-from Captain Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund

the salad of love

the salad of love
Originally uploaded by ergeneman.

from a man without a country, by kurt vonnegut

Here's a lesson in creative writing.

First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

And I realize some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I'm kidding.

For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I'm kidding.
We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding.

If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no mantter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

in the park 

And sometimes when the night is slow,
The wretched and the meek,
We gather up our hearts and go,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

Leonard Cohen

hold my hand
and when i am too high i will come down your stairs.

the blue light comes in. the blue light goes out. the blue light carries me with it into a night. a night whose magic has died. i have been here at another time. standing staring at the sky without a single star, i had crouched over the the ground, my hands touching my shoulders my face, loving what is now unloved. you, my sun, my scented candle, my child-proof lighter, my reading lamp, you have burned yourself out. i now wait for the day to break; it did that night. and i will be happy as i was when i fell in love with you.

on my lips you are the red stain
that remains
after the wine is
gone.

nerde olmak istedim biliyo musun birden? hani culebrita vardı ya snorkeling yapmıştık, o kocaman manyak simetrik yaratıkları birbirimize hayretle göstermiştik. kafalarımız denizle dolu ama bomboş, aklımız sevimli bir balığın peşinde kalbimiz göğüslerimiz kadar hafif. evet çok özledim artik seni. hadi koy şapkanın altına bir j, inelim merdivenden suya, kıyıya yüzelim yavaş yavaş, içimiz kıpır kıpır ama. sonra oturalım yamuk bir kayaya, yakalım, yakılalalım, değiştirelim bu dünyayı, daraltalım merceği denize, tekneye, ayaklarımızın altındakı yuvarlanmış renkli cam şişe parçalarına. gülelim, sen japon ol, ben ince sesler çıkarayım, yerlere yatalım, nasıl geri döneceğimizi tartışalım, nasıl burada kalabiliriz diye planlar yapalım. tekne uzak, hayatlarımız daha da uzak kalsın, hiçbir şey farketmesin biz orada oldukça.

from my window. the truck on the right sells mexican fast food. i haven't been drunk enough to try it.  

my aunt on the left my mom on the right. why do i get to wear white socks? 

my dad and me. i love the pink sweater, no?  

ozge and i were almost getting our haircuts here this weekend. but it was too scary inside! 

i wake up in the middle of the night. i don't have to pee. i am not cold. i am not thirsty. i haven't had a bad dream. it is an unwelcome interruption i don't know what to do with. unwanted thoughts appear, the ones i want to forget, bury, wipe out, secretly toss, drop. drop like you would a piece of trash when nobody is looking and pretend it was never there. so it joins the heap of rubbish thoughts and feelings once possessed now orphaned.
the world does not know time. these days the world and me are not one. buried in my books, leafing through my past, washing my clothes off familiar scents, eating my dreams away like chicken salad sandwiches from lincoln diner. before late, i'm on the last page of a book, the food is consumed, clothes folded. how can life be boring when there is so much you overlooked. how could i forget those nights when i couldn't wait for my parents to leave so i would do the little things i do when i'm alone. there was never enough time then and there is never enough time now. soon the car will be pulling into the parking lot and me racing through the little apartment throwing myself in bed pretending to be asleep. and sleep.

just like i did when i was in second grade, when we used to live in that apartment overlooking a busy street, i sit by my window and watch the cars go by. then i look at pictures from years ago. in one, i look like a boy but i am winking a flirty wink. in another, my mom sits in the background, she seems calm but i know how young she is and how she wants to break free. yet she is smiling her smile for me and seeing it makes me want to make her smile like that again. i still wear the tomboy clothes i used to wear - the cargo pants, the long-sleeved retro shirt and a man's cap. i just bough the cap a couple of weeks ago, only to fund out that i had borrowed the same one from some guest some twenty years ago.
i read the notes my mom has jotted behind the photos. and i wish i could use language like she does. she gives people a voice they never had, she makes them come alive. her narrative is just too strong, it is too funny. and sometimes, when she becomes the voice of my half-blind now dead cat, it is sad.
and then i wish i was a more exciting kid. so the years of her youth that she gave me would be worth it. i start watching the cars again, hoping that she will call me to the dinner table. anytime now.

rainy day in new york city

a day to think of friends. a day to sit by the bar at a diner and talk to the old lady sitting next to me. a day to have thoughts that reach deep down only to let them go one by one. and read about vishnu, keeper of the universe, keeper of the sun:

" I am what you taste in water, I am what you see in air. I am the breath in every flower, I am the life in every creature. I am all living things, I am creation itself. Look at me and see in my body the whole universe."

-from the death of vishnu

should we go outside, when you go away?

strange smells
of cigarettes smoking of wood burning of cucumbers melons
sounds
of me calling

i say the things i always say, my eyes always burn
and the knot in my stomach, for some reason,
does not come loose.

i have so many questions
that i will not ask
i am on my island and i know the answers will never come.

so my heart beats to the beat
my life floats
but still i wish, the spirals i draw
could reach you somehow.

true. 

i liked this dailyom message i got a few days ago

from Giants in the Earth

There were the walls, for example, of which he himself was especially proud, and which Store-Hans never tired of admiring. He had begun work on these walls immediately after he had returned from the trip east to the Hallings' with the potatoes. The lime had been mixed according to directions, and spread over the walls- three coats of it, no less; now the sod hut shone so brightly inside that it dazzled the eyes... Before the snow came, Beret thought it delightful to have such walls; but after there was nothing but whiteness outside- pure whiteness as far as the eye could see and the thought could reach- she regretted that he had touched them. Her eyes were blinded wherever she looked, either outdoors or indoors; the black-brown earthen floor was the only object on which she could rest them comfortably; and so she always looked down now, as she sat in the house.

- O.E. Rolvaag

i am sending smoke signals. can you see them? can you read them?

i am making a paper snowflake out of my life. as i cut the little pieces off, i am not sure how my flake will to turn out. every dash i make i have some hope that it will be striking once the paper is opened. i go this way and that way and with every turn the scissor takes i know the shape will be there to stay. and after every cut i make i open the paper. sometimes a seemingly boring cut turns out so intricate on the other end. the cuts that are elaborate, that wave in and out, are mostly disastrous. but sometimes they are not. then i am soo happy that i ever made them. soon the paper will have too many cuts. and i will not be there to open it. somebody else will look at it and decide if it is beautiful.

you can make them, too.

your heart is an empty room

Burn it down till the embers smoke on the ground
And start new when your heart is an empty room
With walls of the deepest blue

-dcftc

complete silence on my mind. thoughts feelings falling like snow, melting away as they touch my body. with all the clocks stopped, my heart is keeping time.

years have gone by. i have grown, my cells have multiplied, but i have given them away so i can stay constant. so i can come back and find the same me, the bare me, that doesn't change. it hurts to give but i don't want to unlearn how to do it. i am afraid that i will and i will start swelling up with feelings i can't unpart from, with thoughts that pile up and stink like rubbish, like old thoughts do. i don't want to grow cold, distant, i don't want to grow old and burst when one day some sunshine leaks in from the blinds that keep my house dark and dreary. i want to be alive, i want to close my eyes and take a leap and fall fall fall until i wake up and find that i am still there, even if nobody else is next to me. i want to be alive, even if it means i have to cry, even if i have to lose. for losing is living and i don't want to be afraid.