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2013/12/27
2013/12/20
KILLING THE BUTTERFLY
What a difference,
between seeing oneself through thoughts, preconceptions (the mind) and that
prelinguistic, direct way of perceiving with no labeling whatsoever. When you
shift into the latter, you have a one-off, unique cocktail in your cup the
myriad constituents of which are ever varying in density, light, spaciousness,
texture, friction, flow. I’m fine, you say roughly. Fine? What does that mean
at a given moment? How are the countless dots connected whose momentarily outcome
is what you’re used to call the Self? The ordinary language acts like pinning
the butterfly. “I’m fine”, and you have done with it. Killed the butterfly.
Only art could offer an organic expression of those instants when one lives
from within.
2013/11/27
2013/11/14
2013/11/06
2013/10/25
2013/10/20
WALKING THE SHADOWS
They came along.
Following or followed by us, alternately short and long, dark and pale, they
were with us. And not only tonight.
2013/10/09
2013/09/26
C’MON BABY LIGHT YOUR FIRE
When you are stimulated
from within, you don’t seek excitement outside. Life, as it is, gets
wonderfully and sufficiently exciting.
You just walk around
like a self-ignited torch.
2013/09/25
JUST STAY
How different life
feels when you stop jumping around and stay with what you have at hand.
When you let your
definitions, preconceptions quietly go.
When you embrace what
you’d otherwise find pleasant or unpleasant equally, including the part of you
that still might have the urge to avoid pain and seek pleasure.
How your perception
deepens when you just stay.
How full, fresh,
stimulating and rich feels life then.
2013/09/23
FORTUNE-TELLING
You are upset.
Indignant.
Frustrated. Irritated.
People are not the
way you like them to be.
Unresponsive,
irresponsible, insensitive, messy, cruel, you name it, they are.
In short, they don’t
fit into your story. (We all have our own stories. And sometimes they
beautifully match for a while –until one awakens and starts to relate beyond
stories.)
So, you are upset.
In order to look
acceptable, you need to disguise the simple truth even for yourself.
Instead of simply
saying “I’m upset because I don’t get what I want” you embellish it. Justify
your reasons, ennoble them.
Now you are upset and righteous in front of this erratic
casting. A double hunch camel with the burden you lay on yourself.
But in no time, in a
happy moment of realization as the apple fallen on Newton’s head, it’s going to
dawn on you, and the door to dramas closes and click! heart’s vast, vast eyes
open.
2013/09/14
2013/09/13
TO ASK NOW AND THEN
Am I able to let my
loved ones go anytime?
No matter how much I
love them. Precisely because I do love them
and do not mistake clinging (to the strings attached or to my conceptions about
how should things be) for love.
With whom do I have this
liberty?
Do I allow change to occur?
At any time and in any form?
Questions to see how
free my relation to the people, and yes, to life itself at any given moment.
A practical test.
2013/09/05
JUNKYARD AT SUNSET
A theme that never
fails to fascinate me.
Rusty metal
misleadingly so smooth looking in the evening light. Like a sleeping beast.
Exuberant life in forgotten colors. Bits and pieces of things past. Plastic. A
wild collage. Chaotic, tragic. Inspiring.
Limbo between the ending and a new beginning.
A meaningless
meaning.
(Photos:
2013/08/23
CHEWING GUM
Meditation at the
dentist. The only way for me to bear what feels like some infernal sequence of
torture is letting the mind wildly wander. Take, for example, the phrase “chewing
gum.” A foreigner who had learned what to call the firm, fleshy tissue covering the alveolar parts of either jaw and
enveloping the necks of the teeth might understand it as chewing one’s
gum(s). Even more confusing are the words that are both a verb and a noun such
as “rose” or the Turkish word “yüz” (which means face, hundred, swim and to
skin). As if our imagination hung us all of a sudden out to dry, or maybe was
fed up with inventing a word for each and every thing and so hurriedly huddles
together the remaining things to be named regardless of their relevance. A
strange economy.
Come to think of it, languages’ vocabularies may as well have
been developed in the various dental chairs of the world.
ALICE’S RABBIT AND THE MISER
I watched
him hurrying awkwardly. Already running late, he was performing a
mysterious choreography which cost him further time. The frantic victim of the
poor time-management. “You look like the Rabbit in Wonderland” I said, laughing.
What an
inspiring observation these beating-the air behaviors are in someone else (as
opposed to the acrid feeling of being in their grip oneself).
There seems
to be a strong relation between hurry and its derivative, worry, and the
resources both psychological and material.
The more anxious
we are, the scarcer it feels they are, and eventually get to be.
Like money
in the hand of the miser.
Or time. As
long as you see it as an external oppressor, like the rabbit sees his chain
watch, you will desperately try to ignore it until the last minute.
Or you can pay
regard to your inner rhythms and walk gracefully.
This is the
difference between running like a beheaded chicken (as we say in Turkish) and
being a well adjusted dancer; The difference between hurry and excitement.
"So be calm
and act counterintuitively, openhanded with what you’ve got. Time, money, love,
care.. Spend (not waste), give away and offer,” I said to myself, quietly satisfied
with my train of thought when the black sunglasses he left on the table caught
my eye.
2013/08/19
MORNING TEA
Let things
change for they do anyway along with your interpretation of them. Don’t seek
the impossible by attempting to create constant reference points, only to be
frustrated, disheartened, and bitter once they lose their initial
impetus. To remain alive, creative and committed invest in the appetite for
life instead. Let it be the hearth fire. Things and the way you focus on come
and go. Let them be like firewood. Then you can welcome change as the air that
inflames the fire.. I found myself saying this while sipping on my morning tea.
2013/08/16
OPEN SESAME!
How I love
those moments of sudden lucidity!
The wheat separating from the chaff so effortlessly, so neatly that one wonders
why it took so long for such a clear picture to appear.
But
apparently you must be ready, or else, you’ve painted yourself badly into a
corner so that this clarity occurs as a deus ex machina of sorts.
Howsoever,
there you are a calm, impartial spectator of an ongoing power struggle within
between light and darkness. What has thus far been a murky, paralyzing amalgam,
begins to disentangle into its constituents. Sub-characters with strongly
conflicting traits. And you see..
that there’s
nothing wrong with embodying diametrically opposite features. They are only problematic when jumbled, when neither black nor white exists in its own
right but together compose a dull gray. A muffle of energy, vitality, and joy.
As soon as
they are polarized, recognized, and fully owned, a dynamic interplay begins to
replace the former absorption.
2013/08/12
2013/07/22
REMEMBER
Just as there is arterial
calcification, I thought to myself, there is a spiritual one, as well. This is when
you think you already know what is in
front of you. A blinding fallacy. In its advanced acute stage, it leads to
perceptual congestion, a kind of mental/emotional cataract. Don’t waste your
time by struggling with the problem. Just shift from this stagnant pond to the
Source where one is ever fresh in one’s perception, childlike enthusiastic, wisely
serene, light and deep. Once you get the switch it’s as easy as shifting your
weight from one foot to the other. Remember, just remember.
2013/07/18
LIQUID DISTORTIONS
I was transported with the reflections it
produced
before I fell into
the glass and got lost.
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https://plus.google.com/photos/118198168542066911108/albums/5901894469259039009?authkey=CPGx_riD99zgUQ
2013/07/14
COOKING FIRE
Another
violent night in various places of the country.
The
movement is evolving toward further uncertainty.
One morning
I woke up with the recognition that we’re forcefully taught to be a minority.
“We,” the people who want to have democracy and not a ridiculous mimicry of it.
We’re faced
with something having an altogether different agenda in mind. And this
something is the government that tries to repress and silence the resistance
(by police force, heavy censorship of the media, and blocking the jurisdiction),
worse still, to make it subject of a distorted reality. (“Just marginal groups,
a handful of çapulcu who are breaking the peace!”) A government representing of
a previous minority that has been repressed for decades by the secular governments
with the “help” of the army. Hence their fearful reflex of us against them,
their animosity, violence that blind them to the point of not being able to see
what really is going on.
Being a
part of a minority is something new for me, and yet I can already imagine what
previously nonexistent sensibilities are to be developed, what wounds to be
endured. A sobering perspective for sure, but also has a considerable potential
in deepening the empathy, the understanding of “others.” A cooking fire.
*
In the
middle of a spiritual inflammation (it really feels like this) I’m reminding
myself things I’ve learned, discovered thus far.
Our
built-in response to stress is closing down, worrying. So you have to
counteract this reflex willfully. Keep it simple. Begin with getting rid of
counterproductive emotions such as victimization, self-pity, sterile anger.
First of all, unrealistic expectations. See your opponent as some force
defending its lebensraum, just as you do with yours, period. Don’t let it take
you by surprise and infuriate you with its every move. Anticipate bigger
challenges, more injustice, and atrocities.
What makes
things good or bad is but your interpretation. Work on it. Stay lucid.
Open up
yourself to things that support vitality: friendships, solidarity. See(k)
beauty, light everywhere, not as an escape but to keep a fuller sense of
living. Don’t repress your wounded part rather enter a dialog with her,
offering an alternative in perception.
Etc.
2013/07/09
A SCHIZOPHRENIC INTEGRATION
One could write another Ulysses based on just a few hours of yesterday’s
wildly kaleidoscopic experiences and observations.
The Gezi Park was announced to be officially reopened today. Ignoring
that, the Taksim Solidarity group of the resisters invited people to the square
“to get back what belongs to us.” Now, you can see this either as an
unnecessarily provocative act or a consistent move, depending among others on
how much you’re fed up. I was neutral.
At the other end of the about 2 miles long İstiklal street that links
Taksim to the smaller Tünel square the annual jazz festival was supposed to
take place with several groups at various venues.
Through and through in love with this town anew, even the long ride to
the place in a packed bus in the summer afternoon heat, was something I deeply
enjoyed. Tuning in to his vibrant life is simply electrifying. What in other
times disturbs me, the ugly scar on his face left by the tasteless
urbanization, the crowd, his impossible traffic and all, turns then into a
quasi mystic experience in which I feel discerning perfection in imperfection.
As I’ve met with some friends at my favorite bistro nearby, the slogans
were getting louder. I went out to see, took photos of those TOMA
called ominous police trucks equipped with water cannons and their smaller versions,
the Scorpions (a very appropriate name) for the narrower streets. Istiklal by
then was already full of a mixed crowd of the demonstrators and the regular
Istanbulites who were coming as usual to have a good time. I went back to
resume the chat and finish my beer, having some more French fries while
overhearing the conversation of two ladies about the real estate prices in
Istanbul (1.7 million USD for an apartment with sea view, 7.5 mio USD for a
“yalı” called historical wooden mansion at the Bosphorus) -well off persons who
seemed happily unaware of the connection between this (the system) and the very
uprising surrounding them.
I was in a sense as detached as they were, or living parallel realities
simultaneously, I can’t tell.
Anyway, I left and went to the first venue I’ve chosen for the evening.
A cheerful audience was already gathered. The ongoing sound check was mingling
with the noise coming off the main street. As I was calmly looking for a good
angle to take photos, I've got a call from a friend who warned me to stay off
the Taksim square. “They’ve started their damned ‘intervention’ with gas, water
cannons, and rubber bullets, arresting people randomly. Looks really bad!”
How to describe the mental state I was in? “Being in the world but not
of the world?” Having no fear, but not a particular desire to stay and
participate to the demonstration either, it was all one to me. Staying there
longer would mean to miss the exit for a long time, so I left.
On my way back, I watched people enjoying the bright summer day at the
parks, in the tea gardens. Worlds apart.
Deciding the one I wanted to join, I got off the taxi in Ortaköy at the
Bosphorus, bought kokoreç (intestines kebab) headed to the pier and savored all
what is.
A sequence reminiscent of the mobius strip on which you can cover
separate dimensions with a single uninterrupted movement of your finger.
2013/07/05
2013/07/02
HARNESSING THE THUNDERBOLT
This period we’re
going through is a living laboratory for so many things. An ongoing experiment that
challenges petrified worldviews, knee jerk reactions, pushing you to reconsider
your comfort zones..
On the one hand the
forums at the parks going on at full speed, on the other, people are marching,
one day for their “Kurdish brothers,” to be followed the next day by the gay pride (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=141431382722591&set=vb.309272629091835&type=2&theater). All so incredibly dynamic, fresh and refreshing.
The youth teaches the
cold war generations a new way of communication. Free from the habitual (by the
oriental thinking badly reinforced) context orientation, they are content oriented.
They express themselves in a direct, simple and clear way without sinking into
endless what if’s.
Let me give an
example. As security forces killed a Kurdish demonstrator in the southeastern Turkey
last week, people here immediately organized a protest. I for my part, was
hesitant needing to know exactly what happened –with the so-called official and
fragile “peace process” going on and given the fact how the region is a “closed
box,” ready to be exploded at any moment, I was worrying about a possible
misstep which I thought would be fatal. But no, thousands marched, bypassing the
details of a particular instance –just forget about hidden agendas, conspiracy
theories and stuff!- proclaiming
brotherhood, thus owning the peace process, giving it a real chance. Once more
I was in awe –oh, how I LOVE eating my words!
Once empathy is in, as
a visceral reality rather than an abstract idea, it expands toward all until
then marginalized groups. Kurds, gays, Alawites.. Resulting in a clear and loud
demand for basic human rights and a participatory first class democracy.
My enthusiastic
emphasis might make seem the whole purer than it really is. Of course there are
opportunistic elements as well –besides, a leaderless networking is something altogether
new. And the defenders of the status quo suffering deeply from Dunning-Kruger
effect are resisting at full strength.
As a person with no political
interest/muscle, I used to see such grassroots movements like thunderbolt. Immensely
powerful, disruptive but not transformable into a sustainable force. Those who
pull the strings, I was telling myself, are doing so by being extremely
single-minded. They have to be strategically thinking marathon runners as
opposed to the sprinter-like people whose intermittent energy is bound to be
distracted and dissipated some time.
This too I had to
swallow. (And I find the shaking of my cynical, skeptical stance liberating. It’s
as if a heavy crust of dried mud around my waist would crumble.)
It’s not about
changing the world overnight. It’s about redefining our humanness and ways of
relating to each other, and maybe also to life itself.
2013/06/26
UN-ARTICULATING TIME
Ah, this
bitter sweet confusion. Cacophonic, shrill and murky. Brown. And the all too
familiar response of ego that calls for “order!” No escape, mate, we have THIS
on our plate right now. Let’s simplify things a little to get some clarity so
that we wouldn’t be drifted away. The hardest part of dealing with uncertainty
seems to be a constricted sense of time. A heightened urgency in avoiding the
unpleasant. And impatience as its inevitable consequence. Stop. Breath. Step
not on the accelerator like a panicked inexperienced driver, but on the clutch
pedal. Expand the sense of time. Make room to the uncertainty. Consider it an
indefinite crossing. Shift this narrow-minded attempt to control to something
more spacious. Be proactively patient.
2013/04/26
EMBRACING SERENDIPITY
Promising as it may
seem, I had no other desire than simply to be there, ready to welcome whatever
I’d get on my plate as a good guest should be.
Thus, opening the
door to serendipity on the island whose Arabic name Serendib (“island of gems”)
is whence this word comes.
And so it went. From
the very first moment on, when I was immediately upon my arrival hugged by the
nocturnal heat (30C) and a tremendous humidity.
This combination I’d normally
find challenging, felt now like the magical breath of a piece of earth covered
with wild vegetation and surrounded by the warm ocean. Green. Lush. Sensuous.
Sinbad’esque.
*
“Just what would
one’s first impressions of Ceylon be? Mine were formed a little over seven
years ago, but although the country has changed considerably since then, very
likely I should notice the same details today: fireworks, flags and lanterns of
festival time, thousands of clowning and chattering crows, Christmas-tree bulbs
strung through the branches of the trees, catamarans like primitive wooden
sculptures beached on the sand, zebus pulling enormous painted carts,
umbrella-shaped shrines in the Buddhist temple precincts, the Sinhalese with
their frail bodies and betel-stained lips and, more than all the rest put
together, the reckless luxuriance of the vegetation. It is hard to visualize
any scene here without its backdrop of trees, so completely do they dominate
the landscape. They are always there, the vast rain-trees and the ancient
bo-trees with their quivering sequin-like leaves, the bread-fruits and the
jaks, the abnormally tall cocos (in the neighborhood of my home they grow to
eighty feet) and the incredibly thin areca palms” says Paul Bowls beautifully
in his Letter from Ceylon (Travels).
His essay is from
1957. After 56 years, those were the details I too noticed with amazement
–except for the carts and betel neither of which is allowed today. (One may
smoke or chew betel only indoors, including public spaces like restaurants or
bars, not outside. Cigarette butts on the ground are just nonexistent.)
Nor I saw the
Christmas tree bulbs. It was the Buddhist New Year though, and the bulbs were
replaced by fireworks and the incessant tumult of the crackers for one week!
As for the “reckless
luxuriance of the vegetation,” ah!
Starting from the
small seaside village Negombo (neat and low key in contrast with the nearby busy
capital Colombo with its suffocating pollution), travelled to the north, then to
the highland with the country’s only “mountains,” heading finally to the south,
I covered a good part of the island (skipping the national parks -I’m not
really into the safari- and leaving the east coast to some other time). And
during all the time it was this abundant vegetation the leitmotiv. Driving through
the dark green tunnels of the centuries-old huge trees, pass the mahoganies,
teaks, rubber trees, ebonies, tall, tall cocos: a thick cover, densely woven
with infinitely diverse threads of different trees and their whole palette of
green.
What a feeling of riches
is this! Fading all the human misery, poverty, trivializing them it comes to
the forefront as if pointing out the true affluence. (I can’t help but compare
the effect of this with, say, that of the rich towns in arid California. Human
versus natural abundance.)
*
Those exotic
inversions..
A street vendor
selling on his straw mat laying on the ground potatoes, onions and..
pineapples!
Slaking your thirst
with some coco juice from its husk, cheaper than a can of pop. And healthy.
*
Observing the traffic
in a country is the shortest way to get its prevailing sense of time.
Distances are not
great. But what you see on those very decorative signs in three languages
(Sinhalese, Tamil and English) is utterly misleading! After half a day, I
realized that distances here are measured not in kilometers but in time. Having
no hurry they respect the speed limit (70km/h) willingly. It took almost 5
hours to get from Anuradhapura to Kandy –the distance being “just” 147 km. It’s
as though they drive slowly to enlarge their island in this way.
No, they really have no hurry. Exasperating at first (strong is the grip of entrenched habits) this islander sense of time mirrored my own ambiguous stance. After a healthy confrontation I let go and relaxed deeply.
Time is not a whip
cracked on their backs. A separate entity which alienates one to life.
Something one has to obey its demands for the best part of their life to be
emptied and released for the rest. Time to them, it seems, is life itself. It’s
they who let it flow as they like.
*
Proximity and mingling
of such different cultures bring about unique mixtures of customs.
The first driver I hired was a Catholic with two tiny plastic Jesus figures glued to the dashboard and prayer beads hanging from the rear-view mirror. In the morning he was doing a puja, honoring the Lord with freshly plucked white flowers and an incense stick. The second one was Buddhist with a ceramic Samadhi Buddha at the same place on the dashboard.
I saw temples where Buddha and Hindu deities are worshipped together. A contradiction I’m still unable to make sense of.
One enters barefoot not
only Buddhist and Hindu temples but also churches. In fact, considering how
many of them you visit you may as well go barefoot all the time for the rule is
valid in the entire area seen as part of the temple. Sometimes you have to take
off your shoes a few hundred meters before the building itself.
Stepping burning
stone ground, climbing rocks in the midday heath was hard to my delicate soles
at first. But then I saw the logic to this madness. Taking off the shoes, being
barefoot is something humbling, and so, readying. Besides it brings one to
their body. Grounding.
After some time I
started to enjoy this greatly.
This and eating your
food with fingers. (They say that it tastes so much better so, and I agree.
Putting aside the aggressive, insensitive, metallic cutlery really makes a
difference. It’s like making love without condom.)
*
I am blessed with
people I meet in my travels. Highly interesting, helpful locals and fellow
travelers who share their insights, impressions and knowledge generously. This
trip was no exception. I’ll particularly remember Mr. Faiesz (an archetypal
uncle type who went out of his way to help me find a room in Ella during the impossible
period of the Buddhist New Year –also how elucidating were his numerous anecdotes)
and handsome Danush (a true born storyteller, in love with his ancestral
heritage he told passionately about for hours). (By the way, listening to the
classical poem/songs from him was the only time Sinhalese sounded pleasant to
me. Dry and harsh, this language I’ve heard in the street is hard to reconcile
with Buddhism. In contrast with its cursive script I find adorable. Derived
from Sanskrit it’s fluent and calligraphic. Visually musical.)
*
Swimming in the Indian
Ocean. Warmth and power. It’s like moving through some liquid form of Yin and
Yang.
2013/04/25
AN ISLAND WITH MANY NAMES: SRI LANKA
I chose my next
destination on a whim -or maybe, come to think of how preconscious an act it
always is, I was the chosen one. Anyway, the loud click of this mutual
selection was a sure sign that I’m on the right path.
All right then, I
said to myself, we’re going to Sri Lanka!
Check the security
issue (current situation and in general), buy your plane ticket, just outline the
places and things you’d like to see, and you’ll decide your itinerary day by
day following your nose, or ear. In other words, except for a loose leading
idea let you be as flexible as a belly dancer.
For a journey to the
faraway places is first of all an excellent exercise of flexing your mind, body
and spirit. Leaving the habitual behind to embrace the “other.”
Next, I bought the
Sri Lanka edition of my travel Bible: Lonely Planet.
As I was turning the
pages, my absolute ignorance of the country began to dissipate little by little
like an early morning mist. I knew next to nothing. Just that this was the
former Ceylon, the tea place, and was vaguely aware of the finally resolved
conflict with Tamil.
Tamil? Weren’t they
Indians, sort of? Well, yes and no. Part of this people came to the island from
India in times immemorial and merged with the native Sinhala. Trouble only
began when the British, having difficulty to find work force for their tea
plantations (for which they annihilated the rain forests, mind you), let bring
some more Tamil who lived apparently as a closed minority refusing to be
assimilated. What began as a culture clash evolved over time into a blatant
conflict. Ruthless. Bloody. Devastating. Until recently.
So, we have two
people on this relatively small island with a poetically beautiful shape (like
a fallen teardrop from India into the ocean, they say), situated 6 degrees off the Equator: The Hindu Tamil
and the Buddhist Sinhala, the latter building the majority, each of them with
their own language and distinct culture, customs.
Along with Buddhism
and Hinduism, Islam (brought by the Arab merchants who married to the locals
and settled) and Christianity are represented even if in fewer percentages.
Such a multifold input in a small area would not only bring occasional frictions but more important, color, richness of diversity, as well. A cultural equivalent, then, of their rice & curry to die for!
Hmm, delicious and
very, very promising.
(to be continued)
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