Deger

"Love, who will comfort me?"

Aslinda bu satirlari neden yaziyorum, emin bile degilim. Degilim, cunku hic birseyin onemi, sebebi kalmamis...galiba sadece yazmak icin yaziyorum, icimden bu kirli zehiri atmak icin. Cunku dusundukce, kendime olan ofkem buyuyor. Sana karsi hic birsey yok, hic birsey icimde kalmamis...o kadar cok zaman once olmusku hislerim, neden bu kadar uzun sure bu yalani devam ettirttimki? Ben, nasil olurda birinin bana boyle davranmasina izin verdim? Cok kiziyorum kendime cok.

Bastan yanlis degildin. Bastan mukemmeldin. Hersey birer peri masali gibiydi.Hayatimda hic bu kadar mutlu olmamistim. Dualar ediyordum her gece bu mutluluk bitmesin diye. Ama...sonra zaman gecti, guven saglanamadi, vede zaten uc yil icinde cokta sey oldugu kadar, aslinda hic birseyde olmamis. Durmusuz bir zamanda. Ama sonradan yalan, yanlis, zararli oldun. Icimdeki o kadar cok seyi kirmissinki, o kadar cok benim kendime dair sevdigim, onemle buyutup, ilgiyle, ozenle kendime tuttugum, seyleri sokup attin, sondurdun, kirlettin, oldurdun. Simdi o kadar cok bana ait olan seylerim yok. Onlari tekrardan aramakla mesgulum. Yazik bana. Yazik ki kendimden baska birine mutlulugumu baglamayi goze alabilmisim. Ama, soylede birsey var, hic bir regretim yok. Cunku ben kalbimin sesini sonuna kadar dinledim. Pesinden kostum, Sadece beni goturdugu yer mutlulugumun oldugu yer degildi. Cunku sen bunu bana sagliyabilcek kisi degilsin, bunu sagliyabilcek tek kisi benim, bunu ben unuttum.

Ama en kotusu ise, deger verilmemis olmam, hemde hic...hemde ben bu kadar cok deger vermisken. Ama tabi, herkes anliyamicak kadar ince birsey bu. Bunun icin de bunu beklemek cok yanlis. Iste ben en cokta bunu ogrendim. Bana deger verene deger vermeyi, basimin taci yapmayi ogrendim. Degeri hakeden biriyim, ama sadece ben bunu yanlis kisinin, senin eline verdim. Cunku sen bunu anliyamicak kadar kor, sagir vede bilgisizsin. Yazik, gorememisim o hircin askimdan. Herkes bir zaman buyuyor ama. Bende buyudum bunun sayesinde. Ama tabikide, bu canimi benim cok yakti. Yutkunamadigim benim bu. Bir toz parcasi kadar degerimin olmamamis olmasi ve ayakta uyutulmus olmak. Cunku, bu hic haketmedigim birseydi. Hemde hic.

Ama bugun, o kadar mutluyumki. Mutluyum cunku artik ozgur benim olmanin tadini cikarirken, eski, olmak istedigim kisi olma yolunda ozenle, saglam adamlarla ilerliyorum. Tekrar, ben ben oldum. Askindan deli olup, gozum kararip, kaybetmedim kendimi....sensiz tekrar bulup, tekrar mutlu olmaya devam ettim. Cunku beni attigin firtinanin icinde sadece yaralanan ben oldum. Ama olsun, bu yaralar benim magzim, bitmis ama zamaninda benim icin cok buyuk, cok degerli olan askimin yaralari. Ustune, bundan belli bir zaman sonra..eminimki tekrar asik olucam, ve daha once olmadigim ki kadar, daha onceden de daha derine inan bir ask beni bulucak...bu sadece hayatin bir parcasi. Ama o zaman yanlis kisi olmucagi icin, sonu gene ayrilikla bitse, ben kendimden ve mutlulugumdan feragat etmemeis olucagimdan, iste o zaman, hersey cok daha guzel olucak, cunku ilk once o insan benim degerimi bilmis olucak...O yuzdende bu gecen uc yila, tecrube demek dusuyor...ama onun sayesinde seni bu kadar sevmeyi ogrenmis olucam. Buda, bana verilen buyuk bir hediye olucak.

Minnettarim sana.

Death and Mourning

Death is eerie and creepy, it is also a reminder of our own mortality, frailty and vulnerability that we try our hardest to put out of our mind and our societies.

In it's nature we tend to associate both with peace and sadness, time cut short and a purpose fulfilled. We often have conflicted views and feelings about it...we are not quite sure what to do with it as it tends to be an end for us and perhaps a new beginning for those who believe.

Death has fascinated me and well, scared me thoroughly for much of my conscious life. There seems to be an occupation with it somewhere within this tiny vessel of mine.

Why is it that we desire to see people of our kin and friends before they depart for their final destination? We'd like to be there for their needs and do our final part and fulfill our obligations so that our conscious may be clean and rest easy as we lay to sleep at night. All of which are things that we do more for our selves than for the deed of others.

But yet, it leaves us mourning, gets us to think about the potentials that could never be lived and our own eventual demise...the things, people we will be leaving. The surmounted artifacts we have collected over the years, the experience we have collected by making tons of mistakes and the bonds we have deeply forged through pain and laughter...all that we will be eventually leaving, sooner or later, to an unknown world. For some, hell, for some heaven, for some nothing but decaying and rotting. That has to be the most scary part of death. Not knowing. The unknown with it's allusion and charm has the same potency into scaring someone from dying. Who wouldn't? I know I am.

But, why do we mourn after the dead? Do we mourn because of the unharnessed potential of the person who has left us behind, or because we no longer have the access to the soft emotions that the person has created in us, the reliance we have on them. Is it an access issue rather than anything else?

Muses and Motivations

So, I've been thinking about what are motivations and muses. What are they separately and individually, but also how do they differ from one another? What is considered a muse--a job, a person, an inanimate object, a goal in mind, jealousy, competition, the rush of winning? What motivates us though, to keep going to achieve those goals? What keeps us going day in and day out, sun rise after sun rise, how do we keep ourselves from questioning our purpose and the reason we are doing this? How do we continue to justify our reasons for doing the things we do? How do we come to the decision that this can't be let go.

I think in humanity in general, holding on to one thing and preserving something as it is, has to be one of the most difficult things in this life. Starting something can be essentially difficult, but things get started all the time. However to continue that is even so much harder. We change, our experiences change, people surrounding us change, our environments change, political and economical forces change, thus forcing a change in the way we view ourselves and our society as a whole, our own place within that society and the place of the group we belong together at large, altogether. Moods change within the day. How do you continue to foster the very same home, enthusiasm, care, diligence and sensitivity for a long time to come? It's one thing if you're trying to motivate yourself for an exam, an end of semester grade, fitting into a dress for one particular event...but for life time goals that literally take till your very last breath, how do you find a motivation to keep going on and on and on. What makes you get up? What do you find so inspirational to continue and to evolve and tailor the purpose you so adamantly believed in three years ago, although you recognize dramatic changes in your thought and behavior patterns nowadays.


Change isn't always negative. Sometimes change is great as people strive for larger dreams, things that will benefit them in the long run, even if one never gains what she or he seeks, but continues to chase after it as it will keep that said person evolving and keep going towards a greater good for her or his self, personhood, etc. We are bound to change and be a different person in our childhood into the section nowadays called tween, teenage years, early adulthood, adulthood, late adulthood and finally as senior citizens. We all get used up one way or another and sometimes we lose things and sometimes we gain things through the things we've lost. The things we've lost has the very same potential to make us a better person and change us in a positive way as the negativity and the darkness within our souls resides and reverberates. Some changes are necessary as we can't  be the same in our 18 as we were when we were 10. Hormones at the very least dictates so.

Then through all of these different stages of our lives, how do we keep finding different muses and different motivations to keep us going through the tightened rope we walk on as there seems to be an abyss on the other side if we fall.

Salvaging

It feels like, my whole life I've been trying to catch up; catch up to IQ numbers, to classes I've taken, number of books I've read, catching up to job experiences, volunteering and patching up everything that's been getting destroyed in the process of life. Patching up and salvaging my day, my week, my month and year. The lost empathy and my ability to sympathize with people, my credulity, my beliefs, my very torn heart.  I am afraid it takes a lot for me to feel on an emotional level. I used to get all these impulses urges, feelings, constantly...now, where are they? Well, unfortunately either lost somewhere and it's going to be a long time before they return or they've permanently have abandoned me.

At the end, does resilience pay off? Is it worth it? To keep chasing after it, trying to improve, to chase all of these things into the end of eternity before it reverts back and starts over to come into the possession of values and things I deem significant and a must own? Or, is this some sort of sign, a reason to let go and try my hand at something new?

Objectivity in Literature

We're often familiar with the thought process that adamantly proposes that literature is highly subjective and by nature is hard to analyze and difficult to possess qualities that can be ranked and could be criticized.

I disagree. Literature, if it's been done with class, taste and intelligence, if the written proposed pages are true literature can be discussed maturely, accurately, intelligently and objectively. It can be analyzed, criticized and can be redeemed bad or good without being subjective.

Sure, when it comes to reading we all have our own preferences. I dislike harlequin novels, romance novels and novels written with formula fictions, with 1 or two dimensional characters and a plot that's obvious from the title and the book cover, an ending I can guess from the first sentence of the book. That is my own prerogative and my taste. Can I judge the person who reads those books? Absolutely not. It's his or her own choice. But can I define, analyze and judge the written word and deem if it's written well or badly? Absolutely! Now, don't get me wrong. People are free to write whatever they like, people are also free to read whatever they like. But this does not exempt the text from to be analyzed and given a bad grade, just because it's their prerogative to read that book. It is what it is. Literature is meant to be objectively analyzed, and not all books written actually possess literature. Just because it's written, been published and sells well does not make that book a piece of literature or even a good book. People may like it, but it does not make it a good, comprehensive, superb book. So, what do I like? I like classics, I like modern books that are insightful and real, outside of the consumerist carnivorous culture that seems to create a gaping hole in the middle of my soul and brain. Books that can make me think about the modern world and take me to the lives of people who are very unlike me in every aspect possible.

Literature, is highly objective in my eyes. Allow me to explain. Writers, inspired by different generational authors, styles and topics write differently according to their education, experience and mind processes. Most pronounced and widely anthologized writers, most widely analyzed and discussed writers have different and unique styles, with different literary theory school techniques, and the said writers usually focus in one or two similar genres, sub-genres, with certain topics in mind that the author would like to investigate, delve in and discover.  A true writer, will not only captivate you with his or her writing style, different literary techniques used (from symbolism to metaphor, from alliteration to onomatopoeia, from foreshadowing to narration style) but with original characters and a breathtaking world that will make you rethink your own life up to thus far and make you recognize the emotions that you've felt all these times, all these different times but were unable to define and embrace them, the recognition of your own thoughts and emotions in depth, with the addition to the ones you will discover in the said good book (for example, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad). A good book, meaning literature, will make the topic being discussed no matter how mundane or fantastical to appear real, relevant, significant and interesting, even if you're not particularly interested in the topic the writer has written about.

Style, techniques, elements, logic, characters, these can and should be judged without harming the objectivity of the reader or the criticizer. It does not make that person a bad person, a depressed person, a person with a cold heart or without a heart at all. Sure, not many people will like similar topics. For example, topic X could be well liked by audience A while audience B may hate it, but instead like topic Y and it's sub-genres. These are normal as no two fingers are the same in our two hands, yet they belong to the same person, us.

So, is there objectivity in literature? Absolutely yes! Can it define and break books into different categories of books such as good books and badly written books? Yes, it can and it should.

Importance of Resilience

So, just how important is resilience? I guess I should start by asking what is resilience?

Resilience is defined by the dictionary as follows:

noun

1.

the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.

2.

ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy.

But we can hardly go back to an original position after the events we deal with in our lives, from daily to the special occasions. Especially the more challenging and depressive ones. Those also add a depth to our defining and shining moments, the hues always seems to be a little gray, a little blue with a little glory stolen from purple.

One can recover from illness perhaps more easily, but recovering from depression, adversity, challenges, or hitting the rock bottom for example, isn't all that easy and readily. In fact, I question people who can recover from adversities too quickly. Things that are quickly and easily solvable aren't adversities for that person's nature or endurance. We all have different endurance levels. What's easy for one may prove to be quite a challenge. We all have different stamina and the level of pain and sadness one can stand differs from past experiences, rearing and the nature one person adapts as a general philosophy in life. Most of us goes through similar milestones, with similar hardships at certain points in our time defined by our cultures. For example, as a six or a seven year old, we all go through the process of starting kindergarten, or first grade and go through a separation anxiety from or parents and or siblings. Then we grow older and meet bullies we must over come, each to her own, while some may suffer physical abuse, the other may suffer mental, while another's bully just might be herself. Then high school is a phase we're all too familiar with in 2011. We all have heard of teen angst and have been through it ourselves in one point or another. Most of us go through college admissions process and the undergraduate experience of living alone for the first time and learning to get by. Then comes serious relationships, marriages, kids, retirement and within those many similar milestones. While some experience divorce, infertility, lay offs, difficult of acquiring a job, a nonexistent love life, mid-life crisis, family problems, crisis of faith, loneliness, depression, apathy, over-sympathy....the list goes on. But each one of us are affected different by these events that occurs roughly throughout the modern world in the first world countries. It's the reaction we give to these events that separates us from the rest of the statistics, the bulk of humanity that gives us our voices and identities back as Jack, Jill, Joe, Jane and the rest.

So then, what is resilience? The question remains. It's the effort to not hit rock bottom, it's the ability to show the effort that you don't want to hit rock bottom and the ability to foster hope for a future where maybe you could create the opportunity for yourself to accomplish some of your most important goals, like getting a good education, fostering personal growth, acquiring a job, financially securing yourself and the other dreams that comes along with the individuals that we are. For me, it would be to have read all of the British, American, French, German, Russian, Turkish and Persian classics. Now, will I ever be able to achieve that? It's hard to tell at this point. I tell myself, I'm still young and will have many years to accomplish that list, at least partially. Will I ever have that time? Our time here is limited at best, and at worst we never know when we'll be leaving this place. So I might not have a long life and instead die tomorrow and all of this talk and thought could have been in vain; yet I still don't see this useless. It's all that much more important to have been left with impressions of the world and the mind and to have left your own impression on the world, on someone else, deeply enough to be remembered many years from today.


How important is it? I think it's very important not to give up and grow too content (I am an adamant fighter for contentment in our lives) with the settling we're doing in our lives, and growing accustomed to the way bad things are with no effort to fix them. It's hard to create habits, it's even harder to break those habits. It's important to establish a good routine to show resilience and to want more out of yourself, your life and to have the resilience to get through the difficulty in our individual lives for better tomorrows as eternity is always promises to those who believe in one form or another.

Bozulan hayatlar

Cok korkuyorum, ama elimde degil. Kurdugum butun duzenleri teker teker hayat hep sarsti, bozdu ve ben hep amaclarima ulasirken, cok seyi kaybettim, yada ulasmak uzereyken, elimden kayip gitti hedeflerim. Onca zaman, emek, o kadar planlama, sonunda hepsi hic birseye goturmedigi de cok oldu...tabi calismadanda hic birsey elde edinemedigimi vurgulamak lazim. O zaten benim icin hic bir zaman bir secenek degil. Islerim ben ugrasinca bile olmuyor, ugrasmayincayi...sen dusun. Bu sefer alt ust olursa bu duzen, bunun altindan kalkamam ben. Kaldiramam bu kadar cok uzun sure calisipta, tek yapabildigim sey sadece tekrar yeniden baslamak. Yap boz degil hayatim. Her ne kadar oyle bir olmus olsa bu zamana kadar, artik yas ilerledikce, bazi seylerin telafileri bir o kadar da zor oluyor. Tekrar tekrar, bir dik yokusu, tepesinden uc adim onceden yerin sarsilmasi, depremde herseyin yerli bir olmasina benziyor bu. Ve galiba, bu sefer donusu olmayan bir yola girdim. Bu beni mum gibi eritip bitiricek.

Ne hayaller kurmustum bu kis icin, bu yaz icin, hic biri hayal olmaktan cikamicak. Hepsi birer defterde yazilan ve sonradan sadece avutulmak icin okunan satirlardan ibaret olucak. Gene hersey kaldi bir sonraki yillara...

Galloping horses

There is not much to say other than to state the fact that my list of things to do does not diminish in the least bit. At all. The problem is I hate rushing through it when the opposite helps me learn much better, digest it and come to terms with the material I am working.

That aside, which will be worked on better next week and hopefully will set in a stoned schedule where there will be little changes. I used to be happy working at Subway, when I first started working there. No more. With Tony's return everything returned back to it's original stress level with annoyance under my skin. He is no good for the morale, the atmosphere and even the motivation of his works. He has unrealistic expectations of what one worker could possibly achieve during an eight hour shift. The only left to do is to persevere under these circumstances

Blurs

When waking up early in the morning, when it's fall, it always feels colder than it really is. Spending an extra hour in the bed is a goal most of us strive for. To curl up in our warm bed and the blankets twirled around all the way to our ankles, safely cocooning us and holding onto the dream world for a few longer minutes.

When staying late up at night and falling asleep though, everything seems to gradually grow warm and at it's apex is when one finds herself fallen asleep on her couch with her book on her hand, once tightly, now loosely held, barely preventing it from falling on the floor. Book is sacred. Or we seep into our bed, softly as the night turns into morning and the sleeplessness slowly overtakes us.

In those times between reality and sleep, blurring between imagined and lived, fiction and truth, sincerity and lies, life seems a little simpler, sweeter and a lot less overbearing. Life blurs, thoughts blurs and when you write long enough, your sketches sometimes goes in the wrong notebook, just like this blog post, observations from the past seeps into today and your thoughts swirl around on the sky like some sort of message you weren't able to see before.

The morning appears differently from my window then it is actually outside. It's threatening, criminal and abandoned with the trashy street lamp right across my window, reminiscent of a third grade slasher movie. It looks hostile to the idea of a new day and the hope that is associated with the beginning of a new day is missing from the little perspective out of my apartment into the world.

The night, instead of being so potent, incriminating and vast, looks dwindled, dissipated and harmless. It looks no bigger than a veil, a black ruby curtain that seems poetic and partial. It looks conquerable and paled out with the dingy lighting outside of my window, slowly sleeping in through the blinds, diffracted by the window panels further and further until it's a tiny dot on my carpet that never ceases to be out of small red spots. The moon, never visible, trapped within my own excitement and prejudices without the ability to overcome them.

So, too the writing blurs. Observations end up on my blog post, while lines of dialogue, character information, plot lines end up in my observations notebook. My latest poem on my journal and a story on my poetry journal. Resilience seems further flexible than the connotation it sings off when used in plain usage. Essays in my fiction and poetic lines in my research, who would have thought? Well, any writer I would assume.

Cost of Freedom

It's an awfully awkward topic to think about kind of early in the morning, but my head is full and my heart has profoundly grown, stretched and there is so much in there that I am having difficulty catching up,sifting, sorting and understanding what it is that I am feeling and what's going on in there. There are a lot of misleading changes and things that even surprise me, as shocking as that sounds to me. I've always thought I've got myself figured out pretty well. This inability to recognize all of me, all of my emotions and the new reactions I've been giving to things, the new perspective I've seem to adapt formally and without cognizance has lead me to believe that I am in transitional and in an experimenting phase.

I guess I've just went off on another tangent. Freedom, the ability to do what you want, when you want and not have to report back to someone or justify your actions or thoughts to someone else is a Freedom most of us don't know the taste of. As most of us live with other people and there are other people we are bound by responsibility or the affection of love, perhaps even familial bonds which require us to inform them.

To change around, to stay out late, to be free from judgement and to reason to stay at a bar a little longer, or to get out of an environment as you like and wish...When attached these things come to hinder us in the small ways we've all learned to cope with (I shouldn't say all, as I seem to still have a problem with this).

Being alone doesn't bother me as much as it bothers other and in order to pay the price of that freedom in small and sometimes larger scales (that I find essential to growth, understanding and also so very addicting) that I've lost a good chunk of my patience and tolerance for people's stupidity and their problems. A lot of the problems people go through (no surprise there, as one should know from their own life) but I've seem to care a lot less about it, so therefore we can deduct that I've lost my ability to sympathize. Does that make me less human? Does that make me a less of a good person? These questions await their answers just like everything else in my life.

But I like having to wake up without having to explain and without having to rationalize the way I think, the way I feel, the way I do things and arrange them, what I tend to do with my time. I like having to start to clean-slate day with already things I'm itching to do (for example, writing this blog and the reorganizing of my library) and having the freedom to do what I want in the time, where I go and whether or not if I'd like to tag along to someone else. It's great to be with friends whom you love and can have a good time. It's great to be able to have that person(s) to share what is in your heart and mind, the things you discover along the bike path, a new coffee shop, a new lake where your heart seems to soar. People fall into loneliness if that can't be done and I wasn't always this way. A younger version of me was very eager to have as many friends as possible, to surround herself with all the right kinds of people and spend every night with some friend, somewhere. Sure, I miss family and friends and love having a good time with a small group of my friends as the next person. I've never thought I was that different and anti-social. I don't think I am. However, alone time, quiet time, time to myself, time to be me, seems like a far greater treat than constantly being in the presence of others. I like being able to discover by myself all that much more and when the time comes to revisit that place once again with the people that matter to me.

Mondays

It's a sleepless Monday morning where I'm determined to go back to my regular daily routine, although the lazy side of me just wants to curl up on my warm bed and sleep away until early afternoon.

Regardless of the obstacles overcame and the financial stress pressured on me in the second half of the previous week, the week goes and that means I must get back to my daily living before I suffer any more damage both to my soul and mainly to my motivation to keep moving forward to achieving those goals of mine that I always draw near and not always successfully accomplish.

Starting from last Thursday my life has been some sort of a crazy freak roller coaster that has left me without a breath, a large sum of debt and an immense stress, not to mention of not doing one single task item on my list. All of this sounds negative enough to compel me to go back to bed and pretend the world doesn't exist and sink into my new lows. It's more compelling than just writing it on this blank white internet space. Because simply, it would be easier to just let go. But the debt is not going to go away on its own (considering the number of things in need of paying never ceases, rather increases) the stress is only going to grow considering the incriminate weather I'm experiencing and the tasks are going to pile up and I'm going to mourn-after-the-fact for not doing them on time and have a gaping hole in my mind wondering why the hell did I not get off my butt and do them at a timely manner where I could have accomplished much. So there we have it.

It's a Monday, meaning it's the perfect day to start a weekday where it can lead to a robust, efficient and fulfilling week if I seek to see the warm sunshine and the great many ideas that came over as I was thinking over in order to fall asleep. At the end, today could be a very useful day of the week.

Pains, Hospitals, Insurance and Medication

Just like millions in this world, I too hate being sick, vehemently. But when you get sick, there are only a few limited options left which are only better of the worst evils at hand. What I hate more than being sick is having tooth or ear related problems, pains and aches. There is almost no way to endure through them, only to suffer through them and hope that it goes away soon. Almost always tooth and ear aches are more than just pains and leads to more expensive treatment as such it is in my case.

I hate hospitals, I hate doctors, I hate emergency rooms, I hate my blood being withdrawn in large quantities that it leaves me nearly breathless. I hate that I have to extract my wisdom teeth, I have to take antibiotics for a while, and there is a big question for the future of my teeth and ear. This was the last thing I needed in these times of turmoil.

To remain thankful, regardless though, this is my lesson in the world of my fictive imagination and sorrowful heart. Regardless of things, to be breathing, to be dreaming, to be striving and well the general we always take granted for like, having a home, food and clothing to shelter and sustain us through warm summers and chilly winters. These are big things that we forget to be thankful for. Especially for the people who don't have these to rely on. Someone without food will find all other problems of my irrelevant and someone who doesn't have a home to protect her from the troubles, difficulties dirty challenges of the world to a safe and secure haven.