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.

Noel Abla.

my first try in movie editing. this is ozge skiing into the fog. watch her hat. the music is by east village opera company. the song is the flower duet redux...

from the blind assassin

why does she keep arriving? is he some private game she's playing, is that it? he won't let her pay for anything, he won't be bought. she wants a love story out of him because girls do, or girls of her type who still expect something from life. but there must be another angle. the wish for revenge, or for punishment. women have curious ways of hurting someone else. they hurt themselves instead; or else they do it so the guy doesn't even know he's been hurt until much later. then he finds out. then his dick falls off. despite those eyes, the pure line of her throat, he catches a glimpse in her at times of something complex and smirched.

-margaret atwood

from dark star safari

i told him what i felt about time exposing the truth- that time did not heal wounds, but that the passsing years gave us a vantage point from which to see the reality of things. i added that it was no fun to grow old, but that the compensation for it was that time turned your mental shit detector into a highly-calibrated instrument.

- paul theroux

the mouse is cute. but, the mouse has to go, said ozge, it is dirty it will make us sick. she is not here to kill the mouse so i will have to figure out another way. i remember when my first fish died i could not get him out of the tank. i sat down on the stairs and cried and i wasn’t even a kid. and now, how am i going to get the mouse, it has ears!

i am happy to have the mouse. to know i am not alone and to know he will never try to give me advice like everybody else these days. not that i don’t need it. and not that i don’t ask for it. you see, i am a little lost, just floating around somewhere in the cold winter sky. ever since that palm reader told me it is not a good year to make decisions i have given up making them altogether. she also said i should become a massage therapist.

don’t forget, you are not alone, said my dailyom email the other day. remember life is hard for everyone. but i wish i had a tiger, too. instead of a mouse. then the two of us could go sledding down the hill, and forget all our troubles.

Song For A Winter's Night

The lamp is burning low upon my table top,
The snow is softly falling.
The air is still in the silence of my room.
I hear your voice softly calling.
If I could only have you near,
To breathe a sigh or two,
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love.
On this winter night with you.

The smoke is rising in the shadows overhead,
My glass is almost empty.
I read again between the lines upon each page;
The words of love you sent me.
If I could know within my heart,
That you were lonely too,
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love.
Upon this winter night with you.

The fire is dying now, my lamp is growing dim,
The shades of night are lifting.
The morning light steals across my window pane,
Where webs of snow are drifting.
If I could only have you near,
To breathe a sigh or two,
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love,
Upon this winter night with you,
And to be once again with you.

- Gordon Lightfoot

hubel

hubel
Originally uploaded by minikkafa.

by gorkem, again.

When I have fears

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace,
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

- John Keats

i am waiting. just like everything comes everything will go. one by one. my tears will dry one by one. the fish will die, knots will come loose, my boobs will sag, my whole left shoe will become a hole itself and oh my god i will be able to take a breath and then it will start again. i will be waiting.

and why,
do i want to get in a shell
be a hermicrab
so someone picks me up
from the bottom of a sea
maybe 5000 miles away
(and i am so happy, delirious, because it was so secluded you know and slow and monotonous. anything could happen now, i'm going up up up, the sun is getting closer, where am i being taken?)
to a place, with air
but no more water
and no more food
(and oh no i cannot breathe, i am dying, i have to get out, good bye my shell, i have to go...)
then i get out, to crawl among objects unfamiliar, i feel dizzy yet i have to persist.
i am all dry, drier every second and i am getting smaller, less confident, an alien, and i shouldn't admit it
but i might be dying.
i want to be a hermicrab again.

The Real Story of the First Thanksgiving

By Benjamin Franklin (1785)

“There is a tradition that in the planting of New England, the first settlers met with many difficulties and hardships, as is generally the case when a civiliz’d people attempt to establish themselves in a wilderness country. Being so piously dispos’d, they sought relief from heaven by laying their wants and distresses before the Lord in frequent set days of fasting and prayer. Constant meditation and discourse on these subjects kept their minds gloomy and discontented, and like the children of Israel there were many dispos’d to return to the Egypt which persecution had induc’d them to abandon.

“At length, when it was proposed in the Assembly to proclaim another fast, a farmer of plain sense rose and remark’d that the inconveniences they suffer’d, and concerning which they had so often weary’d heaven with their complaints, were not so great as they might have expected, and were diminishing every day as the colony strengthen’d; that the earth began to reward their labour and furnish liberally for their subsistence; that their seas and rivers were full of fish, the air sweet, the climate healthy, and above all, they were in the full enjoyment of liberty, civil and religious.

“He therefore thought that reflecting and conversing on these subjects would be more comfortable and lead more to make them contented with their situation; and that it would be more becoming the gratitude they ow’d to the divine being, if instead of a fast they should proclaim a thanksgiving. His advice was taken, and from that day to this, they have in every year observ’d circumstances of public felicity sufficient to furnish employment for a Thanksgiving Day, which is therefore constantly ordered and religiously observed.”

rating life

i just took this test that is supposed to rate different aspects of your life as well as your overall life quality. i am not so sure i agree with it though as my worse category ended up being the friends/family one! have i been deceiving myself for so long thinking my relationship with both are what keep me going???

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	7.3
Mind:	7.7
Body:	7.5
Spirit:	6.8
Friends/Family:	5.1
Love:	6.2
Finance:	7.7
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

in palais de tokyo

this one is really in color. gorkem with the camera.
wonderful museum...

my dad in his wonderfully tidy office
photo by ali göktan.

i have four walls around me i have pictures of a window that opens up to the outside. i listen to the radio and i sit here wanting to get out but i don’t know where to go. wherever i go i reach wall that surrounds me. I hit the wall and the wall hits me back and with a thump i go down. i get heavier and heavier and think that i will soon fall through the floor. i have fish that stare at me, every month it is a different fish and towards the end of the month the eyes of the fish lose their brightness and you know they would smell if they were really here. the fish change and I change and i hope that they won’t die as they always do. so i am sitting, there is no use standing up.

gorkita again.  

moon again...

ROMEO

Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear
That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops--

JULIET
O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

To the Moon

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,—
And ever-changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

-Shelley

c&h

wp article on the best cartoon strip ever

The Tiger Strikes Again

donate to noah's wish

...and help all the animals left behind. they are all so cute and need all the food and love after losing their owners. you can make a donation thru paypal.

Noah's Wish Hurricane Katrina Efforts

my friend alison's baby quinn and max!  

Abraham Lincoln's Favorite Poem

came across while reading "With Malice Toward None," Lincoln's biography...

Mortality

By William Knox

Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave
He passeth from life to his rest in the grave.

The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
And the young and the old, and the low and the high,
Shall moulder to dust, and together shall lie.

The infant a mother attended and loved;
The mother that infant's affection who proved;
The husband, that mother and infant who blest,--
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.

The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,
Shone beauty and pleasure, -- her triumphs are by;
And the memory of those who loved her and praised,
Are alike from the minds of the living erased.

The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne,
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn,
The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave,
Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.

The peasant, whose lot was to sow and to reap,
The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the steep,
The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread,
Have faded away like the grass that we tread.

The saint, who enjoyed the communion of Heaven,
The sinner, who dared to remain unforgiven,
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.

So the multitude goes -- like the flower or the weed
That withers away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes -- even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.

For we are the same our fathers have been;
We see the same sights our fathers have seen;
We drink the same stream, we view the same sun,
And run the same course our fathers have run.

The thoughts we are thinking, our fathers would think;
From the death we are shrinking, our fathers would shrink;
To the life we are clinging, they also would cling; --
But it speeds from us all like a bird on the wing.

They loved -- but the story we cannot unfold;
They scorned -- but the heart of the haughty is cold;
They grieved -- but no wail from their slumber will come;
They joyed -- but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.

They died -- ay, they died; -- we things that are now,
That walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
And make in their dwellings a transient abode;
Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.

Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
Are mingled together in sunshine and rain;
And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.

'Tis the wink of an eye -- 'tis the draught of a breath--
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud:--
Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

mmm nice car

BMW 130i - Autoblog - www.autoblog.com _

BEN HER BAHAR AŞIK OLURUM

Damarlarımda yine aşk var
Gözlerim yine bir manalı
Başladı güneşli yağmurlar
Islandı umudumun saçları
Kırılan dallar gibiyim
Ben her bahar dirilirim
Gizli bir kaynaktır içim
Kendime bir yol bulurum
Ben her bahar aşık olurum
Rüzgar olur yağmur olurum
Filizlenir anılarda gururum
Taşar içimden ruhum
Gönlümde sönen ateşin
Küllerini savururum
Kalbimdeki acelenin
Peşinde ben kaybolurum

-Sezen Aksu

new haircut 

me 

if you wanna see more stray cats of bodrum, check this out.
zorro!

my mom 

Bugun Pazar
Bugun beni ilk defa gunese cikardilar.
Ve ben omrumde ilk defa gokyuzunun
bu kadar benden uzak
bu kadar mavi
bu kadar genis olduguna sasarak
kimildamadan durdum.
Sonra saygiyla topraga oturdum,
dayadim sirtimi duvara.
Bu anda ne dusmek dalgalara,
bu anda ne kavga, ne hurriyet, ne karim.
Toprak, gunes ve ben...
Bahtiyarim...

-Nazim Hikmet

Today is Sunday
Today for the first time, they took me out into the sun.
And for the first time in my life, aghast
I stood there wondering
how the sky could be so far from me
so blue
and so vast.
Then with respect, I sat on the ground,
leaned my back against the wall.
Not a care about diving into the waves
Or about strife or freedom or my wife.
The soil, the sun and me...
I feel blissful.

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and answer to inquiries and say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts - not to hurt others.

- from Middlemarch, by George Eliot

moving into another place in my mind where i haven't lived before. where hermit crabs are not afraid of being lured out of their shells, and there is no thinking thoughts away.
 

edgar allen poe on my window sill.

excerpts from Eric Hoffer's notebooks (from Harper's July 2005 issue)

WHAT OTHERS THINK
It is not good for our efforts at self-realization to know the opinions other people have of us. It is difficult or perhaps impossible to be ourselves if we are known. 1951

BROODING
I am more and more convinced that taking life overseriously is a frivolous thing. There is an affected self-dramatizing in the brooding over one's prospects and destiny. The trifling attitude of an Ecclesiastes is essentially sober and serious. It is in closer touch with the so-called eternal truths than are the most penetrating metaphysical probing and the most sensitive poetic insights. 1952

PLENTY OF TIME
The chief difference between me and others is that I have plenty of time-not only because I am without a multitude of responsibilities and without daily tasks, which demand attention: But also because I am basically without ambition. Neither the present nor the future has claims on me. 1952

THINKING AND WAITING
Thinking with me is like looking for a person whose address I don't know. I stand on a street corner all day long waiting for him to pass by. Certainly there are more efficient ways of locating a person whose address you don't know. But if you have a whole lifetime to wait and enjoy watching things go by, then waiting on street corners is as good a method as any. If you don't find the person you are looking for, you might meet someone else. 1953

THERE ARE BUT A FEW YEARS
The most important point is-and remains-not to take oneself seriously. There is no past, and, certainly, no future. There are but a few years-ten at the most. You pass your days as best you can, doing as little harm as possible. Let the desires be few and treat expectations as weeds. You read, scribble as the spirit moves you, hear some new music, see every week the few people you are attached to. Again: guard yourself, above all, against self-dramatization, a feeling of importance, and the sprouting of expectations. 1954

Here is "Passionate State of the Mind" by Hoffer, from Harper's Magazine 1954

how puffy can one be? puffiest is my tombik lounging on a coffee table on a sunny afternoon.  

Alone

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then - in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life - was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

- Edgar Allan Poe

Well I don't believe in love
Until I'm in love
And I don't know if it's a miracle
Or just chemicals in us.

-(the real) tuesday weld

paris for olympics?