Today was Zafer bayrami, in Turkey. This meaning it was the day they celebrate the Canakkale Victory. This meaning, in 1914 with a broken army and very limmited arms, we kicked English, French and Greek hineys to kingdom come, and saved Istanbul.
So how do Turks celebrate? They drape tall buildings with massive Turkish flags and building-sized pictures of Ataturk, the dog of dogs. 'Why?' -you ask, since Ataturk had jack to do with it.
Because every good Turk believes that God's gift of a victory to the Turkish people in WWI was all thanks to Ataturk's great ass, on which he was reclining at the time, while others were giving their lives for it. So lets all praise him.

In any case though, below is a pic of Elest celebrating Turkish facism.



Yes that's a Hitler tash, coz I'm so funny.

...and Elest behaving more naturaly in her natural habitat, when caught unawares.




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

A lecturer once said that the most tragic moment in an epic is the arming of the epic hero part.
Now, I'll tell you why it's tragic.
It's the Samson story.
Perhaps Achilles.
A life time of thickening skin against ignorant prejudices,
growing so strong, their cruelty only curls a smile in the corner of your lips,
and then someone stabs you when the armour comes off.

Hello. This is Miyavi.



As you can see, the resemblance is phenomenal.

(No, he's not an adopted friend for Sushi, he's just a stray kitten with a mohawk who turned up in the living room like he owned the place. Hence meriting a name)

Regret is very bitter, and the bottom-far-bellow of very high places, inviting.
The ability to regret dawns...slowly, slowly, upon the world.
And one can find ones-self lying on ones roof at night, watching the stars (I swear there were a lot more when I was younger and wore funny glasses) and thinking: 'Why is Mars not visible yet? Is this secretly not August or have the astronomers lied?'
One can find ones-self in many many deep and dark silences, and under the influence of bad influence mullings.
Funny that cows are such happy seeming beasts when all they ever seem to do is chew and mull, chew and mull, chew and mull...and swat the random fly.
Which says what?
It says, if I'm resigned to all these mosquito bites I must be more aloof than a cow.


A classic Arabic/Persian (everyone including the Turks seem to be wanting to lay claim to this) story follows:

There was once a young man named Kais who fell in love with a girl named Laila, who wasn't particulalry beautiful or amazing, but this is irrelevant...or perhaps it's relevant because it says alot more about love than it would if she was beautiful. Because you see, thanks to the immortalisation of Laila & Majnun (which existed way before Romeo & Juliet, and is at a higher calibre of tale entirely) Laila has been transformed in the minds and stories of men into the embodiment of unmatched feminine beauty (so much so that according to another story a particular sultan who wished to see the legendary Laila, asks for her to be brought to him and upon laying eyes on her is shocked.
Sultan: Majnun loved you? you're not beautiful?
Laila: You are not Majnun.)

...So, Kais loved Laila, but Lail's family married their daughter off to an older, and very wealthy man. Kais, in his devastation and despair fled to the desert and went mad, hence why he was then called Majnun. Many years passed, word of the love-sick Majnun who roamed the deserts still spread far and wide, until one day, Laila's old husband died. Having been set free at last, Laila who'd heard what became of Kais, set out into the desert in search of him. When she finally found him, Majnun did not recognise her.
Majnun: Who are you?
Laila: I'm Laila.
Majnun: ...then what have I loved all of this time?

The Importance of Being like a child: or Cows and Why Not to Underestimate Any Sign. Ever.

-a rant-

There are symbolic dreams -dreams that symbolize some reality. Then there are symbolic realities -realities that symbolize a dream.
Symbols are what you might call the honorary town councillors of the worm universe. In the worm universe there is nothing unusual about a dairy cow seeking a pair of pliers. A cow is bound to get her pliers sometime. It has nothing to do with me.

Yet the fact that the cow chose me to obtain her pliers changes everything. This plunges me into a whole universe of alternative considerations. And in this universe of alternative considerations, the major problem is that everything becomes protracted and complex. I asked the cow, "Why do you want pliers?" and the cow answers, "I'm really hungry." So I ask, "Why do you need pliers if you're hungry?" The cow answers, "To attach them to branches of the peach tree." I ask, "Why a peach tree?" to which the cow replies, "Well, that's why I traded away my fan, isn't it?" and so on and so forth. The thing is never resolved, I begin to resent the cow, and the cow begins to resent me. That's a worms eye view its universe. The only way the get out of that worm universe is to dream another symbolic dream.

(Haruki Murakami- A Wild Sheep Chase)

The 'cow' and 'me' here, might as well be Khidr and Moses, the time-traveller and the prophet, me (personally) and the snail in my planter...any two individuals/entities existing in separate plains of possibility or dimensions of thought and experience, but encountering one another, for a brief moment in the same now. I feel sorry for the snail in its pitifully slimy and slow excuse of an existance, and the snail, feels sorry for me; a loud and threatening giant, apparently so busy wasting energy with sensless comings and goings, to know the colours of the different levels of silence, and the shades of every depth of peace.

Likewise, keepers of different wisdoms, the cow's motives will never make sense to me, and my motives will never make sense to the cow, because we both see and experience the universe through our own very separate yet limited vision. Hence the worms eye view.

If our human senses are only capable of experiencing less than a billionth of the material stimuli in the immediate space which surrounds us at any given moment, then in retrospect to a universe with boundless possibilities incomprehensible to any one being alone, cynisims is one of the greatest sins we commit against ourselves. As the Turkish idiom goes, What fault is it of the sun, if you're blind?

One of the Prophet's (sas) prayers went something like this: 'Allah, make me full of wonder'. And that is why Lewis Carol put Alice in Wonderland, because she was a child. So, if you find a caterpillar chasing dragons on a giant mushroom, for Gods sake, don't tell him he's not supposed to exist, that's just rude. Instead you should ask permission to partake, and who knows what many other cows with pliers you may encounter on what wondrous trips, which await to broaden our worm universes.

I wish I could surrender my soul.

Shed the clothes that become my skin,

See the liar that burns within my needing.

I wish I'd chosen darkness from cold

I wish I'd screamed out loud...

Instead I've found no meaning.

I guess it's time I run...

Far far away,

Find comfort in pain.

All pleasure's the same,

It just keeps me from trouble.

Tears and Rain, The Blunt-man.

I know now, where I get my simple minded honesty from.
The side of me which spurs from a nation of painfully and stupidly honest people.
Yesterday Huden and I were getting fresh juice form the juice man, and I said I wanted Pomegranite juice and the guy lowers his voice and goes, 'this isn't real pomegranite juice.' Moments later we are trying to buy bread and the baker goes, 'The bread's so hard, look it's like a rock! it's coz of the heat!' naturally we didn't buy bread or the pomegranite juice ...its seems honesty is more important than losing customers though. And that, I think is a beautiful trait, beneath its painful stupidity.

Yes I am in Ankara...and it is safe to say it has taken 2 days for 'Burn it up, Girl make it hot like the roof is on Fayyaaaaaa!' to stop playing itsself on repeat in my mind. Trust crazy, beautiful friends to turn a bloody goodbye into 2 nights of belly dancing. I mention not the quality time and 'moments' because I keeps special things to myself.

I cried on the plane. To which the passenger sitting next to me could only ask: 'Have you lived in America?' -Ntch, foo!
Righteeeo, the Boris within warns that this is turning self indulgent again. Lets see...do I have anything else to say without dear-diarying?
Yes.
Turkish Grandfathers are cute.
So are Turkish guys.
In different ways of course.
The former are cute in the cudly sense that makes Father Christmas look like a pedophile.
As for the latter...I'm still trying to get over the shock of this.