The Hydrogen Economy: Genius or Madness?

A couple of days ago I attended a conference about sustainable development in China, where Jeremy Rifkin explained his theory about the "hydrogen economy." It's a novel vision, and it goes like this: According to Rifkin, industrial revolutions happen when a new way to utilize energy coincides with a new way to distribute information. The first one was when coal was used for the steam engine, and it coincided with mass printing. The second one was when oil was used for the combustion engine, and it coincided with the telegraph and telephone. In the face of rising oil prices, limited oil supply and limited security, as well as the environmental problems brought about by the climate change, Rifkin thinks that we are approaching the end of an era.

Rifkin draws his inspiration about a new energy distribution system from the Internet. He thinks everybody, households and businesses, will be producing their energy from renewable sources, like wind, solar power and biomass, store it as hydrogen, and then distribute and share energy through intelligent grids. In addition to solving our obvious problems regarding oil prices, security of supply and climate change, this will also spur sustainable development, he says, as the developing world will be able to produce its own energy.

Rifkin paints a great picture, although I'm not sure about the soundness of his technological assumptions. It's almost too good to be true. Can a new system be planned like this? After all, the first two industrial revolutions were not planned in advance. They evolved, new technologies and solutions came in increments, one thing followed another. People invented things partly out of necessity, but partly out of coincidence. That's why a grand scheme like this, as magnificent and logical as it sounds, can easily draw skepticism.

Ey liberal: Hangi tarafta olduğunu bil!

Biz liberal geçinenler, aslında hangi tarafta olduğumuzu sırf fikirlerimizin değil, ne olduğumuzun, nasıl yaşadığımızın da belirlediğini sonunda anlıyoruz. Aynı mağdur gördüklerimizin bizimle aynı tarafta olup olmadıklarını ne olduklarının, nasıl yaşadıklarının, ne kadar güç kazandıklarının belirlediği gibi.

Bir arkadaşımla LSE'deki "Avrupa Birliği Yolunda Türkiye'de Milliyetçilik" konulu konferansa gittik. Konferansın sonunda izleyicilerin bir kısmı, Kürt milliyetçileri Abdullah Öcalan'a "sayın" diye hitap edince galeyana geldi. Arkadaşım, konferansta, bir akademisyen olarak henüz kendini kanıtlamamış birine söz verilmesini eleştirdi. Toplantının tatsız bitmesinde bunun da etkisi olduğunu düşünüyordu. Arkadaşım elitist, ben de demokrat, yenilikçi, liberalim ya, ona şöyle yazdım:

"Aslında Türkiye şu anda güç dengelerinin bilinçli olarak değiştirildiği bir dönemden geçiyor. Belki basitleştirmiş olacağım, ama elitler - yargı, akademisyenler, eski zenginler (TUSIAD, beyaz Turkler) gittikçe güç kaybediyor, geliri ve eğitim seviyesi daha düşük kesimler (muhafazakar olsun, olmasın) zenginleşiyor, güç ve ses kazanıyor. Ancak AKP'nin güçlenmesinin önemli bir sebebi, o elitlerin şimdiye kadar toplumun diğer kesimlerini tatmin edecek politikalar üretememiş olmalarıdır, gerek sosyal, gerek eğitim, gerek ekonomi açısından. Ya da gerçekten kaliteli insanların ("elitler" içinde bile) hep azınlıkta kalmış olmalarıdır.

Tamam, bu demokrasının kabahati. On beş çocuklu bir ailenin çocukları beni kimin yöneteceğini belirleyecek. Televizyonların, gazetelerin içeriğine onlar karar verecek. Toplum gittikçe banalleşecek. Maalesef demokrasilerde yasama işini akademisyenler değil, halkın seçtiği politikacılar yapıyor. Buna isyan etmenin, o insanları yok saymanın, bir anda değiştirmeye, aydınlatmaya, darbelerle susturmaya çalışmanın bir yarar sağlamayacağı belli oldu. Bizler onların isteklerini, ihtiyaçlarını dikkate almak zorundayız, onların iyiliği için olmasa bile kendi iyiliğimiz için! Gerçi bunu söylemek için biraz geç oldu. Belki de söylememiz gereken - dua edelim de onlar bizim isteklerimizi dikkate alsın!"

Birden anladım ki, ben aslında olduğumu düşündüğüm tarafta değilim, zaten hiç olmamışım, olamam da. Aslında tek derdim, şimdiye kadar işleri düzeltmediğini düşündüğüm politikaların değişmesi. Gayet pragmatiğim yani.

AKP'yi destekleyen liberaller birden gerçeğe aydılar, hayal kırıklığına uğradılar. Hayal kırıklıkları mağdurların iktidara geldiklerinde o kadar mağdur ve sevimli gözükmemesinden mi, yoksa kendilerinin aslında laik elitistlere benzediklerini farketmelerinden mi, bilinmez.

Bizler, onlara bizden farklı düşünme, yaşama hakkının verilmesinin, sorunları çözeceğini düşündük. Yıllardır ülkenin ayaklarına dolanan düğümleri ancak bu çözebilirdi. Ama onların bize kendi düşüncelerini, yaşam tarzlarını dayatma ihtimali, aslında onlar gibi olmadığımızı hatırlamamızı sağladı. Şimdi korkuyoruz, meğer aslında kaybedecek bir şeylerimiz varmış.

Truth

I'm sitting in Starbucks, drank a chai latte and ate a banana nut muffin, finished the Kite Runner. I've been here for more than three hours now, so many people came and went.

Reading this book reminded me of some things, made me realize some things. It reminded me of my cousin, my warm heart, my sister, my reference point through our childhoods, our youth. Our families voiced this so many times, showed me to her as an example, her reference point. This made me stronger and stronger, I was the bee getting most of the honey in the comb. But I know they enjoy it when she makes fun of me sometimes, as I became more vain, more self-righteous over time, as I became strong and independent, as I drifted away from them.

The book made me realize (once again) that there's no way to ensure things will stay pure and good. But it also made me realize, that it doesn't mean the end of the world once things are impure and bad. It made me realize there's a way to make things better. Guilt can lead to good, if one tries. We are not Gods, as my friend said, we do our best. We can, if we want to.

I realized one can witness religious fundamentalism and still believe, still be religious when someone dear to him survives.

And it made me think about my father. My father, who witnessed his own dad die of lung cancer when he was young. My father took me to fly a kite to a hill close to our old flat in Izmir. The hill is just there, quite unreal in the middle of the adjacent, concrete apartment buildings. Once you start climbing it, as far as I remember, at least, it gives you quite the feeling of being in a cool, shadowy wood of pine trees. It's balding at the top, and there are more apartment buildings in Hatay. We flew the kite there on a Sunday, I was quite small. Then I remembered myself flying a small newspaper kite out of the window of my room in our sixth-story flat - a kite I had made in our arts and crafts class in elementary school.

(The girl across from me is talking into her laptop, telling the story of a boy who died suddenly without any prior health problems... She has dark eyes lined with black pencil and curly long hair. She doesn't cry or anything, and now she's eating a banana. This boy must have been an acquaintance.)

And then I remembered my dad teaching me how to ride a bike on his really old bike with back wheels on the concrete walkway by the bay. That road, sahilyolu, is built on a landfill, closely-knit apartment buildings lining it. The passers-by told me to look ahead, and my dad pushed the bike. We took it to the repairshop to fix something with it. I learned in the end, and my dad bought me a pink Bisan bike. I rode it more when we moved to the suburb. We still ride bikes in Çeşme with my dad when I go home, and I'm still scared of the traffic, and still ashamed for riding bikes with my dad and not with people my age.

(The girl moved, I think I made her uncomfortable by observing her. She thanked me warmly.)

My dad also made me apply for colleges abroad. I told him I wanted to focus on the entrance exam in Turkey rather than spreading myself thin. He contacted the counselor in our school, made me go to meetings, pick schools from a big thick yellow book. He took me to school on a Sunday to take pictures for my portfolio. (I made one to apply to Cornell Architecture.) He drove me to UPS to mail my applications, we drove through the poorest neighbourhoods, and one of those days it snowed, and it stuck on the ground for the first time in Izmir. He made me take the SAT and later AP exams. Bought me a graphing calculator which I later lost at Georgetown. When we went to DC for the first time, staying in a really depressing Hilton across from a 7-Eleven in Ballston, he told me that he was paying the tuition and I was staying for good. He told me to apply to LSE when I said I was sick of studying, I wanted to work for a while.

My dad made me make my own web-site when I was 13. I remember the day he came home and explained to me and my mom what Internet was.

I talked to my dad the other day, and he said I'm depressing myself, sitting like a pickle and I should come back home immediately. He said I need some direction and if I'm home my mom will cook potato soup and he himself will tell me where to apply. I'll be able to drive sheker sherbet and gain experience before I have to drive in Istanbul. I said OK, and then changed my mind to stay a couple of weeks more.

(The girl met with someone else. I don't feel so offended now.)

I make the Capricorns in my life impatient with my indecisiveness, fear. My friend told me what her dad told her, that you have to be a lion in this life to get what you want. Of course, she added, it's hard if your character is different from a lion's. She said she wants to push me sometimes. She said I should apply to jobs like there's no tomorrow. Another friend told me I can't afford to be not hungry.

I have been sitting like a pickle, sour in my glass jar, for the past month. But I suddenly crossed the border between depression and vacancy to a state more alive, more full of meaning. Yesterday I went to Winchester with two friends, barely made it to the train because I hardly cared. We climbed a big grassy hill and looked at the little city from above. We ate lamb shanks with mash and gravy in a dark pub with a very pretty bartender, filled animals, lots of books, some cut in half and tied to a door as decoration. Medical instruments hung down from the ceiling of the bathroom, words scribbled all over the stall.

We walked in the sunshine, on little streets, we passed through small gates into courtyards, watched the sunlight go through windows in the stone, medieval cathedral, in the little chapel. We lingered in a small garden with a pond and a small fountain, stirring the pond and making a trickling sound in the silence, under the sunshine. We walked on the muddy walkway by the stream, which was branching and merging, the water flowing without making a fuss, clearly and with determination. We ended up in Abbey Gardens, one of my friends had heard from a co-worker that it was a must-see, supposedly full of flower beds. The Winchester youth were hanging out there, smoking, and the garden was a disappointment. "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, after all," I joked.

"I wrote that in an essay once," my friend said, "And my professor wrote, 'cut that relativistic non-sense!'"

Although I had just said it myself, I agreed wholeheartedly with that professor. Cut the relativistic non-sense. What he meant was, probably, "it's laziness to think that there's no truth, to stop searching for it, to stop trying to understand things, see meaning in things." He thought the search for truth had a point.

For me, it also means: Stop comparing yourself with others. Stop competing, stop determining your value based on the value of others. No, everything is not relative. There's truth, absolute truth, there's value, absolute value, there's beauty, absolute beauty. Everybody has a piece of it, one recognizes it, remembers it once one sees it, hears it. It might be in a piece of music, in a building, in a book, in a person. One sees it and recognizes it.

AKP's mistakes

Apparently when Cuneyd Zapsu suggested their party to be named "Muslim Democratic Party," Tayyip Erdogan objected, saying religion should not be mentioned in the party's name, because political parties make mistakes. Good foresight.

Back in July, I said I would vote for the Justice and Development Party, had I been in Turkey. Mostly for the lack of a better alternative. Then I got to do research about the healthcare system and the new social security law, and I was impressed by the government's efforts to undertake politically difficult reforms. Now they are working on an employment package to cut social security premiums and severance payments, as well as eliminating bureaucratic obligations, in an effort to reduce the informal economy and create more jobs - the headscarf debate permitting. (The Justice Minister's proposal to change Article 301, too, seems to have been shelved until the dust settles.)

The government's mistakes overshadow the well-meaning reforms. Just a quick laundry list to brush up our memories: The Finance Ministry launched a questionable tax probe on Petrol Ofisi, a privatized oil distributor, after the newspapers and TV channels belonging to its new owner, Aydın Doğan, took a critical stance towards the government. Then, only about a month ago, the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF) sold Sabah, a newspaper, and ATV, a TV channel, to Çalık group, which is headed by Erdoğan's son-in-law. The rumor goes that the government is looking to change the law that bans foreign ownership of media outlets, and the Çalık Group will be able to make a decent profit by selling off its stake.

And take a look at the government's Jan. 9 action plan: Most of the items on the list lack clear detail and a timetable, and the few concrete policies lack consensus even within the cabinet. Economy minister Mehmet Şimşek, as well as the State Planning Organisation, had announced that the social security premium cuts would not go into effect until 2009, because the budget does not have any room to compensate for them. Industry Minister Zafer Çağlayan demanded earlier implementation, and Erdoğan announced that premium cuts will come into effect in 2008. It seems unfeasible, and Erdoğan only hurts his credibility by making promises at the spur of a moment.

A similar story goes for agricultural subsidies: The government announced that direct income support, based on land ownership, would be replaced by product price support, but it turns out the preliminary work isn't complete: it is not clear how much each product will be subsidized in each region.

Erdoğan also pledged to move the Central Bank from Ankara to Istanbul. The Central Bank staff, most notably the governor, have voiced their opposition to such a move, and the government has failed to show that such a fait accompli has a clear economic rationale. Now it all seems like stubborn insistence.

All this, including a global economic downturn that will hit emerging markets like us the most, doesn't matter, of course. The most important item on the government's agenda is the headscarf ban in universities. The ideal solution would be if another party, not AKP, lifted the ban, and such a move would give secularists real strength. Because they are not smart enough to do that, AKP drew power from their victim status. I never thought they would take the final steps to lift the ban, but they finally seem to have found the resolve, also emboldened by their election victory.

Of course, devil lies in the extremes: the religious conservative intelligensia is not shy about their dissatisfaction - they think civil servants, and even high school students should be allowed to wear headscarves. That would be going too far.

like a rolling stone

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you're gonna have to get used to it
You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They're drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you'd better lift your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Bob Dylan
:)

London notes #2

22.01

Founder's Arms

I feel "ferah", like there's a huge breezy space in my heart, windows open, curtains flying in the wind. I don't know if it's the subtle, strong movement of the water, the lights or the dim, wide waterfront. I don't know if it's the medieval tunnels under the bridges. Or the memories, the habit of having walked there so many times, with different people, with the same people. There's still no place in London more soothing than there. There's no place, where the thought of going makes me happier.

Behind closed doors

You know those action movies, where the only weakness of the hero is his loved ones? And how secret service officers are usually picked among orphans?

One evening we found a ten pound bill on the staircase, and started ringing people's bells to see whose it is. Some people weren't home, but one family answered the door. The house was a real house and the family was a real family, in their casual home attire. The kids, some in their teens, the smiling mom trying to understand why we rang their bell. I felt like we put a huge spotlight into their nest, we intruded their privacy, caught them in their most defenseless moment. Just when they felt they didn't have to deal with strangers anymore, just when they felt they could relax.

You can be cool when you're by yourself. You can be all cool and collectively not care when you're sharing a flat with people your age. You can wear your poker faces and pretend you're strong.

Family, though, makes one so weak. You care for these people, you care for your home, you see their flaws and weaknesses, but still you can't imagine what would happen if something happened to any of them. You want to protect them from the world's gaze, sometimes you want to protect them from your own gaze.

I think that's why family can be such an intimate thing.

London notes

17.1, 20.1

Mayfair

Mayfair is a small, wealthy Swiss town in the middle of London. The Bond Streets host the boutiques, jewellers, art galleries and auctioneers advertised in How to Spend It. Sophisticated women and men walk the sidewalks, chins up, hardly flinching at what's displayed on the windows, never stopping. Women usually wear their trenchcoats and coats unbuttoned, while men keep their hands in their coat pockets. The buildings, powered by wealth and history, hold the colourful flags of the shops tirelessly. Small shops with small, delicate paintings, men's shoes, pipes, and small rectangle perfume bottles line the passages, they glow with the rustic red of the wood and warm yellow lights. On Sundays jewellers put away the jewels, but the price tags remain.

18.1

Shoreditch

Walking out of the dirty, busy Liverpool Street Station, one steps into the dark world of asphalt, steel, glass, sharp corners, vertical lines, white lights and water puddles reflecting and multiplying all this. If you walk left a little, you'll see a huge pub on the corner across the street, and that little street leads to the alleyways which in turn lead to where I used to live. That's why it's homey to me. First there's the friendly dry cleaners. Then there are little cafés and sandwich places that fill up during lunchtime, a dark winery decorated with barrells, there are homeless people walking up and down (one guy wanted to go to Bermuda and there was a little woman who really creeped me out), the occasional boutique that manages to hold an elegant, fragile contrast to everything else. There's the Jack the Ripper graffitti on the brick wall plastered with white paint. When you walk on those alleyways at night, there is always lots of trash, and a couple making out promiscuously.

I could see the roofs of these small buildings from my kitchen. One of them had a terrace with green plants even.

That was a huge paranthesis, sparked by my love of my old neighbourhood. But that is not where we went Friday night. We didn't take the street that leads to my old dorm, and then to Spitalfields, Commercial Street with the little, dark, concrete church, and Brick Lane. Instead we just kept walking on Bishopsgate past EBRD, ABN Amro, RBS, a skyscraper construction. We ended up in the Light on the brink of Shoreditch High. It's a two-storey, spacey place. Upstairs there are big windows and a terrace. From the windows you could see the street, the traffic, the red buses with their red stop lights. We had to step outside to escape from the loud trance music, and stood in the drizzle. From here we could see the Gurken and the street. It's a happy, playful building. It was alit white like all the others, but its round shape made it smiley like the moon.

19.1

Covent Garden

I remember the day I handed in my dissertation. I felt so light. I stopped by work briefly, then walked back towards Covent Garden. The first time I walked around the neighbourhood properly. There were boutiques, bookshops with boxes of cheap books outside, one bookshop solely dedicated to books about design, dance studios. It looked like an artsy theater district. Somewhere hidden were bohemian dancers, singers, actors, their aspirations. Then there were a couple of astrology/mysticism shops with colourful stones and beads and cards. I walked in and flipped through the books to read about the qualities of my sign - and the sign of the guy I liked at the time.

Last night, I walked from Charing Cross to Long Acre with a friend. I saw a Mexican restaurant, a native American place with high ceilings, some other restaurants/bars we haven't been to yet. People mingling. When places like these open in Istanbul, it becomes a huge deal. Here, there are just too many of them. Diverse, lively neighbourhoods, exciting and inspiring even in their dirt and ugliness. I felt ashamed of not being able to be happy in London, not being able to appreciate it fully, not being able to catch up with it, lose and forget myself in it.

Now that I'm thinking of leaving in a couple of months, I'm so awake to its beauty. I'm walking around like a tourist, always lifting my gaze to see the buildings and the whole street, my eyes scanning around to discover side streets, alleys, courtyards.

When I came home, I saw a quote by Charles Baudelaire on Ekşi Sözlük. "Ben nerede değilsem orada iyi olacakmışım gibi gelir." Whereever I'm not, it seems that I'll be good there. People said you couldn't escape from yourself wherever you went. Yea, we are always by ourselves, with ourselves. People can leave us, and each time somebody leaves us, we too want to leave ourselves, but we can't. We are stuck here. I can leave everything, everywhere and everyone, but not myself.

So better start getting along!

a wave

weird, how you see one side of a wave as it approaches the coast, and then it turns onto itself and you see the other side - of the same wave.

and then it expands and thins out and recedes and disappears. with all its sides.

I could feel at the time
There was no way of knowing
Fallen leaves in the night
Who can say where they´re blowing

As free as the wind
And hopefully learning
Why the sea on the tide
Has no way of turning

More than this - there is nothing
More than this - tell me one thing
More than this - there is nothing

It was fun for a while
There was no way of knowing
Like dream in the night
Who can say where we´re going
No care in the world
Maybe i´m learning
Why the sea on the tide
Has no way of turning

More than this - there is nothing
More than this - tell me one thing
More than this - there is nothing

Roxy Music

to stay or to go home

ON the same crossroads again... Don't read further if you're bored of it. I'm writing to help myself anyway.

All my friends think going home is the easy way out. Londoners (the good ones) must be the highest form of living, right, since they are surviving in this expensive, crowded city, constantly on their feet, interacting with others, coming up with ideas, making points, making the most of work and the most of their precious free time. The highest form of civilization is here, a hub of high benchmarks, reference points so much so that you have to be good to feel happy, accomplished. The most you can make out of your time and brain in this world.

So if I go home it means I'm chickening out just because I'm too scared of the competition, too lazy? I pretend I don't want to work in the City because I couldn't even if I wanted to? It means once again I failed to settle, grow roots, build and keep deep relationships?

Maybe so. There's another school of thought, though, saying how staying away from home may be cowardly, too, at least for citizens of the third world:

"He knew what his father thought: that immigration, so often presented as a heroic act, could just easily be the opposite; that it was cowardice that led many to America; fear marked the journey, not bravery; a cockroachy desire to scuttle to where you never saw poverty, not really, never had to suffer a tug to your conscience; where you never heard the demands of servants, beggars, bankrupt relatives, and where your generosity would never be openly claimed; where by merely looking after your own wife-child-dog-yard you could feel virtuous. Experience the relief of being an unknown transplant to the locals and hide the perspective granted by journey. Ohio was the first place he loved, for there he had at last been able to acquire a poise-" The Inheritance of Loss, page 299.

I really don't want to float for much longer, stand where I could do anything, without doing anything. I want to build something, I want to write. There.

...
Or a little more while... here. I still don't know. I'm human after all, I'm weak and self absorbed!

"By now, with the conversation disintegrating, his sense of humor began to return to him, and Gyan began to giggle, his eyes to soften, and she could see his expression shift. They were falling back into familiarity, into common ground, into the dirty gray. Just ordinary humans in ordinary opaque boiled-egg light, without grace, without revelation, composite of contradictions, easy principles, arguing about what they half believed in or even what they didn't believe in at all, desiring comfort as much as raw austerity, authenticity as much as playacting, desiring coziness of family as much as to abandon it forever. Cheese and chocolate they wanted, but also to kick all these bloody foreign things out. A wild daring love to bicycle them into the sky, but also a rice and dal love blessed by the unexciting feel of everyday, its surprises safely enmeshed in something solidly familiar like marrying the daughter or son of your father's best friend and grumbling about the cost of potatoes, the cost of onions. Every single contradiction history or opportunity might make available to them, every contradiction they were heir to, they desired. But only as much, of course, as they desired purity and a lack of contradiction.
...

"The sister was trying to hear but Gyan had her by the braids and was pulling her home. Sai had betrayed him, led him to betray others, his own people, his family. She had enticed him, sneaked up on him, spied on him, ruined him, caused him to behave badly. He couldn't wait for the day his mother would show him the photograph of the girl he was to marry, a charming girl, he hoped, with cheeks like two Simla apples, who hadn't allowed her mind to traverse the gutters and gray areas, and he would adore her for the miracle she was.

"Sai was not miraculous; she was an uninspiring person, a reflection of all the contradictions around her, a mirror that showed him himself far too clearly for comfort."

page 259, 262, The Inheritance of Loss

(In)consistency

I was having tea with a friend of mine, and here's more or less how the conversation progressed:
"I still wonder why you called me intriguing," she said, referring to a birthday card I'd given her. "You don't say things for no reason, right?"

As I was about to reply, she went on: "Do you always think before you speak?"

"Not always, sometimes I realize what I say is not what I mean and it's disappointing," I thought and said. (I should have said, "no, I usually end up not speaking when I think.")

"Do you think people can always be rational?" she asked.

I went into a spiel about how we can never have enough information, we can never interpret it right - so no.

After a while I asked her:

"Do you think people who act emotional are stupid?"

Before all this we had talked about how a way of live becomes the norm in the society. How one's job becomes the most important thing in one's life, how everything else is supposed to be transient until we reach a certain age, how one has to be really ambitious if one wants to get somewhere. How we hang on to people only as long as they give us pleasure, and the moment they don't, we feel no obligation. I was referring to that.

"No," she said, getting me slightly wrong, going into the IQ vs. EQ debate, "those who are stupid are the ones who try to control everything, rationalize everything. You never know the reasons why someone acts a certain way - maybe they didn't get the toy they wanted when they were little...."

I didn't listen to the rest. She always accuses me of trying to rationalize everything. I was offended.

I do try to understand things, understand people, myself. I want clarity. Sometimes I eliminate my options just because I want some clarity. I decide I want a certain thing and block other possibilities. Maybe I want order, consistency, rules to live by. A definition of what is good and what is bad. What is right and what is wrong. What makes sense and what doesn't. What is meant to be and what isn't. What is conceivable and what is not.

People who want contradicting things all at once, people who believe in one thing now and another thing later puzzle me. You can't hold on to them. What is this then, a jungle? Don't we have any rules at all? Don't we learn anything from the past? Shouldn't we try to get out of this mess?

My friend has a point. Maybe I should lift the barriers in my mind, allow my mind to be free, allow myself to be inconsistent, disloyal to any one option. Jump into the mess rather than looking down at it from the sidelines, thinking it's beneath me. Alright.

***

"What kind of man are you?" she asked. "Is this any way to behave?"

"I'm confused," he said finally, reluctantly. "I'm only human and sometimes I'm weak. I'm sorry."

"At whose expense are you weak and human! You'll never get anywhere in life, my friend," shouted Sai, "if this is what you think makes an excuse...."

"I don't have to listen to this," he said jumping up and storming off abruptly just as she was in powerful flow.

And Sai had cried, for it was the unjust truth. page 249.

Kader?

Bugün otoyolda sol şeritte gidiyoruz, tabii ki lambalar yanmıyor, yol zifiri karanlık. Yine aynı şey geldi aklıma - şoförü içip içip otoyola ters yönden giren, farları bile yanmayan kamyonla çarpışıp ölen gazeteciler. Kamyonu çarpana kadar görmemişlerdir bile belki. Kader, dedim kendi kendime, herhangi birinin karşısına çıkabilirdi o kamyon. O kadar tesadüfi ki her şey, pamuk ipliğine bağlı.

Ama sonra anladım ki, o kamyonla kimin karşılaşacağı kader de, o kamyonun şoförünün içmesi, zifiri karanlık yola ters yönden girmesi kader değil. Buralarda kader denen bir çok şeyin bir sorumlusu var, insanların hayatı boşu boşuna sönüyor, engellenebilecek şeyler yüzünden. Bu anlamsızlığa, bu haksızlığa dayanmak mümkün olmadığı için, biraz rahatlayabilmek, nefes alabilmek için kadere atıyoruz sorumluluğu. Karşımızda sorumluluğu alacak bir muhatap bulamadığımız, bulamayacağımız için. Pek çok şeyin sorumlusunun kader olduğu yerlerde hayat ucuzluyor.

Books and People

I started reading Elif Şafak's Siyah Süt. The book didn't seem very interesting at first, it's about post-partum depression, what's that got to do with me? When I read further, though, I realized it's not only for women who just had a baby or planning to have one - it has much more to it.

Then I realized people we meet are just like books. Maybe we are attracted to the cover or something we heard about them, but then once we start reading them, we may realize they are not what they seemed like, what we expected - the first pages are complicated, they are not that interesting, they don't draw us in. Maybe we decide they are not for us. We put them away.

Just like books, people we put out of sight can't do much to convince us to pick them up again, until we are ready, until we make up our minds for it. But then, people are capable of doing one thing that books aren't able to: They change, they move on. We can't resume reading them from where we left off.

A tragic assassination

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is likely to be a serious setback to democratization and secularization efforts in Pakistan. Bhutto's return to Pakistan was reportedly supported by the U.S. to conduce President Pervez Musharraf into a more civilian, legitimate rule and a power-sharing arrangement. Bhutto's party was likely to come out first in the upcoming elections in January. It is not clear whether these elections will still be held.

Many think radical Islamists are to blame. Al Qaeda has already assumed responsibility. The country has been fighting the Islamist militants in Waziristan, the northwest area bordering Afghanistan. During the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Taliban and Al Qaeda militants have reportedly crossed the border into Pakistan, starting an insurgency in the tribal area. The conflict in the region has escalated following the Lal Masjid siege in July.

Radical Islamist groups seem to have much to gain from the assassination: Not only would such an attack eliminate a secularist politician with a strong backing, but it would also put President Musharraf in a difficult position. Musharraf is already much disliked by radical Islamists for supporting the U.S. in the war against terror. Now he is also accused by Bhutto supporters for not doing enough to ensure her security. He will have difficulty controlling the resulting instability.

Al Qaeda, however, is not the only suspect. When Bhutto's bus and supporters were attacked in Karachi upon her return in October, Bhutto herself pointed to radical Islamist intelligence officials and politicians as suspects. Members of Pakistani intelligence agencies have long been suspected to frequent the Lal Masjid in Islamabad, known for its radical agenda and teachings, and home to the recent bloody siege.

One can draw parallels between Turkey and Pakistan, but there are also differences. Both countries have immature democracies influenced by the military, although the problem is more acute in Pakistan. In both cases, the state has rogue, criminal elements within. Both countries face continuous conflict between secularists and Islamists. The insurgencies have different justifications (ethnical in Turkey and religious in Pakistan), and although the instability in neighbouring countries contribute to them, the insurgencies actually reflect deeper divides within these countries.

American policies in Afghanistan and the Middle East are part of the reason of the clashes in the region today. Even Bhutto herself is said to initially view Taliban in a positive light, hoping that they will bring stability to Afghanistan.

The assassination is tragic for Pakistan and on a personal level. There is something naive, idealistic about Bhutto's decision to return to Pakistan. She could have well stayed in Dubai with her family, enjoying the riches she is claimed to have gained from corruption. Although her father and brothers were killed -maybe because of that- she returned. Maybe she liked the love and attention she received from her supporters, she liked her heroine status. Maybe she genuinely believed that she could make a difference, that it was her calling. In any case, I really respect and admire her decision to return under such risky circumstances, and it saddens me to see the story end like this, the evil triumph. (I started to sound like Bush but this is how I feel!)

Jack Vettriano, Drifters

"time can do so much - are you still mine?" - Unchained Melody

"of course as you're looking in the rear mirror life goes on." - Levent Abi, my driving instructor, reminding me to check the road again

The food arrived. Bose made a valiant effort to retract and start over:
"Just found a new cook myself," he said. "That Sheru kicked the bucket after thirty years of service. The new one is untrained, but he came cheap because of that. I got out the recipe books and read them aloud as he copied it all down in Bengali. 'Look,' I told him, 'keep it basic, nothing fancy. Just learn a brown sauce and a white sauce-shove the bloody white sauce on the fish and shove the bloody brown sauce on the mutton."
But he couldn't manage to keep this up.
He now pleaded directly with the judge: "We're friends, aren't we?"
"Aren't we? Aren't we friends?"
"Time passes, things change," said the judge, feeling claustrophobia and emberrassment.
"But what is in the past remains unchanged, doesn't it?"
"I think it does change. The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind, Bose." The Inheritance of Loss, page 207, 208

Time

They are preparing a new room for the antique watches and clocks in the British Museum, and they put them in a temporary room until then. I got to see them last weekend, and I wondered, once again, how people came up with the concept of time, and how to measure it. Once I read somewhere that time is the fourth dimension, but I didn't quite get it. Now I grasp it better - let's say we have a room, with its length, width, depth. But the room is not the same from one second to the next. People enter, leave, relocate objects. The room changes, it moves away from the origin. We have frames following one another, each different from one another, like in a movie.

People must have noticed the change, the movement, and they called it time. The movement of stars, planets, earth, changing of coordinates, not being able to find something where you left it, finding something else. One of the clocks had a mechanism that portrayed exactly that - a small ball rolled along a curvy belt, and when it reached the end of it, it pulled a spring that pulled the wheels and turned them ever so slightly - then the plate with the belt slanted backwards and the ball started rolling again. Apparently it took 30 seconds for the ball to get from one end to the other.

We say it takes a certain time to go a certain distance. The opposite might be true, too - when time passes, people and objects move. We might as well assume that as time goes by, the further away from the origin we can expect to find things.

This doesn't say anything definitive about objects' positions relative to each other, though. The passage of time doesn't necessarily mean we'll travel further and further away. The opposite may also be the case. That only time can tell.

deli kızın türküsü

yağmur yağar akasyalar ıslanır
ben yağmura deli buluta deli
bir büyük oyun bu yaşamak dediğin
beni ya sevmeli ya öldürmeli

yitirmeli ne varsa
başlamalı yeniden

bu Allahsız bu yağmur
işlemez karanlıkta
garipliğine yan
yan yürek yan
gitti giden gitti giden

yitirmeli ne varsa
başlamalı yeniden

sana büyük caddelerin birinde rastlasam
elimi uzatsam tutsam götürsem
gözlerine baksam gözlerine
konuşmasak ah anlasan
elimi uzatsam tutamasam
olanca sevgimi yalnızlığımı
düşünsem hayır hayır düşünmesem

senin hiç hiç hiç haberin olmasa

Gülten Akın

Jack Nicholson in Men's Journal January 2008 issue: the best interview I've ever read. He has solved it all. Read the whole interview, I don't want to spoil it for you by pulling quotes out of context, below is just a selection of good stuff.


***
"I don't know if you earn good fortune, but I think I've been pretty healthy about exploiting it when I had it, not kicking myself in the ass over it. I don't feel guilty because I'm fortunate. That's a waste."

"Don't waste hate on anything you don't love. This particular lady once told me, 'I never fight with anybody I don't love.' And you can't, anyway."

"Now this is a tough truth, but it's a truth: The men climbed on and over them to live. It's scary. I can't conceive it. But this is a fact. No matter what you may think about yourself, you're this."

"The real fear I have to overcome, actually, is the fear of the unknown. We're very uncomfortable with the unknown, and that's why we tend to cling to the status quo, to structure, to relationships - to just cling. You start off today and every day by trying to overcome fear with clarity. If you have clarity, it'll give you a position of power, the ability to act on your best instincts. I once put it this way in a comedy film: Where there's clarity, there is no choice. Where there's choice, there's misery."

"To be celebrated is uncomfortable, for men in particular. Because you don't have the choice of not being celebrated."

"For years I carried in my wallet this clipping from the Newark Star-Ledger that my mother gave me as a kid. It was the Comic Dictionary definition of a smart aleck: 'A smart aleck is the person who doesn't know that it's what he learns after he knows it all that counts.'... I carried that forever as a cautionary reminder, because I had to learn how to talk less forcefully, not hurl everything I had at somebody and feel like I had to win every argument. The truth is, I'm against nobody. My newest motto is: Everything in addition to; nothing against."

"But life - it'll make you suspicious of love, there's no doubt about that."

"We know the woman's actual cycle of infatuation is nine months; this is not psychological but in her genetic makeup. And your corresponding cycle, or sexual cycle, whatever you want to call it, is 20 minutes? An hour? We have more in common with a male dog than we do with a woman in this department."

"It's a false concept, the escape: 'I'm going to New York. I'm going to leave and go away from the pain.' This does not take anybody out of the world. We know this in many other areas of loss. Why do we think the game of geographic relocation could work here? I arrived at this on a personal level, because I always thought I could do without it, partnerships, in any situation. 'Hey, you're not happy with this scenario - okay, I've done the best I could. Let's see what happens. I'll just - go away.' So it was more an admonition of myself, because you get comfortable with the ways you successfully solve problems, and sometimes that's not the best thing."

"It's only if you don't examine it and allow it to nourish your perceptions that you're cooked. My secretary's a kind of Yiddish mama, and I love her definition of a relationship: 'If it's not half the effort and twice the fun, it's not good."

"Look, I have a lot of late eureka experiences these days. I'm driving along on Mulholland on a particular day, the kind about which my friend Harry Gittes says, 'The Lord's playing L.A. today.' And I'm looking at this beautiful day, thinking, I cannot imagine anything better than this, period. People say, 'Paradise, you're living in it.' But it had never sunk in in that eureka way that not only made me happy, but my tits got hard and my hair stood on end. I thought, Goddammit, you've experienced something here. But one second later I thought, Hey, what about Iraq? That's what I mean by the skill of happiness. It didn't protect me from Iraq. I wasn't able to jump right back into that euphoria. The increment had happened. So it's a grace to be able to modulate that. That's the best thing I have say about happy."

"the meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances;
if there's any reaction, both are transformed." - Carl Gustav Jung

Lazy

A good friend of mine went to a training session in the gym she just subscribed to. As she was telling me everything they made her do, she mentioned something she learned. Apparently our body prefers to use the muscles that are the strongest and avoids using the weak ones, because it's more difficult. If an exercise requires that we use the weak muscles, we slightly change it to be able to use the strong ones again.

This made me wonder if it's the same way with the brain. We must be using the same parts of our brains all the time, and avoid using the other parts. We think in familiar ways, we recycle familiar opinions, listen to familiar songs, do familiar things. But when something new, unfamiliar arises, we get confused. The night before, when I asked another friend what she would change if she could only change one thing, she said she would "try to make people think in less extreme ways."

Going back to the original story, when I asked about the brain, "I think it's lazy to say it's the way you are," my friend said. She heard somewhere that our brain builds new links when we start thinking about different things, in different ways.

Part of my confusion, fear stems from laziness, but it's not only me. We try to keep new, unfamiliar things at bay, we put on our poker faces and wait for people to adjust to us. My way or highway.

Any kind of relationship is only meaningful if both sides are willing to adjust. This is what I think, if it matters at all...

refocused...

you know that split second the camera lens takes to refocus and the zzzzzz sound it makes. a blurry split second, the lens quickly moves back and forth, then everything is sharp again.

I was right at the beginning, I need my anchor, my voice before everything else.

when my dad was teaching me how to drive, I would go on the highway slowly, ever so slowly shifting left. hoping the cars would slow down and give me the way. they never did, they never cared, they just kept whizzing by. my dad kept telling me to just speed up. I hoped some drivers would be courteous.

every day I'm learning more about people.

Kaputt

I feel like a computer and somebody just spilled a glass of water on me. As the water is seeping through my compartments, the data I've stored, the opinions I've formed, my beliefs are getting blurry, I'm getting confused. I'm trying to refocus, gather my thoughts - not even for my own sake, but only because nobody wants a dysfunctional computer - not even when they broke it themselves.

Now apparently they are making computers more resistant to accidents like this, they don't get messed up with a little water. Technology is evolving with experience. Unfortunately I'm older-generation, but at least I know by now that this is not a good state to be in.

From the Times Style supplement, Dec. 2, 2007:

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article2941341.ece



Age of innocence?


Shane Watson

Babies, according to new research, can tell good people from bad at the tender age of six months. In tests, the babies unanimously preferred a “positive” doll over both a “negative” or “neutral” doll. In other words, before we can speak, we can distinguish the people who have our best interests at heart. This is pretty amazing when you think about it: not that babies are programmed from birth, but that we all start out with a foolproof people-radar that is then systematically dismantled.

It starts with your parents making you play with their friends’ dysfunctional children. That’s when you learn that you must get on with everyone, even the ones who hit you over the head continuously, for the sake of avoiding awkwardness. The same way you have to put up with your grandparents’ lethal driving and the au pair taking you to the park with her friend and then abandoning you while they smoke. You are too young to point out that these people are not acting in your best interests. But you are learning that in the grown-up world nobody listens to their instincts because they have other more pressing concerns (saving time, saving face, getting through).

Then there’s school. You are a sneak if you tell anyone that the girl in your class is torturing you at break. You are dead if you don’t pick the pretty but unsporty girls first for the rounders team. You must quickly bury your instinctive grasp of who is decent and who is not because the only issue is fitting in.

This distorted perspective becomes normal and, once you hit puberty, the thoughtful boys and girls are toast: both sexes are now only interested in destructive types. Your mother, who has spent the past 15 or so years bludgeoning your instincts into a socially acceptable compromise, starts saying, “Can’t you see he’s no good for you?” Too late! Meanwhile, your brother is definitely a negative doll in your life, as is your mother’s shopaholic best friend, your youth-envying aunt and the neighbour who always gets your dad drunk - all natural enemies. But nobody does anything about it; instead everybody blames you for being too “black and white”.

It gets worse, obviously. All around you there are examples of people who are either negative or nimby or both: so-called friends who moan that you are horrible since you got a boyfriend/lost weight, and so-called colleagues who advertise all the great ideas you have missed during meetings. Gradually your “negative influence” radar gets furred up, because it’s hardly ever appropriate to act on it. When accepting a proposal of marriage, yes. When going into business with someone, yes. But, for some reason, you are not able to say, “I will not have dinner with them because I sense they would use me for a float in a tsunami.” You must throw your inner baby out with the bath water, and just get over yourself.

a good definition of friendship

"a look of recognition had passed between them at first sight, but also the assurance that they wouldn't reveal one another's secrets, not even to each other." the Inheritance of Loss, page 118

Delirium

The first sign on the road to madness is looking for meaning, deliberateness in things that are completely random. I do that often. For example, have you ever wondered how you would feel if you found out that you were Truman? That everything that happens and everyone who enters your life is part of a composed tale, and you are only a laboratory animal who can't do anything but respond? And if you get really suspicious, you start doing unpredictable things to trick the composers of your story? When I get this feeling, that I'm only a pawn in my own life, I start thinking about the things that I choose purely out of my free will. But when I trace them back, I always hit something that was not my own making. Only to realize actually a decision I made previously led to this random thing. This interaction between the random and the deliberate amazes me.

I used to think I couldn't be Truman, because not enough interesting things are happening in my life. If I were Truman, script writers would surely send me more things to deal with, present me with more dilemmas.

But now it's getting more interesting, and I started seeing recognition in strangers' eyes.

But no, I'm not Truman. It's only that life throws more at me than I thought it did. I only see and take those I'm ready for.

fast car
You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere

Anyplace is better
Starting from zero got nothing to lose
Maybe we'll make something
But me myself I got nothing to prove

You got a fast car
And I got a plan to get us out of here
I been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money
We won't have to drive too far
Just 'cross the border and into the city
You and I can both get jobs
And finally see what it means to be living

You see my old man's got a problem
He live with the bottle that's the way it is
He says his body's too old for working
I say his body's too young to look like his
My mama went off and left him
She wanted more from life than he could give
I said somebody's got to take care of him
So I quit school and that's what I did

You got a fast car
But is it fast enough so we can fly away
We gotta make a decision
We leave tonight or live and die this way

I remember we were driving - driving in your car
The speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
And I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
And we go cruising to entertain ourselves
You still ain't got a job
And I work in a market as a checkout girl
I know things will get better
You'll find work and I'll get promoted
We'll move out of the shelter
Buy a big house and live in the suburbs

...
You got a fast car
And I got a job that pays all our bills
You stay out drinking late at the bar
See more of your friends than you do of your kids
I'd always hoped for better
Thought maybe together you and me would find it
I got no plans I ain't going nowhere
So take your fast car and keep on driving

You got a fast car
But is it fast enough so you can fly away
You gotta make a decision
You leave tonight or live and die this way

(a Tracy Chapman song)

"What I would change"

FT Magazine is running a series of essays and a contest with the theme "What I would change?" The following ones, all written by FT journalists, are really good. Especially the first one :)

Forget focus, celebrate breadth, Stefan Stern

Be good, for goodness sake, John Lloyd

Weak with awareness, Jan Dalley

things in demand

I put my Amy Winehouse ticket for sale on gumtree and got eight responses so far. My ticket only got delivered this morning, and seeing my ticket (which I had bought happily in july) and the eight suitors made me realize its value and keep it. I remembered that Sex and the City episode when Charlotte loses the baby when her parents decide to keep her.

Why do we need the confirmation of other people's demand, the threat of losing something to appreciate its value?

Real World

"Be confident. People draw their strengths from your weaknesses," wrote my mom in an E-mail the last time I came back from Turkey. She also tells me to "keep the tail up" no matter what happens. I can't always follow her advice. I claim I don't want to pretend I'm better than I actually am. I claim it's dishonest. But the real reason is different, I think. First of all, I'm not smart enough. Secondly, I think sometimes being weak can be used as an excuse not to try harder. It's a comfortable place. I'm afraid I'll have to actually be better if I claim I'm better.

But I'm beginning to see my mom's point more and more. My year in London has been a crash course on real world: I've seen a lot that I hadn't before, but the more I see, the more doubtful and confused I get about myself, people, humanity. I discover and I forget - only to realize once again - we draw our strengths from others' weaknesses. Accepting this is maybe as genuine as we can get.

Everything is relative, after all. We need reference points. I'm intelligent if someone is less intelligent than me. I'm paid well if there are people around me who are paid less. If I take different reference points, I could well realize I'm actually not what I thought I was. I guess when you move up the ranks, you get more resistant to different contexts, you reach a more absolute, more robust feeling of success, value, confidence.

A couple of nights ago I went to have drinks with my new colleagues. Our big boss foot the bill (what's the past tense of "foot"?) so we shamelessly kept drinking. At first I really enjoyed the mood, much more relaxed, warmer, friendlier than in the office. But soon after I noticed that people were either gossipping about people not present (whom I didn't know) or talking about the competitors, the business. In the end, you couldn't really learn more about them than you could in the office.

So there's virtue in professionalism, putting on your poker face sometimes. But it's also important to let it down eventually, around some people. I guess it comes with time, trust.

"what did I want back then?"
"you wanted to be your own person." Frida

"you don't paint because you're good. you paint because you'd die if you didn't paint." Frida

"the straight line is godless." - Hundertwasser

"it was always my intention to bring pleasure to many people. I would like to share beautiful and useful things with people which have a meaning to them and enrich their lives." - Hundertwasser

Blurting out

In Impressionism, I wrote how artists, over time, sought to reflect their feelings rather than imitating the world. Technique became just an instrument to take it all out. Things happen to you, you see things, you feel things and it's too much, too messy, too heavy - maybe they are not that heavy but they weigh on you, because you are not normal -- you have to blurt it all out. This simple fact is your anchor. You take things in and you let them out - they pass through you but in the process, you change things. What comes out is not the same as what went in. You are blended in it, and when people see what comes out of you, they see you.

I went to three exhibitions in Budapest and just watched Frida. I want to jot down a few notes about them - they won't make sense, just a few impressions.


Hundertwasser

Deep, thick, electric blue is Hundertwasser's colour. Michaela Frey uses details from his work on gorgeous jewellery, that's when I first heard his name. He draws (and then paints) like a small child, his work is so much like a dear friend's, she might be his reincarnation. Lines, colours, windows, raindrops, tears, faces blend into each other, but each piece has something clever in them, a small drop of meaning that quickly appears. And he's not discreet about it, his descriptive titles give it away. He wants to be understood.

Vaszary

He painted nudes and still lives and scenes from First World War and Parisian life and Italian beaches - he painted what he lived and witnessed, basically, but his dark style, simple lines like a caricaturists', the contrasts, the thick strokes of paint, which almost make some objects jump out, account for most of it.

Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky

I didn't quite get Kandinsky's work, but I still liked looking at it, especially "light construction" (because of its name :) and "blue" - which was a beautiful, curvy boat! His work either reminds me of elaborate machines (sometimes decomposed, sometimes intact, but very important and deliberate), space stations or biological forms - ameba or something complete with all its compartments.

Klee's plant according to rules, above the water, legend of the nile and winter hills were all very simple but powerful. So were Andre Derain's the Road to Beauvais and Henri Laurens' sculptures.

bana güven



sen - hey sen
en son giden sen -
sen olmayacaksın


sen - hey sen!
en son giden sen
sen olmayacaksın


bana güven
istersen


ne canın böyle yanıp coşacak
ne bu mevsim hep kış kalacak
yeniden bulacak birini bu kalp, bulacak
o da gitse son olmayacak


...

ne canın böyle yanıp coşacak
ne bu mevsim hep kış kalacak
yeniden bulacak birini bu kalp, bulacak
o da gitse son olmayacak


bana güven - istersen


aynı deftere
aynı deftere isimler yazacak ellerin
yanımıza sevgililer
yeni sevgililer seçecek geceler bilirim
zor gelecek
çok zor gelecek bazen dostların bile
en son sevdiğin
son sevdiğin ben olmayacağım

bana güven



yaz ortasında
için bir anda ürperecek
bir gülecek, bir küseceksin
ama geçecek
aşk kendini
aşk bizleri zar zor temize çekecek
senin de boynu bükük bir defterin olacak -
olacak bir gün


bana güven



mete özgencil

Environment: A new story?

Talking to the girls this weekend made me remember the things I cared about a few years ago, the things that were thought about and discussed around me. I'm not sure whether I was genuinely interested in them or I was drawn into them out of circumstance, but thinking about them and trying to make sense of them still seems like a valuable effort.

One of my friends will be working on an environmental project, and she told us about the necessity of "a paradigm shift in capitalism," because the system is going to "hit the wall" unless we do something about it. I never thought to label the growing awareness about environmental problems in such a way - communism failed because it did not give people the right incentives to improve their lives, and the ones who had bigger aspirations could not reach them. It was capitalism that prevailed by giving people freedom and choices (that could still be tweaked by regulation and incentives.) So now we realize that capitalism, too, will not last long unless we do something to fix it?

In developed countries (more in Europe than the US), environmental problems almost seem to have given a new story to the urban affluent and the idealist. An area of improvement. As one venture capitalist told me, Europeans are ready to pay the premium for clean technology. They are ready to accept personal responsibility and go out of their ways to recycle, buy efficient bulbs, organise G8 summits and flashy concerts. They are aware of a problem, and they can afford to work towards fixing it.

This attitude is totally respectable and admirable, but idealists should not expect everyone to possess the same awareness and the means to prioritize environment the same way they do. It will take more than idealism and publicity. An effective set of solutions can only be found if the right regulations and incentives are in place to align the interests of those who don't necessarily care about the environment with those who do. All solutions will have to involve some degree of regulation, free markets won't suffice. Even the carbon trading system, which seems like the ingenious capitalist solution, would not be possible without the cap - and that requires public supervision and commitment. It will be very difficult to bring governments and businesses on board.

Environmental problems point to a flaw in the free market economy that needs to be corrected by regulation. Individual choices will not add up to a socially optimum outcome, unless the costs are internalized. Economists, scientists and policy makers will have to work hard to come up with innovative solutions. The awareness, panic and effort, however, are all truly meaningful. It gives our generation a new story to believe in, something to correct, something to fix - but we have to realize that the road to a solution will take a lot of thinking. Not that this should discourage us.

no games (updated)

for a long time I have been thinking about rules and books and strategies and human nature and being comfortable and pretending and standing behind yourself and insecurity and taking for granted and being taken for granted and being independent and posing a challenge and being challenged and I decided - no - no games. I want to be someone someone can count on - and I want to be able to count on someone. if that makes people predictable and boring, so be it.

(thanks to one of my friends who made me see this... she's a treasure! :)

...
after writing this, something made me doubt what I wrote. I believed in it when I wrote it, but then I realized sometimes people do not play games consciously, but they simply do not know what (or who) they want. they believe in one thing now - in another thing later. maybe it takes time. maybe they are trying to protect themselves by simply not wanting a specific thing, just so that they can pretend they didn't want it if they don't get it, and switch swiftly to wanting something else.

anyways - the consequences are the same either way, somebody gets hurt. and it is not fun not to want something wholeheartedly, because then you don't get happy when you actually get it, either. after going through all the arguments for and against - no games!

Why bother?

Once I wrote that I feel horrible when I'm home on a Friday night. This weekend I didn't have any plans until last minute, and the same fog of confusion settled down around my head. What if I end up home alone with my book? In an instant I started feeling like someone nobody loves, someone excluded. Last night, I went from having no plans to being triple-booked in the matter of an hour, none of the options really excited me (large groups with only a few people I know and like) but I wanted to have them all just in case. As my flatmates were also confused, we ended up grumpily sitting around for a while, walking around our small temporary flat aimlessly, discovering there is no personal space after all, and the boredom and fatigue towards ourselves and everyone else became palpable. We ended up breaking a computer.

Then we went to a larger house with more people, sat around more for a while, watching what we say, and dutifully wound up in this horrible Walkabout (an old church, fittingly) where glassy eyed people were trying to grope each other. I must say I enjoyed some of the songs and the dancing. I almost felt part of a group. We couldn't really hear each other but we glanced at each other lovingly, danced freely, looked at drunker people with tolerance and even sang aloud (of course nobody could hear our voices but we could see we were singing). My phone broke and I couldn't even tell my colleague that I wouldn't be able to make it to her thing. But "in London, that's almost to be expected," one of my flatmates says.

When we got off the bus on our way home, I looked back at all the people in the bus, holding on to the handles. They looked happy-drunk, sad-drunk, tired-drunk, sad-sober, tired-sober, but not happy. What is the point? Why do these people even bother?

One of my favourite sayings is "luck only comes to those who walk around." Is that why? We feel like we need to be out and about to get lucky? Is this the best option out there, one of the terms and conditions we tacitly accepted by being young, moving here? Do we want to feel some kind of intimacy, some kind of solidarity that only comes with getting collectively drunk and over our self-consciousness? Does the bond between people grow stronger when they see each other drunk and silly and sick and still accept it? Because clubs are the only places where we can make horrible dance moves and sing aloud and grope each other, shielded by the crowd and the loud music? We can do all this because it's the only place it's accepted, expected?

Many times after a night out, on my way home in the cold, I wondered whether it was worth it. Sensing my doubts, our leader sat me down one day and told me: "Will you remember the nights you stayed home studying or the nights you went out with your friends?" Yes, I do remember the freezing walks at 5 o'clock in the morning from Dülferstrasse station all the way down Panzerwiese. I remember the parties at Nachtgalerie and Back Stage and Studentenstadt and Fabrik and the Frikadella man in Hauptbahnhof. I remember all this, and I ask whether it was worth it, and maybe it was. Maybe this is all we could come up with after years of experience and evolution, maybe it is the best option.

Don't ask me...

Sometimes my friends ask for a favour - and I say no when I really have to go out of my way to make them happy. They think I shouldn't say no, because we're good enough friends now. I think they shouldn't ask me that to begin with, because we're good enough friends now. I have to try and be just to myself just as I try to be just to everyone else.

Free Electrons

"Then what's the point? We're like free electrons!" shrugs my friend often. The free electron metaphor is not the only one. When I was leaving Izmir last time, we saw a baby running with his two arms open, little legs making little swift steps, he just kept running. My mom said laughingly, "this is like your life! you keep running until you hit something!" It's funny and cute, but maybe I do need some direction. I've been like those dry leaves, ready to go wherever the wind blows.

Free electrons without a proton, without an anchor or a reference point. Nothing that pulls us to the ground, to something. Severed from our roots long ago, we are looking for something, something that will pull us. We started out with protons not of our own making - we started out with a family, a country. Now that we are away, now that we are not bound to anything, we need to find our own anchor, we need to find something new to attach to. We need to make the meaning, there is no predetermined fate or story that we must discover and follow.

I wanted a sign to tell me where I'll be happy, and I started seeing signs everywhere. A sign here, a sign there, pointing at different directions. I tried to take other free floating electrons as anchors, but two electrons don't really make anything. You can't hold on to another electron when they are floating and you are floating. Electrons need to find their protons before anything else.

The same friend who calls us electrons, she also told me that I should look inside for what I'm looking for, not outside. I thought she contradicted herself - a couple of days ago she told me not to think too much and act! But now I see what she's saying. I have to find my anchor first, I need to find my own thing.

So I'm not looking for signs outside anymore. I'm not depending on anyone for my own happiness. But I'm also staying put until I find it.

Not knowing yet deciding

“…When things come to you easily, when things click effortlessly into place, it is so tempting to use the four-letter F-word. Fate. Which to Millat is a quantity very much like TV: an unstoppable narrative, written, produced and directed by somebody else.

Of course, now that he’s here, now that he’s stoned and scared, and it doesn’t feel so easy, and the right-hand side of his jacket feels like somebody put a fucking cartoon anvil in there – now he sees the great difference between TV and life, and it kicks him right in the groin. Consequences. But even to think this is to look to the movies for reference (because he’s not like Samad or Mangal Pande, he didn’t get a war, he never saw action, he hasn’t got any analogies or anectodes), is to remember Pacino in the first Godfather, huddled in the restaurant toilet (as Pande was huddled in the barracks room), considering for a moment what it means to burst out of men’s room and blast the hell out of the two guys at the checkered table. And Millat remembers. He remembers rewinding and freeze-framing and slow-playing the scene countless times over the years. He remembers that no matter how long you pause the split-second of Pacino reflecting, no matter how often you replay the doubt that seems to cross his face, he never does anything else but what he was always going to do.” (White Teeth, 526, 527)

“If neither imperative can be overridden, then choose one, and as you say, get on with it. Man makes himself, after all. And he is responsible for what he makes.”

“I may yet redeem myself in your eyes… or you may be mistaken – your decision may come back to you as Oedipus’s returned to him, horrible and mutilated! You cannot say for sure!”

“No… no… we are not fortune-tellers. I could never have predicted my life would end up in the hands of a child… Corinthians I, chapter thirteen, verse eight: Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. But when will it come? For myself, I became tired of waiting. It is such a terrible thing, to know only in part. …

If only we were brave enough to make the decisions that must be made…between those worth saving and the rest… Is it a crime to want –“

“Imagine, if you can, events in the world happening repeatedly, endlessly, in the way they always have…

…
imagine this war over and over a million times…

It is not a serious proposition. It is a test. Only those who are sufficiently strong and well disposed to life to affirm it – even if it will just keep on repeating – have what it takes to endure the worst blackness. I could see the things I have done repeated infinitely.”(538, 539.)

Mary Poppins

Mary Poppins conversation box song.
Mary Poppins "anything can happen if you let it" song.

The Widening Gap

During exams time, I wrote about Olson's observation of rational ignorance. In the same article, he wrote about the tendency of business practices, laws and regulations to become more sophisticated over time. Intelligent, sophisticated people come up with new, innovative ways to do business and make money all the time. Policy makers and legislators have to catch up with the suitable regulation and legislation. Then business people need lawyers, auditors, accountants and advisors to make sure they play by the rules (and find out if there were any gaps in the rules, any opportunities.) This all creates an exclusive, closed-circuit biosphere of intelligent, sophisticated people. You have to prove your intelligence, motivation and cunning to break into their circle and rise up to their level. You have to work very hard and build relationships. You have to pass the exams of their associations. All simply because they don't want the competition over-crowding brings.

And we are struggling to join the biosphere, not only because we need the money, but also because it's the only way we think we can prove our intelligence. Joining their circle seems like the best use of your time, something challenging enough. Something that can prove ourselves and the world that we are worthy. Look at the money we make. Look at the people we hang out with.

When I go to private equity conferences, I am envious. I feel like I'm looking at their circle from outside, because I'm not smart enough. I am dependent on the information they provide me within the few minutes of spare time they have, because they call the shots. Their time is important. This envy makes me want to join their circle. Become one of those smart girls who are always on their feet. It blurs my vision of what I really want to do and what is meaningful to me.

Pendulum

"Pretend you have some responsibility," said my dad. "Changing jobs every three months won't serve your career."

He said this after he asked me what would happen if he quit his shitty first job and I reminded him that he already had a wife and a daughter by then. He didn't have the choice.

But it's hard to think you are responsible for something when in fact you aren't. It's hard to run after food when you aren't hungry. It's too easy to get distracted and get all these noble ideas like becoming a novelist and an academic and inspiring people. (Think of Refik in Cevdet Bey ve Oğulları.) Thinking you're special. One only gets these ideas if one has spare time. One can only be an idealist if one can afford it. Everyone else is busy sustaining themselves.

In my freshman year History of Capitalism class we read an article about the pendulum - how nations work hard and become rich, and then once they become affluent, they start spending more time and money on culture and arts and philosophy and education (and enlightening others, if you know what I mean :) They become complacent. Then one of my professors this year crudely suggested that if the soft budget constraint was the weakness of communism, inheritance was the weakness of capitalism. It breaks the momentum.

The confused interpreter

One of the great questions that kept philosophers occupied was, "what is the truth?" Can we ever know what the world really is? Whatever we see around us, it will always pass through the box that is our head, that is our heart (hormones, that is). Even our eyes, can we trust they are projecting the world as it really is? (Here's a little story for you: A man who sees everything narrower draws a tree. Then a person with healthy eyesight looks at the drawing and sees a perfectly normal tree. But this doesn't change the fact that the guy who made the drawing saw the tree differently than the other guy.)

Many people had theories about this, some said we could comprehend the truth, some said we couldn't, some said who cares, do we have an option anyway? The only theory I can link to its owner now (because it was my favourite - the middle ground) is Kant's. He said all the information goes through the processor that is our brain. Whatever limited information we actually get, our brain divides into little pieces, puts them together with what it already knew, rationalizes them, blows them out of proportion (with the help of hormones!) and in the end you get something that is new, different from what the world told you in the first place. The rays are refracted until they point in a completely new direction. And the most important information, the one that is most dear to you, the one that has the greatest consequences, is the one that gets distorted the most.

For example your perception of yourself. At any point in time, I perceive myself as someone stronger, weaker, smarter, stupider, prettier and uglier than I really am. The catch is that how you are determines how you see yourself and how you see yourself determines how you are. It is as if you put a broken mirror across an intact one, standing in between, trying to see yourself among infinite slanted versions of the truth.

Then all those misunderstandings that make the romantic comedies and soap operas all so grueling. The viewer knows the truth, she watches what both sides are going through, and she watches them interpret the limited information falsely, she watches the truth being distorted and hastily countered with the wrong reaction - how difficult is that? I know you know the feeling. You want to somehow go into the screen and poke the character and tell them what it really is. He loves you, stupid, don't go running off now! You'll ruin everything. He will not be able to stand you, he will give it up just because you thought he would.

Hence the self-fulfilling prophecy. Hence the power of positive thinking. The secret. It actually has nothing mystical to it, it all makes sense. You are pessimistic, you interpret the information wrong, you see yourself weak and stupid, you think the others see you weak and stupid, you distrust them, you distrust yourself, you don't apply to your dream job, you don't pursue your dream boy, you leave them before they leave you, and then you end up losing the boy, losing the job, only because you thought you would. You leave yourself, as Alanis Morissette says, you don't stand behind yourself anymore. Now I figured it all out without even having read the secret ;)

Boiling point

Watched water doesn't boil, as my friend Milan said. At least, your intent stare by itself won't make it boil. For water to boil, the molecules should get enough heat, they should have enough energy to start moving quickly and far enough from each other and stay there. They should have enough power to overcome the lazy tendency to stick together. Or so I remember from my high school chemistry class.

Sad but true - I act on something IFF:
1- I'm late enough OR
2- I'm envious enough.

Both conditions are fulfilled now.

Note to self

No, you don't have to strive at something just for the sake of accomplishing it. You don't have to keep this job and be bored out of your mind just for the sake of not giving up. As you wrote long ago, there are many great things to do in life, but one has to pick one, because we have one life (I know how irresponsible and spoilt that sounds - but this doesn't justify middle aged men leaving their wives and kids, for the record.)

White Teeth

It's literally the light in my life now. I'm scared I'll miss my tube stop when I'm reading it. I'm looking forward to the hour I'll read it before going to sleep. I don't know what I'll do when I finish it. It's so real, so larger than life and down to earth, but it still has bits you could underline, lessons from life, things you didn't know you knew, like the stuff in this blog if I may say, but the talent lies in embedding them truly in the little, light things in life so the whole thing flows. Daily Telegraph says the book "has energy, pace, humour and fully formed characters; it is blissfully free of the intoversion and self-conscious detail that mar many first novels... the dialogue is pitch perfect... bounding, vibrant, richly imagined and throughly enjoyable."

Of course, all this comes with envy, longing to do something similar myself. It must take so much labour, patience, talent. One must have collected and observed so much already. Once I talked about writing a novel with someone. Without thinking, he said something in the vicinity of "but it's easy, all you have to do is come up with a story!"(Hard to believe he's a philosophy student.) Then I told him no, the story is fiction but everything, every little detail has to be real, believable. That's so difficult to accomplish, to write something others can identify with. Stepping out of your bell jar (or finding something universal in it.) That's why people write about what they know best, what's closest to their heart. They write about people like themselves, their families, they write about their cities. Pamuk writes about Istanbul and Smith writes about half Jamaican, half English girls from north London.

IKEA

I don't like shopping malls, supermarkets, where people try to push themselves (plus shopping carts and buggies) absent mindedly through corridors lit by white shining spots, and I found out I don't like IKEA, either. (I went to the one at home a few months ago, and I thought I liked it, and I imagined how I would shop there to decorate my place when I had a place - but no - I don't like it.)

I accept it, the idea is novel - you cut millions of pieces of wood and plastic and glass instead of hundreds - economies of scale. Then people make one trip for everything they need (and didn't know they need) instead of ten trips. You make order lists and stand in huge check out lines (a fight broke out in the adjacent line when I was there) and everything is oh-so-efficient and functional and clean-cut. So are our homes. But where is the individuality, where is the story of a coffee table you bought in Camden and carried all the way through Regent's Park? That would be special. But in IKEA, I don't see how anybody could feel special. I don't know if anyone cares.

Still, it was nice to have good friends along to stand on the check out line with and endure the sickening bus ride to and from Wembley. Maybe that's the key to feeling special. Being with special people who think you're special. Then you don't even wonder whether you're special, because you know you are. Something like that.

"If religion is the opium of people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister. If religion is a tight band, a throbbing vein and a needle, tradition is a far homelier concoction: poppy seeds ground into tea; a sweet cocoa drink laced with cocaine; the kind of thing your grandmother might have made. To Samad, as to the people of Thailand, tradition was culture, and culture led to roots, and these were good, these were untainted principles. That didn't mean he could live by them, abide by them or grow in the manner they demanded, but roots were roots and roots were good. You would get nowhere telling him that weeds too have tubers, or that the first sign of loose teeth is something rotten, something degenerate, deep within the gums. Roots were what saved, the ropes one throws out to rescue drowning men, to Save Their Souls." White Teeth, 193.

Roots #2

Since I came back to Turkey almost a week ago, waves of emotion are washing over me. Emotion, cheap, abundant, ample seas of emotion. The flight home - as Kundera says, things lose a fraction of their meaning each time they are repeated, and I've flown back and forth too many times - but I still feel happy when I fly home. Countless dramas with their familiar, predictable plots. Old songs (they don't seem to make any good songs anymore, so they just sing the old ones over and over.) Horrible morning shows with dark singers and circular conversations. Ramadan desserts and memories from the time when all I knew was this country and didn't need to imagine further. I go to Alsancak and high school kids are hanging out just like we did six years ago.

Then I met up with two friends from high school and saw how they grew up and how they are struggling and surviving without making a big deal out of it. That was something new, something different, something refreshing. They are passing into a new stage in their lives ever so smoothly, instinctively, cheerfully.

This reminded me I should shake off this irrational, romantic, heavy cloud that sits over my head when I come to Turkey, when I think of Turkey. It's making me very lazy, and it's time I take it for what it's worth. It's the icing on the cake, but I need to earn the cake first.

Mad Woman

"In North London, where councillors once voted to change the name of the area to Nirvana, it is not unusual to walk the streets and be suddenly confronted by sage words from the chalk-faced, blue-lipped or eyebrowless. From across the street or from the other end of the tube carriage they will use their schizophrenic talent for seeing connections in the random (for discerning the whole world in a grain of sand, for deriving narrative from nothing) to riddle you, to rhyme you, to strip you down, to tell you who you are and where you're going (usually Baker Street - the great majority of modern-day seers travel the Metropolitan Line) and why." - White Teeth, 174.