all I needed was to spend a couple of months in England to become fluent. And not even my bosses who dictated me their business letters or, later, let me write them by myself which I somehow managed to do.

True, I’ve got the feel of the overall structure as a kind of musical sensation specific to this language.

But this is an uneven development. While I am becoming more fluent in writing I’m still struggling with speaking. (Particularly when expressing the most ordinary things.) An oddity as frustrating as trying to tie shoe strings of which one end is extremely short!

Writing is my thing. It always has been. In writing there is no time, or it is I who set the rhythm with no outside pressure. In contrast, as soon as I open my mouth the gap is there: the discrepancy between the active and passive processing of language. Becoming paralyzingly self-conscious, I give up without even trying.

Yet all those mistakes I make –and used to hate- are not only inevitable, they are telling milestones indicating one is moving on even if slithering. And where there is movement, there also exists a potential for improvement.

And this is how I came to appreciate, even to love them.

DOTTING THE VOID

That’s because we’ve somehow got this extravaganza called mind, he said.

Look at the cats, dogs, animals, how they are content with what they get. Always in the moment.

We, on the other hand, are pretty clueless about what to do with that infinitely (and unnecessarily) complex machinery in our skulls.

Unable to turn itself off, it’s continually there. Endlessly producing anxieties, hopes, passions, thoughts.

If you’d strip the process down to its essence though, you’d see that all this is nothing but kind of a connect-the-dots game. Similar to the constellations we define in the night sky. Just as we cannot bear the void we cannot stand still.

We are connecting the dots creatively at times. Take Newton and his apple, for instance. Skipping all the other possibilities he drew a connection between the fallen fruit and gravity. Or arts, for that matter. But most of the time the void is filled with conflicting ideas. Religion. Ideologies. World views. Culture. My way of connecting the dots is superior! Truer!

And how childish is the mind in its pretense. Restless. Jumpy. Like a spoiled kid. Distract me. Entertain me. Approve me. Mirror me. Love me (and do it in MY way!).

Then he smiled gently and swam away leaving me behind, smiling, as well.

Seeing through phenomena and looking for the essence of things is liberating, isn’t it?

*

Sitting on the verandah, I’m watching the swift procession of the wonderful rain clouds.

Their continual formation, shape shifting, dissolution and filtering the light in varying shades offer yet another analogy for the mind with our passing attachments and detachments.

He hadn’t used the word mind, in fact. For him, it’s simply “the human brain” with all its odd byproducts, mind being just one of them.

I go one step (or a dot shall I say?) further and start to think about consciousness, the timeless counterpart of the childish mind. Where the one is time-bound, non temporal is the other. Non dualistic, unifying what the mind divides. Encompassing. Equanimous.

The sky beyond the clouds and the void itself beyond the sky.

Womb of insight.

HOW OLD ARE YOU?

How old do you feel, she asked.

30, I replied. And simultaneously ageless and ancient.

Where is biological time in all this?

Apparently just on the ID card.

ON CONSISTENCY

Thinking about consistency..  Wouldn’t life be easier if we don’t try to rationalize our inclinations and choices that are shaped most of the time irrationally (by conditioning, emotional short-circuits, raw instincts etc.)? Doesn’t this attempt create avoidable conflicts? More importantly, isn't it alienating? If I recognize from the start that, as a human being, I’m not made to be consistent, then I’m free to live life as it is (wincing at the sight of a nicely served lobster while eating a brain salad with gusto, for example). Consistent could only be the persona (and at a cost of such delusion and self-pressure), not the individual. We can debate on any subject indefinitely without reaching a common starting point since rationalization based on arbitrary arguments can offer but a slippery ground (my irrationality disguised as rationality against yours!). Alternatively, exposing yourself with all your contradictions and conflicting outputs means a sustainable basis for genuine inner and outer relationships, and therefore it is hugely liberating and enhancing.

TO THOSE WHO ARE COMING TO ISTANBUL

Istanbul awaits you!

Being at the moment away from him (for Istanbul is definitely a lover to me, thus a “he”) let his image once more crystallize.

A huge, rewarding challenge euphemistically called a mega city (which I’d rather bluntly name a populational metastasis).  And yet this is but a soulless fact. To get most of him, you have to go beneath the surface.

According to your mindset you can see him like a sepia photo (as Orhan Pamuk so savoringly does which might require certain background knowledge/life experience in town though), a decent black and white shot or a vivid color Polaroid. Or, ideally, a collage of all of them.

A 2.600 years old settlement, Istanbul comprises countless overlapping, mutually annulling, enhancing, reinforcing, contradicting layers. The impressions you’d get would be accordingly, depending on your perceptional gear, so to speak.

True, he can push your limits (oh, yes, and how he can!), tries your patience (with his maddening traffic, among others, similar to a lava eruption still hellish hot that comes to a halt). Sedate or over stimulate your senses through his chaotic dynamism. He can hurt your eyes with his newer neighborhoods (that brutal violation of all sense esthétique). As well as fascinate with his uniqueness (just think of the Bosphorus, lacelike shoreline, magnificent historical landmarks) and, win your heart with his friendly people (although one cannot be prudent enough in a 13.5 million city).

But if you shift your approach from that of a tourist to the traveler’s (that is, leaving your expectations aside and opening yourself up to here and now) your resilience could be hugely rewarded. This is also when you begin going beneath the surface. And recognizing patterns, leitmotivs and the links between those layers that constitute this place.

Oh, not as complicated at all as it sounds –I just love sounding as an elaborately sauced meal, a personal weakness.  Just sitting in a traditional “kahve” as my dear friend Katie loves doing when visiting the town, and watching people pass would give you a glimpse, for example, into the colorful human landscape.

So, my friends, what I would recommend to you so that you enjoy your stay at maximum is this: relax and be observant. Forget for a while all you do know, be like a fisherman who throws out his net ready to be content with what and how much he’d catch instead of attempting to push a shopping list to the sea.

*

Some useful links:

www.atdaa.com

www.mymerhaba.com

http://www.ibb.gov.tr/sites/ks/en-us/Pages/Home.aspx

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Tourism-g293974-Istanbul-Vacations.html