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.

LIQUID DISTORTIONS

I was transported with the reflections it produced 

before I fell into the glass and got lost.

https://plus.google.com/photos/118198168542066911108/albums/5901894469259039009?authkey=CPGx_riD99zgUQ

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.

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.

SKY SPOTTING STOP

https://plus.google.com/photos/118198168542066911108/albums/5897145217913386625?authkey=CKftz5D0xrqF0wE

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.