the joint venture of wonders: gezi park resistance - 1

Today is the 18th day of our resistance in Gezi Park / Istanbul. You most certainly know about it wherever you are since it has been a popular news for the world press from the day it began. There are lots of reasons for all the attention but what we can simply say is that you find everything in this nationwide story. It is an intense thriller, drama, action, romance, comedy, documentary, and even film-noir. Of course for certain other countries some of these qualities prevail over others. It is seen as an uprising of Turkish people. It certainly is but I don't think that the whole atmosphere of this revolt is understood by the world in all its extensiveness. What I attempt in this series of essays is to give a little taste of what this legendary resistance actually is for us Turks and how it transformed us.

It all started as a little protest against the demolition of a park in the heart of Istanbul. But right after police intervened violently to the people - there were only a few hundred of them if I am not mistaken - who moved there with their tents, things got out of hand in a very surprising way and protests spread like wildfire to the whole country.

I was there from the second day onwards (May 29th) when the police removed us from the park again and from Taksim Square using tear gas and riot controlling vehicles and did so with "disproportionate force" while occupying the whole area. Although it was a surprise even for us how this protest about a little park (!) became a resistance, it was not really a surprise for it to spread to the whole country as a "resistance" to the government since it was not about a little park even from the beginning. It was about the oppression we have been experiencing from this government for over 10 years and at the end we collectively said "enough is enough!" as you know all fires start with a little sparkle.

If we are to track the road that led us to this point, we can name more than a few things. The first things that come to my mind are mainly related to personal liberty. Although they were known as Islam oriented for all the years they were in power, they had the support of many different people, even the leftists (yes, that was something I have never understood too) since they used the discourse of being oppressed Muslims from the birth of the republic. They said "our women are not able to go to college because they wear turban." I remember many of my friends supporting their protests in college but nobody seemed to remember that "turban" was not actually about sincere religious beliefs but it was an ideological symbol for the long tradition of political Islam that we had to fight since their aim was to bring religious law (which doesn't allow any other freedom than that of being a Muslim). Turban was a different way of wearing head scarf that emerged right after 1980's military coup d'état which was a big step backwards for the country. Anyway...

When they came into power, they de facto allowed turban almost everywhere although they did not passed the law yet. And we heard news of women doctors not treating male patients etc. This was only a small piece of their setting up their own cadre in the public offices. Of course, executive and judicial powers followed legislative power.

They put many journalists, professors, military men, political party members and heads as well as members and heads of NGOs into prison accusing them of plotting a coup d'état against the government by establishing an alleged organization named Ergenekon. We protested this as people who know that this was also a part of their "cleaning" in order to set up their own cadre but many people has seen this as a real cleaning and democratizing the state. So, we forcefully swallowed this.

Then came the education. They changed the whole education system with their own "brilliant" system which basically "revolutionizes" education by making it "optional" only to increase the religious high schools' admission rate. We swallowed this too of course after protesting a little.

They pressed charges against humor magazines for joking about the prime minister; they banned many websites (like youtube); they prohibited the access to Internet with the discourse of "clean Internet"; they covered up many events in which a lot of people died (for example Uludere massacre for which a lack of jurisdiction decision was taken just a few days ago).

But all this wasn't enough for a mass protest since almost all were attributable (or attributed by force) to some ideology. Since 1950s, we have been gradually divided into different groups of people opposing each other as Kurds-Turks, Muslims-atheists, nationalists-liberals, right wing-left wing, and although we have a strong memory of uniting for a common purpose (from our War of Independence), all the efforts to plant hostility among us were pretty successful. We were simply  afraid of being involved in politics at the very least even if we did not believe in such oppositions. Politics was a dangerous game for all involved. People were beaten to death, tortured, murdered by unknown assailants, bombed etc. for being involved in politics. Especially after violent 1970s, a whole generation was raised with a strong apolitical inclination. Actually, we developed a strong sense of humor in order to cope with all the injustice.

But thanks to the present governing party's move to take it many steps further, we began to see that not being involved in politics doesn't save anyone. They started to interfere in our personal liberties and that was what drove us to the edge nationwide. That and our wounded sense of justice.

We heard of little girls (12-13 years old) being raped by 20-30 men. You would think the men doing this would be sentenced in a state of law, right? But on the contrary, these men were acquitted and the little girl was accused of turning them on willingly. Of course there were reactions against this injustice but at the end we swallowed it since we have a long tradition of injustice. Simply put, we were used to it although we could never get used to this level of injustice... This is only one example to give a sense of the set of mind we are dealing with here.

Another recent event to hurt our sense of justice was the bombings in Reyhanlı, a small town on the border of Syria, which caused more than 50 innocent people's death according to official numbers (the rumor is that the number of deaths is actually 500). The bombings were attributed to Syrian government although they openly declared they had nothing to do with it and also they had no motives to do such a thing. They proposed to investigate it together with the Turkish government but it was refused. Actually, bombings were the result of the Turkish governments policy to open our borders to the terrorist organization (Free Syrian Army) working against the Syrian government. I don't ever want to use this label (terrorist) for anybody but after seeing them and what they do to people (they cut people's chests open and eat their lungs while saying religious chants) I don't hesitate to do so. Our prime minister called them "freedom fighters" while defining them as his "brothers" who are oppressed by the Syrian government. He opened our borders to them in order to save them from the "cruelty" of Syria but he did not care about his own people dying there because of this move. He just went to USA to meet with Obama instead of visiting Reyhanlı. These events wounded the sense of justice for all of us regardless of ideology and made everybody suspect of the PM's intentions for his own country.

All of these went hand in hand with personal liberty issues. Prime minister started to advise us in many personal areas such as...
The number of children we should have - it is 3;

How we should behave in the public - just a few months ago, an announce was made in the metro advising people to behave according to moral values. The cause of this was a young girl sitting on her boyfriend's lap. This announce was protested with a kissing protest in which couples kissed each other in front of the metro entrance but they were attacked violently by people with chopping knives.

What we should eat and drink - according to him we shouldn't drink wine but eat grapes since wine is made of grapes. Again to his opinion, our national drink is not rakı (our alcoholic drink) but ayran (made of yogurt and water).

Abortion and birth control methods - although abortion is still a legal right according to the law, it is now de facto prohibited in the state hospitals. Husband's permission is required for married women and single women are getting flagged if they apply to a state hospital with such a request. There were reports of young women whose fathers or husbands were informed by telephone after they applied to hospitals with the demand of abortion.

The prohibition of selling alcoholic drinks between 22:00-06:00 and all kinds of advertisement of such.
So on...

And we cannot ignore all the bad language PM and the members of governing party used during these years. He called the founders of our republic "two drunks". They said they would "spit on" art works. They said ballet turns people on sexually so we don't need it.

To cut a long story short, people united in the hatred of Tayyip (the PM but we call him with his second name since his discourse is also not very polite) and AKP.

I don't want to postpone publishing this. So I am cutting it from the middle.
Enough with them.

To be continued with our story: better, funnier, smarter, more painful but more humane one.

For beginners in Deleuze's philosophy

Here is a good recommendation for the beginners in Deleuze's thought. It is very important where to begin especially when dealing with a complex thought like Deleuze's. What is important is to understand what he is aiming for all the way. So Nietzsche and Philosophy is the perfect choice to decipher Deleuze's will in philosophy. Although I think that it is pretty hard to have a complete, wholesome idea about his philosophy without considering Bergson's affect on him. The fundamental notion of "difference" in the works of Deleuze forms itself alongside of the evaluation of Bergson's concept of "durée" as the living time. So I would add Bergson readings (not by Deleuze, but by himself, for example Matter and Memory) to Nietzche and Philosophy in order to enable a deeper understanding of the will introduced in Deleuze's works.

Magic happens...

How do you know somebody? Is it his face combined with his name that makes you think you know someone? Is it what you share with each other such as memories? How do you recognize someone as that particular person? Recognizing someone is somehow magical on the contrary of rational assumptions. It is his whole being you are acquainted with when you meet a person. There is always something about people that you cannot express, that makes you want to stay around a little bit longer or to run away as fast as you can.

What is this "whole being" if not his name, personality, appearance, behavior combined? I would say it is the essence of the people which could be very different than how they appear. And this is almost always the case if you are lucky enough to meet interesting people. What I mean by "appearance" is the generalities that we - as social beings - share, categorize, use to position ourselves in the midst of others. A very simple example would be being polite. Socially acceptable way to navigate within the social without getting harmed since you don't pose any threat to anybody by being polite. You pass the initial test, as it were. But is this the case in reality? What appears to be a polite gesture could very well be a threatening act of aggression in some cases. I think we all know what that means.

So there is another layer which is not apparent but makes itself felt. The above example is a very simple one so it has no power in making us understand the depth involved in this subject. The categories such as polite, rude, asshole etc. are only useful when they are represented in the consciousness of a social. I mean you can very well talk about a person to another and say "he is polite" or you can just tell what he did, like "he opened the door for me, waited me to get in, then he asked how I was doing and about my family and friends, and so on..." but as you talk you realize that there is something very important missing in this scenario, that thing is how you actually know that person, it's his whole being. Impossible to represent like this. If you want another person to know someone, you would have to express the affect he has on you, not the facts.

As far as my own experiences go, I apparently have a tendency to become involved with people who are very difficult to talk about in the plane of social. Of course there are many people about whom you can just say "polite" for example and that would be enough since they are immersed in the social in the very core of their being and they operate in that plane only. They resemble each other even when they are in very different areas of a social structure. They assess each other in the same way, they know each other like members of the same species. Know when to back off, when to attack. It is almost like watching a documentary on animals. Funny and interesting in this sense. But I have to be in a very, very good mood to find this interesting and it doesn't last long. It is boring when you get the dynamics which doesn't change much. Those people I call fake in the sense of fundamentally corrupted, so fundamentally that they think the social is the real since it is their only reality.

There are genuine people on the other hand, hopefully. These people always require an effort on my part to explain to others since what they appear to be doing is almost always very different than what they are actually doing. There are gaps between their outside behavior and actual affect of their existence. Now as I write it seems that these people should be called fake. If we were trying to communicate on a social plane that would be the case. Their social behavior is fake, it is true, but this fake indicates a genuineness which is not, could not be incorporated in the social. They are like wild animals who are not part of a herd, who only come to communicate with the herd for reasons of survival. Maybe when they need protection that only a group of individuals could provide by the sheer force of their numbers. Maybe they are starving and need to hunt with the herd or within the herd. Well, it is always within the herd when it comes to sexual hunting for example.

Back to my point. Hm, what was it... Oh yeah, I wanted to talk about the magic of knowing people. Sorry, I got confused on the way. This confusion is the magic that I find fascinating when meeting new people. Most of the time there is no gap between what a person does and the affect of him. They are 90% very decent people. So decent that there is nothing left to imagination. They have a job, they have a family, they have 5-year or 10-year plans about what they are going to do. Even in their relationships with the opposite sex, they consider their plans and calculate the benefits and losses, only then they decide to go on or to part ways. They live in the social even in their bed. It terrifies me to even think about such an existence. It maybe very secure but, you know, the prison is the safest place. They are volunteers to be prisoners just for the sake of the security social provides. What is worse is that usually they don't know it. If they had such a thought, that would put them in contact with another realm other than social, so they would be a little more interesting which contradicts with their very existence.

People I love to be around are "assholes" which can also be very "polite". But neither "asshole" nor "polite" is enough to describe them. These adjectives are always in quotes. The thing I feel when meeting them is this fact: their adjectives are in quotes. So begins a journey to unknown. Unknown for me as well as for them since before this has been said, they had been in agony thinking that they are fake (if they have a strong inclination to the social) or they had been just aggressive to the point of self-destruction (again because of the feeling of guilt deep down due to not fitting anywhere in the social or natural scheme). Having another perspective such as this opens another way. A confused nevertheless creative way. They always have a dark side that social cannot shed a light upon. Making this a source of creation rather than self-destruction is the challenge. This is the magic out of which new ways of doing things come from.

The question I ask myself still stands though. How do I see the quotes? How does this recognition take place? Why I am never satisfied with pure decency? Maybe because I feel it is not pure. It is the corrupted. The dark appearing as light. Maybe it is something like knowing your own species instinctively. Magic happens everyday, in every actual encounter. But magic always happens in other layers of experience, ones which cannot be pointed out. The only expedition that is worth embarking is on these layers where the magic happens.

Of course this is only my point of view. Still I think that world would be a much better place if only there was a way to make everybody understand that magic is real and is found in the unknown planes of our very own existence. I could have been a very lovely dictator I guess... nevertheless dictating.

About the image: It is from a wonderful film ("Kader" which means fate) of Zeki Demirkubuz (a Turkish director) whose movies are very dark. In that darkness one could see the light of being human to the point of not being human anymore. I should write about this movie exclusively some time. 

Exclamation of spells: questioning

No question mark is floating in an empty space. I mean, no question is objective. To have a question, you have to desire. It is not desiring something real, but close enough. You have an inclination to that question and not to the other. It is not asking just to ask. It has a will. It is another world you've had glimpses of. Another universe. The possibility of another universe within this one, that is the will to question. Intricate...

I question only the ones I want. Or maybe I only want the ones I have big questions about. Doesn't really matter. It is the same. To question and to want, to desire. The others do not relate to me at all. If I was objective, you know, like a subject who is the master of objects including others, I should have been putting question marks on everybody. That doesn't happen. You pass many people without having any interest in them. But ones that I relate myself or the ones that relate themselves to me in a seductive way, forcing me to question them (what is seduction anyway if it is not the force that drives you to a particular place, a particular mood, a particular sensation, it is spell) while being interesting enough or promising a land that is not yet discovered, even by themselves, those are the ones who promise another universe. Almost like a spell, a force drives you to question something in particular. I think it was Bergson who said "a philosopher has only one question." One real question that animates her thinking. A will to something, to a way of existing in other words. The seductiveness of other universes belongs to the will to create, I think. Asking a question becomes like a dance almost. I don't want to tango for example. Tango is a style of questioning far away from my standing. I want to invent the rules of dancing, invent the postures while dancing. Real education within the concept of dance itself. To be challenged with the complexity of dancing. Of course if you are willing to dance from the beginning, that complexity would be a creation of yours. That feels good no matter how confusing it is. There is an atmosphere of a spell of another universe in questioning/dancing. You are forced to do certain things and not others. Rules are inventing themselves if you are under the spell of that other universe where everything is strange. You discover the rules of the moment in that other universe. And if you are under the spell of that other universe, if you will to question it, if it is seducing you to come and discover, you live there, in that moment, as an exclamation.

I know it has been very confusing. But it is confusing. I am just trying to make sense of my questions/exclamations. At the end I now see that they are the product of the same: a spell of a kind that rules over the life itself. Maybe curiosity and the will to curiosity is THE spell... And it is never objective. Curiosity is being under a spell, allow it or not, it will take you over.

Give back the problem its exclamation mark!

When exactly did the word "problem" get a negative meaning? Let's return back to the very dear etymology dictionary.

problem
late 14c., "a difficult question proposed for solution," from O.Fr. problème (14c.), from L. problema, from Gk. problema "a problem, a question," lit. "thing put forward," from proballein "propose," from pro "forward" (see pro-) + ballein "to throw" (see ballistics). Meaning "a difficulty" is mid-15c. Problem child first recorded 1920.

So, it was "pro" "putting forward",  in other words, "in favor of" doing something that has an effect. Well, I would call that "existence", standing forth in a certain way. Standing forth is always in a certain way anyway. A way that is changing other ways, allowing other certain ways to do certain things and standing in the way of other certain things, obstructing or even destroying their way of being.

For example, if you think that I am talking gibberish, you won't be allowing "my way" to exist in your world and do things to you. You will just surf on to another web page and continue on surfing until you find something that passes through the pours of your mind's skin, making a difference for (on) you, "interesting" you. Off you go...

And the others who still stay on this page and continue reading probably have the same vague feeling that I have now: there is something important about this question of problem and existence and the negative meaning "problem" has in the everyday life, something that makes a difference in our existence, but what?

To my surprise, I often come across as a negative person when I talk to others. I've been thinking about what could be the thing I do to make people understand me as oppositional all the time since all I actually want to do is to have a nice conversation, stimulating and interesting enough to make me want to keep going, to feel as if something else is happening. Of course it is impossible to be objective when one tries to understand how one comes across to others but I think, in my situation, the negativity they feel is more about how they understand questions than it is about the negativity itself. People feel that questions (provocative ones, the ones that pushes you outside your limits) are signs of not-accepting, not-agreeing, not-liking, and all the "not"s. When all I do is to point out that there is another thing and another and another... waiting to be considered in any subject, they feel that I oppose them by not staying in the comfort zone of their own making. Well, maybe it is just my "problem" but I feel that there would be nothing to talk about if everybody just agrees and feels comfortable within one line of thought, without even going till the end point of that line which almost always consists of a jump to another line, and goes on to the next and so on... The "problem" is not taking the problem seriously enough to follow through. The "problem" is not wanting to deal with the problem(s).

Actually my intent was to try to explore the quality of problems when I began writing, but now I see that before passing to the question of the quality of problems, we have to first pass through the will to problems, the will to follow their lines which are always intersecting with, crossing across other lines and creating "shining points" from where they open themselves up to other lines. The more "shining points" the better the quality of the problem.

And not everything is a problem. For example, if you want to change your job because it pays less than you need and all you consider about your job is the benefits, there is not much to talk about on this line. What your "problem" is here, is not an actual problem. It is merely an obstruction, a difficulty waiting to be solved by acting on it. But it will become a real problem once you start to question what you do as a job and how that effects you, changes you. You will still be unhappy about the job but instead of thinking that there is a solution (and in many cases there are solutions with which the "problem" itself disappears and everybody lives happily ever after), you will be on a constant search, problematising the very subject of how you live your life, how you spend your time while you are going through all the actual changes...  The way you put yourself forward is the problem which doesn't -fortunately!- have a solution.

My "problem" is my very own questioning but more with exclamation marks than neutral question marks. It is me following the lines while putting myself forward in a certain way that only I am capable of. It is me making a difference, being difference as I jump to that line instead of this willing to go on an almost infinite journey.

The problem should be understood as a verb. Problematising that is... Your problematising is your very own exclamation mark, the meaning of your problem which happens to be you leaving an affective trace in the world.

Before philosophy, there was the problem

There is nothing left, but a dream. In the middle of reality.
If the real is a dream then what are we, means of its realization?
Are all these dreams stored somewhere?
Is there such a thing as being a dream and being aware of it?
What is the meaning of questions when there are no answers,
other than creating an illusion of existence while we are swept away by time?
I think therefore... I have the illusion of living, that's all.
That's all...
That's all...
This...
This...
Th...
...
Nothing...
The pitifulness of human being -and they found a name for it: nothing...
The answer to all the questions.
- What is this?
- Let's say A.
- And this?
- B.
- Oh ok, now i get it.
Interesting...
A dazzling stupidity.
An horrifying powerlessness.
- What is this?
- Nothing.
"And they all lived happily ever after with their illusions and gods"
- Happily?!
"Ok, maybe not so happy, but at least they lived, right?"
- Ever after?!
"Hm, they took turns, generation by generation. That's something to be grateful"
All these lives pass by three dot sequences in opposition to exclamation marks.
We fool around with the exclamation as well as question marks
in our little sand pool...

(25 March 2006, 5:00 am - silence - thinking about how to write a synopsis - the desire to hold my lover - hushing nurse pictures in the hospitals)

Politics of intense bodily metaphysical experiences

I want to say that the presence of loved one is what makes an intense bodily metaphysical experience possible so that normality (normal perceptions, habits, even normal sensations that are no longer perceived as what they are, but became a part of the feeling of self) dissappears, its thick surface shatters while allowing every kind of "beyond" to be free and in such a way that it is impossible to deny what's happening since it is felt in the body, through the body, as a body...

So this intense bodily metaphysical experience is fundamentally a political experience if political is understood to be an adjective for the things moving in an active way without a need but with the will to move. The will of things is political, whether they want to stay passive, to defend their static status, or to become active to put their mark on the world as their difference, they always create the sphere of, let's say, minor politics.

What is important is this: what kind of an intense bodily metaphysical experience does your loved one's presence create? In other words, what is the will of your love? Does it make you regress from everything and try to fit in the image that is being created by it? Does it make you afraid of loosing it and by doing so limit your relation with the world? Or does it make you want to traverse all images by fully subscribing to life itself with its every little thing? Does it create something more than your own identity using your own difference? Does it enforce your own difference in the face of the banality of life? Does it give you the power to change the world in your own way? Finally does it create feelings of guilt or joy?

These are the important questions to ask ourselves while loving somebody / something to understand what does that love wants. Does it want you to be limited and fixed so that it can feed on you? Or does it want you to be yourself, an ever changing, moving enpowered style through which it can proliferate itself?

Any evaluation about any kind of love should be constructed upon these questions, whether the object of love is a child, an opposite sex, a hobby, or a philosophical approach. Yes, philosophical approaches have presences too, and all the more intense.

We were all poets...

We were all poets back in those days,
we would ooze out from the cracks of life and merge on the way.

We were all poets,
our poems would live by leaning over each other without any other ground.
Nobody would ask a question like "what is expressed by the poet here?"
We all knew that the expressed was always another poem, resisting to explanation.

We were all poets,
we would become polluted while leaking from the cracks of life.
We would flow into each other's poem, blurred.

We were all poets,
we would look to each other with loaded eyes.
And we loved each other through the pouring poems of our eyes,
we would make love to the extent of our thick and blurry and dirty waters mingled...

We were all poets as much as we were embodied poems,
we would touch one another while becoming some other image every time.
Each time, with our image-becoming that comes from pre-historic times and goes to infinity,
that travels across the whole of time,
that fills the space between us with a time that never was,
we were acquainted with each other as ourselves during the encounters of our intensities.

We were all poets back in those days.
Time, embarassed of our existence, would bend to our presence.
We,
we would look at it with serenity through our violent image-becomings.
So would time give up its being history,
it would let itself free in every move of its peculiar dance and it would talk about its before.
In its every curve, there was always a franticness.
In every franticness, there always was an infinity.
The deepness of being would talk to us from within this infinity.
The deepness of being narrated the savage character of our image-becomings as if we were always there, we were there eternally...

Enigma and projections of life

What is an enigma? Is it a riddle that just waits there to be solved? Not at all. If it were so, everything would have been much easier (and boring) and probably human beings would have been somewhat uniform. An enigma is that which does not have a solution. It is not a question waiting to be answered. It seems to me to be the pure form of question which does not have and do not need an answer. But it is a very special form as if it is the form itself and in-itself.

It is even almost impossible to call enigma an 'enigma'! It is never there to be signified and it is everywhere so that you cannot point at it. I don't yet know why I keep coming to the same metaphor in almost every subject but I cannot help it to think of enigma as the atmosphere. It is very mind blowing to me to think about the atmosphere. You cannot feel its existence but it is always there. It is everywhere so that you are always already in it without even thinking that you are in it. Enigma seems to me to be a psycho-sociological atmosphere, maybe we can even say that it is 'the will of a time'. 'The' and 'a' are the most important features of this adjunct. The tendency of a time, here time being not 'the' time but a singular time. Not at all an individual time where psychology is in act. It is singular, not particular. It is shared only by way of its singularity. Maybe enigma is the moods of Greek gods, never understood consciously but followed willingly. You can never judge a god by its doings. They will to do so and they do so. And the people who are under the influence of gods - oh, those great people - they cannot be judged also. Like Helen who ran away with Paris... She was not accused to be immoral when she returned back because she betrayed her husband and went together with handsome Paris. No. She was just obeying the goddess, Aphrodite. She was in her mood and it was a good thing to be in a mood. This was the projection of what a life should be and how it should be lived at that time and that location. There was nothing to be understood, but only moods to go along with.

Anyway, if we return to our subject and try to understand 'the will of a time' in terms of 'the' and 'a', and of course in connection with a pure question of how to live and form in-itself, there still remains too much to grasp. It is the enigma itself that contains everything.

Before beginning to write, I was thinking about how is it possible to have a projection about life. For example what is it that makes somebody go like this: I will finish my school, I will find a job that pays well, I will be independent for a while, then I will find a person whose status is in accordance with mine, I will marry and have kids, I will live in the security of my status and my marriage even though I don't even like the person I marry after a while... when I try to complete this projection what is deepdown there in the fundaments is: I will live forever. I even asked a girl who had such a projection for her life "but what about death?" She looked at me as if I was talking in a language that she does not know a word. That was the atmosphere she was breathing in, without any kind of dying. Or maybe it was too banale of me to point out such a fact. Maybe it was the most natural thing. I don't know shit. All I know is that this very concept of projection is an enigma for me. It is this 'how' I find very troubling. But it is again this 'how' most of the people live their lives without being shocked at every moment of what they do.

So there are things, enigmas that nobody talks about or teaches to their kids but everybody knows, and the kids even more so are aware of this projection because they see there are things adults do and does not make sense. And because their memory of taking this air into their lungs is very fresh. Because they remember the pain. That is why they have a very sharp version of this projection. A horrible one. It is like a jungle out there in the kindergarden...

Words are more

One: words are never just words. They are more than their meaning in their material beings. They embody some kind of rhythm and this is more worthy of attention than the meaning they supposedly transmit.

The experience of talking with the people of different cultures made me realize a very important fact about how I communicate and in general, what I like in communicating with others. Actually, it is no more communicating (if what we think of communicating is transmitting messages across) than it is, well, having fun. This fun consists of chance, experiment, coincidence and repetition as I see it. How?

First of all, you never start your sentence knowing what you are going to say next. It is not planned. To start talking, it is enough to just point out something around. This may be a thing, a person, a view, but most of the time it is a situation that covers a number of these elements and others. A complex situation that stands out just by pointing at it. This could be the beginning and the end of conversation. This is the chance factor. Some pointed situations just cannot bear to hold a whole conversation on them. Of course what I am describing here is a conversation between ideal, in other words understanding partners. Well, I happen to have a friend with whom I communicate in this way, so I am lucky. But the structure is more or less the same for a whole cultural assemblage and this assemblage is very different from that of European ones as far as I have seen.

So there is a situation and it's been pointed out. There is no message intended in this pointing out. It is just like a gesture which says "look!" And this, having no message at all, will be a recurring theme in the whole process of communication. You are there, not as "you" but as a part of the situation. If the situation is complex enough, it generates other different branches of itself that you can comfortably be placed in, without knowing. This is important. There is absolutely no knowledge, nothing is consciously grasped. Actually if someone brings conscious activities in the conversation (a German friend of mine used to do this constantly), the whole process dies. It stops to carry you on. "And...it's gone."

You have the situation, then situation holds you in. You don't have any mood killers around and you start regenerating the situation from within. Now, this is the experimential part and it should also be coincidential so that it holds the communication together. One experiment breaks down while the other proves itself solid. The solid one is solid as much as it has elasticity. It having elasticity means that it has a lot of virtual lines that could be taken up. You go ahead from these virtual lines, both of you simultaneously. This is where co-incidence occur.

After the success of all this previous process, repetition of what is experimented in the situation and what coincidentally occured comes to play. And it is the best part. This gives you joy as well as an eagerness to continue on experimenting. Every repetition is new and there is always more than words in what is repeated. The rhythm of life.

What I realized is that other cultures (most of European cultures) do not communicate as we do. They really have something to say beforehand and they want their message to get across. I even felt bad for a while thinking that I never knew what communication is to that day. But then I met Italians and their "eternal dadaism" felt so good, so freakishly full of life, I promised myself never to suspect if I am doing this right or wrong again. Afterall, there is nothing to suspect if you feel good right?

I won't ever have any message to give except "let's play!"