tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11856172789106332642024-03-13T12:18:15.972+03:00why not!ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-48907967587535831222019-03-21T20:44:00.000+03:002019-03-21T21:18:58.971+03:00Waiting for the goat to gander<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/u_R9fId_Rqo/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/u_R9fId_Rqo?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
So...<br />
<br />
Once I was very much in love. "Very much" is nonsensical though, since when you are in love, that's it. It is out of the quantifiable realm. And now, "once" and "was" also seem wrong to me, because there is no time there, in that dimension. Once you see that dimension, you cannot unsee it. It is part of your world, now and forever. It's an act, not related to a subject. It's awesome.<br />
<br />
Anyway.<br />
<br />
So, these were the last words he said to me: "Wait Aysegul. Wait for the goat to gander. Whatever gander means."<br />
<br />
I laughed. It was a good joke. But today, out of nowhere, I started to really think on it, to think why I laughed so hard when the situation was so dreary. So here I go.<br />
<br />
It was funny because... it skillfully pointed out something. Something very fundamental. The impossibility. The impossibility for the goat to gander because there is no such thing as gander. I know there is such a word. It probably means something. However, the "whatever gander means" that comes right after it negates the existence of "gander" itself since words don't really exist out in the nature. They are made up by us to point to things, feelings, situations, etc. When you don't know - or really don't care about - the meaning and when you use it in a context that requires you to know the meaning (I mean when you wait <i>for something </i>to happen, you have to recognize it when it happens to end the wait), what you are trying to point out is exactly "impossibility" itself.<br />
<br />
I just realized this. A few moments ago. And I laughed even harder. Because what I realized was even funnier: I was actually waiting. Actually.<br />
<br />
I was waiting... for an impossibility to occur. Yes. This is like waiting for a bus that would never come. No, no. It's more like waiting for a bus when there is no such thing as a bus. There aren't even vehicles. No such actuality. But you wait anyway. You can't even understand, let alone explain what you are doing because there is no such concept, even in your mind.<br />
<br />
This strikes me as the most fundamental basis in life, of life. Like when we say "in life" it sounds like there is such a thing, place, whatever "out life." Isn't it funny? How can you even think "out life?" Yet, we talk like this.<br />
<br />
Now, we have come to the most important point I want to make if I can manage.<br />
<br />
According to scientific thinking, life emerged at some point in time. I mean organic life, of course, since universe has a life much larger than organic life. And even universe came to being at some point where there was no time. Before that, it didn't exist. It came out of nothing. Isn't this an impossibility itself?<br />
<br />
The true nature of life is impossible. That is what I am trying to say without going into complicated philosophical concepts, and also I can't go into them even if I wanted to, since I forgot it all - after years of reading - to do <i>me,</i> to hand it to <i>whatever I am</i>... So, waiting for what you don't know, what you can't recognize even if you see it, which was my case in this scenario, is existence itself. I am not making this up. It is logically obvious.<br />
<br />
Here, I found another support for my fight against the disease of nihilism. Nihilism consists of a very consistent and even more distorted <i>way of being</i>. I don't say "seeing the world" anymore because it sounds like a perspective, and perspective is understood as something harmless. No. It harms not only the diseased, but everybody coming into contact with him/her.<br />
<br />
This guy embodied nihilism - for me. Maybe that's why I was so attracted to him. I wanted to understand my enemy at its source to be able to fight it better. He was walking-death, and I must say this as well: death has many faces as we all know, this one was cheerful, don't be fooled, don't confuse it with joy, it's not joy. What he said - what he thought he was saying - with the goat and gander was the manifesto of death. However it was a scam, just like death is. And I felt very proud when I exposed it for what it was: just another confirmation of life. That's how I managed, once more, in my own way, to weaponize death against itself (for more on this subject, see Deleuze&Guattari).<br />
<br />
So, waiting for the goat to gander is the joyful truth of life. Although I don't like using the word "truth" at all, now is the time. It's joyful. I like it when the "truth" is joyful because it is true only when it's joyful.<br />
<br />
I will always be waiting for the goat to gander. And I will do it joyfully - preferably with a whip, just in case... That's the beauty of impossibility that is life.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-85971086348820633982017-02-23T20:55:00.000+03:002017-02-23T20:55:51.463+03:00The practice of forgettingI don't know if you read Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. I just started reading so I don't know what to make of it yet but so far, it created some beautiful glimmering moments for me. One of them happened to be where he was discussing the difference between digital and manual writing. That subject itself, nevertheless related to this one, deserves a whole other essay which I plan to write on the comparison he made on possibilities of digital vs. manual writing where he sided with digital, rightfully and beautifully arguing that act of writing on digital media enables one to create universes "where sharp lines in space and time do not exist" due to various abilities such as the speed, replacing words at the press of a key, deleting and recalling as opposed to the "linear" process of manual writing. Basically, he praises digital media for its ability of forgetting. Here is a beautiful passage to enjoy while making things clear.<br />
<br />
"Repenting, I could have deleted the first draft. I left it to show <i>how the “is” and the “ought,” accident and necessity, can co-exist on this screen.</i> If I wanted, I could remove the offending passage from the screen but not from the memory, thereby creating an archive of my repressions while denying omnivorous Freudians and virtuosi of variant texts the pleasure of conjecture, the exercise of their occupation, their academic glory. This is better than real memory, because real memory, at the cost of much effort, learns to remember but not to forget. Diotallevi goes Sephardically mad over those palaces with grand staircases, that statue of a warrior doing something unspeakable to a defenseless woman, the corridors with hundreds of rooms, each with the depiction of a portent, and the sudden apparitions, disturbing incidents, walking mummies. To each memorable image you attach a thought, a label, a category, a piece of the cosmic furniture, syllogisms, an enormous sorites, chains of apothegms, strings of hypallages, rosters of zeugmas, dances of hysteron proteron, apophantic logoi, hierarchic stoichea, processions of equinoxes and parallaxes, herbaria, genealogies of gymnosophists— and so on, to infinity. O Raimundo, O Camillo, you had only to cast your mind back to your visions and immediately you could reconstruct the great chain of being, in love and joy, because all that was disjointed in the universe was joined in a single volume in your mind, and Proust would have made you smile. <i>But when Diotallevi and I tried to construct an ars oblivionalis that day, we couldn’t come up with rules for forgetting. It’s impossible.</i> <i>It’s one thing to go in search of a lost time, chasing labile clues, like Hop-o’-My-Thumb in the woods, and quite another deliberately to misplace time refound.</i> Hop-o’-My-Thumb always comes home, like an obsession. There is no discipline of forgetting; we are at the mercy of random natural processes, like stroke and amnesia, and such self-interventions as drugs, alcohol, or suicide. <i>Abu, however, can perform on himself precise local suicides, temporary amnesias, painless aphasias.</i>" [Abu is the name of the digital machine and italics are mine.]<br />
<br />
Well... this passage right here made me think firstly about my desire to write with a mechanical typewriter - why I wanted to write with a mechanical typewriter which will be another essay's topic, that is if I ever manage to write it - and of course about how one could practice forgetting...<br />
<br />
And since I never go directly for the obvious and always revolve around the subject to discern it from its peripheries, it seemed like a good idea to try to write about the practice, or better put, the movements of forgetting since I have a lot of experience in that subject: I've - most of the time - deliberately forgotten and continue to forget many things. It's more like a habit. Or maybe I should say that I operate on whatever is attached to the thing I desire to forget.<br />
<br />
So here it goes...<br />
<br />
First rule of forgetting: you do not talk about... oops sorry, that was Fight Club...<br />
<br />
Where were we? Oh yes, forgetting... so, it was close enough to Fight Club as well.<br />
<br />
Anyway, the first rule of forgetting is not wanting to forget! (It is so deliciously paradoxical that I had to stop and enjoy the thought for a few minutes! It is moments like these that make me lose track of my own thoughts so I cannot promise much coherency from now on - as if I ever had a claim about coherency!)<br />
<br />
So, if you want to forget, you should not want to forget. Instead, you should <i>will</i> <i>to remember and face your accidents, </i>as<i> </i>Eco puts it. Life is a series of accidents. In philosophy, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accident_(philosophy)" target="_blank">accident</a> is mostly understood as the things which happen to you, in other words, the events of your life. This has been a major topic in philosophy, discussed in depth since Aristotle but for our purposes here, it would be enough to define accident as experience. The object of the act of forgetting is necessarily an experience, right? An experience of some importance. Nobody would bother to forget insignificant or trivial experiences such as going to the store to buy cigarettes etc. So, what you try to forget is always something that makes you feel in a certain way, be it pain, sadness, shame or sorrow...<br />
<br />
That certain feeling attached to the experience indicates the forcefulness or power of your experience, in other words the <i>problematic nature</i> of it. That means it has <i>a power</i>. A potential waiting to be created to transform you, and once you become a new person, that is, once you change your plane of operation, the accident you wanted to forget ceases to be itself as well.<br />
<br />
These powerful experiences are real questions, and being real questions, they don't have an answer. What is a real question? I feel like it is the creator of <i>a particular </i>truth. Truth, even the emphasis is on the <i>particular</i>, never wants you to give an answer to it. It pulls or pushes you to believe or not believe it. You are kind of helpless on that plane, at the mercy of a certain arrangement of forces. So, you have to jump on another plane where you will meet the light coming from the crack the question created. There always is a crack. And actually you use that crack like a pole to jump onto another plane. Trying to forget won't help because you will be under its power, entangled in its mesh, it will force you to do something until you do something. You can choose to repress it, and by doing so stay within that force zone but that's how various disturbances originate on various parts of your body and not only in your mind.<br />
<br />
Anyway, you have to want to change your plane rather than wanting to forget; that is to arrange yourself differently, to change your patterns... You can start with really small and concrete things as well, like literally arranging your home differently even if its imaginary. Let me give you an example:<br />
<br />
A few weeks ago, I was trying to forget some pain and in such a state that I didn't want to do anything. I didn't want to work, to read, to watch movies, to go out, to talk to people. I mean nothing... I was constantly procrastinating in front of the computer, telling myself that I will work at some point while surfing on the online shopping websites meaninglessly since I wasn't buying anything. Days went on like this. At the end I had arranged a virtual new home, existing only in the shopping lists of the websites. At some point I asked myself, "What the hell am I doing?!" This looked so meaningless, so null. But it wasn't so... I actually had transformed the apartment where I work and live, basically spend most of my time, and it didn't need to be real. I needed a new perspective so my procrastination was showing me the way. What I was reaching for was not only different furniture, different arrangements but a different life. I came to this conclusion by tracing myself, and asking on the way, "What could this mean? What does it do for me that I feel better having this couch here and this table there only in my mind? Hell, it wouldn't make any difference even if they were here." But believe me, your mind is much like a home, arranged in a certain way that enables you to do certain things, like sitting comfortably where you get sunlight or being stuck and uncomfortable under bad illumination. Changing such a small thing as illumination enables you to do different things with things illuminated. A painful memory could be made something creative this way, if you follow the pain through its path of origination which seems to me to be basically the crack of the question.<br />
<br />
Or if you are one of those people feeding on sorrow, you probably would want to forget good feelings such as vigor, passion, and joy... but if you are one of those people, I am sorry to have wasted your time. You could have instead opened another bottle of an alcoholic drink of your preference full of melancholia and continued to feel pity for yourself...<br />
<br />
On the other hand, you could be trying to forget an event which, at the time, gave you pleasure but now became a source of pain since you are no longer able to experience it. Well, pardon me, but this would only show your limited understanding of that event, your restricted ability to recreate and feed on that pleasure. The movement to make in this situation should be searching the ways to make that event or experience productive for it to be a source of ever more pleasure.<br />
<br />
So jump off that plane. I know it's easier said than done. But once you manage to do it once or twice, you'll see it's more of a matter of athletics - much like pole vault really - rather than a conscious effort - not that I know anything about conscious efforts... It's quite true though that it cannot be really taught. You have to do it yourself to learn. At the end you might even make it a habit like me but I don't really recommend that. Because then it kind of becomes impossible to stay on one plane for long. You just want to jump! Plus, since we are living organisms, we cannot really be as precise as Abu in our local suicides. One of these days I may perform my last jump...well, nobody said it was safe, but it's fun and it's the least I can do. For now.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwEYc237JBPRla60AeSfBwWrzeCKKw9znM3IBQYuqEwGLX66yCLydb1cI4NUH9Rs-iquQDNW31I5-FoqaXIEXJgRvXqeZ-EoOekzvkUhdqZ2IgI4iYL_DqbZEqhAF0d-rxLt2U1ldj8z2v/s1600/635741132912417851-AFP-543007452.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwEYc237JBPRla60AeSfBwWrzeCKKw9znM3IBQYuqEwGLX66yCLydb1cI4NUH9Rs-iquQDNW31I5-FoqaXIEXJgRvXqeZ-EoOekzvkUhdqZ2IgI4iYL_DqbZEqhAF0d-rxLt2U1ldj8z2v/s320/635741132912417851-AFP-543007452.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
P.S. This is an old post which I wrote exactly one year ago today apparently and never finished until today. It's what jumping does to you: you have trouble completing things. Ah but I finished Foucault's Pendulum. Books, I always follow to the end. And I am still jumping and not completely dead yet.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-32760572325518243482017-02-22T22:37:00.003+03:002017-02-22T22:37:26.583+03:00Yours sincerely, Ubik.I always had this idea: being smart necessarily involves some kind of happiness. I don't know where I got this idea despite the contradiction it created with my very first memories - maybe I was Spinoza in another lifetime, who knows... I remember being four or five years old, and trying to tell the adults around me the vastness of the universe and how little we are compared to this immense thing about which we know close to nothing. I remember them being surprised, not because of the immensity of the universe but because I was stating this very normal fact everyone can actually figure out for themselves. So as for my own experience, being smart involved a painful boredom from the stupidity of humans. They never even came close to be stupefied before this weird universe together. That was all I asked: to be baffled together.<br />
<br />
So obviously, I had to doubt that idea. Could being smart necessarily involve sadness instead? Of course, it kind of involves some degree of happiness down to a certain level. Spinoza is all about this. You get better and better as your understanding increases. However, as you dig deeper, layer after layer, you come to this weird layer. Philip K. Dick calls it "irrationality as the fundamental stratum of universe." It is deeply saddening. There is a very delicate balance there. That stratum is where it all happens and it is so indifferent that it hurts. You have to constantly keep yourself interested with the life side of the scales rather than the death side to stay alive.<br />
<br />
It is kind of true, then, that being smart - and alive - involves both a saddening and a very forceful will not to be sad. It involves a constant search for something that can, in a way, be used for the life side of the scale. As a very smart person, I think Philip K. Dick felt this to his bones. He dived into the waters of sincerity - which is a term I kind of use for that fundamental stratum of irrationality as the basis of life - and although he was deeply saddened, he never gave up on what he managed to take with him from there. That was Ubik. Maybe a little more explanation is needed here.<br />
<br />
The book "Ubik" is not really the best literary work but something happens there. Something I still can't really figure out but I feel it's important and something I am sure Dick himself didn't really understand. His intelligence was a felt one, generally just very confusing. The general plot is... well, I can't tell the whole book here. Let's just say there are some people doing some things. Ah, and there is this half-life thing going on where people continue to sort of live on after death. Living people can communicate with them for a prolonged but again limited period. The interesting thing is that you see this thing called Ubik everywhere. It appears in cheap ads at first such as "Instant Ubik has all the fresh
flavor of just-brewed drip coffee. Your husband will say, Christ, Sally, I used
to think your coffee was only so-so, but now, wow! Safe when taken as directed." There are many of these but they always end with something like "use only as directed." At some point, things start to degenerate, to rot, to get old and people use Ubik to heal things. I mean, time starts to rewind and if I remember right, it only goes as far back as 1930s.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFRPlvlUXU-E_qly3HXlrb00_14U7Sy3_cZfzxAf6z5-q9r7iyNBQUonfzVZzkKC8D_QOb-6TKnP3S5OhDV64UydqtGmibHTwrnroLfZzD0TREuRHys8yADQ0O14JIHFwZIfnWmxXyIdQh/s1600/try_ubik___new_and_powerful_by_mary_chan-d3du5w3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="129" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFRPlvlUXU-E_qly3HXlrb00_14U7Sy3_cZfzxAf6z5-q9r7iyNBQUonfzVZzkKC8D_QOb-6TKnP3S5OhDV64UydqtGmibHTwrnroLfZzD0TREuRHys8yADQ0O14JIHFwZIfnWmxXyIdQh/s320/try_ubik___new_and_powerful_by_mary_chan-d3du5w3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
(For the wonderful visual: http://martinacecilia.deviantart.com/art/Try-Ubik-New-and-powerful-204640851)<br />
<br />
<br />
Why am I telling all this? Because, well, I was thinking about the significance of Ubik for me and I had written this piece on Deleuze&Guattari, Ubik and resistance a few years ago. There, I had argued that Ubik was the "dark precursor" of the resistance against capitalism. But it occurred to me that I wasn't really catching the point unless I considered time as something inter-subjective. I was thinking too abstractly. Sometimes I can't see what's in front of me because of this tendency. Anyway, everything is in-between of things, worlds, people... So, the three syntheses of time go really good with the three syntheses in the Anti-Oedipus. Here, connective synthesis goes parallel with the synthesis of the lived present (now). Disjunctive synthesis goes parallel with the synthesis of the past: there is a difference between chronological past and the past-that-never-was which is the difference between the production of recording and the record surface which is body without organs. And conjunctive synthesis with the synthesis of future.<br />
<br />
Now, this is the production of life and of time. This is the process. The result is a nomadic subject, existing only as intensities, intense feelings. the relation between intensities. This subject can only exist as someone else, something else than itself. How does this relate with PKD and Ubik? Well, how did he come up with Ubik? What is it exactly? Something so very trashy but nevertheless healing life only when used as directed which means, too obvious for me, it is a style. It is a friendly whisper to sooth you while you're rotting in half-life, it is a "reality support" to prevent you becoming a zombie or a vampire. It is like an undercurrent even below the irrational and irreal stratum, through which you relate to others who dug deeper and deeper, who didn't stop at nothingness, who didn't surrender to nihilism, who kept on loving life and other people even when those other people were killing them with their self-destructive tendencies. It's just like he writes in Valis: "She will not allow herself to be healed because she does not understand that she is sick. This illness and madness pervades us and makes us idiots living in private, unreal worlds." This is the madness. And this is making death weigh heavier than life at that layer where life needs some support. Here is another quote from Valis:<br />
"All creation is a language and nothing but a language, which for some inexplicable reason we can't read outside and can't hear inside. So I say, we have become idiots. Something has happened to our intelligence. My reasoning is this: arrangement of parts of the Brain is a language. We are parts of the Brain; therefore we are language. Why, then, do we not know this? We do not even know what we are, let alone what the outer reality is of which we are parts. The origin of the word "idiot" is the word "private." Each of us has become private, and no longer shares the common thought of the Brain, except at a subliminal level. Thus our real life and purpose are conducted below our threshold of consciousness."<br />
<br />
The whole point of PKD is love. That's what he means by empathy, by agape, by eros, that which keeps us together and thus alive in the face of constant death and destruction and dissipation. He didn't want this to be his occupation. Nobody wants such a life of struggle. This cannot be a conscious effort. He just did what he had to do to endure life with what he had. He was just desperately smart. As he says himself, "He wasn't just theory-mongering for the sake of it; he was trying to figure out what the fuck had happened to him," all the while constructing universes to try to find a way out of this madness.<br />
<br />
"How do you construct a universe that doesn't fall apart in two days?" Well, by diving into the existing universe. By diving into sincerity to connect to the world. By becoming a machine entangled with the fabric of the world. Sincerity - one cannot be sincere, it is like an atmosphere, it cannot be used as an adjective, and I know I should elaborate on that concept in another post - is always at the very beginning. It enables one to be at the very beginning, it is a kind of timeless primordial experience. Honesty which is very disturbingly confused with sincerity, comes only later, when there is a later. When it's already too late. When one no longer can become a machine with the world but with the connection broken, can only observe the world from the outside as a dead lump of meat at the very best.<br />
<br />
Anyway... So, I wanted to say that Deleuze&Guattari are revolutionary academics with their conscious effort to show a way out for health but PKD is not less of a revolutionary in his own confused and desperate way. He named Ubik for the rest of us through his own experiences. I can go on for pages on how he deconstructs the production of recording for the benefit of the recording surface, on how his paranoia enables him to decode and detach himself, on how he envisions an inclusive and nonrestrictive society where he reattaches himself to others, on how he so accurately speculates and fictionalizes philosophy, on how he enables his reader to go along this mind boggling journey, on how wonderful was that little Sci-Fi society of 1940s and 1950s before it was cool...<br />
<br />
But for the purposes of this little post what's important is only this: how does Ubik heal life? Well, it is Logos, it's the force of life on that irrational stratum, it is our weapon against destruction, death and nothingness. It truly belongs to us in this vast universe. It's our power to create. Yes, maybe it's the "dark precursor" of life against death. It is how forces of life communicate with each other and create together. It is that book through which a self-educated and desperately smart man continues to communicate with the people who can receive the signals. The people who have a will to heal life which is an impossible task to begin with.<br />
<br />
By the way, I am not a Dick-head - it's how fans of PKD call themselves - because being a fan of somebody or something just doesn't belong to my constitution. I just love some people very much and like to praise them. I feel this is the only way I can resist all this stupid shit going on in the world, and not especially now. It has always been stupid. I am just trying to make more of what I love. Just getting some reality support and thus joy from Ubik right now... I will always be on the side of desperate nevertheless joyful intelligence.<br />
<br />
Last words from PKD:<br />
"I think Dr. Willis McNelly at the California State University at Fullerton put it best when he said that the true protagonist of an sf story or novel is an idea and not a person. If it is good sf the idea is new, it is stimulating, and, probably most important of all, it sets off a chain-reaction of ramification-ideas in the mind of the reader; it so-to-speak unlocks the reader's mind so that that mind, like the author's, begins to create. Thus sf is creative and it inspires creativity, which mainstream fiction by-and-large does not do. We who read sf (I am speaking as a reader now, not a writer) read it because we love to experience this chain-reaction of ideas being set off in our minds by something we read, something with a new idea in it; hence the very best science fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create -- and enjoy doing it: joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of newness." (in a letter) May 14,1981<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-47534085141735844592017-02-08T20:37:00.000+03:002017-02-10T18:28:50.861+03:00There is a Law, there is an Arm, there is a Hand!There are species of people: monkeys, penguins, rabbits, cats, wolves, anteaters, pandas, dung beetles... - ah, dung beetles are lovely! They remind me of Sisyphus with their painstaking labor just rolling shit and trying to push it just a little further...<br />
<br />
Anyway, there are as many species as the number of people, and one person is already many species, we can't enumerate them all. So a more fundamental categorization would be, for me, poets and others whatever their species may be. Poets do not necessarily write poetry though. Actually it is something rare for someone to be a poet and to write poetry at the same time. I have a poet friend who has never really written poetry and works in a bottling factory, for example. Poets are the ones starting from breaks, cracks, who see and feel the constant shifting of planes of existence, who kind of surf on the waves of existence without really belonging to any of these, without settling down, not really taking anything seriously enough to plant roots because they know, feel that it's all going to end. The end is always already happening. Poets signal that but always cheerfully because, really, there is nothing else to do in the face of such constant change and destruction than to laugh, and maybe to create more signs to be found by others to guide them in turn, to create their own signs...<br />
<br />
So is Leonard Cohen, and he is one of the rare poets who also wrote poetry. Someone said that he was the last anti-hero and it made me feel sick to my stomach. This understanding, for me, is as wrong and warped as it can be. What is an anti-hero, anyway? Is he a loser? Is he someone that stands in the way of the hero? Is he aware that he is an anti-hero? Is his opposition a conscious effort? Or is he just an asshole, destroying things without building anything? The idea of anti-hero never really made sense to me but I feel the tastelessness of it even for the very fact that it assumes a plane where heroes and anti-heroes reside. Settled in there comfortably. Sure, Leonard might have passed from there, might have produced signs pointing there but that would be all. He would be just passing by...<br />
<br />
Anyway, the day he died, I was actually reaching for Back to Methuselah, a book of Bernard Shaw, to help me once more with, well, everything. There are a certain number of things I constantly go back to read, to feel. That means these things still have something to offer, they are still producing signs for me, or for the Hand to grope to make its way in the world.<br />
<br />
So I reached for Bernard Shaw for him to heal my belief in the world which is basically a belief in a Hand. In this funny and smart book, two guys talk about how the lifespan of humans should be increased to create a better civilization and how this is actually possible if only people wanted, desired, felt the need to live longer. It's basically an argument for creative evolution. But what is funny is that both of these men who argue for this die while a guy who was there totally coincidentally continues to live as we see in the next scene set 150 years later. He didn't understand what happened to him when he just wasn't dying when it was reasonably his time. So beautiful and funny.<br />
<br />
What this entails for me is that there is this force, these forces, just creating things, paving different roads and this has nothing to do with knowing or understanding or being conscious. Unconscious workings of life...guided by desire...<br />
<br />
So:<br />
There is a Law, there is an Arm, there is a Hand.<br />
<br />
In a very different way though.<br />
<br />
Sometimes I do outrageous things, things that don't make sense at all at that time, things that are not functional, even counter-intuitive for my survival, things that will most probably crash me, cause me to dissolve...<br />
<br />
When I do these things I feel like I am plotting against myself and I feel a Hand. Not the Law or the Arm though. I wonder about them, wonder if they exist but I know there is definitely a Hand there, very much palpable. So I pass to the side of paranoia from the usual schizophrenic plane I dwell in but I do so to wonder about what's happening, to follow where this Hand is trying to take me. That paranoia, it's not like there is some grand scheme. Now Werner Herzog talks in his enchanting way that says even more than his words: "The universe is indifferent to our constructions of grands schemes" - of course it is, Werner... But we are not indifferent. Werner, sure, is not indifferent. Life is not indifferent. For there to be life, there must be a reaching out to light, water, food... There must be an interest for light and water and minerals etc. for a plant to grow, for instance. Or there must be a pathetic Grizzly Man for Werner to make a film on.<br />
<br />
So when I do these outrageous things I do them happily, really. Not even happily but unconsciously. I don't decide, I just reach out. And by now I learned that even though nothing makes sense at that point in time, a time will come for me to feed on the very thing that destroyed me: to make sense. Because I had to reach out to that thing to make the very transformation which is the wonder of making sense.<br />
<br />
So... there is a Hand, for sure in these lyrics for me:<br />
"I left everybody but I never went straight, I don't claim to be guilty but I do understand. [...] Now my heart's like a blister from doing what I do. [...] I'm going to miss you forever tho' it's not what I planned. [...] Now the deal has been dirty since dirty began. I'm not asking for mercy, not from the man. You just don't ask for mercy while you're still on the stand."<br />
<br />
Sure, these lyrics may be talking about something else entirely. But I don't care. And such is the beauty of the lyrics as well: they give off signals beyond themselves. It's not important that we are not on the same page with the lyrics. What's important is that these lyrics have opened some pages before me, whatever those may be.<br />
<br />
I don't have a will to know what they <i>really </i>mean... I have a will to dance and to witness the creation of new connections guided by the rhythm of that Hand. I am sure there will emerge something to enlarge my playground, at the very least.<br />
<br />
One must dance to the rhythm of all those invisible but forceful Hands...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zyon7A9g3cw/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zyon7A9g3cw?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-38193523757233122662016-06-04T11:25:00.000+03:002016-06-04T11:36:40.493+03:00questions, exclamations, anchors and spins<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The question that has been hunting me since I was a kid
revolves around interest, I suppose. Not monetary interest, god no! That kind
of interest just exceeds my understanding. I have no interest in that kind of
interest. My interest is more like why being interested in this rather than
that? Why some are drawn to one thing - like monetary interest, for example,
which is a type of interest I just can't grasp - while others are drawn to
other things? The question itself is still pretty blurry for me. I can't
formulate it yet, or better put, I formulate it all the time in varying ways
which are always quite different from each other, most of the time to the point
of contradiction.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And I always contradict myself, that's another point, or
maybe I should say I find myself in contradiction most of the time. Even this
state of contradiction creates a contradiction if you take, as I do, the first
premise of "people are drawn to certain things" to be true. You
wouldn't contradict yourself if what interests you was a certain fixed thing.
The thing is you don't even know and you can't possibly know what you will be
drawn to. It's in the future tense because it's about a future state of
mind. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So, that means, being interested in something necessarily
involves future, a kind of future that resides in the here-and-now. It is not a
planned future, a schedule, an abstract representation of how it
"will" be. It is in the very moment of being drawn, in that weird
feeling that pushes you this way rather than that way. You stay on something if
you are interested and you stay on it right in the middle of the here-and-now.
There is a duration, a persistence, a reaching out... This is not a conscious
thing obviously. Of course there are consciously decided interests, but again I
am not talking about them since I don't really understand how they work. I am
talking about the fundamental shift that takes place when you reach for a
particular thing you see or hear or read. It is like magic really, as if
something gets a hold on you, orienting you towards a certain direction. It
could be a major thing that will leave you feeling that it changed your life forever,
or it could be one of those little things we dwell in everyday, like wanting to
take a walk on this park rather than the other or reaching out for this book
rather than the one next to that.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Deleuze talks about something he calls "dark precursor,"
something that signals future while at the same time constituting it. I still
don't quite know what it is but the important thing here is that I was
instantly drawn to this peculiar series of words as soon as I saw it written on
some page among hundreds of other series of words. There was something for me
in that particular adjective clause; something resonated with me, something I
cannot put my finger on but something forceful. It interested me. I
cannot say why, just as I cannot truly give a reason for my interest in
philosophy. Many people live their lives without philosophy and they seem just
fine. We can always list reasons, and perfectly justified ones as well to be
interested in philosophy such as the cliché of "one should live a life
that is thought through," etc. But all that comes from the level of
consciousness. It doesn't explain the fundamental orientation, the
"granite of fate" as Nietzsche calls it (which is another wonderfully
forceful image for me).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So, interest has nothing to do with consciousness and it
involves future in a way. Think about falling in love. You find yourself drawn
to a particular person among many people. You can't give a reason why you are
drawn to that person. The feeling just holds you there. As Leonard Cohen puts it
so simply, "I am not the one who loves, it is love that seizes me."
You are literally seized by some world, a certain assemblage of the world which
is called the self. It is almost like being caught in a web that appears to
exist just to catch you.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sometimes I entertain the thought that we are all question
marks, not at the end of the questions but in the middle of them, signaling a
certain web of questions. We are all signs of a certain assemblage of questions
and we relate to each other through the web of questions. Some don't interest
us at all since our web of questions doesn't touch those. Some, on the other
hand, attract us instantly since our webs are intertwined. There is always a
search for the questions we signal with our existence. And what we call life is
the journey towards clarifying what these are. Once the question is formulated,
it is solved. We are all trying to formulate our web of questions. There are
moments when we, as question marks, turn into exclamation marks. Something we
encounter transforms us into exclamation marks to show the way within the web
and make us sense what we are a sign of. It's just like what Philip K. Dick
said: "There exists, for everyone, a sentence - a series of words - that
has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words,
that could heal you. If you're lucky you will get the second, but you can be
certain of getting the first." </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It's not a smooth business wandering around your web. He is
right. You can be certain - if you are a little awake - that you will turn into
an exclamation mark somewhere along the road through an encounter that will
destroy your existence as a serene question mark. But, if you can persist and
find other signs - if you have not already - that secure your place in the
middle of your web, that help you continue your quest by acting as anchorage
points, that heal your existence as a question mark - because as an exclamation
mark you can't do anything but scream with joy and pain - then you will be able
to see your web in a better light, to see more of it or, better put, to expand
it. Tried and tested. Those anchorage points for me, for example, include Dick, Cohen, Deleuze, Coffeen and many other friends. They are other signs on my web
of questions. They don't act as fixation points but literally anchors. I hold
onto them and spin around my own web with the hope of exploring more of what I
am made of. Thanks to them, I don't dissolve and lose sight of what I am here
for: namely to investigate what I am, to increase my land on the surface of
life. What destroys me is also a part of my web world; otherwise it wouldn't
have been able to destroy me. So, I have to become a question mark again after
each time I have turned into an exclamation mark only to look at the direction
the exclamation mark has shown me. That is, my very own future, here and now.
And all this happens on the ground of fundamental sincerity, but that is a
subject for another post... </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Life is so interesting...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-18099791585793346782016-05-15T15:57:00.000+03:002016-05-15T15:57:20.674+03:00an encounter with a vampireIt was two years ago today,<br />
exactly at three a.m. that I saw him approaching from the future.<br />
We were in the middle of yet another time war,<br />
past vs. future, and all that crap.<br />
I always sided with the future because I had to,<br />
I, of course instantly, sided with him too...<br />
<br />
What I didn't know back then in the future was<br />
the nature of vampires,<br />
how they shimmered with life they drink,<br />
how they were tortuously caught in between times,<br />
how they operated within the delay,<br />
there, the reason for their myth of eternal youth lay.<br />
<br />
There he was, stroking me with his shine,<br />
Irresistibly full of shit, incomparably attractive.<br />
I had to ask breathlessly,<br />
"From the depth of which grave you rose up to get me?<br />
"What was that strong enough to kill you?<br />
"What do you want from me?"<br />
<br />
He said, "We have no graves," with an ever more radiant beam,<br />
"We have no mortis causa,<br />
"We do have sticks full of powerful life residue to offer."<br />
He was amused with my stupidity,<br />
all the while playing his trick on me with that stick,<br />
to take my becoming, digest it and make it stink.<br />
<br />
The war was still going on,<br />
I had taken a break, exhausted of all the lonely battles,<br />
We ran and hopped and jumped around<br />
on the immense green fields of the future.<br />
No need for war, we said,<br />
we'll enjoy the cosmic play of joy from here.<br />
<br />
Then one day, as I looked in his eyes intensely, he said, "Honestly!"<br />
"You can't possibly be that ignorant of me,<br />
you had to shut your intensity down to enjoy the cosmic mockery."<br />
There, he named the game what it was not.<br />
In "honesty" he must have fallen into the crack of times.<br />
In "honesty" he was sure I'd fall too...<br />
<br />
I felt as heavy as the earth itself,<br />
and the earth itself felt heavier than me.<br />
We both could only croak, "Sincerely..."<br />
"We who sided with the future, our game was sincerity.<br />
Now you cast me the role, now you imprison me.<br />
Now you push me into the grave of dead meats,<br />
full with facts, and matters, and things.<br />
Now I am blinded, now I truly see<br />
how horrible your life must be."<br />
<br />
His ears were soundproof with bricks of facts,<br />
death itself was looking through his now-impersonal eyes.<br />
As the earth and I were losing all our folds,<br />
he turned his back and walked away.<br />
Out of the corner of my crusting eye<br />
I caught a glimpse of his depart,<br />
it was a little too late, a little early, eternally.<br />
In the twilight of my body, his figure was just a lump.<br />
"How could a lump walk?" I thought for the last time, painfully...<br />
<br />
There we were, the earth and me, in the land of delay,<br />
the earth; reduced to its surface, stretched infinitely...<br />
me; bloodless, lifeless, helpless, achingly less...<br />
Unable to send a signal from this immense prison,<br />
there, I laid flat, squirming with torment,<br />
there, I was a little hysteric, a little dead.<br />
<br />
Thus the vampire had bitten me<br />
to turn all the imperceptible signs of life in my flesh<br />
into impersonal death messengers.<br />
For a moment that felt like forever<br />
the earth was a howling desert,<br />
For a moment, my flesh was a gaping wound.<br />
For a moment, there I was no more.<br />
<br />
Then, the moment passed, as it does, in a thousand years,<br />
finally the future commanded me to unfuck myself, to break free<br />
and sent me the pass to write this story.<br />
Now, I keep rocking my chair in the sun<br />
all the while I sense sincerity giving shape to the earth again,<br />
and healing all that is me,<br />
but once in a while<br />
I think I hear the chair sigh...ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-39982561080987841252015-12-17T14:31:00.001+02:002015-12-17T16:28:32.900+02:00migratory routes of us, nomads (I)I, hereby, declare that I belong to a society which is called by many names.<br />
<br />
Every member of the nomadic people of the earth has the right to rename our society, although most of the members don't really care about naming stuff. They just go about doing their own business. I wasn't interested in naming it too, but since I was asked, with a tinge of hatred and contempt, of what my society consists, I had to come up with some names. I thought of some, some others I borrowed from other members. It is not a crime to steal names in our society if you build on it and create with it - in other words, if you manage to make it your own, you're always welcome.<br />
<br />
So here it goes:<br />
<br />
nomads...<br />
individuals...<br />
people of future...<br />
future-tense-people...<br />
erewhonians...<br />
birds...<br />
zarathustras...<br />
paradoxical elements...<br />
pebbles...<br />
contingents...<br />
sense-events...<br />
dark precursors...<br />
marks of the earth...<br />
time-cracks...<br />
networks...<br />
conjunctives...<br />
ands...<br />
withs...<br />
flows...<br />
poets...<br />
prophets...<br />
gönüls - which is many things at once as one of our members described: "mind, soul, heart, energy, lovers, jealousies, silences together" - his English was poor as he is an Italian, but he showed his deep understanding of this Turkish word which is essentially untranslatable. Ah!<br />
untranslatables...<br />
and so ons...<br />
<br />
This is not an exhaustive list obviously. We are not an exhaustive people. We enjoy our lack of completeness. We are not and will never be whole, complete, finished. We are not masters of anything, not even ourselves. We don't believe in God since we have flesh-and-blood prophets to believe instead. Well, everyone in our society is a prophet of another world of their own making, so believing may not be the best term there since we don't have any other option. As one of our members who is known as Philip K. Dick in the normal society - an outside for us - pointed out: reality is that which doesn't go away when you stop believing it. We are real, not because we don't believe in each other, but because believing in each other and existing is one and the same thing. Almost. Well, that member was actually pointing out another kind of reality which is quite foreign to us. A reality that is said to exist out of our relational field. We are still discussing whether it is a myth or not.<br />
<br />
And yes, we discuss things. We enjoy to discuss everything. But we do it politely. It's a kind of dance for us, not a fight. We dance to each other's rhythms. We silently move away when another's rhythm becomes to much for us to handle. This doesn't mean that there is no violence in our society. Actually, the violence is almost always present on the geographies we wander together. There is death, first of all. There are injuries from which we sometimes have trouble to survive. But luckily, our geographies are in constant motion, continuously changing with small earthquakes, rearranging themselves with small revolutions as we wander. So when we fall down an abyss, we are sure we will not stay there for long since the abyss will also close to create another beautiful scenery with waterfalls and stuff. The earth under our feet will raise us up with it. We always have the earth. On this earth, some of us have territories quite hard to trek. For example, one particular member who goes about as Nietzsche by day, has these steep and cold mountains higher than any of us has seen. There are rumors that he has gone mad and now resides at the top of one of those mountains. But I saw him the other day very early in the morning in the fish market and we had a pleasant conversation. He didn't seem crazy to me at all. So, one should not believe in rumors.<br />
<br />
This manifesto thing is tiring. Let's take it up from here later with our routes which are basically the same thing with our existence: too many...<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpNn0Gye44ZdIl5BmEJ_9EAZ9DtU1HH7O9K1ZKMM2EVFZYu3YQbFDokdoc7hWnKcejmnNFyjraKx49UmNz8Q84qE7lTakMVeHySLfPmldZVWUoM5ABgTK_VrsiuAW2p16erQZzpD256LtE/s1600/a+fost.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpNn0Gye44ZdIl5BmEJ_9EAZ9DtU1HH7O9K1ZKMM2EVFZYu3YQbFDokdoc7hWnKcejmnNFyjraKx49UmNz8Q84qE7lTakMVeHySLfPmldZVWUoM5ABgTK_VrsiuAW2p16erQZzpD256LtE/s320/a+fost.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A screenshot from the movie "A fost sau n-a fost?" that is "Did revolution happen or not?": yet another beautiful multiplicity, another pride of our society. Look at those expressions! Those expressions are just a few samples of our routes...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-44243060501024852532015-12-11T16:46:00.002+02:002015-12-14T18:05:50.747+02:00the tragedy of an inconclusive death<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
to my dark precursor, that peculiar Mark...</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9uSF64whydnR9ahpEcEM69C8uspGyjBLHOghSanTp4mQi6_Tp4z_nY9kxZUf0Y-KJNEiWf7znc0ds8YKVx3fIUJAogFPh02nhJA66z-Zl5VCMR0afURjMJ98KaKcfDQeFvEEAekLgfby-/s1600/water+alone+drowning+artwork+abyss+2560x1440+wallpaper_wallpaperbeautiful_100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9uSF64whydnR9ahpEcEM69C8uspGyjBLHOghSanTp4mQi6_Tp4z_nY9kxZUf0Y-KJNEiWf7znc0ds8YKVx3fIUJAogFPh02nhJA66z-Zl5VCMR0afURjMJ98KaKcfDQeFvEEAekLgfby-/s320/water+alone+drowning+artwork+abyss+2560x1440+wallpaper_wallpaperbeautiful_100.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
In the line of flight that is love</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
there is a sign,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
in the sign a crack,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
an abyss,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
the bottomless depth of an open wound...</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
as the wound throbs with emptiness,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
the full body of death devours everything that flows,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
tides no more,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
flights no more,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
dives no more.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
matter forgets itself,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
its plenum remains,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
just nothingness of not-thing-ness</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
just nowhere of now-hereness</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
the wound heals</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
scabbing over the mouth of that very intimate
exclamation mark</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
punctuation screams no more</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
language lost</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
time stripped from its future</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
its fundamental layer</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
becomes heavy with the load of everything-there-was</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
everything-there-was becomes a piece of flesh</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
flesh with no bone(r)s to penetrate <i>it</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
nothing to hold <i>it </i>together</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
nothing in <i>it </i>to stand up for <i>it</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
flesh</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
now nameless</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
flesh</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
heavy</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
flesh</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
out in the open</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
flesh</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
flashing out</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
flesh</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
still feeling</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
flesh</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
sweating cold</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
flesh</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
shivering</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
flesh</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
desolate</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
flesh</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
mute</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
flesh</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
scratching its insides</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
flesh</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
can't get out</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
flesh still living</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
...</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
a drooling mouth comes out of nowhere</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
with big hands and feet and a grotesque body and a giant hump</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
looking familiar in its atrocity</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
properly humanly ugly</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
picks <i>it </i>up</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
spits in <i>it</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
wipes his mouth</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
puts <i>it </i>in his pocket</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
in the pocket a giant hole</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
in the hole a gummy dick sticking his head out </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
the human beast hobbles on...</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br />
a scorching pain follows</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
stamping <i>it </i>with a mark reading</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
[not over yet]</div>
ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-83267267531968592092015-03-28T06:01:00.000+02:002015-03-28T06:08:11.418+02:00Stringer Bell, Philip K. Dick and the resistance<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLfRuBI8QorIjvTuTWDT4G7hdSIWbPrUiA8vRF9j06MBYgRkAvhqY6BVoiu26vJGDG5BdY0dZEa0proA2nrCQL4C6GDmqeRy6q_FmAvjHfrCzYxE5met8DLTFtk2oBirgrmPTj_I8FX3-E/s1600/season-3-avon-stringer-come.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLfRuBI8QorIjvTuTWDT4G7hdSIWbPrUiA8vRF9j06MBYgRkAvhqY6BVoiu26vJGDG5BdY0dZEa0proA2nrCQL4C6GDmqeRy6q_FmAvjHfrCzYxE5met8DLTFtk2oBirgrmPTj_I8FX3-E/s1600/season-3-avon-stringer-come.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
You should know The Wire, the most beautiful TV show ever, and not only in my opinion. Since I watched it, and I admit a little late, in 2009 or 2010, I don't recall exactly, I made a habit of making some of my friends watch as well and watching with them all over again. And it was interesting to ask them which character they loved the most. Of course it's never only one character. It's such a show that you love all the characters, even the bad ones, with a few exceptions maybe. But there is always a top three, and the first one, I think, gives away what you're about yourself. The character you love the most is the one you identify with on some fundamental level. We've had rich conversations, shedding light on ourselves as well as the characters in the show.<br />
<br />
So, mine was Russell Bell - a.k.a. Stringer. But I haven't been able to figure out exactly why I loved Stringer - he is not usually loved that much - the most until recently. He was always a hero in my opinion, although a little degenerate. His fate made my heart hurt, kind of like a tragic hero. He tried to get out of the thug game in the streets by trying to get in to the bigger and official game of real estate. He studied economics in the university while laundering the drug money, establishing corporations and buying huge amounts of real estate. He was a business man, not a gangster. He didn't like all the killings that brought the police on them. He was trying to become legitimate while Avon - his childhood friend and the king of West Baltimore's drug trade - was conducting the business like a war. Avon was fighting to keep his corners, dropping bodies here and there to intimidate competition while Stringer was thinking that this was stupid. As a business man, not a soldier, Stringer thought that they can get out of this mess altogether if they were smart enough to get legit. So he contacted Clay Davis, a corrupt politician, who stole much of his money and fooled him by giving promises about approvals of real estate licences through his contacts in the high places. We watched Stringer, that cool character, becoming helpless day by day, getting angry, and once he fully understood that he has been fooled, he completely lost his cool and went to Avon trying helplessly to convince him to kill Clay Davis.<br />
<br />
All this makes sense in the story. What didn't make sense for me was the reason why I was so impressed by Stringer... I have no inclination whatsoever for business. I am not a business person, in fact I am the opposite of that. So, it couldn't be the business aspect of it all. Then, the other day, while I was reminiscing about Stringer and mourning, it hit me: I loved him because he had a problem with the reality. He didn't accept reality as it is. They were drug dealers coming from the streets and that was it. Avon, for example, in all his naivety, had never suspected that it could have been otherwise. But String thought that they can actually change their reality if they're smart enough. It was only a matter of money, the world was revolving around money and they had enough money now to get out of their illegitimate lives. He studied economics in the college to get to the bottom of the whole system. He educated his crew, forming some kind of college atmosphere at their headquarters. Oh, what a beautiful scene that was...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BPS9YKGaKQE/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BPS9YKGaKQE?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
Anyways, Stringer, in his quest, found a solution out of <i>his </i>reality into to the <i>bigger </i>reality - outer wheels of capitalism - and it is here Philip K. Dick enters the scene for me. Stringer, although smart and educated, followed a solution involving faking the bigger players in the bigger game. If everything was about the money, why not use the money accordingly and enter higher society as one of its members, right? Why not act, work, dress, talk, and walk like one of them? That should be enough to jump from this plane of reality to the plane of another, one that is actually running the business. But it wasn't enough. Stringer is a <i>fake fake, </i>in PKD's term, in the fake capitalist world. What does that mean? That means an authentic being in a fake world. The capitalist game in higher places was - is - much more cruel, sophisticated and most importantly fabricated than the game in the streets. While Stringer was the cunning one in the streets of Baltimore, the throne of cunning belonged to Clay Davis at that higher plane because Davis was already a fake, through and through. He was already a fabrication of capitalism and bureaucracy. He belonged to that plane, and as such, he knew the topography, the paths, the nature of that fake world by heart while Stringer, in all his authenticity, was a complete stranger there, ready to fall prey to Davis. Stringer believed that there was a way out of his reality but he couldn't realize how sophisticated <i>the game</i> was on that other plane. He was a stranger, a fake in this other world merely due to his <i>belief </i>that he could change the game<i>.</i> Nobody believed anything up there. Up there, there was - is - only the inherent acceptance that the world is already fake and that's how it goes. That's why we saw Stringer as helpless as he can be when he encountered the ultimate illusion. His very core, his being was shaken before Clay Davis. He was not that helpless even when he understood that he's going to die. Because he <i>understood </i>that. His death was a result of his doings and he knew that it was fair. Clay Davis, on the other hand, represented something that he cannot possibly understand without ceasing to be himself. What made Stringer himself was believing in another world and when that was taken away from him, he was left with nothing. Sigh...<br />
<br />
Before I linked Stringer's problem with the problem of fake, I had thought that he encountered his demon in Clay Davis, his mirror twin. After all, Stringer was very much the Clay Davis of the streets. He was the most cunning of them all: killing D'Angelo behind Avon's back, cooperating with people he shouldn't cooperate, snitching on Avon, deceiving everybody that he thought he should deceive in the name of business... Those are not good deeds. And when he encountered Clay Davis, I thought "Well, yes, this shitty person is probably the Stringer of high places." It was as if he was looking in a mirror, but one that shows the image much bigger. Stringer had, or he thought he had, an understanding with him. But then, I realized that there was something fundamentally different between them. One was sincere, even in his most harmful deeds while the other one was... well I can't find another term: fake.<br />
<br />
Then, all of a sudden, this whole thing seemed to me to be related with resistance somehow, more specifically, with Gezi Resistance. Why did we resist? Because we believed in another world, not the world they imposed on us. And who did we resist against? <i>Them</i>, our versions of Clay Davis. The fakes of this geography. <i>Them</i>, who are able to use everything and anything to get their way. <i>Them</i>, who are inferior to us but somehow who are governing us. <i>Them</i>, who impose their vision on us. <i>Them</i>, who do not believe in anything other than money. And, I realized, the reason of the resistance being such a big deal and also the reason for our exhaustion (I had a few nervous breakdowns, for example, and many are feeling the same way now) was that we found a solution quite similar, yet different to the one Stringer found. We, the common mind of the resistance, were faking the fake. It was our method. They were already fake, and moreover they were bringing forth absurd, even surreal arguments such as the resistance being financed by foreign powers and organizations which do not even exist; some men dressed in leather with whips in their hands abusing a head scarfed woman and her baby and peeing on her; that we were trying to manufacture an atomic bomb in the tents in Gezi Park, etc. The list is too long to include everything here but you can see the surreal quality in all this. So, our minds were forced to go to the limit. We started to produce fakes everywhere, fake arguments, fake happenings, fake news much like Onion's. We opened pages on Facebook in the name of these non-existent lobbies they were talking about as foreign organizations, we opened Twitter accounts in their names to make their parody. We had fun like hell as well while doing that. And they were pathetic because they didn't expect this. They thought that we would take a defensive position against their absurd arguments and then, we would be on their plane to comfortably attack. We actually won by taking the battle on another field. Our intelligence and authenticity won over their stupidity. We know that. But the thing was we weren't fake, and they already were. We believed in changing the game, and they were playing it relentlessly. So, at some point, we were exhausted of all this nonsense but they weren't. They continued bullshitting. And they still are. But we are tired now, at least I know I am. We want our sanity back. They don't need sanity (they have been born and raised in a world of insanity - now I understand better why PKD keeps calling evil insane) but we do. So, it appears now as if they won. We know that isn't true but nothing much changed since then, moreover it became worse lately with this internal security package they got through the parliament. Anyway, I didn't actually mean to go into these things but I can't help myself.<br />
<br />
Actually what I wanted to say was this: it's a smart solution to fake the fake as Stringer did. But the problem is, for Stringer as for the resistance, the authentic can fake the fake to some extent. After that, a disintegration occurs just as the experience of PKD's characters. The authentic cannot hold itself together in a fake world. It cannot communicate with the rest of the world whose reality is quite different. The authentic person's strength which is believing in himself and his dreams becomes his weakness when he's faced with the all-encompassing illusion which is capitalism in its deepest form in the world we are living today. He cannot fake enough to be a real fake. And this is the very personal doomsday that everyone experiences privately. This is the tragedy linking Stringer to resistance and to me. Of course, Stringer won if you ask me. He won because he was - is - superior to Clay Davis with his authentic reality. That's why he, not Davis, is the one we remember. And Gezi was a success no matter what happened next. I don't believe in their fabricated reality. One day, it will shatter; it's already shaking but one day it will be destroyed completely and we will be there to watch with great pleasure because we are the <i>real reality. </i>We still having a charm of reality in our hearts. "Us motherfucker..."<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3OLUGEr1KwI/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3OLUGEr1KwI?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
P.S. After I wrote this and was searching for some images I can use, I stumbled upon <a href="http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/spring_2011/gibson.htm" target="_blank">this article</a>. So, I wasn't alone in thinking he was tragic, although the article's context differ from mine, fortunately.ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-28745553608245171572015-03-18T10:02:00.002+02:002015-03-18T12:25:07.070+02:00The horror and joy of a certain enlightenmentI've had my share of enlightenment in the last few years, and I suspect that I've stolen from the others' share if the quantity of enlightenment is somehow fixed. You know, if a quota exists.<br />
<br />
These enlightening moments had a wide range too. In one, I found myself being in that place where the virtual becomes actual, the place where the world is constantly created, where life creates itself as a current coming from the virtual and transforming into actual, the ultimate <i>now</i>. In another, more mundane one, I suddenly understood something which before constantly escaped the eyes of my mind (which I don't remember now). Of course all of this had a transformative effect on me on some level, otherwise they wouldn't be called enlightenment. But I went through them intact, that is, I always felt an inherent trust in myself, therefore in life that it wouldn't break me. It would only make me more, I would know and feel more, I would become richer... Isn't this the meaning of life to some extent?<br />
<br />
Then came the breaker and probably the most superior enlightenment of it all, at least among the others I experienced. I met this guy and had a lot of fun. I felt as if I found "my mirror twin, my next of kin" to quote Leonard Cohen. I don't remember exactly when or where I fell for him. But our encounter was such a forceful attraction that it was as if time itself disappeared and we were in a constant now. To speak more intellectually, it was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aion_(deity)" target="_blank">Aion </a>that I found myself in in contrast to Chronos. No wonder why Aion is identified with Eros... These weird things started to happen: I was dreaming his dreams, or maybe I was moving into his mind while I was sleeping. There I experienced the first tinges of horror. It's not pleasant to come into being in somebody else's mind, no matter how much you love them. It may even be the ultimate horror of life: realizing that you are a figment of somebody else's imagination. Being conscious and ultimately powerless. Having no power of action to change things around...<br />
<br />
And his mind was not a pleasant environment either. It was contrary to everything I believe myself to be. So, I was put off a little and we eventually broke up with the addition of some other mundane reasons. But I couldn't really detach myself from this experience. One day, as I was in bed trying to sleep (you can imagine that sleeping has become very hard to accomplish for me after this), I saw myself<i> standing at the edge of the world, where an abysmal wound was constantly opening in the flesh of the world</i>. Yes. I'm sorry, I haven't yet found a more understandable expression to draw the image of that affect. It was the world becoming wounded at every instant and it was the abyss which seemed to me essential to the world's existence. The wound was always there and it was going to be there forever, without the possibility of healing since it was always becoming a wound...<br />
<br />
Of course, being me, I approached the matter in a philosophical way, to discern the problem. I solved or am constantly trying to solve all my existential problems with philosophy, so why not this one? First I thought this was related to the material being of the world since the wound was crawling with things, things I couldn't define. It seemed to me, at first, that the world was suffering of the being of matter, in a Bergsonian sense that is matter is in a state of forgetting itself, continuously getting away from itself. World was rotting from within because matter was forgetting itself, becoming stranger every moment. World was not able to penetrate matter, relate to it even though it is made of it. So it was becoming stranger to itself. But the world had a flesh or is flesh, with that I mean matter with soul, something that relates everything with every other thing, invisible connections throughout. So, these connections were constantly breaking because f*cking matter couldn't remember that it was a part of all this. Sorry about that, I always get angry at this point. Can't help it.<br />
<br />
OK, this explanation seemed quite right to me but I wasn't relieved of course. Now, my ground was shaken all the more because I believe in the world and matter, I believe that they reconcile somehow, that matter would come back to itself at some point. Maybe some connections are constantly being broken but others are constantly created. So this wound shouldn't be a fundamental wound but it terrifyingly seemed so...<br />
<br />
Then, in the hope of finding my comfortable ground again, I started reading everything that made sense to me before. And there it was, in Deleuze's Difference and Repetition:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Nietzsche seems to have been the first to see that the death of God becomes effective only with the dissolution of the Self. What is then revealed is being, which is said of differences which are neither in substance nor in a subject: so many subterranean affirmations. If eternal return is the highest, the most intense thought, this is because its own extreme coherence, at the highest point, excludes the coherence of a thinking subject, of a world which is thought of as a guarantor God. Rather than being concerned with what happens before and after Kant (which amounts to the same thing), we should be concerned with a precise moment within Kantianism, a furtive and explosive moment which is not even continued by Kant, much less by post-Kantianism - except, perhaps, by Hölderlin in the experience and the idea of a 'categorical abduction'. For when Kant puts rational theology into question, in the same stroke he introduces a kind of disequilibrium, <i>a fissure or crack in the pure Self of the ' I think' , an alienation in principle, insurmountable in principle:</i> the subject c an henceforth represent its own spontaneity only as that of an Other, and in so doing invoke a mysterious coherence in the last instance which excludes its own - namely, that of the world and God. A Cogito for a dissolved Self: the Self of 'I think' includes in its essence a receptivity of intuition in relation to which I is already an other. It matters little that synthetic identity - and, following that , the morality of practical reason - restore the integrity of the self, of the world and of God, thereby preparing the way for post-Kantian syntheses: <i>for a brief moment we enter into that schizophrenia in principle which characterizes the highest power of thought, and opens Being directly on to difference, despite all the mediations, all the reconciliations, of the concept.</i>" [Italics are mine] </blockquote>
There are other passages that are of importance here for me, in one he talks about thought, in the other about the nomadic distribution. Bear with me:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"It is true that on the path which leads to that which is to be thought, all begins with sensibility. Between the intensive and thought, <i>it is always by means of an intensity that thought comes to us. </i>The privilege of sensibility as origin appears in the fact that, in an encounter, what forces sensation and that which can only be sensed are one and the same thing, whereas in other cases the two instances are distinct. In effect, the intensive or difference in intensity is at once both the object of encounter and the object to which the encounter raises sensibility. It is not the gods which we encounter: even hidden, the gods are only the forms of recognition. <i>What we encounter are demons, the sign-bearers"</i></blockquote>
<i><br /></i>
[...]<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Even when it concerns the serious business of life, it is more like a space of play, or a rule of play, by contrast with sedentary place and nomos. To fill a space, to be distributed within it, is very different from distributing the space. It is an errant and even <i>'delirious' distribution</i>, in which things are deployed across the entire extensity of a univocal an undistributed Being. It is not a matter of being which is distributed according to the requirements of representation, but of all things being is divided up within being in the univocity of simple presence (the One - All). <i>Such a distribution is demonic rather than divine, since it is a peculiarity of demons to operate in the intervals between the gods' field of action, as it is to leap over the barriers or enclosures</i>, thereby confounding the boundaries between properties. Oedipus' chorus cries: 'Which demon has leapt further than the longest leap?' <i>The leap here bears witness to the unsettling difficulties that nomadic distributions introduce into sedentary structures of representation.</i>" [Italics are mine] </blockquote>
<br />
Well, all this made even more sense to me. In a very real sense, his existence opened a crack in me, or my representation since I identified myself with him but he was an "other" nevertheless. I found this crack in the very core of my being, and a terrible alienation took place. It was the result of an encounter which forced me to think as it always is. Of course I had similar experiences before but it was always from a relatively safe place. I was always a good girl trying to make sense of the world. It seems that I had never put myself on the line and this time my very own being - or the structure which represents me - was in danger. What I encountered at the edge of the world's flesh, crawling were demons. The wound was actually the crack in "me," where I actually think. And this crack, this wound was as impersonal as it can be. It had nothing to do with my puny life. It was fundamental indeed, but in a good way, not towards death but creation.<br />
<br />
You can imagine life is more endurable again. Because now I have something to work with to create. Now, I'm not drowning in the horror. I still see it, I still feel it but now I gained the necessary perspective to go on and transform the sad passions into joyful ones, to speak in Spinoza's terms. I can look in the eye of the horror of enlightenment and still survive to make something out of it. I was wounded deeply but I was healed in a different sense as well.<br />
<br />
To return another deep love of mine, Philip K. Dick, I am now able to take smaller doses of schizophrenia. Dick talks about the unfolding in schizophrenia (in my context the crack in the 'I') as follows:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"This unfolding is not in any sense a causal progression; it is the vertical opening forth of synchronicity rather than the horizontal cause-and-effect sequence that we experience by clock time, and since it is timeless, it is unlimited in extent; it has no built-in end. So the universe of the schizophrenic is, again to understate it, somewhat large. Much too large. Ours, like the twice-daily measured squirt of toothpaste, is controlled and finite; we rub up against only as much reality as we can handle -- or think we can handle, to be more accurate." (Here is the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/aysegul-baran/schizophrenia-the-book-of-changes-1965-by-philip-k-dick-in-a-schizophrenic-style/10153762327143636?pnref=story" target="_blank">link </a>for the ones who would like to read this beautiful article) </blockquote>
<br />
The space where thinking happens in the speed of light, the crack, the wound at the edge of the world's flesh is not a space you can endure to live. It is too much to allow any kind of activity. You are in the mercy of demons, always passive, being dragged from there to here. That was the source of my deep sorrow: ultimate passivity. All the thoughts that came to me was about that: the forgetful character of matter, the crawling eerie things, death, etc.<br />
<br />
But there is no need to give in to death and get incurably depressed. You can and should make something out of everything in life since you are living! So, I thank life for giving me all these opportunities full of wonder to discover its horrifying and beautiful sides. I thank life for constantly destroying and reconstructing everything anew. And I thank life for introducing me such beautiful people like Dick, Deleuze, Cohen, and more who are constantly moving me, renewing the joy that is the essence of our soul, I believe.<br />
<br />
"Got something in my eye, a light that doesn't need to live, and doesn't need to die..."<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://ytimg.googleusercontent.com/vi/RY2XYRL9pQk/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/RY2XYRL9pQk?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-25071106293316441232014-08-03T07:57:00.000+03:002014-09-01T12:21:45.333+03:00Mindless Dissection Vol. IIShe woke up to the ugly fight between seagulls at 5 in the morning. In the ambiguous place between sleep and awareness, she found herself thinking about meaning and meaninglessness. Everything was obvious for a fleeting moment. "We don't create meaning, we only contract meaninglessness," she said to herself, simultaneously wondering what that meant. For example, this ugly, noisy fight between seagulls, she thought, it only has a meaning for me and obviously for them since we both are limited in our perception of the world at that moment, we both are focused on the fight while there are many other things there in the world.<br />
<br />
She tried to remember what was so obvious in that ambiguous moment. She recalled an image, it was an image of a pinball machine... The ball hitting the edges, changing its direction every time... The limits of the machine... That was what created the game itself. "So," she forced herself to think, "if there were no edges of the machine, the ball would be lost in one direction, in only one motion. That would be the real limitation, for the ball and for us as players. The game, the meaning is only possible through the multiplicity of the motions of the ball. The game has to have a structure and this is what makes the meaning. And the same applies from the perspective of the ball, I guess. It, now, thanks to the game, has more than one motion to enjoy, more than one direction to go. The ball would enjoy this as well, right?" She couldn't be sure.<br />
<br />
Then, she remembered something else while trying to make sense of this dreamy revelation (yes, it felt like a revelation when it happened, but now she was hesitating, what if it was only a beautiful but empty sentence...). In The Penultimate Truth by PKD, there was this machinery like a giant computer which recorded every book or source a person has ever read or watched. You would go there, insert a kind of identification card, it would make some incomprehensible calculations with its giant brain, and propose you what to read or watch next. In the story, it said to the guy "OK, now don't panic," and proposed the guy the very first source he ever used. This had a terrible effect on him, but she thought there was something to enjoy there. Of course, he thought, "if I have to go back to the beginning, then everything was in vain." She, on the contrary, was enthusiastic. At first, she didn't understand why of course. She always had to think about these kinds of things... She was feeling something but didn't know why she felt that way, and she was trying to make sense of it. "Make sense, yes. Sense is something you have to make. You have to know the structure. Here, the computer's proposal is about structure as well. Proposing the guy to return to the very first source could be a beautiful thing in terms of structure since it implies his - current - structure is completed, and since it is a machine, it doesn't really know how to jump from one structure to the other. So, it refers him back to the first source. If only he could understand it like this... it doesn't mean that he understood nothing all his life but, on the contrary, that he completed his job as himself, now is the time to jump and build another structure. It's ultimately about freedom."<br />
<br />
Now, everything seemed more coherent to her. The seagulls, that phrase, the pinball machine, and the referral to the first source... everything was about some limitation, thus, some structure. So, there lied freedom and creativity, in the determination of limits. "Leibniz!" she said out loud to herself, "I should have known. The architect of creativity... now I get it. I think..."ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-85387977674734385702014-07-14T14:27:00.001+03:002014-07-14T14:40:57.369+03:00Mindful Dissection Vol. IEverything was actually very simple: people were taking their wants and calling it "fulfilling their needs." But I needed to make a distinction here, as I always need to make distinctions. Why? To understand, to categorize, to make my mind about it... I think I see myself bigger than I am. I think I can control everything if only I understood what's really going on... I think the universe is rational, then... Hmm, I don't like this kind of thinking, so I have to take myself out of that plane by putting it in a different way. For example; I actually believe in Logos as the ancient Greeks did (it's not human rationality, so it's OK now, eh?)<br />
Why do I need to convince myself, to believe that I am not doing something wrong? What is right and wrong here? The socially established way is obviously wrong, I don't think I need to justify that with evidence...<br />
I care about ideas, I think they hold the truth to right and wrong. They make us live, and they make us die. If we have the wrong idea about ourselves, we would certainly die or at least get sick. It's like believing you are a fish while you are actually a cat. You would try to dive in the waters just to find yourself drowned in the next few minutes. And painfully too. "Why me?" you would be saying in the last minutes of your life, "why me?" Rebelling against something you don't understand.<br />
So, it seems that I believe that there are kinds of people as there are species of animals. once again, this is a limited thought. So, I save myself by saying, "Maybe even as much as there are individual human beings..." I don't want to generalize, but I do it nevertheless. "Maybe I should change the meaning of 'kinds'," I say to myself, by making it something as individual as it can get. Differentiating all the thin lines along the way...<br />
Returning to the previous point, it seems that I believe living is right and dying is wrong... Why is that? Maybe some other people would consider dying right and living wrong. Don't they have such a right? Well, no. Because they can only have such ideas while living, and that's kind of hypocrite of them, using the advantages of life to defend death. That seems like the most limited thinking a human being can produce since death is the most limited thing one can think of. It is shutting you off basically. You become fixed, stiff like a rock. Well, there are few limited things when you are as stiff as a rock. Nobody really sees you, gets affected by you. Even mountains depending on the existence of rocks don't care about you. One more or one less rock, they would still exist since they depend on the quantity of the rocks, not the quality.<br />
So, limited affecting capacity is wrong while you can have more of it while you live. Am I contradicting myself here when I say "more" affecting capacity is better than "less?" Am I falling to the same trap of the importance of quantity? <br />
I like to say no but this "want," I am not able to justify, not right now at least since I am confused.<br />
To be continued... when I am able to forget more of what I learned...<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwVkiqkgLLRwmUY4ivsS4ZTnD9GiP57cF81xykT_ROLizRqqh03joXQQNQ2bMmqO65uSK-m7MBtpdqcmSEBXu9AY_EIh0e62IloZjfcFbUtiZFtm4Vr8bTM8dnefClud6IJDmid82b5B_f/s1600/dissection.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwVkiqkgLLRwmUY4ivsS4ZTnD9GiP57cF81xykT_ROLizRqqh03joXQQNQ2bMmqO65uSK-m7MBtpdqcmSEBXu9AY_EIh0e62IloZjfcFbUtiZFtm4Vr8bTM8dnefClud6IJDmid82b5B_f/s1600/dissection.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-13655833198364234682013-06-14T19:51:00.001+03:002013-06-14T19:56:47.697+03:00the joint venture of wonders: gezi park resistance - 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhRmEvNBfIPoBAZpaMZXu01i4cYmZTGI6bPAp9WhJm7o-ijln0paWWro0_cvLTj284LEsIItuS7e8JbGIiWJ8FfeJE_9DCHOs5TYygIL-q4OLpGPVO2tH0gnaoSHstsTmG4SEutn_OKWnr/s1600/besiktas3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhRmEvNBfIPoBAZpaMZXu01i4cYmZTGI6bPAp9WhJm7o-ijln0paWWro0_cvLTj284LEsIItuS7e8JbGIiWJ8FfeJE_9DCHOs5TYygIL-q4OLpGPVO2tH0gnaoSHstsTmG4SEutn_OKWnr/s320/besiktas3.png" width="288" /></a></div>
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. <br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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...<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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).<br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
All of these went hand in hand with personal liberty issues. Prime minister started to advise us in many personal areas such as...<br />
The number of children we should have - it is 3;<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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). <br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
The prohibition of selling alcoholic drinks between 22:00-06:00 and all kinds of advertisement of such.<br />
So on... <br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
I don't want to postpone publishing this. So I am cutting it from the middle.<br />
Enough with them.<br />
<br />
To be continued with our story: better, funnier, smarter, more painful but more humane one.ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-75085150988751127772013-02-11T14:21:00.000+02:002013-02-11T14:21:40.577+02:00For beginners in Deleuze's philosophy<br />
<a href="http://schizosophy.com/2013/02/10/how-to-begin-reading-deleuze-a-query-a-challenge-a-response-nietzsche-and-philosophy/" target="_blank">Here</a> 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. ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-54152316624309707182012-12-23T15:46:00.000+02:002012-12-23T15:57:10.402+02:00Magic 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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL2nM6_FmtkaiDsZDv5G962KGrSqoJq6jIJruaIAHE45SQkXFWBpS9G04DVcqOCb7nUHGkEyyH5G2hUwLoAWPjqj-EhomDrxgJEYc6dexCwH0Z5KsYPlxpcZ8-cZhAdeJ2ZszRjLkv053q/s1600/kader.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL2nM6_FmtkaiDsZDv5G962KGrSqoJq6jIJruaIAHE45SQkXFWBpS9G04DVcqOCb7nUHGkEyyH5G2hUwLoAWPjqj-EhomDrxgJEYc6dexCwH0Z5KsYPlxpcZ8-cZhAdeJ2ZszRjLkv053q/s320/kader.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
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. ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-75306747417916768482012-11-21T02:29:00.000+02:002012-11-21T03:39:40.419+02:00Exclamation of spells: questioningNo 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...<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/8RlkIm8tS0M?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-45789028230737592302012-08-17T07:51:00.000+03:002012-08-18T15:44:46.098+03:00Give 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.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=problem&allowed_in_frame=0" target="_blank">problem </a><br />
late 14c., "a difficult question proposed for solution," from O.Fr. <span class="foreign">problème</span> (14c.), from L. <span class="foreign">problema</span>, from Gk. <span class="foreign">problema</span> "a problem, a question," lit. "thing put forward," from <span class="foreign">proballein</span> "propose," from <span class="foreign">pro</span> "forward" (see <a class="crossreference" href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pro-&allowed_in_frame=0">pro-</a>) + <span class="foreign">ballein</span> "to throw" (see <a class="crossreference" href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ballistics&allowed_in_frame=0">ballistics</a>). Meaning "a difficulty" is mid-15c. <span class="foreign">Problem child</span> first recorded 1920.<br />
<br />
So, it was "<a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pro-&allowed_in_frame=0" target="_blank">pro</a>" "putting forward", in other words, "in favor of" doing something that has an effect. Well, I would call that "<a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=existence&allowed_in_frame=0" target="_blank">existence</a>", 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.<br />
<br />
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, "<a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=interest&allowed_in_frame=0" target="_blank">interesting</a>" you. Off you go...<br />
<br />
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? <br />
<br />
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).<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifdFpk5N4JGZblQ0M9ljpTJTdAKDGogUNiMFr2tMIu6TsFK5ZQoUkXZp7CGNT2fRlc0VlOT7XW6fWSiSpwaHXAyi2kD8WFvVpDIARYZc3M35oQQXQRGVGaFu0491C8vXpuc3fb49DYMcT8/s1600/IMAG0896.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifdFpk5N4JGZblQ0M9ljpTJTdAKDGogUNiMFr2tMIu6TsFK5ZQoUkXZp7CGNT2fRlc0VlOT7XW6fWSiSpwaHXAyi2kD8WFvVpDIARYZc3M35oQQXQRGVGaFu0491C8vXpuc3fb49DYMcT8/s320/IMAG0896.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-63368752773107985052012-07-13T18:23:00.000+03:002012-07-13T18:28:39.995+03:00Before philosophy, there was the problemThere is nothing left, but a dream. In the middle of reality.<br />
If the real is a dream then what are we, means of its realization?<br />
Are all these dreams stored somewhere?<br />
Is there such a thing as being a dream and being aware of it?<br />
What is the meaning of questions when there are no answers,<br />
other than creating an illusion of existence while we are swept away by time?<br />
I think therefore... I have the illusion of living, that's all.<br />
That's all...<br />
That's all...<br />
This...<br />
This...<br />
Th...<br />
...<br />
Nothing...<br />
The pitifulness of human being -and they found a name for it: nothing...<br />
The answer to all the questions.<br />
- What is this?<br />
- Let's say A.<br />
- And this?<br />
- B.<br />
- Oh ok, now i get it.<br />
Interesting...<br />
A dazzling stupidity.<br />
An horrifying powerlessness.<br />
- What is this?<br />
- Nothing.<br />
"And they all lived happily ever after with their illusions and gods"<br />
- Happily?!<br />
"Ok, maybe not so happy, but at least they lived, right?"<br />
- Ever after?!<br />
"Hm, they took turns, generation by generation. That's something to be grateful"<br />
All these lives pass by three dot sequences in opposition to exclamation marks.<br />
We fool around with the exclamation as well as question marks<br />
in our little sand pool...<br />
<br />
(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)ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-73828149377653547882012-01-20T17:21:00.000+02:002012-01-20T17:21:43.720+02:00Politics of intense bodily metaphysical experiencesI 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...<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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? <br />
<br />
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? <br />
<br />
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.ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-43837142916577780572011-11-14T16:34:00.001+02:002011-11-14T17:10:29.111+02:00We were all poets...We were all poets back in those days,<br />
we would ooze out from the cracks of life and merge on the way.<br />
<br />
We were all poets,<br />
our poems would live by leaning over each other without any other ground.<br />
Nobody would ask a question like "what is expressed by the poet here?"<br />
We all knew that the expressed was always another poem, resisting to explanation.<br />
<br />
We were all poets,<br />
we would become polluted while leaking from the cracks of life.<br />
We would flow into each other's poem, blurred.<br />
<br />
We were all poets,<br />
we would look to each other with loaded eyes.<br />
And we loved each other through the pouring poems of our eyes,<br />
we would make love to the extent of our thick and blurry and dirty waters mingled...<br />
<br />
We were all poets as much as we were embodied poems,<br />
we would touch one another while becoming some other image every time.<br />
Each time, with our image-becoming that comes from pre-historic times and goes to infinity,<br />
that travels across the whole of time,<br />
that fills the space between us with a time that never was,<br />
we were acquainted with each other as ourselves during the encounters of our intensities. <br />
<br />
We were all poets back in those days.<br />
Time, embarassed of our existence, would bend to our presence.<br />
We,<br />
we would look at it with serenity through our violent image-becomings.<br />
So would time give up its being history,<br />
it would let itself free in every move of its peculiar dance and it would talk about its before.<br />
In its every curve, there was always a franticness.<br />
In every franticness, there always was an infinity.<br />
The deepness of being would talk to us from within this infinity. <br />
The deepness of being narrated the savage character of our image-becomings as if we were always there, we were there eternally...ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-41367863134904604112011-08-18T19:53:00.000+03:002011-08-18T19:53:23.399+03:00Enigma and projections of lifeWhat 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. <br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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...ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-17792463853961915202011-07-13T15:34:00.001+03:002011-07-13T22:28:37.627+03:00Words are moreOne: 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.<br />
<br />
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? <br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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."<br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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? <br />
<br />
I won't ever have any message to give except "let's play!"ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-7165473727360244882011-07-12T10:43:00.000+03:002011-07-12T10:43:35.671+03:00Philosophy, location and confusionThere is a deep problem about philosophizing in a time in which globalization of the world is a common belief. It is not really an error because of the mobility of everything, first and foremost money of course. Besides, messages from all over the world are a click away. All these create an illusion that we, as human beings, have more or less the same problems no matter where we are. Well, one could not be more in error than this. <br />
<br />
What I observed on philosophy students in Turkey is that they take philosophy as something ultimately abstract, so much so that it cannot have anything to do with life itself as we experience it. Of course we can say that most of them just don't get it just like the philosophy students all over the world. Philosophy requires a different way of thinking and most of the people find it useless. In Turkey we even have a saying which implies the uselessness of philosophy: we say "don't philosophize to me" whenever somebody is talking just to talk without any meaning whatsoever. It is just ignored. Yes, I will admit that this is not a local but a global approach to philosophy. And there is the opposite approach which is very common too. I don't know about the world but in Turkey if philosophizing is not ignored, that means you are in a setting where everyone thinks that they can philosophize too. Oh this is the worst, because they make philosophy an aggregate of cliches and by repeating cliches, the phrases such as "the meaning of life is to be happy" or "we cannot know what tomorrow will bring" they really think that they are thinking. But what I had in mind was to make a different point from inside, the strange position of the professionals. <br />
<br />
Basicly, I think that we have different problems in this part of the world and the main problems of philosophy in the 20th century such as subject-object issues do not fit anywhere in our world. We never experienced what is to be cogito. The loneliness and the instrumentalization of the world within that loneliness never happened here. Our existence (from a cultural perspective) never suffered of being separated from the world. These are the first points that comes to my mind right now. But I don't mean that we are not there yet or that we are behind of western history in some way and that we are going to experience the same problems when we are developed enough(!). No, not at all! What I mean is things go differently in this specific location with its specific ways of dealing with the world. A little shamanism, a little nomadism, a pinch of "loving every creature because of its creator", understanding rules and regulations by their gaps and what could be done with them without getting into trouble, not being serious about anything, etc. These are a few constituents of our existence that I can think of right now. So telling someone that she is not really a subject does not have an effect other than confusion. There goes philosophy into the deep waters of abstraction. I even had a professor who said philosophy is confusion. Of course it is and remains confusion if it is not connected to its grounds. These grounds are the problems. So philosophizing in different environments require to be aware of the environment and formulate the unspoken problems of that specific location encompassing people, location, climate, language, social attitudes, food, entertainment, etc. And here the academics are talking about the death of subject or the unveiling of truth in poetry! <br />
<br />
I don't intend to say that these subjects shouldn't be a part of philosophy in this specific location. But since I believe that philosophy should be something that feeds itself from life and life should be enrichened by philosophy, the main issues of western philosophy not only stay at a distance to life here, but also contribute to confusion about concepts which constitutes my main point. <br />
<br />
For philosophy to be an invention of new possibilities, it is crucial to make all the concepts as clear as possible. Only after understanding the concept within the concept will we be able to invent ours. So there it goes: our problems are different than that of any people living in a different geography. Our main problem is confusion about concepts and not specific concepts, but concept of concept itself. Only after we made concept clear and invent our own concepts for various aspects of our experience, we can start to philosophize. At the moment, there is a disgusting manipulation of the confusion arising from this vagueness. And I just hate to see how beautiful concepts are used in every ugly way possible. Here it becomes a very important political issue. Philosophy could open a way out of this political and social problem. If only the academics themselves were not blind to people's confusion... sometimes it is even as if they feed on this confusion, like leeches. So where to find their genuine concern for philosophy? I don't think they have a genuine concern for anything other than surviving. So why philosophy? They could have been involved in real estate as well and as a matter of fact, they would be doing a favor to all by not worsening the already deep confusion.ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-55010276385090830452011-07-11T17:20:00.000+03:002011-07-11T17:20:50.968+03:00In praise of being noble and dancingWhat does being noble mean? It seems to me that being noble is a non-calculative attitude. It doesn't mean acting without consideration of the consequences, nevertheless very similar to that. It is acting while being aware of the consequences but refusing to change the action because what results of it. It is a conscious resistance to be determined by the consequences. <br />
<br />
Well, most of the time this kind of attitude is a result of defending identity. But I think being a result of defending a fixed definition of "me" makes it a vulgar act rather than noble. It says "I am afraid of what is going to happen to me". It says "I have to resist in order to survive". It is too self-conscious to be noble. <br />
<br />
To be noble, you have to consciously forget about everything that falls out of the action itself. The consequences are among those that fall out. The cause on the other hand is a little tricky. The cause of the action should be such a cause that would not involve any calculation whatsoever other than something that could not be called calculation: that is aesthetic evaluation. This is an evaluation of the action itself, in itself and by itself. In other and simpler words, it is going with the world without resisting but like a talented dancer, figuring out every move you make together with the world at every moment. There are no predetermined rules when it comes to life. So, being noble is the awareness of this indeterminedness and enjoying it. It is being light in the face of heaviness of consequential thinking or what might be called "the soul of gravity". It is dancing just to dance. Because it is the right thing to do, it feels good. <br />
<br />
But what are the chances of such an attitude in a world in which everything is considered to be calculated even though it is not at all so? How could a good dancer enjoy dancing with the people who are so far removed of the concept of dance? Of course she could still dance with the world, the events by herself. But while everyone around repeat their memorized, one-way electro moves (so depressively dull), is it possible to dance alone freely? Does not a dancer need a few other dancers and a good music to dance? <br />
<br />
To be noble necessitates a few other things it seems. First of all, it is impossible to be noble for a long time in an environment in which not considering the consequences is thought to be a dumb thing to do. This is where action itself loses all its power when it is tied to a simple lack of consideration. So the event cannot regenerate and multiply itself. This is a dead end. Just like the repetitive moves of (bad) electronic music. <br />
<br />
Secondly, thinking of being noble as a way to resist and defend identity is in cross purposes with being noble itself while the aim is lightness as opposed to heaviness. All that calculation is a heavy burden to carry around just to survive a little bit more. Could crawling be called a life while there is a possibility of flying?ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1185617278910633264.post-90704859530449424452011-06-17T18:13:00.000+03:002011-06-17T18:13:52.556+03:00Sense of Life in Sense and LifeOne of my favorite words in English is "to germinate." I could have said germination but it would not be the same. I like words which are in the form of verbs. Infinitives. What a beautiful name for verbs! They move, they make something happen when they hang on in the atmosphere. It is as though they are really infinite. An endless becoming... <br />
<br />
Anyway... Today, after a chance encounter with the etymology of the word "fool" (which was also very interesting) I wondered what would be the word I would like to learn about while the page of an online etymology dictionary was still open in the screen. "To germinate!" I said to myself with enthusiasm. The dictionary first refered to "germination" (which I find a little dull), then from that page we smoothly passed to "germ" which was given as the root of all. <br />
<br />
Here is the definition and the history of "germ":<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=germ">germ (n.)</a> <br />
mid-15c., "bud, sprout;" 1640s, "rudiment of a new organism in an existing one," from M.Fr. germe "germ (of egg); bud, seed, fruit; offering," from L. germen (gen. germinis) "sprout, bud," perhaps from PIE base *gen- "to beget, bear" (see genus). The older sense is preserved in wheat germ and germ of an idea;[...]<br />
<br />
Then something else comes into play: "sense of "seed of a disease" first recorded 1803; that of "harmful microorganism" dates from 1871. Germ warfare recorded from 1920."<br />
<br />
How different is the definition of "rudiment of a new organism in an existing one" from "seed of a disease", or "harmful microorganism." Of course it could be said that this change in the sense of the word "germ" is parallel to the germ theory of disease which was validated in the late 19th century. But still I have a hard time to follow this kind of causal thinking. It is very dry and therefore it does not seem to be the real explanation of what happened. Furthermore, what I am inclined to believe is the almost opposite of this inference: I think the sense of "germ" has already been changed, it had already began to reside in the "bad" side, otherwise it would be impossible to name a bad, sickening thing with a word which carries life, which is "good." So life itself must have become a burden at some point. Then somebody was able to find "germs" as causes of disease. <br />
<br />
How did we come to understand "new life" as a bad thing? Is it because new life does not ask our permission to sprout? Are we offended by life and its ways to invent itself? Why are we so afraid?<br />
<br />
Another thing worth thinking in a different way, without resorting to causal explanations that reduce our sense of the world, thus us, to something which has no effect at all. It is like breathing and not even noticing the air you breath in eventhough you cannot live a second without it (well, it may be a little longer for some of us). We have to understand our making-sense-of-the-world right to be able to change it, or to get a breath of fresh air...ayşegülhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08773508991432654626noreply@blogger.com6