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