Untold

Click on the image to enlarge.

I was thinking about the fundemantals of human-to-human communication for a while. I was trying to understand the system and the dynamics of the data traffic between two individuals looking at each other and trying to understand each other. Using words, symbols, mimics, postures and silence to transmit your messages to the one in front of you. Is it really possible? In practice, it seems possible because we can communicate with the ones around us somehow, in our daily lives.

What I am going to put forth is not a "so authentic" approach indeed, but my point of action is that sometimes we miss the meaning of the untold area in our communication.The way I portray the situation is given in the above picture. Once our brains started to work (prenatal period), we begin structuring our mental realm in an increasing fashion, through the time we spent from the scratch, until now. In the very moment of now, we have a cognitive potential carried and developed from our past. However, for the most of the human beings, it is not likely to be aware of their cognitive potential fully because we, humans, forget, misinterpret, misremember etc. :) So you see above that the area of the awareness is a subset of the cognitive potential which includes the mental reflections of our past and the time being. As we do not tell everything we are aware of, the amount of the things we talk about must be a subset of the things we are aware of.

On the other hand, we have the realm of the untold, where the most of our mental existence resides. Besides, from the time slice we are living in, we sometimes design future and talk about our projections. And in the most of the cases, our envision is not sharp. To be honest, we usually say things far from the reality to come in future. In other words, we are future-blinds. To sum up, the area of the told consists of three different groups:

1. The words about the past: We can't remember properly, we can't retrieve information rationally.
2. The words on the time being: We are not fully aware of our very current state.
3. The words on the future: We have no idea about the "real" future so we bullshit a lot :)

As you can see, told is not so important. It does not respresent who you really are. Moreover, told is usually designed, it's like acting, it's the way we tell our stories to each other. We connect distinct and discrete things, persons, happenings, sayings etc. and make up subjective stories to tell, to believe, so on. We usually talk in order to justify the things we have done, to translate our past actions into explanations which are terribly subjective and far from the truth.

Please think about the burden we are carrying from our pasts; all the sorrows, surprizes, excitements, happiness, all the action, accidents, experiences. All those have reflections in our minds and, at the same time, this process (litearally our lives) shape us physically: the way we stand, we look, we cry, we touch etc. Therefore, the untold dominates our existence and we have to learn communicating through the untold. The secret is there. Fortune tellers and "so called" psychics have got this talent of cold reading and if they can do this well, mixed with hot reading, they can easily convince people that they've got super-natural powers.  

I know that I am too assertive by stating that the powerful key of the communication is hosted in the untold area. Especially, being aware of my conclusion is contradicting with Martin Heidegger's prompts a big question mark in my mind. Heidegger was saying that:

"Language is the house of being, which is propriated by being and pervaded by being."

Actually, in a way, we are talking about different things. Language, literally, might be the house of being as a tool but the sum of the told words for a being cannot be considered as a language, I think.

To make the story short, I am saying that just try to read the things other than you're told. The silent being hides a lot to dig. You may come up with a fortune or a rotten soul after you dig it.

Stop.

Beast

It's another Sunday afternoon and I am reading Charles Bukowski for soothing my soul.
I am going to share the poem, "Beast", from the book What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire, part 3. The Turkish version of the book is Kimse Bilmez Ne Çektiğimi.
I am writing both the original and the translated versions of the poem below.
Enjoy.

my beast comes in the afternoon
he gnaws at my gut
he paws my head
he growls
spits out part of me

my beast comes in the afternoon
while other people are taking pictures
while other people are at picnics
my beast comes in the afternoon
across a dirty kitchen floor
leering at me

while other people are employed at jobs
that stop their thinking
my beast allows me to think
about him,
about graveyards and dementia and fear
and stale flowers and decay
and the stink of ruined thunder. 

my beast will not let me be
he comes to me in the afternoons
and gnaws and claws
and I tell him
as I double over, hands gripping my gut,
jesus, how will I ever explain you to
them? they think I am a coward
but they are the cowards because they refuse to
feel, their bravery is the bravery of
snails.

my beast is not interested in my unhappy
theory—he rips, chews, spits out
another piece of
me.

I walk out the door and he follows me
down the street.
we pass the lovely laughing schoolgirls
the bakery trucks
and the sun opens and closes like an oyster
swallowing my beast for a moment
as I cross at a green light
pretending that I have escaped,
pretending that I need a loaf of bread or
a newspaper,
pretending that the beast is gone forever
and that the torn parts of me are
still there
under a blue shirt and green pants
as all the faces become walls
and all the walls become impossible.

Translation is by Avi Pardo, as usual.

öğleden sonra gelir canavarım,
bağırsaklarımı kemirir,
başımı pençeler,
hırlar,
parçalarımı tükürür

öğleden sonra gelir canavarım,
başkaları fotoğraf çeker ve
piknik yaparken.
öğleden sonra gelir canavarım,
pis pis sırıtır bana
kirli mutfak döşemesinden.

başkaları düşüncelerini durduran
işlerde çalışırken
benim canavarım onu
düşünmeme izin verir,
mezarları ve ruh sıkıntısını,
çürümeyi ve harcanmış yıldırımların
iğrenç kokusunu. 

rahat vermiyor bana canavarım,
öğleden sonra geliyor,
kemiriyor ve pençeliyor,
ve tanrım, diyorum ona ellerim karnımın
üzerinde, iki büklüm, seni nasıl
açıklayacağım onlara? benim bir korkak
olduğumu düşünüyorlar,
ama asıl onlar korkak olan
çünkü hissetmeyi reddediyorlar, salyangoz
cesareti onlarınki.
canavarım ilgilenmiyor mutsuzluk
teorimle-bir parçamı daha koparıyor,
çiğniyor, tükürüyor

kapıdan çıkıp yürümeye başlıyorum,
peşimden geliyor.
kıkır kıkır gülen güzelim okul kızlarının
yanından geçiyoruz,
fırıncı kamyonlarının
yanından geçiyoruz,
ve güneş bir an için istiridye gibi
açılıp kapanarak yutuyor
canavarımı
yeşil ışıkta karşıya geçip
kurtulmuşum gibi yaparken,
ekmeğe ya da gazeteye ihtiyacım varmış gibi yaparken,
canavar sonsuza dek gitmiş gibi yaparken,
benden kopardığı parçalar
hala orada, mavi gömlekle yeşil pantolonun
altındaymış gibi yaparken,
bütün yüzler duvarlara,
bütün duvarlar imkansızlığa dönüşürken.

Do you sometimes think of your beast(s) my friends?