Stringer Bell, Philip K. Dick and the resistance

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.

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.

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...

Anyways, Stringer, in his quest, found a solution out of his reality into to the bigger 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 fake fake, 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 the game was on that other plane. He was a stranger, a fake in this other world merely due to his belief that he could change the game. 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 understood 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...

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.

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? Them, our versions of Clay Davis. The fakes of this geography. Them, who are able to use everything and anything to get their way. Them, who are inferior to us but somehow who are governing us. Them, who impose their vision on us. Them, 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.

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 real reality. We still having a charm of reality in our hearts. "Us motherfucker..."

P.S. After I wrote this and was searching for some images I can use, I stumbled upon this article. So, I wasn't alone in thinking he was tragic, although the article's context differ from mine, fortunately.

The horror and joy of a certain enlightenment

I'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.

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 now. 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?

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 Aion 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...

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 standing at the edge of the world, where an abysmal wound was constantly opening in the flesh of the world. 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...

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.

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...

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:

"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, a fissure or crack in the pure Self of the ' I think' , an alienation in principle, insurmountable in principle: 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: 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." [Italics are mine] 

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:

 "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, it is always by means of an intensity that thought comes to us. 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. What we encounter are demons, the sign-bearers"

[...]

"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 'delirious' distribution, 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). 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, thereby confounding the boundaries between properties. Oedipus' chorus cries: 'Which demon has leapt further than the longest leap?' The leap here bears witness to the unsettling difficulties that nomadic distributions introduce into sedentary structures of representation." [Italics are mine] 

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.

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.

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:

"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 link for the ones who would like to read this beautiful article) 

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.

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.

"Got something in my eye, a light that doesn't need to live, and doesn't need to die..."

Mindless Dissection Vol. II

She 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.

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.

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."

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..."

Mindful Dissection Vol. I

Everything 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?)
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...
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.
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...
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.
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?
I like to say no but this "want," I am not able to justify, not right now at least since I am confused.
To be continued... when I am able to forget more of what I learned...

the joint venture of wonders: gezi park resistance - 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For beginners in Deleuze's philosophy

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

Magic happens...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exclamation of spells: questioning

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

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

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

Give back the problem its exclamation mark!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Before philosophy, there was the problem

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

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