when the inner fire meets the outer fire (dışı seni, içi beni yakar)

I take this as a description of dream-formation, i.e. as meeting of fires

For the eyelids --whose structure the Gods devised as a safeguard for the vision,--when they are shut close, curb the power of the inner fire; which power dissipates and allays the inward motions, and upon their allaying quiet ensues; and when this quiet has become intense there falls upon us a sleep that is well-nigh dreamless; but when some greater motions are still left behind, according to their nature and the positions they occupy such and so great are the images they produce, which images are copied within and are remembered by the sleepers when they awake out of the dream. And it is no longer difficult to perceive the truth about the formation of images in mirrors and in bright and smooth surfaces of every kind. It is from the combination with each other of the inner and the outer fires, every time that they unite on the smooth surface and are variously deflected, that all such reflections necessarily result, owing to the fire of the reflected face coalescing with the fire of the vision on the smooth and bright surface.

Plato, (Timaeus, 45d-46b)

Ey Sözlerin Aslın Bilen

Ey sözlerin aslın bilen gel de bu söz nerden gelir
Söz aslını anlamayan sanır bu söz benden gelir

Söz kılar kayguyu şad söz kılar bilişi yad
Eğer horluk eğer izzet her kişiye sözden gelir

Söz karadan aktan değil yazıp okumaktan değil
Bu yürüyen halktan değil Hâlık avazından gelir

Ne elif okudum ne cim varlığından kelecim
Bilmeye yüzbin müneccim tâalüm n’ıldızdan gelir

Şu’le bize Ay’dan değil aşk eri bu soydan değil
Rızkımsa bu evden değil deryâ-yı ummandan gelir

Biz bir behâne arada ayrık de elden ne gele
Hak çün emir eyler cana bu keleci ondan gelir

YÛNUS bir derd ile âh et kahr evinde neyler rahat
Bu derde derman kefâret bir âh ile suzdan gelir   

Yunus Emre (1240?–1321?)

the whisper

"one needs to lose oneself, in order to find,"
whispered Hayyam to my ear.
one needs to leave,
in order to arrive.

you won't be ever coming back here,
back to now
don't lament your traces
time will erase them all

a rain drop made its way
to the seed underground
what seems dead and silent
can come alive to light

je rêve, moi, je ne suis pas

this was something I wrote down after watching the film Léolo, Leolo's words that remained with me, it is a beautiful little film with a big heart, by the Quebecois director Jean-Claude Lauzon whom I just learned passed away in a plane crash.

the little proud duck

oh little duck
you're so proud
of your bright colors
of dark green and brown
so proud little duck

oh little duck proud
splashing waters around
as you land on the surface
of the shallow little pond
so small is the pond

oh little proud duck
I've crossed the oceans
flied with albatrosses
swam along with the whales
I've seen the biggest storms on earth
I've been to the eyes of maelstroms

the duck, proud and little
how bright are your colors
under the sunlight
what would have become of them
if you had ever left the pond

I love these friends of mine

My friends have many mountains,
Many mountains that I can breathe in
My friends have many houses,
Many caves that I could choose to live in

Yeah, you're a friend of mine
I love these friends of mine

borrowed from Marianne Faithful's song

cloud

I am the cloud
on which
a dream has landed

rastgele okumalar 2

Masalların Masalı

Su başında durmuşuz
çınarla ben.
Suda suretimiz çıkıyor
çınarla benim.
Suyun şavkı vuruyor bize,
çınarla bana.

Su başında durmuşuz
çınarla ben, bir de kedi.
Suda suretimiz çıkıyor
çınarla benim, bir de kedinin.
Suyun şavkı vuruyor bize
çınara, bana, bir de kediye.

Su başında durmuşuz
çınar, ben, kedi, bir de güneş.
Suda suretimiz çıkıyor
çınarın, benim, kedinin, bir de güneşin.
Suyun şavkı vuruyor bize
çınara, bana, kediye, bi de güneşe.

Su başında durmuşuz
çınar, ben, kedi, güneş, bir de ömrümüz.
Suda suretimiz çıkıyor,
çınarın, benim, kedinin, güneşin, bir de ömrümüzün.
Suyun şavkı vuruyor bize
çınara, bana, kediye, güneşe, bir de ömrümüze.

Su başında durmuşuz.
Önce kedi gidecek
kaybolacak suda sureti.
Sonra ben gideceğim
kaybolacak suda suretim.
Sonra çınar gidecek
kaybolacak suda sureti.
Sonra su gidecek
güneş kalacak,
sonra o da gidecek.

Su başında durmuşuz
çınar, ben, kedi, güneş, bir de ömrümüz.
Su serin,
çınar ulu,
ben şiir yazıyorum,
kedi uyukluyor,
güneş sıcak,
çok şükür yaşıyoruz.
Suyun şavkı vuruyor bize
çınara, bana, kediye, güneşe, bir de ömrümüze.

Nazım Hikmet
7 Mart 1958
Varşova - Şvider

rastgele okumalar

bir kitabı elime alıp rastgele bir sayfa açtım. bugünki okumam şu:

KORO

Bile bile, öykü öykü, gibi gibi

Bir kenti aradığımız, bir başka kentin

Adıyla aradığımız ve asıl bulmaktaki

Çözülmez güzelliğin . .

Kan!

Hem sonu hem doğuşu en gerçek ilkelliğin.

Edip Cansever, Tragedyalar I

the story of the little cloud

children have their own world, not regulated rigidly like that of adults, but still, there is something common, something that we adults still share a little with that world, and through which we can enter into that world often, luckily.

when my niece was about two years old, I read her a tale, a story of a little cloud who decided to leave his parents and travel the world, as a nap time reading. her attention span was short and she was distracted after a while, I thought that the five page story was too long for her. we reverted to well known stories. many days later when it was time for nap, she asked me to read her the story of the cloud, amazed that she remembered the story I nevertheless asked which story she is talking about, I wanted her to tell me about it. "you know, the little cloud that you read me" she said. I read the story from the beginning again and this time she was more patient. later, I would make her tell me the story, she would look at the few drawings and narrate the story in her own way of liking. this was two years ago and I only see her during the summer time not for a very long time. yesterday I was talking to her before she went to bed on webcam and I asked her how the cloud is doing? she didn't ask me which cloud. she asked whether I would like to see it and brought me the book with the drawings of the scenes about the adventures of the little cloud.

children are curious things, like little clouds.

in search of the dream

What’s the price?
“Is the price of living a dream much higher than the price of living without daring to dream?” asked the disciple.
The master took him to a clothes store. There, he asked him to try on a suit in exactly his size. The disciple obeyed, and was very amazed at the quality of the clothes.
Then the master asked him to try on the same suit – but this time a size much bigger than his own. The disciple did as he was asked.
“This one is no use. It’s too big.”
“How much are these suits?” the master asked the shop attendant.
“They both cost the same price. It’s just the size that is different.”
When leaving the store, the master told his disciple, “Living your dream or giving it up also costs the same price, which is usually very high. But the first lets us share the miracle of life, and the second is of no use to us.”
from In Search of the Dream, Paulo Coelho

a definition of dreams

Unauthorized appearance of suppressed longings behind a false face and under a false name.

Cark Spitteler - "My Earlier Experiences," 1913

Basho on poetry

Learn from the pine

Learn about pines from the pine, and about bamboo from the bamboo.

Don't follow in the footsteps of the old poets, seek what they sought.

The basis of art is change in the universe. What's still has changeless form. Moving things change, and because we cannot put a stop to time, it continues unarrested. To stop a thing would be to halve a sight or sound in our heart. Cherry blossoms whirl, leaves fall, and the wind flits them both along the ground. We cannot arrest with our eyes or ears what lies in such things. Were we to gain mastery over them, we would find that the life of each thing had vanished without a trace.

Make the universe your companion, always bearing in mind the true nature of things --mountains and rivers, trees and grasses, and humanity-- and enjoy the falling blossoms and the scattering leaves.

One should know that a hokku is made by combining things.

The secret of poetry lies in treading the middle path between the reality and the vacuity of the world.

One must first of all concentrate one's thoughts on an object. Once one's mind achieves a state of concentration and the space between oneself and the object has disappeared, the essential nature of the object can be perceived. Then express it immediately. If one ponders it, it will vanish from the mind.

Sabi is the color of the poem. It does not necessarily refer to the poem that describes a lonely scene. If a man goes to war wearing stout armor or to a party dressed up in gay clothes, and if this man happens to be an old man, there is something lonely about him. Sabi is something like that.

When you are composing a verse, let there not be a hair's breadth separating your mind from what you write. Quickly say what is in your mind; never hesitate aa moment.

Composition must occur in an instant, like a woodcutter feeling a huge tree, or a swordsman leaping at his enemy. It is also like cutting a ripe watermelon with sharp knife or like taking a large bite at a pear.

Is there any good in saying everything?

...

Eat vegetable soup rather than duck stew.

Matsuo Basho

secret

best dreams are --
kept secret

I am There

I come from there and remember,
I was born like everyone is born, I have a mother
and a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends and a prison.
I have a wave that sea-gulls snatched away.
I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass.
I have a moon past the peak of words.
I have the godsent food of birds and an olive tree beyond the kent of time.
I have traversed the land before swords turned bodies into banquets.
I come from there, I return the sky to its mother when for its mother the sky cries,
and I weep for a returning cloud to know me.
I have learned the words of blood-stained courts in order to break the rules.
I have learned and dismantled all the words to construct a single one:
Home 

Mahmoud Darwish

Confessions # 1

In one of my previous jobs, I was asked to write letters on behalf of my employer who already had an assistant for that task. The letters were meant to be simple one or two sentences expressing regrets of declining a certain invitation to attend a certain meeting or gratitude of being invited to such a well-organized event. Not being in a position to decline the task I was given, and at the same time out of fury that I was asked to perform a basic task that someone in the position of my employer is supposed to be able to do, and adding to that, that my employer had an employee whose main task was to perform what I was asked, I wrote these letters of at most two sentences with an overtly stylized language which sounded too sophisticated that rather indicated an arrogant mockery than sophistication.

My employer liked the letters that I wrote so much that he kept asking for more.

I took a Kafkaesque pleasure in my secret revenge.

What happens to a dream deferred?

HARLEM
Langston Hughes


What happens to a dream deferred?


Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?


Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.


Or does it explode?

one of those moments, travelling in time

Hajo (Hans Joachim Rose), Self-Portrait, 1931

fire, gaze, the thing (or das ding)

“the outer gaze always alters the inner thing…by looking at an object we destroy it with our desire, that for accurate vision to occur the thing must be trained to see itself, or otherwise perish in blindness, flawed.”

Ben Marcus, The Age of Wire and String

time

When one doesn't run, time passes slowly.

"In childhood everything is near, everything is immediately present, there isn't the possibility of distance, of an overview, every moment appears to be an eternity."

Peter Weiss

Take off your words they get in the way...

Narcissus

"Narcissus knew that he could never have himself. But if he'd had a photograph maybe his tragedy would have been avoided."

Vik Muniz, Mirrors; Or, 'How to Steal a Masterpiece'

There are no paradises other than lost paradises.

J.L. Borges

Conversation with a stone

I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I want to enter your insides,
have a look round,
breathe my fill of you."

"Go away," says the stone.
"I'm shut tight.
Even if you break me to pieces,
we'll all still be closed.
You can grind us to sand,
we still won't let you in."

I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I've come out of pure curiosity.
Only life can quench it.
I mean to stroll through your palace,
then go calling on a leaf, a drop of water.
I don't have much time.
My mortality should touch you."

"I'm made of stone," says the stone,
"and must therefore keep a straight face.
Go away.
I don't have the muscles to laugh."

I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I hear you have great empty halls inside you,
unseen, their beauty in vain,
soundless, not echoing anyone's steps.
Admit you don't know them well yourself."

"Great and empty, true enough," says the stone,
"but there isn't any room.
Beautiful, perhaps, but not to the taste
of your poor senses.
You may get to know me, but you'll never know me through.
My whole surface is turned toward you,
all my insides turned away."

I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I don't seek refuge for eternity.
I'm not unhappy.
I'm not homeless.
My world is worth returning to.
I'll enter and exit empty-handed.
And my proof I was there
will be only words,
which no one will believe."

"You shall not enter," says the stone.
"You lack the sense of taking part.
No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part.
Even sight heightened to become all-seeing
will do you no good without a sense of taking part.
You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what that sense should be,
only its seed, imagination."

I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I haven't got two thousand centuries,
so let me come under your roof."

"If you don't believe me," says the stone,
"just ask the leaf, it will tell you the same.
Ask a drop of water, it will say what the leaf has said.
And, finally, ask a hair from your own head.
I am bursting with laughter, yes, laughter, vast laughter,
although I don't know how to laugh."

I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in."

"I don't have a door," says the stone.

Wislawa Szymborska

city poetics

I missed reading a good poem, or writing one. trying to write one. suddenly coming up with one. but I don't have much time nowadays. what a bad excuse! or, let me say, I don't have a poetic space in my mind these days. so I am indulging myself on the neon scriptures of the city, of the boards, of the ads posted on lamp posts, that is, on the poetics of the city. I wish I was taking their pictures. This is something I saw today, and hence I leave you with the unbearable lightness of its heaviness.

Silence is a text which is easy to misread.

on lies, secrets, and silence

"She goes to poetry or fiction looking for her way of being in the world, since she too has been putting words and images together, she is looking eagerly for guides, maps, possibilities; and over and over ... she comes up against something that negates everything she is about: she meets the image of Woman in books written by men. She finds a terror and a dream, she finds a beautiful pale face, she finds la Belle Dame Sans Merci, she finds Juliet or Tess or Salomé, but precisely what she does not find is that absorbed creature, herself, who sits at a desk trying to put words together."

from On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, Adrienne Rich

dreams on the back of a tiger

What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him -even concerning his own body- in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the bloodstream, and the intricate quivering of the fibres? She threw away the key. And woe to that fatal curiosity which might one day have the power to peer out and down through a crack in the chamber of consciousness and then suspect that man is sustained in the indifference of his ignorance by that which is pitiless, greedy, insatiable, and murderous - as if hanging in dreams on the back of a tiger.

Nietzsche, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense.

If you ever run across a bear...

The bears are extremely curious animals. They generally avoid contact with humans yet they might get close in search of food, especially during their food frenzy in fall before they hibernate. Bears can be dangerous and attack in cases when they are protective of their siblings or if they are wounded.

If you ever run across a bear

• don't run; you won't have any chance. Bears are faster and stronger than you, and they can climb trees. Even if you manage to climb a tree, the bears are known to be patient. And running will only trigger bears' curiosity.
  
• stand still and try to create noises, for example by using two stones: bears are afraid of avalanches, the trembling of the earth beneath their feet and falling of the rocks and soil. Who doesn't fear that if one lives on the mountains?
• you can play dead if you are good at it. Still, the bear might check whether you are really dead or just pretending, they are just smart.

madness and meaning / what is a blog?

Is a blog more than (or, less than) a marker board, like the surface of a fridge covered with pictures and notes and ads? I love my virtual magnet board where I stick some quotes and notes and pics.

Here is such a quote on madness, from an article on the story of Nabokov "Signs and Symbols":

"madness, unlike literature, fails in the quest of meaning and is therefore associated to silence, as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida suggested, whereas literature, although sometimes verging on madness, is characterized by the desire to live and to move away from the silence of death."
Jacqueline Hamrit
this is a madness driven outside the shore of language where the fishes of meaning swim.

and a contrary one:

"On n'est fou que de sensé ("Only meaning drives you mad" or "No madness without meaning"), writes [Michèle] Montrelay, -the unconscious is the only defence against a language frozen into pure, fixed or institutional meaning, and what we call sexuality, in its capacity to unsettle the subject, is a break against the intolerable limits of common sense."
Jacqueline Rose

By posting them, I am intending to forget about them, but at the same time to make them near, so as to return and think about them in a new light. Why do people stick notes on their fridge door? In order to remember, or to materialize and externalize so that they don't have to keep in their minds all the time?

reminders of the day

circles on the water

I watch the drops dripping on the surface of the water. they form circles and then the circles merge to create other circles, and they tremble and they tremble me. I extend my hand to touch the surface which looks like solid and put my finger just above the water and the line of the surface bounds with the touch, my finger still dry. I look closer as the circles fade and as reflection of the sky with white clouds on the surface gets clear, the visage of my face enters the frame, so distant, so mysteriously real.

düş: kurmacanın gerçeğe dokunduğu yer

düş: kurmacanın gerçeğe dokunduğu yer

düş bütünlüğün sağlandığı yer, geleceğin ve geçmişin birleştiği, renklerin aktığı, istemsiz imgelerin hareket ettiği uzam. iç ile dışın ayrılamadığı boyut.

düşlerimin berraklığı ve iletilerinin dolaysızlığı dehşete düşürüyor beni. nereden kopup geldiklerini bilmediğim imgeler başka bir dünyanın kaynağına açılıyor. kehanet, öngörü, yoğun bir yaşama arzusu.

saçmalık.

düş ben imgesinin sakatlandığı, kırıldığı yer. anlamın saçmalaştığı, arzunun sıvılaştığı, bilincin buharlaştığı, benlik ile dış arasındaki sınırların kalktığı enlem. düş, içinden dünyaya düşülen yer. asla geri dönülemeyen. her zaman farklı, her zaman yeni, her zaman şaşırtıcı, her zaman beklenmedik.

düşlerim kehanetimdir, ne olduğumun ve ne olacağımın kehanetleri. ne olmak istediğimin. ne olmak istemediğimin. ne olmaktan korktuğumun. ne olmaktan kaçındığımın. ne olmayı ertelediğimin. ne olamadığımın. olma hallerimi kurcaladığım ve kurguladığım boşluk.

düş olmadığım öbür yanlarımın toplamı. düş, yanlarımı her açıdan görebildiğim nokta.

Something

I am still amusing myself with the Lacanian definition of love:

Love is to give what you don't have, to someone who doesn't want.

more will come...

a beginning of writing?

"Love is mute, Novalis says; only poetry makes it speak. Song means nothing: it is in this that you will understand at last what it is that I give you; as useless as the whip of yarn, the pebble held out to his mother by his child."

"To know that one does not write for the other, to know that these things I am going to write will never cause me to be loved by the one I love (the other), to know that writing compensates for nothing, sublimates nothing, that it is precisely there where you are not --this is the beginning of writing."

Roland Barthes, from Fragments: A Lover's Discourse

auto-erotics

Unuseful lists # 2

a to do list

• look out from the window until you count ten people passing your street
• learn the speeling of "procrastination"
• write a poem entitled "pair per tree"
• contemplate on whether it is possible at any moment to do nothing
  
• examine the petals of a caucus-like flower for at least ten minutes
• miss your street while walking back home, indeliberately
• make a shopping list of thing you would never want to buy
• make a "please no!" gift list, terminable
• make a list of possible responses to use in case you encounter relationship clichés such as "it's not you, it's me"
  

A long journey,
starts with a small step.

"I think it was John Lennon who once said 'life is what happens when you're making other plans', and that's exactly the way I feel. Although he also said 'I am the walrus, I am the eggman', so I don't know what to believe."

Tim Canterbury, in BBC sitcom The Office

writing

I am sooo bored!
is writing an act of erasing,
or is it a disclosure?
why is the angst in all writing?
what do I fear?
what do I long for?

where do I write from?
where does the script come from?

unutulanlar nereye gidiyor?
hatırlananlar nereden geliyor?

özdemir asaf

la main

La Main (S.), Pascal Renoux

Portrelerde kadınların kameraya bakarken pozlandırılmasından daha çok, modellerin izleyicinin farkında olmaları ve kendilerini bakan kişiye sunmaları ilgimi çekiyor.

Bunun kameranın varlığından, kameranın ardındaki kişinin beğenilerinden, eğilimlerinden ve dahası görsel alışkanlığından daha fazla bir şeye işaret ettiğini düşünüyorum. Bu, henüz ucunu yakalamaya çalıştığım bir sezgi, ipuçlarını topladığım. Bu soru (ve yanıtı) başkalarını ilgilendirir mi bilmiyorum, ama ipin ucundan görünmeye başlayan giderek daha ilginçleşiyor.

Bir de gelişigüzel (?) iki şeyi (görsel, metin, nesne, şey) bir araya koyduğumda, yanyana, altalta, aynı çerçeve içinde koyduğumda her iki şeyin anlamlarının değişmesi, ve bir arada yeni anlamlar üretmelerine, zıtlıklar yaratmalarına bayılıyorum.
Fotoğrafçının diğer fotoğraflarını merak edenlere: Pascal Renoux

Un frais matin d'été 4

an amusing word play on "perfume" or whatever word you choose from it:

the virtual mind
is a kind of
ghost
perversion
père version
la version du
père
the version of
the father
the fuming
father
perfumiste
père-fumist
père-fume

lacan dot

izdüşüm

izdüşümlerin fotoğraflarını çekiyorum. yeniden görmek için, anımsamak için, düşleri, izleri düşenleri, düşen düşleri. unutmamak için. hayat dediğimiz şey hatırlamadan ve unutmadan ibaret.

hatırladıklarımız kadar hatırlamadıklarımız mıyız? hatırlamamayı seçebilir mi insan? seçerse unutabilir mi? ya hiç izi düşmeyenler? bir de, izsiz düşenler? hani, iz bırakmaksızın düşenler?

anlardan mı, insanlardan mı bahsediyorum? bellek için bir farkı yok. fotoğraf çekiyorum, anı dememek için.

blue box

I am thinking of the difference between night-dreams and day dreams
they should be called with different words
like in Turkish

also of the intrusive confrontation of learning another's night-dream
which is personal, always elusive, unintelligible
a net of unsignifying signs for me
ethics of confessions
I am no priest
nor an analyst
(neither you are)

since there is no two different words in English
for making clear which I mean
I play on their slippage

looking in through my blue box

dreaming father

Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939

the father of psychoanalysis, ouups! did I say "father"? Correcting: the genius who repudiated the legitimization of the "normal" upon human conduct, who by incorporating into human disposition explained away the "superstitious" and "irrational", and who, by this way, saved a place for the dreams on the stage by giving their worth. He was missing on this page from the beginning.

Barbara Kruger, Thinking of You

Barbara Kruger,
"Feel is something you do with your hands", 1985

"... we can know many things just by the look of the eyes when people are silent; ... their whole body is clear ... and each is like an eye, and nothing hidden or artificial, but before one speaks to another the other sees and knows." 

Plotinus, IV, 3 [27]

Love is a Sickness

LOVE is a sickness full of woes,
All remedies refusing;
A plant that with most cutting grows,
Most barren with best using.
Why so?

More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoy'd, it sighing cries—
Heigh ho!

Love is a torment of the mind,
A tempest everlasting;
And Jove hath made it of a kind
Not well, nor full nor fasting.
Why so?

More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoy'd, it sighing cries—
Heigh ho!
Samuel Daniel. 1562–1619

I wish I could post the song instead of the poem, because it is a song more than a poem for me, (I used to sing it), which portrays very well the perception of love as a sickness, but of the mind, on which a lot of Medieval scholars wrote treatises. They were trying to provide an analysis of its symptoms and suggest cures. And when they were calling it a sickness, they were not speaking metaphorically, No!; they were speaking of a sickness, just like any other sicknesses. For your enjoyment: "Questions on the Viaticum". The seriousness of their preoccupation and their explanations seem mostly funny from the point of view of our knowledge of medicine and human sciences. But I can't keep myself from asking: have we arrived at a better understanding? Have we moved any closer in explaining this feeling (or syndrome, depends on how you approach it)? Or, rather, have we gave up the effort of trying to give an account of it and left the concept (and the thing itself, I don't know what it is, this_thing_called_love) to be exhausted by the consumerism of advertisements and horoscopes? And, lastly, will there be an end to my rhetorical questions? And, loss of words, I sigh!

It has been only weeks since I wrote my autumn haiku, and now the time came for me to write one for the winter, for while I sit in my warm and softly lit room, it snows outside. But wait! The trees still have some green leaves. The trees still have green leaves.

These days I wonder which one is better: to dream during the sleep and be reminded of those left aside, swept under the rug in the light of the day; or better not to dream at all. But if everyone dreams, is it possible to choose not to remember? If dreams are gates to our hidden desires and fears, the things we would prefer not to be reminded, the judgments we flee to make, maybe the question is whether one wants to know or not. The curious thing with dreams is that one does not have the choice to decide on that. It is just there, right in one's face. What does it say? It says, "the more you run the more I'll come after you." It is like a psycho postman who is obsessed with getting his mails delivered to the right person by the hand. Ok. I got my mail. So what's next? I don't know.

"No, It's Not Fatigue"

No. Fatigue, why?
It's an abstract sensation
of concrete life
-something like a scream
to be screamed,
something like anxiety
to be suffered.
To be suffered completely
Or to be suffered as ...
Yes, to be suffered as ...
That's it: as ...
As what?
If I knew I wouldn't have this false fatigue within me.
F. Pessoa (Alvaro de Campos)

first breeze of autumn -
turning of the leaves, to soil,
I breathe in the air.

airport inversions, Munich

unuseful lists # 2

çalışma zamanı
az konuş, çok iş yap.
araştır
başvur
karar ver
arzula
heyecanlan
üzerine git
vazgeç
geri dön
yeniden başla
yeniden heyecanlan
geri durma
hata yap
yanıl
hatalarını affet
sahip olduğun tek şeyi kucakla

gözle
seyret
öğren
coşkuyla izle
akışa katıl
merak et
izinden git
müziğe uy
seviş

az konuş, çok şey söyle
gözlerini kapa
düşle
düşlerini anımsa
öğrendiklerini unut
benliğini yık
ve sonra
ötekinin imgesinde
yeniden kur
aşk dediğin nedir ki?

"Bu kuru söz kalabalığı, sana dokunamadığım için. Seni kollarıma alıp uyuyabilseydim, bunca mürekkep şişede de durabilirdi. Birlikteyken gene erdemli kalabilirdik. Ama bir süre ayrı olmamız gerekiyor, gerçekte böylesi de daha iyi. Ah, kesinlikle güvenebilsek geleceğe …"

D. H. Lawrence

laleye güzelleme

A flower am I, the tulip.
Rose and violet are my haloes;
I, the queen of all gardens.
Mehmet the Conqueror

Drink wine! long must you sleep within the tomb,
Without a friend, or wife to cheer your gloom;
Hear what I say, and tell it not again,
"Never again can withered tulips bloom."
Omar Khayyam

zifiri sıcak;
dumanın kıvrımında
asılı düşler

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.
...
Fearlessness may be a gift but perhaps more precious is the courage acquired through endeavour, courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one's actions, courage that could be described as 'grace under pressure' - grace which is renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremitting pressure.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi

Death of Distance

Günün ilk ışıklarıyla şarkılarına başlayacak olanlara imreniyorum. Yaşlı bir kuş gibi yüreğim, suskun. Neşenin parıltıları düşmüş kanadından. Şarkının ilk dizesini unutmuş, sonrasını getiremiyor. Kimbilir hangi havai fişeklerinden ürkmüş, ürktüğü için seyrine varamadığı.

Hiçbir yere gitmeksizin yürüyorum. Sokaklar belirsizce birbirine bağlanıyorlar, ağaran gökyüzü gece lambalarından sızan ışığı körleştiriyor. Tepeden aşağıya yılan gibi kıvrılarak inen dar sokağın son dönemecinde ıhlamur karşılıyor uzaktan, tüm geçmiş baharlarımı yüklenmiş. Bu bahar da geçmekte, havada asılı ıhlamur kokusu gibi.

Yollar birbirine bağlanarak uzanıp gidiyorlar önümde, mesafeyi kısaltmaksızın.

Mesafenin ölümü, neyin ölümü?
Mesafenin ölümü, neyin başlangıcı?

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Gandhi

inside - outside

"Pathology has made us acquainted with a great number of states in which the boundary lines between the ego and the external world become uncertain or in which they are actually drawn incorrectly. There are cases in which parts of a person's own body, even portions of his own mental life -his perceptions, thoughts and feelings-, appear alien to him and not belonging to his ego; there are cases in which he ascribes to the external world things that clearly originate in his own ego and that ought to be acknowledged by it."

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 1930.

kuştepe'nin güzelleri

the city I love

you teach me how to hate
everyday, once and again

from the incidental passions
to our mundane obsessions
I love to watch your cosmic feature
transform
everyday, inch by inch

I love to travel to your borders
crossing the limits
traversing your routes
watching you move, watching you groove
everyday, every hour of the day

I love to flow into your crowds
getting dispersed, becoming anonymous
your fragile texture, insecure encounters
I am learning to expect the unexpected
in your restless presence
everyday, anew

I love to miss you when I am here
the nostalgia I accumulate
before leaving
you, the city I love
the city I love to hate

bowl in the fishes

nothing more complicated than a full bowl of water and two fishes running away from each other. one fish is yellow, the other is blue. they turn their backs to one another and see the reflection of the other. the reflections are intimidating, they stand next to the image of the self two fishes in a bowl and their lunatic movements. the dull gaze of the outsiders. they don’t hear the music inside. they don’t hear the rhythm of the synchronic movements of the fishes’ tails. the bowl is just small, but it is full of water, blue water, blue as the sky above. and the rain falling from the sky, bounces back from the surface. it doesn’t move the water though, it doesn’t create any shivering. so the reflections stand still, though there is the sky falling, and the rain falling, and big drops falling. the bouncing rivers of water are running down around the bowl. the bowl full of water, and the bowl is water, inside is water, all water, and the outside is all water.

etcetera etcetera

if something interesting happens every day, it is generally a tiny, mundane, insignificant event, which can not even be called event. How miraculous they are! It is not the good things or happy coincidences, it is a bee visiting the newly blooming flower in pot, the shining sidewalks after a quick summer rain, and today, among many others, it is the baby seagulls beginning to practice timidly their unexperienced wings.
And how flat they become when they are told. However, most of the time it seems they are the things which count most; the etceteras we look down on, extraordinarily mundane, unadorned presences we disdain to share.

unuseful lists # 1 (titles)

there is a good reason to start making useless lists, since I am so tired of making to-do lists, shopping lists, books to be read lists, which after a certain amount of time proves to have not much bearing on the outcome. Maybe, this is just the point of making a to-do list: so that I can organize my mind while making it, and eventually having to make a new one again and again.

I want to make lists, which will have no pressure on me. And the first one goes for the titles of books and albums, songs or movies, whatever, the titles which I like very much, eventhough I may not like or be familiar with the works themselves. This is a titles list, as taken distinct from the work itself, its author, genres, whatever, some of which are enjoyed for the combination of sounds. Of course, as with all lists, this one will need to be enlarged, but since it is useless, not to be revised and revised and revised, over and over again... (Which all goes for not confessing that I am lazy :=)

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Way to Blue
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
Sanatçının Bir Genç Adam Olarak Portresi
The Book of Disquiet
Subterranean Homesick Blues
Clair de Lune
The Name of the Rose
I like Chopin
Farawaysoclose
Jude the Obscure
Kızarmış Yeşil Domatesler
Continuity of Parks
Some Like It Hot
Stories from the city, stories from the sea
Great Expectations
Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Alice speaks to Cheshire Cat

`Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
`I don't much care where--' said Alice.
`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
`--so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.
`Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, `if you only walk long enough.'
Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. `What sort of people live about here?'
`In that direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, `lives a Hatter: and in that direction,' waving the other paw, `lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'
`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.' ...

the vicious circle of Narcissus:

"A strong egoism is a protection against falling ill, but in the last resort we must begin to love in order not to fall ill, and we are bound to fall ill if, in consequence of frustation, we are unable to love."
Sigmund Freud, On Narcissism

I want something but I do not know what
I want the world and I want it not
I may be a fool or I may be not
off my center am I and the center is not.
there is always something missing
or there may be not,
the eye of maelstrom
of an ambitious skeptic
am I not?

Bored by Dreams

Things are never what they seem
Play a part most of the time.
What is yours cannot be mine
And I'm bored by dreams.

Bored by dreams.

I can't say the words I mean
Make myself go through the line.
Does the payment fit the crime
If I'm bored by dreams ?

Take me through the steps my love,
Shall we dance again?
I was older then,
Now we are the same.

Lasse des rêves.

Rêve qui brille dans le noir
Brillera bien, tu peux le croire.
Toujours dire la vérité
Quand je suis lasse des rêves.

Take me through the steps, my love,
Shall we dance again?
Things were always brighter then,
Hear me call your name.

After a certain age
Every artist
Works with injury.

After a certain age
Every artist
Works with injury.

Take me through the steps my love,
Shall we dance again?
I was always older then,
Now we are the same.
Marianne Faithfull

impression

abandoned spaces

those who fill in the blanks
spaces lined with dots,
with the most appropriate
from finite choices.
can you jump a little higher?

those who create blank spaces
marked around with crosses
drawn by white chalk
and a stick nailed on each.
can you reclaim your remainings?

those who move with the current
with no articulation to chart
traceless and immune,
using the void to be.
can you become null?

happy aviv

a late salutation to Nisan,
and its sunloving bahar/aviv/spring flowers
in the name of purple dreams

blue ghost

Hayalet öykümün parçaları kafamda bir novellaya doğru devşirilirken, iki ayrı anlatının paraleliğini tasarlamaya başladım. İki farklı anlatının koşutluğu fikri beni metinlerin koşutluğu, ve ordan da koşutluğun kendisi üzerine düşünmeye sürükledi. Aslında koşut akan iki metin ne kadar koşut (yani paralel) olabilir ve olmaları gerekir mi, dahası gerçekten çakışmayan iki metin niye yanyana dursunlar, ya da paralel metin lafı yalnızca çift dil basılmış metinler için mi kullanılır ve orda da bahsettiğimiz metinler ne kadar koşuttur...
Hikayelerin bir-aradalıklarını koşut olmalarıyla tanımlamam işe yaramıyor gibi görünüyor, nerede koşut, nerede benzer olduklarını, nerelerde çakıştıklarını (henüz) bilmiyorum. Üstelik bir tanesine hayalet hikayesi demek de zor, şimdilik öyle olduğunu varsaymak işime geliyor.
Yazma sürecine dair yazmanın, esas yazıya dair alınan notların (belki işte burda, esas yazı ile onun tasarlanmasına dair alınan notların en azından kronolojik bir koşutluğundan bahsedilebilir) ilginç bir yanı varsa, yazanın o notlardan ne kadar bağımsız kaldığını görebilmesidir belki de.

Ortaya çıkacak olmasını umduğum "şey"in, tanımlamalarıma ve benzetmelerime meydan okumasını umuyorum.

Bir yazma günlüğüne dönüşen bu yazıya, bir yazma-eşliği parçası (adı) eklemeli:
There is a ghost - Marianne Faithfull

ve elbette bir de fotoğraf

Fantôme bleu (koşut ad: Blue Ghost) Pascal Renoux

visible

"It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible ..."
 
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

temptation to end a temptation

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

all influence is immoral

"All influence is immoral - immoral from the scientific point of view." "Why?"
"Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there is such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one's else music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly -that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. ..."

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

sis

haklı haksız

allahın hakkı üçmüş, hak’lı mı hak’sız mı bilemem. şüphe etmek küfürmüş. hak ettiğini ileri süren aptalmış, hak yerini bulsun isteyen pek safmış. hak’lıselimin aklının yerinde seher yelleri esiyormuş, balıkçılar henüz dönmemiş. aklaziyan bir hezeyan yerini sessizliğe bırakmış. denemek hataymış, durmak düşmekmiş, bir şey yapmadan seyretmek şeytana uymakmış. beklemeksizin beklemeyi öğrenmeliymiş insan. denemeksizin yapmayı, istemeden istemeyi, istemeksizin almayı, hep gelmeyi, hep varmayı.

kollarını kocaman açmalıymış insan iki yana, balıkçıların denize attığı ağ gibi olmalıymış. ve beklemeksizin beklenen gelebilirmiş, vardığında sarmalıymış onu ağlara, sımsıkı tutmalıymış. balıkların pulları kayganmış, tutunca bırakmamalıymış. sormamalıymış hak’lı mı hak’sız mı diye, Hak kızarmış küfürbazlara. sormadan almalıymış; istemeksizin alabilen, almaksızın verebilen hak’lıymış.

moment

every moment is a historical one - a summation of a person's life

one hundred bones

In this poor body, composed of one hundred bones and nine openings, is something called spirit, a flimsy curtain swept this way and that by the slightest breeze. It is spirit, such as it is, which led me to poetry, at first little more than a pastime, then the full business of my life. There have been times when my spirit, so dejected, almost gave up the quest, other times when it was proud, triumphant. So it has been from the very start, never finding peace with itself, always doubting the worth of what it makes ... All who achieve greatness in art - Saigyo in traditional poetry, Sogi in linked verse, Sesshu in painting, Rikyu in tea ceremony - possess one thing in common: they are one with nature.

Basho, The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel

into the green

the poem of the enso

If that moon falls,
I'll give it to you.
Now try to take it.

The poem in "Enso with a Poem"

the view

dreaming butterfly

You the butterfly -
I, Chuang Tzu's
dreaming heart

Basho Matsuo



"Once Chuang Tzu dreamt that he was a butterfly. He did not know that he had ever been anything but a butterfly and was content to hover from flower to flower. Suddenly he awoke and found to his astonishment that he was Chuang Tzu. But it was hard to be sure whether he really was Tzu and has only dreamt that he was a butterfly, or was really a butterfly, and was only dreaming that he was Tzu."

from the book of Chuang Tzu

a change in melody, a shift of rhythm happened and I consistently look out for the tunes which are not exhausted, in one way or another.

but here is a song which goes in every moment and place, which, I find, never loses its novelty. 


There was a boy...
A very strange enchanted boy.
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea,
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he.

And then one day,
A magic day, he passed my way.
And while we spoke of many things,
Fools and kings,
This he said to me,
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return."

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return."

Nature Boy

It was the light
and it was the air
the miraculous

and while I write
it is already there,
writing is always about ending
'cause it is about naming
it came and passes through me
to an infinity

it is the time the melody changes
the bottom of the deep blue ocean
reverberates
it is tangible,
a deluge of divine response
I tune in

Sketches for A Personal Chronicle

In a world where time does not obey a universal (solar) order but rather passes according to things, a personal chronicle would have to devise a unique system for recording instances. In this way, an anniversary, for instance, would not be an annual recurrence, but would be celebrated (or commemorated) every single moment the event is recollected to the mind of the proprietor of the chronicle. However, since recording the time of the first occurence is the purpose of keeping a chronicle, it would be appropriate to write down the associations which would serve to the recollection. The following are some suggestions for a future chronicler of a private chronicle:

• it was full moon 40º to the horizon, mid-summer, french balcony, dark green wall
• just before I had this feeling of a punch on my stomach due to which I was unable to eat, and I starved
• when I realized I was a butterfly fish and that I was not in the water
• on the broken pavement where the sidewalk ends against the park
• the world hushed and I gave ear to a shared silence

and on recording durations:

• until the dogs barked
• when the sky reddened
• as long as a cat's sleep
• seventy eight heartbeats in ... tempo
• until the breeze which electrocuted every single hair on my skin left my body

optics

The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does the psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.

Walter Benjamin

The Angel

I dreamt a dream!

What can it mean?

And that I was a maiden Queen

Guarded by an Angel mild:

Witless woe was ne'er beguiled!

And I wept both night and day,

And he wiped my tears away;

And I wept both day and night,

And hid from him my heart's delight.

So he took his wings, and fled;

Then the morn blushed rosy red.

I dried my tears, and armed my fears

With ten thousand shields and spears.

Soon my Angel came again;

I was armed, he came in vain;

For the time of youth was fled,

And grey hairs were on my head.

William Blake, from Songs of Experience

the lost village

once upon a time, there was a village across the ocean on a hill, bending towards the other horn of the bull, before the earth was round like it is now. the village was called the Hollowland because every one in this village was born with a birthmark on the belly. The shape and the color of the mark was not at all similar in everyone, but once looked closely, it was not very hard to notice that the natal scar was in fact a hollow, inversed inside the body.

after the Flood, as can be imagined, the people of the village has dispersed through all directions on the planet, as they were few in numbers, they settled with others, raised families and hid their unique marks reminding them their homeland now submerged under the dark blue ocean. then winter came, and then the spring, and summer and then winter again. many winters passed, seasons followed one another and so the generations. the grandchildren of hollowpeople has lost their trace in their memories of a long forgotten village bending towards the edge of the earth. but once in a while, the hollow grows bigger, grips the body from within, burns the flesh like a concave volcano, leaving behind no visible scars, only the birthmark which looks like a dark mole.

soru

erguvanlar açtı mı?
sığırcıklar göçtü mü?
martı yavrusu kendini
çatıdan aşağıya bıraktı mı?

blue

castle made of words

I build a castle
made of words
pieces of sentences
delicately put on one another
it grows high
and high
thick brickets of sounds
with no holes or windows
to look out
from my castle made of words.

I have every reason to be mad
to be angry
to be whatever I am not
to be somehow solid
to be what I need not be

every one of us
will drown in our own loneliness
in our castles made of ice cubes.