Chronicles of Beşiktaş

Yıldız, Abbasağa and Çarşı, from my daugther's perspective :)









I took the one below.



Don't you think Ayşen Gruda's new look is sexy?





















The Day


What can a man like me do on a day like this? 
A day that's cold and snowy. 
A day which bears the energies of differerent sources of the great great universe... 
What can a man like me do on a Thursday, in the year of 2012? 
A man like me can wake up at 6:40 AM and leave the bed half an hour later. 
That man also can lead his daughter up to her school bus at 7:30 AM. 
That man can kiss her wife and send her off to work at 7:31 AM and look to the white and thick sky spraying showflakes down to earth.
What can a man like me expect from a day like this in a month like February?
That man can shave, put on a jean and a t-shirt and  head to a professional event like this at the hotel like this.
On his way to hotel, just in front of the next building to his one, he may see a sweet dog like this:


After saying "hi" to this guy, he can take a taxi to the hotel.
He may meet some friends at the hotel, chat with them, listen to the great presentation delivered by these gentlemen and come back home on foot at 6:00 PM.
A man like me can have a bottle of this beer and some slices of toasted spicy bread prepared by his wife.
After his daughter fell asleep, a man like me and his wife can watch a great movie like this.
And, my friends, the man like me can be hypnotized by the movie.
He may describe that movie as a full visual feast.
The perfection of the pictures, the power and the simplicity of the words and the whole harmony can make a man like me cry at the end of the movie.
On a day like this, while it is still snowing at night, what is a man like me supposed to do?
Although he is not a fan of religions or those sort of things, he may want to share what Father Haynes preached in the movie:
Job imagined he might build his nest on high – that the integrity of his behavior would protect him against misfortune. And his friends thought, mistakenly, that the Lord could only have punished him because secretly he’d done something wrong.
But, no, misfortune befalls the good as well. We can’t protect ourselves against it. We can’t protect our children. We can’t say to ourselves, even if I’m not happy, I’m going to make sure they are.
We vanish as a cloud. We wither as the autumn grass, and like a tree are rooted up.
Is there some fraud in the scheme of the universe? Is there nothing which is deathless? Nothing which does not pass away?
We cannot stay where we are. We must journey forth.
We must find that which is greater than fortune or fate. Nothing can bring us peace but that.
Is the body of the wise man, or the just, exempt from any pain? From any disquietude, from the deformity that might blight its beauty, from the weakness that might destroy its health?
Do you trust in God?
Job, too, was close to the Lord. Are your friends and children your security? There is no hiding place in all the world where trouble may not find you. No one knows when sorrow might visit his house, any more than Job did.
The very moment everything was taken away from Job, he knew it was the Lord who’d taken it away. He turned from the passing shows of time. He sought that which is eternal.
Does he alone see God’s hand who sees that He gives, or does not also the one see God’s hand who sees that He takes away? Does he alone see God who sees God turn His face towards him? Does not also he see God who sees God turn his back?  

Hysterical Pollyanna


Oh my god! This, so called, Pollyanna picture was attached on the wall of my daughter's school. Do you think she is healthy? This picture reminds me the dialog from Fight Club:

TYLER: Two, equal parts gasoline and diet cola. Three, dissolve kitty-litterin gasoline until the mixture is thick.

JACK: Pardon me?

Tyler turns to Jack.

JACK (V.O.): This is how I met --

TYLER: Tyler Durden.

Tyler offers his hand. Jack takes it.

TYLER: You know why they have oxygen masks on planes?

JACK: No, supply oxygen?

TYLER: Oxygen gets you high. In a catastrophic emergency, we're taking giant, panicked breaths...

Tyler grabs a safety instruction CARD from the seatback, hands it to Jack.

TYLER: Suddenly, we become euphoic and docile. We accept our fate.

Tyler points to passive faces on the drawn figures.

TYLER: Emergency water landing, 600 miles per hour. Blank faces -- calm as Hindu cows.

Jack laughs.

JACK: What do you do, Tyler?

TYLER: What do you want me to do?

JACK: I mean -- for a living.

TYLER: Why? So you can say, "Oh, that's what you do." -- And be a smug littleshit about it?

Jack laughs. Tyler reaches under the seat in front of him and lifts a BRIEFCASE.

TYLER: You have a kind of sick desperation in your laugh.

Dogs Asleep


These photos were taken on November 25th, 2011. The dogs were sleeping at the corner of Nurol Plaza in a serious dry cold. Although it is so cold and windy, they look peaceful.

Saturday Blues


This is my work drawn today :) And the one below is my daughter's.

Rabbits


It is a story from a couple of months ago. My 5 years old daugther wanted me to draw a rabbit for her and I did. You can see my rabbit on the right. Then she drew her own rabbit by looking at mine. And it is on the left :)) Don't you think that her rabbit looks like it's possessed by evil? Do you know father Merrin's number? We need an exorcism session :)

Antihero


I love these antiheroes. The first one is Conan the barbarian from my childhood.


 The second is Rorschach of Watchmen.


Third one is a god but not like the spoilt child of Olympus, Zeus :) He is Odin of Asgard. He knows that he will go to Valhalla at the end. To me, the most impressive thing about Odin is he sacrified one of his eyes to drink the Mimir's water which gave him the wisdom of ages.


And the last but not the least: Behzat Ç. of Ankara :) He is a pure antihero for sure.

Isolation

Photo by PalePictures

I usually follow no one. I don't want anybody to follow me, or depend on me. I like healthy transactions between persons. Healthy means no potential for causing expectations from each other: When you're with me, do what you want, if you want to. And please don't expect me to do something because of the things you did with me. The dangerous chain of expectations and responsibilities must be avoided, I think. There is no need for emotional burdens to bear in my life. 

It might sound like a motto of freedom or independence. But it's not. It really is not, because I know the impossibility of defining myself independently from the others. If I am tall, there are short ones around me. If I am bad, there are good persons around me. Every quality that I cast to myself is relative to the qualities of others. It is a trap. The trap of existence. The human condition that we are alone, we are free, we are mortals, we are not going to extract enough meaning from our lives... 

To come back to my story I started above, I can say that I feel isolated most of the times. I could be laughing to you, telling witty jokes etc. but deep in my soul, I am terribly isolated. And unfortunately, I know that there are no peaceful harbours for me to fetch, which means no one can be my salvation other than myself. So I am the only one to deal with myself and cure myself. Besides, the feedbacks that are received from some good friends of mine would be helping me knowing myself in a better way. 

Life is such a thing for me my friends: lonely, chaotic, iterative and evolutionary. And finally, life is better with you :)