all about eve

the kids are all right (or not?)

2011-03-22T14:19:00.002Z

*****spoilers*****

is it so hard to step out of the limits of conventional gender roles? i had the same feeling while watching brokeback mountain. why does a romantic/sexual relationship between two people need to be depicted in terms of heterosexual roles even though these people are gay? plus, despite it's uber-cliche happy ending, why is it that the lesbian couple have to question their monotonous relationship by means of a heterosexual fling?

(ok, i realize it's better if i continue with a list)

-why is it that we see an unnecessary amount of heterosexual sex scenes and almost none homosexual ones? why is it that julianne moore's nudity is visible in the former and invisible in the latter? actually, a better question, do we need to see any of that wild hetero sex? is it any use to the script other than saying: look she's getting more pleasure out of it than she does with her lesbian lover?

-why is it that we need to know: 'the kids are alright', really. the daughter is seemingly virgin, but hey, don't worry, she likes men, she kisses her best friend remember? and the son is sort of disgusted when he realizes that his moms think he is gay. so they're alright.

-why does annette bening remind us of a boring nick nolte? all negative male characteristics are stuck on her: she's the breadwinner, the successful parent who has control over all family members; she drinks heavily and she wears striped pajamas for god's sake.

and, what was this film about anyway? that gay couples also go through similar problems, they're normal people, ok?

SAD*

2011-01-26T08:45:00.003Z

now, the attentive reader will notice i rarely use capital letters in this blog. i just don't like them. ok it may be comfortable for the eye to know where a sentence starts, but then again, i feel, it is not a necessity. it must be really hard for the germans, hitting the shift button every now and then in the middle of a sentence.

after this long introduction to the title, which is not a word, but an abbreviation, i have to confess my winter depression. the music that accompanies this confession is something by phillip glass. i don't know why they would play this music early in the morning. but i still haven't bonded with the cafe managers to interfere with their music choice.

so, that doesn't help the depression much.

lately i've been thinking, is personal satisfaction about what you do (read, write, make, think, look, sleep, eat) sufficient to make you feel worthwhile? or is it usually the other way around? where does the feeling of guilt fit in this equation? what are we really responsible of?

too many big questions. i guess it's better to admire my new trekking shoes and be grateful that my feet are no longer cold.

*seasonal affective disorder

2011-01-25T15:37:00.002Z

i need to update my syllabus. what a bore! to update it, i checked my blog, to be reminded of a good movie for the students on their first class. then of course i started reading my old posts. i think i used to be a pretty interesting character. i wonder what changed now: is the moving? is it less writing? is it being too busy?

i just can't stand december and january. they are my least favourite months. lots of things to do. but absolutely no motivation.

these days

2010-12-20T17:38:00.000Z

strange

a strange double bill

2010-10-21T19:30:00.002+01:00

i have been meaning to watch 'rocco and his brothers' for a long time. cuneyt is a great partner for movies. he came for a short breakfast, but we ended up watching not only the three hour visconti film, but also hawks' 'bringing up baby' to neutralize the after-taste of the first. the conclusion was: we are just not visconti people. all that grandoise, the epic story-telling, and the hysteria, is just too much (or i'd rather take it from sirk or ophuls) well, that said, i think i would give it another chance on the big screen. coupling irrelevant films; this is what we do on thursdays, from today on, hopefully.

2010-10-19T08:56:00.002+01:00

the new flat is so sunny that i may have to start wearing sunglasses at home. no, we still don't have any curtains. change of space, new furniture, new sounds, new smells: the cat hates it! is life all about perception? i mean, one minute you know that you are on top of everything, and the next, you just cannot even move.

murakami's the wind-up bird chronicle is simply amazing, by the way.

hello.

+six months of facebook

2010-10-18T20:22:00.000+01:00

has taught me that i miss blogging.

i wish myself good luck

2010-05-06T12:07:00.001+01:00

...

titicut follies! once again

2010-04-07T09:34:00.002+01:00

2010-01-20T09:42:00.000Z

2010-01-14T08:48:00.000Z

2010-01-14T08:47:00.000Z

do we miss waiting?

2010-01-04T14:53:00.002Z

do we miss

letters
developed prints
mechanical phones
trains
seasons
(and seasonal fruits and vegetables)

somehow i feel exhausted and exploited by the immediacy and instancy of some things, recently

reminding ourselves of gombrich

2010-01-02T14:43:00.000Z

unlike scientists, […] we humanists have been less fortunate and that for the obvious reason that the events we try to explain tend to be immensely complex and can never be reduced to one easily formulated law, which we may describe as the cause of event.

my -momentarily- top ten films list

2009-12-25T10:11:00.003Z

so, i could make a list, finally, and decided, all my lists will be ephemeral, destroying themselves as i write, nevertheless

1. johnny guitar - nicholas ray
2. imitation of life - douglas sirk
3. fury - fritz lang
4. viaggio in italia - roberto rossellini
5. stalker - andrei tarkovsky
6. titicut follies - frederick wiseman
7. angst essen seele auf - r.w. fassbinder
8. l'eclisse - michelangelo antonioni
9. faces - john cassavetes
10. 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle - j-l godard

(one method could be to do them occasionally and note the ones that re-appear so that i discover the real top ten)

always a pleasure to watch

2009-12-23T09:53:00.000Z

robin wood dies!

2009-12-21T07:58:00.001Z

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/wood-d21.shtml

britanny murphy dies!

2009-12-20T20:46:00.002Z

such sad news

my mother

2009-12-17T08:53:00.002Z

i must say i have finally managed to pin down the reasons why my mother and i cannot get along. - thanks to a conversation with the real margo. it's not that i long for a different relationship with her. all's fine. but at least it's comforting to know why.

1. she's conservative: this is something i have noticed only recently and i always thought she was the opposite of conservative - at least during my teens.

2. she acts like a 14-15 year old: and a conservative teenager is not very easy to handle.

3. she doesn't take me as an adult: this is the worst part. she doesn't only have a patial view of herself, but includes me in it too!

(it was time i got a little personal in this blog)

audrey hepburn in charade

2009-12-11T09:59:00.002Z

oh I love you, adam, alex, peter, brian, whatever your name is! i love you! i hope we have a lot of boys so we can name them all after you!

a brief history of climate change

2009-12-07T20:41:00.000Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8285247.stm

not joking

2009-12-07T15:47:00.001Z

i passed by this store on essex road and stopped to look again. get stuffed? yes, it was true. and with all kinds of animals in the window staring at me:

http://www.thegetstuffed.co.uk/docs/page2.htm

2009-11-20T15:48:00.001Z

turns out the temporary unavailable sign was for my background image. well, here's a temporary replacement then.

lift off those bold capital letters please!

2009-11-20T07:24:00.004Z

i wonder how long 'temporary' is for blogger. to my surprise, this morning, i saw those words: temporarily unavailable. written in bold and capital and repeating all over the blog. didn't like it. but i'm not sure i would have posted anything if i hadn't seen them.

i miss a lot of things.

how does this justify the demand for polanski's release?

2009-10-08T07:37:00.001+01:00

'the outraged middle class feminists and liberals demand their pound of flesh from Polanski while the real criminals in America—CIA and military torturers and killers—go free'.

petition for polanski

2009-10-02T08:12:00.002+01:00

i can't believe the list of names

cold case

2009-09-27T14:19:00.000+01:00

roman polanski detained in zurich

gilberto perez writes, simply, and beautifully

2009-09-09T20:23:00.002+01:00

nobody understands lacan very well. it may be that he is difficult to understand because he is profound - he is so obscure that it's hard to tell - but it seems to have been his intention to make himself difficult to understand. in his youth he was associated with the surrealists and all his life he seems to have kept up the surrealist program of bafflement on purpose. he may have been an important thinker or he may have been a charlatan and it's indeed surreal that it should be hard to tell; he was probably a bit of both. his vogue among american academics he no doubt enjoyed as part of the surrealist joke. the purpose of academics in making themselves difficult to understand is to stake out a field of specialized expertise to which outsiders will defer. they set up a jargon impenetrable to outsiders that they themselves may not understand very well, and after a while they may not even know that they don't know whereof they speak because they speak what has become the idiom of the field, the language in which they talk to one another by common consent.

from 'the material ghost'

support for ahmet yildiz

2009-09-09T07:37:00.000+01:00

http://ahmetyildizismyfamily.blogspot.com/

http://www.bianet.org/bianet/diger/116920-ahmet-yildiz-cinayeti-davasi-basladi-sanik-baba-firarda

inglourious basterds

2009-09-07T21:05:00.002+01:00

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/bast-s01.shtml

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/may/20/cannes-film-festival-tarantino-inglourious-basterds

http://twitter.com/zizekspeaks/status/3591466984

2009-09-05T16:45:00.002+01:00

we do not know what a photograph is; we do not know how to place it ontologically. we might say that we don't know how to think of the connection between a photograph and what it is a photograph of. the image is not a likeness; it is not exactly a replica, or a relic, or a shadow, or an apparition either, though all of these natural candidates share a striking feature with photographs - an aura or history of magic surrounding them.

...

we said that the record reproduces its sound, but we cannot say that a photograph reproduces a sight (or a look, or an appearance). it can seem that language is missing a word a this place.

from 'the world viewed', s. cavell

egg issues

2009-09-05T16:14:00.002+01:00

why do the male penguins protect their (super fragile) egg-children from the cold, rotating from the centre to the periphery, in their circled colony? why do the salmon, after traveling miles in the ocean, after having seen new worlds, swim against the current to travel back to the origin of the stream where they were born? why do the turtles, on the other hand, lay eggs in the sand and leave them there to hatch?

left on a jet plane

2009-08-30T14:54:00.003+01:00

took me 24 hours to come to istanbul. (mental note: always have a connecting flight; never change airlines; don't ever wait for more than four hours in between flights)
but i must admit this method beats jetlag.

in less than 24 hours

2009-08-25T23:18:00.002+01:00

say goodbye to seattle

2009-08-25T22:18:00.000+01:00

the reason why i don't wear suspenders is the fear of social exclusion.

2009-08-12T23:33:00.001+01:00

what I have seen with my eyes was simultaneous: what i shall transcribe, successive, because of the very nature of language.
how can the predicates “simultaneous”, “total”, “perfect”, be translated into the order of discourse whose predicates are “successive”, “fragmentary”, “imperfect”?
moreover, there is no solution to the central problem: how to enumerate, only partially, an infinite ensemble?

borges, the aleph

we feed the world

2009-08-12T17:59:00.002+01:00

a documentary by erwin wagenhofer

http://www.we-feed-the-world.at/en/film.htm

my response should be more than just crying. but it feels like, no it's obvious, the whole world is parceled out by the largest corporations and trying to run out of one's trap you fall into the other's. the image i have on my mind is of monsters sucking and depleting and destroying everything they see, happily, and towards the end, themselves, without any regret. it's not a funny image. really, if this is the point we've reached in our civilization, there's no doubt we are all essentially evil.

titicut follies

2009-08-10T18:50:00.006+01:00

watching frederick wiseman's documentary was not easy. but once again i realised how powerful images can be. 'drama' is excess in front of the camera; it just needs to shoot.
t had told me that psychiatric hospitals in the us were not sufficient to accommodate everybody who suffered from mental illness and the poor were inevitably driven to homelessness. an article i read today made me more concerned:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/aug2009/hmls-a10.shtml

more on the film

slow is a state of mind i can embrace

2009-08-07T19:46:00.002+01:00

all work and no play

2009-08-06T22:07:00.004+01:00

it's been so long since i posted that i forgot my password to sign in. here i am, in the reading room, university of washington's library. the vast space (with high ceilings, with 2 rows of 11 huge chandeliers, to be exact, 2 hanging globes, countless books) earns itself a place - next to the lobby of overlook hotel - in our hearts. everyday, around 30 jack nicholsons (room takes up to 131 people to be exact) type in their word documents: all work and no play... i am starting to think that the always-swinging chandelier, the second one on the left row when you face south, is put up there for hypnosis reasons.
yesterday, all of a sudden, fear of death hit me. it may be because there is too many news of babies being born around or the realization that i won't have time in my life to read the books in this room. at these times, first i fall into a great darkness of helplessness, an awareness of the cruel fact that there will always be things i will never find out or understand. but then in the second instant i am full of life again. i really do connect this feeling with how humanity came to be civilised. defy death. boom. civilisation. all the deadly sins, all that religion teaches us not to do, are actually the must-do's on humans' book of survival.
and here is a picture to illustrate my negotiations with the ocean - shi-shi beach was beyond my imagination:

i think i saw some political incorrectness yesterday

2009-07-16T19:31:00.002+01:00

we were wondering around the asian food section, looking at the types of noodles and trying to tell the difference between the japanese, thai and chinese ones. then i lifted my head to check out the sauces, when suddenly, a strange object caught my eye; hanging from the edge of the asian gourmet section, it did not look like it had anything to do with food. in fact, it did not look like it could garnish, flavour, enhance or simply go well with any kind of food: a set of table tennis balls.

PP 101 film screening

2009-07-13T04:35:00.003+01:00

there's no love - there's only desire.
there's no happiness - there's only will to power.

dr. mabuse, the gambler (fritz lang, 1922)

PP 101 - petite philosophies

2009-07-13T01:45:00.006+01:00

ever since the fall of the great ottoman empire - ooops, sorry, childhood trauma. repeat: ever since the fall of the great tree in (what once used to be) my backyard, i seem to have started to develop an interest in roots. how strong, for instance, is a pine tree's root? how tall can it grow? how long does it live? what causes it to fall? how deep does/can a root go?
i think there's a parallelism between this and my recurring favourite topic: 'the meaning of life'. on our way to snoqualmie falls and then the trail in twin falls and then in the rattlesnake lake, my mind was busy on some of my new and unpleasant findings about human existence:

- if you don't believe in the continuity of life, world, nature, then you cannot think for the good of the others, that is, if you are not faithful about something, anything, you are inclined to be violent, steal, usurp, end. if you have no belief in afterlife and you do not have any attachments to anyone or anything in the world, it is so easy to do evil.
- what civilisation does is to teach you to stop worrying about death and all other enigmas of the world and go with the flow and lose yourself in the established system, that is, to be faithful.
- so civilisation and religion are the perfect duo (actually capitalism and religion are the perfect duo so you can both have faith and continue to consume indefinitely; an excuse for consumption). he asked in the car: what's more interesting is how people can go on believing in these books after so many years? to which i replied: the beauty of myths.

anyhow, perhaps this is why i'm so interested in other forms of life: like plantea. forms that i neither know nor understand.

2009-07-11T17:48:00.002+01:00

i must say we've pretty much become food connoisseurs. lately, we are trying to profess in the crepe-pancake-muffin holy triangle, a very competitive area.if you housesit in the best houses in seattle loaded with any equipment and gadget you may desire, you try to make the most out of it. and this time there's a deck, overlooking green hills and then the sea. the cat and the dog get along incredibly well, i must say, i haven't seen such a harmonious relationship. this gave me the opportunity to observe dog behaviour and i realised once again that unconditional love is kind of sick. sense of guilt have already started to grow in me: have i not paid enough attention to her? t thinks dogs are like mothers. i think he's much more at peace with it.
whereas the cat... maybe the reason why they get along so well is that cat's rules always apply. so one makes the rules the other submits. as long as the parties involved are happy, what can i say?
meanwhile i'm trying to adapt to the fact that i literally started to work on my thesis's introduction. the more i think about it, the more gaps i find. thesis writing is such a schizophrenic experience: one day you think your ideas are worthless and the next you think you are the greatest thinker alive. one of the results of earning a phd degree is to be able to cope with this fluctuation.

2009-07-09T22:16:00.002+01:00

all that's left for me to write is the introduction and conclusion. or, i have four chapters without a beginning and ending. they wouldn't make sense without each other, but now i have to come up with reasons for their order and organisation. i have to narrate, linearise, sequentialise, and so on.
in the library, i thought, a couple of hours ago, a way to 'introduce' my thesis. i think it could work. between the chaotic bits and pieces of words, books, references, old notes, i remembered i had been postponing reading borges's 'the aleph'. the subject interests me for sure, but the title... and now on its first page - it turns out beatriz viterbo was born on the thirtieth of april.

2009-07-03T19:16:00.000+01:00

It’s worth remembering, I think, that Propp himself in writing about fairy-tales writes about an example of the hybrid plot, a hybrid story, the story of Oedipus. Here too he detected elements of the simple fairy-tale. The hero who sets out on a quest, an adventure, kills an ogre (the Sphinx) and releases a princess (Jocasta) whom he marries. In this case however, the stranger killed turns out to be the father and, of course, the princess, his mother. This in turn, as Propp demonstrates, necessitates the further change of transforming the story into one of detection. Oedipus investigates the crime which turns out to be his own. The original fairy-tale is thus transformed into an embedded crime story of the type I described earlier.

from p. wollen, 'hybrid plots in psycho'

2009-06-29T19:29:00.003+01:00

prologue (in the form of a confession): the opossum's image is disturbing; the page loads and, bam, it's looking at me. hmm. i guess i do judge by appearances.

i read today in the business section of new york times - yes, it's true, i did read the business section - an article about wikipedia. apparently, a nyt journalist was kidnapped in afghanistan and the paper did not want to make this information public so that the taliban does not think he's worth it (they say 'publicity would raise mr. rohde’s value'). and one anonymous editor insisted on adding this update; eventually wikipedia gave up and froze his page. the page was activated again and updated when rhode escaped and the editor's attitude was: 'i told you so'.
i think my thesis would have worked better if i had studied webpages instead of films. wikipedia's serious-looking form is so deceptive that even if the page were full of lies i would most likely believe it. form is much more dominant than content, you do not, even for a second, think about the thousands of anonymous editors entering updates - and mind you, individually, not collectively - but you think of a reliable encyclopedia.

procrastination

2009-06-28T21:41:00.001+01:00

it's been an hour and a half since i came to campus. the library's been open for forty two minutes. and i have not started yet.

the animals that i meet in america II

2009-06-28T21:30:00.003+01:00

opossums are what the foxes are in london. i have no idea what they feed on and how they survive. they are scary and ugly and come out at night. which of course, immediately interested me. you know that sense of injustice when you think of the disgust towards rats as opposed to the attention and love given to squirrels and pigeons? some animals are just treated as the quasimodos of animal kingdom.

more on america

2009-06-28T20:30:00.004+01:00

if the swedes commit suicide because everything is in so much order then the americans should be taking their own lives because of an abundance of options. i am so bored and confused and frustrated with the range of alternatives offered to me everywhere, from coffee shops to supermarkets to toilets. this, of course, gets reflected in the way people live: bicycle gears, picnic baskets, camping equipments, gardening stuff, coffee and tea sets, etc. etc. when there is millions of alternatives there is millions of preferences and in this country, the more preferences you have, the more character you have. you have the possibility to be unique - in a sort of deranged way. i guess it's similar to the avatars you make for online games. the same attitude is inevitably reflected in language. not only people speak so fast and they feel the need to be witty and ironic and fast and funny all the time, they make up shortened words or nicknames for anything.
i guess all this is too fast for me; i feel the need to tell some people to slow down and relax for a while.
i actually wanted to write about house-sitting (yes, another one of those words). we feel like we are in summer vacation: three floors, two cats, a lovely back garden, wii, music (me on the piano and him on the clarinet), the kitchen. the kitchen being the microcosm of what i have just described above or the whole house, actually.

michael jackson is dead?

2009-06-25T23:51:00.002+01:00

back in the day, as a child, i used to think of both michael jackson and madonna aging and imagine if and how it would be (a weird childhood i must admit).
i must say i was expecting a kind of an early death, but i didn't have the slightest clue as to how his appearance would change. i must say i was really curious about what was happening in that xanadu of his and i wonder whether the truth will ever come out.

sartre on america - 1945

2009-06-20T19:23:00.001+01:00

When the American puts a nickel into the slot in the tram or in the underground, he feels just like everyone else. Not like an anonymous unit, but like a man who has divested himself of his individuality and raised himself to the impersonality of the Universal.
It was this complete freedom in conformism that struck me at the very beginning. There is no freer city than New York. It is public opinion that plays the role of the policeman. The few Americans I met seemed to me at first to conform through freedom, to be depersonalized through rationalism. They seemed to identify Universal Reason with their own particular nation, within the framework of the same creed.

chinese solution to constant hiccuping

2009-06-18T23:46:00.002+01:00

take a mouthful sip of water (or in my case, coffee worked too, so any liquid) and swallow it in seven steps. you think you cannot equally divide this invisible amount, but incredibly, you do. and it works.

what happens to old shoes in america?

2009-06-18T06:43:00.005+01:00

i decided i may start a new initiative that will mobilise people to collect the old shoes they have thrown to tree branches or lamp posts - just for fun - and to give them to people in need or send them to a third world country. i think the latter would be a more stimulating reason since it contains 'the third world'. but really, why do people do this?

here's to andromeda mou OR the animals that i meet in america

2009-06-18T06:34:00.004+01:00

the otters enjoy scratching their bodies and faces and doing flip turns in water. but they do these repetitively without getting bored - which is something i really admire. when with a partner/friend they would let the other do the scratching or else they'd chase each other.

comedy america is teaching me II

2009-06-12T20:43:00.002+01:00

i came across vice magazine's do's and don'ts in an old compilation book of their first ten years or something. very politically incorrect. very funny. and sometimes quite obscene. here's one:

http://www.viceland.com/int/dd.php?id=299

comedy america is teaching me

2009-06-12T20:39:00.004+01:00

i heard about the far side for the first time a couple of days ago. i saw this one yesterday and was experiencing a laughing fit when i woke up in the morning, remembering the man's face.

2009-06-05T17:55:00.002+01:00

i'm starting to think blogging starts out of loneliness. perhaps. since t and i are together, i share all post ideas with him and there's nothing left to write. ideas get worn out, old. i have to learn to be patient. to share.
meanwhile - i got used to the time zone; bought a new camera; had the chance to observe more people and places, and some animals too; started the 'from couch to 3 miles' running plan; cycled around town.
more to come.

first observations

2009-05-27T00:00:00.002+01:00

-the average temperature in seattle is over 20 degrees celcius (experience since last week confirms this)
-there are water fountains everywhere, including the library.
-there's infinite space but not many people
-there are parks and lakes and canals and the sea
-there's a cycle trail
-there are sea planes
-there are beautiful film theatres

2009-05-26T23:55:00.002+01:00

my characters are on the edge of society. i want them to testify to human fragility because i don't like toughness, i don't like very strong people, or people whose weaknesses don't show

-truffaut

2009-05-17T00:09:00.002+01:00

just as i was thinking: spring is not the season of foxes; they must have already left the town, he started running with something in his mouth - i suspected it may be the curious cat as some fur was hanging down. well, this is how things go. yes, i am sorry for all those lovely rabbits eaten by the hungry dogs in gumusluk but can i blame the dogs? it's the people i blame for injustice, not the animals. we have reason; that means no excuse. and of course, this is why i hate all those comparisons about 'human beings' and 'nature'; it's natural to be this it's natural to do that. let's face it, we are not in harmony with nature; most probably we were created to slowly destroy it; and to deeply feel this destruction (c.f. 'why human beings have memory, conscience and feelings?')

i think i am starting to believe in god, does that come with age too?

i think i am starting to believe more in myself. (hmmm, maybe i should think about the previous statement.)

2009-05-15T23:38:00.002+01:00

she said there was something wrong with the people. well, the best thing you can do is to take your shoes off when you come home. take your shoes off and notice the difference. noticing the difference is something that comes with age. and then, there's this: learning to do things, you think, belongs to childhood - like learning to tie your shoes, learning to not stare at / point to people or things, learning to say thank you. whatever. no, learning continues, and what's better about it is that you are conscious of the change! what's much better about it is that you are unconscious of the process of change. it goes like this: you think, at one point, you wish - or perhaps you decide - that you are going to do things differently. you forget that you have made this wish. time passes. you notice you do things differently. you understand that you have always wanted to do things this way. when you are young you think you already forget about the initial wish anyway. when you become older, you know that you have interfered in your own behaviour.

it's spring that makes me think and the spring affect has not passed yet. or perhaps it won't. not until summer. we never have summer here anyways; spring is the best time. 'seattle is not much different'- so they say. seattle is so much different they have no idea. only i know.

here i am, a bit tipsy (tipsy is a word i associate with dolly parton, who knows why?), trying to actually write about some of the best things that have happened to me in the past months (and only some.). i never thought i'd say this - but life seems to be less fragmented; it's such a harmonious, continuous, beautiful flow, actually. those inserts, those mis- fortunes, happenings, understandings, are beautifully put, somehow.

but yes, there's something wrong with the people. sure. it's good to laugh about it though. i wish i could put all those i love into a mini-capsule i could carry through time and space (e.g. pocket).

and once again; eliot:

let us go then, you and i,
when the evening is spread out against the sky

outer space by peter tscherkassky

2009-04-27T12:01:00.002+01:00

i am haunted by tscherkassky's work, that's why i couldn't resist and bought a collection of his shorts, films from a dark room, all so beautiful.

random thoughts on the beauty of spring

2009-04-27T11:01:00.002+01:00

it is rainy today. there's no such thing as a rain-less april (at least in britain). and the knowledge we have of april being the cruelest month, we submit. sneezing heavily for last week, i was thankfully blaming it on the blossoming trees. i realised, i have started to be grateful for ordinary things again, my short term memory loss is very helpful in seeing beauty and originality in randomness. or this is what aging is about. gratefulness and nostalgia are relatives. sneezing in the morning today, i tried to get rid of my hypochondriac thoughts about how much the swine flu is going to spread. meanwhile, the turks are, as always, interested in their own trivial matters: claiming rights to smurfs' hats!

and here is me, and what i have been doing in the last couple of days:

32 years ago today

2009-04-21T18:12:00.001+01:00

9 days separated the 2

pirates of penzance

2009-04-20T14:38:00.002+01:00

in the middle of thesis writing, moving out, marking essays and preparing a conference paper, i thought it would be a great idea to go on a holiday.
so we are heading off to cornwall; i must say i have been a stranger to this country. anything beyond the limits of london did not interest me. until a couple of months ago. 'first we take scotland, then we take stonehedge' it went. so now i'm on way to seaside.

"dis mihraklar"dan sikilanlara ic mihrak

2009-04-17T16:04:00.001+01:00

http://icmihrak.blogspot.com/

10 years after columbine

2009-04-17T11:22:00.000+01:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/17/columbine-massacre-gun-crime-us

changes

2009-04-14T17:38:00.002+01:00

visits to two consulates today (canadian and turkish) and my views about 'being seen as being from the third world' and 'being from the third world' have been re-affirmed. i'm not sure i can stand neither of the attitudes. but eventually i have a canadian visa and a new id. what else do i want? perhaps my hours back.

after the fall of the tree, foxes have left the area; it's the curious cats' territory now.

i have started wearing a watch, just two hours ago, and haven't made use of it yet. let's see.

otolith II: an alternative to slumdog millionaire

2009-04-12T11:28:00.001+01:00

http://www.ificantdance.org/index.php/archive/artist/otolith-group-edition-ii.177.html

socialism has failed. now capitalism is bankrupt. so what comes next?

2009-04-12T11:17:00.000+01:00

by eric hobsbawm

gilda

2009-04-11T23:32:00.003+01:00

-at first i thought i was just dreaming it, i've been hearing her voice in my sleep for nights anyway. then i realised...

wake up you sleepyhead!

2009-04-11T15:57:00.002+01:00

ok, some films, some photographs and some music have a strange effect on me. for a second, i am immersed in another reality.

what i have learned from films

2009-04-11T11:36:00.002+01:00

ortolan is a european dish made by drowning the bird alive in cognac.

(walkabout)

i wonder if they came up with this idea when they were drowned in cognac.

any resemblance between maria falconetti and nurgul yesilcay?

2009-04-10T23:12:00.001+01:00

tell me if i'm wrong this time!

the language barrier

2009-04-09T23:31:00.004+01:00

at the end of antonioni's 'the red desert', monica vitti seeks help from a man, asks him something (sorry i cannot recall the details in full). the man looks puzzled, he doesn't understand. at this moment, what is perhaps designed as a scene to depict the inability to communicate (or something like that) becomes the most anti-climactic scenes of all times for me: the man starts talking in turkish! he says he doesn't understand the woman. so all the enigma is lost. at this crucial moment, all my attention is on the man rather than vitti! this man takes away vitti's appeal! such a sad experience.

watching 'walkabout' (again?) today, i had a wish, that i were fluent in aboriginal language and had no idea of english whatsoever and saw the film then. it would be wonderful not to understand the civilised.

faces

2009-04-08T23:13:00.002+01:00

-jeannie, do me a favor. don't be silly anymore, just be yourself.

-but i am myself, who else would i be?

-i'm serious.

-definition of serious: blah, blah, blah, blah.

how many 'oldest person of the world' are out there?

2009-04-07T11:13:00.002+01:00

i realised, in approximately a bimonthly frequency, an oldest person in the world celebrates her/his birthday. i guess being the oldest person, they must be dying soon afterwards.

song of childhood*

2009-04-02T17:26:00.002+01:00

When the child was a child
It walked with its arms swinging,
wanted the brook to be a river,
the river to be a torrent,
and this puddle to be the sea.

When the child was a child,
it didn’t know that it was a child,
everything was soulful,
and all souls were one.

When the child was a child,
it had no opinion about anything,
had no habits,
it often sat cross-legged,
took off running,
had a cowlick in its hair,
and made no faces when photographed.

When the child was a child,
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?
Is what I see and hear and smell
not just an illusion of a world before the world?
Given the facts of evil and people.
does evil really exist?
How can it be that I, who I am,
didn’t exist before I came to be,
and that, someday, I, who I am,
will no longer be who I am?

When the child was a child,
It choked on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding,
and on steamed cauliflower,
and eats all of those now, and not just because it has to.

When the child was a child,
it awoke once in a strange bed,
and now does so again and again.
Many people, then, seemed beautiful,
and now only a few do, by sheer luck.

It had visualized a clear image of Paradise,
and now can at most guess,
could not conceive of nothingness,
and shudders today at the thought.

When the child was a child,
It played with enthusiasm,
and, now, has just as much excitement as then,
but only when it concerns its work.

When the child was a child,
It was enough for it to eat an apple, … bread,
And so it is even now.

When the child was a child,
Berries filled its hand as only berries do,
and do even now,
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,
and do even now,
it had, on every mountaintop,
the longing for a higher mountain yet,
and in every city,
the longing for an even greater city,
and that is still so,
It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees
with an elation it still has today,
has a shyness in front of strangers,
and has that even now.
It awaited the first snow,
And waits that way even now.

When the child was a child,
It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,
And it quivers there still today.

by peter handke

*the poem from 'wings of desire' but reminds me more of 'alice in the cities'.

suheda fiskiracak topragi siksan suheda

2009-04-02T16:10:00.001+01:00

http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/id/24952734/

any resemblance between fred astaire and zeki muren?

2009-03-31T17:25:00.004+01:00

join the alternative summit

2009-03-31T17:21:00.001+01:00

http://www.altg20.org.uk/

2009-03-31T17:08:00.002+01:00

does anybody know since when it is acceptable to publish photographs of dying/dead people in accidents, crime scenes or war zones?

worse

2009-03-31T10:28:00.000+01:00

http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/id/24951994/

ntvmsnbc claims the number exceeds 300.

2009-03-31T10:26:00.001+01:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/31/migrants-libya-drown-italy

it is horrifying. what is more horrifying is that i will forget these news in a couple of hours.

my father and me

2009-03-21T14:38:00.002Z

oddly enough, today, at my father's retirement ceremony, during his speech, i heard, for the first time in my life, his perception of time. he said something along the lines of: time is artificial; we created it; there are no hours or days or years; time is what we make of it.

time is my (new?) god

2009-03-19T11:49:00.002Z

if the world were flat, would we experience jet lag (note: there is no one living at the bottom)? how is it that there is a different time in space? if time is relative, why can't we control it? if i am able to move ver very slowly, do i extend time? is infinity in that indefinitely slow, almost stopped heartbeat? is this the essence of meditation?
(looks like i am experiencing a recurrence of my fascination with time and movement -dates back to when i was seventeen)

long time no see

2009-03-11T23:56:00.003Z

the reason why i haven't been posting is due to my laptop's 'unresponsive' keyboard and trackpad. and it looks like it will take a while. patience. this is the third problem we (me and my laptop) have encountered since it entered my life - which was not even a year ago! so i'm not feeling particularly good about it. i sometimes doubt it's a mac. i had so much confidence in them.

anyway, long story short (like long time no see): i have made two very important discoveries during this time.

1. turkish army's not very rightful occupation in symrna actually may have changed the history of cinema. i didn't know - or i seem to have forgotten - that henri langlois was born there and fled to paris with his family when he was a child. i think the cinemateque is very much about his personal initiative. or is this just another myth?

2. there is an uncanny resemblance between fred astaire and zeki muren -especially the eyes. sadly, i could not find good pictures online to compare. you just need to watch top hat and think focus really really hard on astaire's face.

2009-03-03T11:17:00.003Z

looks like i cannot keep up with my blog, or the blog cannot keep up with my life. recently, i have been thinking (and there is no harm to remind ourselves of this quote) how remote and unfamiliar i feel towards any of my 'presences' in the past. looking at a year-old photograph does not seem very different than looking at 'me as a baby'. have those hands really grown into the ones i have now? how do skin and bones grow? -they are essentially not different than asking- when and why did i smile like that? is this the way i stand, sit, pose? is this the way i look bored, angry, happy?
to me, there isn't anything other than now. each new moment has traces of the past. but each new moment steals those traces from the past by killing it.

this is for real and this is the reality of politics

2009-02-25T13:53:00.003Z

save these children and sleep comfortably at night.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/feb/25/slumdog-millionaire-child-stars-homes

films and stories sell. we live in that part of the world, the part that's made up of films and stories. somewhere remote, something else is going on, something i do not exactly know and i cannot exactly describe because my relation to it is mediated, controlled, limited. the closest i get to that world is through reading, watching, listening.

is this for real or is this the reality of politics?

2009-02-25T12:46:00.001Z

a candidate for istanbul:

http://www.seyfisolukal.com/multimedya.html

love of cinema

2009-02-25T00:19:00.002Z

i am still impressed by citizen kane. do we judge the richness of art by its capacity to multiply and diversify in each new experience? repetition does not bore us and/or diminish the work of art; it re-produces it.

en son nazan oncel

2009-02-24T22:02:00.000Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYDYGnBXy7g

sonra aklima su cumle geldi:

2009-02-24T21:47:00.001Z

'Nasıl oluyorsa oluyor, yirmi dört kısım tekmili birden bilinçaltımızın/üstümüzün, dışavurumumuzun/içe hazinelememizin bütün sözleri, müzikleri Aynı Kadın'ın elinden çıkmış oluyor.'

'o' kadin, perihan magden

http://www.radikal.com.tr/Default.aspx?aType=RadikalYazarYazisi&ArticleID=834567&Yazar=PER%DDHAN%20MA%D0DEN&Date=24.02.2009

sonra birdenbire deli kizin turkusu*

2009-02-24T21:38:00.002Z

http://www.last.fm/music/Sezen+Aksu/_/Deli+K%C4%B1z%C4%B1n+T%C3%BCrk%C3%BCs%C3%BC?autostart

(sana buyuk caddelerin birinde rastlasam / elimi uzatsam tutsam gotursem / gozlerine baksam gozlerine / konusmasak ah anlasan / elimi uzatsam tutamasam / olanca sevgimi yalnizligimi / dusunsem hayir hayir dusunmesem / senin hic haberin olmasa)

*fulya icin; hatirlayamadigim bir nedenden dolayi

sonra birdenbire kavaklar

2009-02-24T21:32:00.000Z

http://www.last.fm/music/Sezen+Aksu/_/Kavaklar?autostart

birdenbire cok fena 'karam aman aman' dinlemek istedim, ama sezen aksu'dan

2009-02-24T21:24:00.002Z

of oooooooooof kopruler yaptirdim gelip gecmeye, cesmeler yaptirdim suyun icemeye karam

http://www.last.fm/music/Sezen+Aksu/_/Karam

birdenbire cok fena erkin koray dinlemek istedim

2009-02-24T20:56:00.003Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP-1vNjEdig&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6VHfePznsE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dtu9EN77jw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cepF8obJGX8&feature=related

the giant tree II

2009-02-24T20:01:00.004Z