Humanity

Provided from http://bukowski.net/

In a lazy Sunday afternoon, I was just reading a poem, that made me feel the tranquility all the way, by Charles Bukowski and I wanted to share it below:

avoiding humanity

much of my life has been dedicated
to just that.

and still is.

even today at the track,
I was sitting alone between races,
in a dumb dream-state
but dumb or not,
it was mine.

then I heard a voice.
some fellow had seated himself
right behind me.

"I've come where it's nice and
quiet," he said.

I got up, walked about 150 yards
away and sat down
again.

I felt no guilt, only the return of a
more pleasant state of
being.

for decades i have been
bothered by door-knockers,
phone-ringers, letter-writers; and
strangers in airports and bars,
boxing matches, cafes, concerts,
libraries, supermarkets, jails,
hospitals, hotels, motels,
pharmacies, post offices,
etc.

I am not a lonely person.
I don't want to be embraced, cajoled,
told jokes to, I don't want to share
opinions or talk about the
weather and/or etc. and
etc.

I have never met a lively, original
interesting soul by accident and
I don't expect to.

all I have ever met are a herd of
dullards who have wanted to project
their petty frustrations upon me.

for some time women fooled
me.
I would see a body, a face, a
seeming aura of peace and
gentleness, a cool refreshing lake
to splash in,
but once they spoke
there was a voice like
chalk scratching a blackboard,
and what came forth as
speech
was a hideous and crippled
mind.

I lived with dozens of these.

wait.
the phone is ringing now.
but I have a message
machine.
they are leaving
one.

this one wants to see
me.
it wants to invite
itself over.
a reason is given,
some pretense.
it is hardly a worthy
one.
the last words are,
"Please let me know."

why do they want to see
me?
I don't want to see
them.
can't they sense
this?

am I the only one in the
world who finds being
alone to be a blessing, a
miracle?

must I always be kind to
those who would wallow
in my hours?

am i an ugly soul?
unkind?
unappreciative?
misanthropic?
a misogynist?
a crackpot?
a bastard?
a murderer of hope?
do I torture animals?
am I without love?
do I reek of bitterness?
am I unfair?
am I the wrecking ball of dreams?
am I the devil's encore?
do I put glass in the sandbox?
am I without morals or mercy?

if so, why do they want to keep
seeing me?

I would never want to see
anybody like that.

especially
when I am
shaving.
       Charles Bukowski, Betting on The Muse, 1996, pg. 240

Türkan

- Who is she?
- Türkan SAYLAN. She was a physician, a professor, an activist supporting modern & secular life style and working on public health and educational issues very very hard.
- How old is she?
- She was 74 when the photo above was taken. She was born on December 13th, 1935.
- Where is she now?
- She is dead.
- When did she die?
- May 18th, 2009. A year ago.
- What's the cause of her death?
- Cancer was the apparent one ofcourse.
- Any hidden reasons?
- I think "yes". Lack of conscience might be one of supportive reasons. Why do you think she is indicating the "Time Out" in the picture?
- How can I learn more about her?
- You can read the book "Türkan", which is her biography, by Ayşe Kulin.

Türkan by Ayşe Kulin

Dio

Ronnie James Dio passed away on May 16th, 2010.
Just six months after he was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
Dio is Dio. Nothing more to say.
Let's read, listen and bless him:

Heaven and Hell
Sing me a song, you're a singer
Do me a wrong, you're a bringer of evil
The devil is never a maker
The less that you give, you're a taker
So it's on and on and on, it's heaven and hell
Oh well

The lover of life's not a sinner
The ending is just a beginner
The closer you get to the meaning
The sooner you'll know that you're dreaming
So it's on and on and on, oh it's on and on and on
It goes on and on and on, Heaven and Hell
I can tell...

The Family

I am thinking about being a family...

After a jazz concert performed in a grand shopping mall, my wife and daughter went to the cinema to see Tim Burton's last movie, Alice in Wonderland. Then I stepped into an Italian restaurant located in the mall and ordered a pizza margherita and a glass of red wine.

I was alone... Having a book on my table as usual... I was reading a couple of lines then watching the other tables. I like watching people... There were a group of three women living their 40s and a young couple in the restaurant. The book I was reading was about irrationality. I was reading, learning, thinking, listening to others in the restaurant...

After a while, a family of 5 persons came and seated beside my table. A son, 2 daughters, mom and dad...

They were speaking Spanish... At first sight, I loved the scene. The kids were energetic, full of life; father was calm and lofty, mother was cute after giving birth three times. The family was looking awesome indeed.

I really tried to understand this feeling: Having more than 1 child as a man. How can this feel? Creating new individuals and taking care of them. Being a "senior" father and a husband. I tried to empathize...

You are a man, loving a woman, having 3 kids, having a good job and a family car. Is it the real meaning of being a man? Can a man be considered man enough without having a wife or kids?

Being a large family... My external opinion about the large families is that the variety of fresh existences of a young man and a woman becomes the existences of 3 kids who are full of energy. Man gets weaker, woman gets bushed, life goes on... A family with multiple children is like a pot where you melt down your vital energy and then, you pour it into the spirits of your kids. Is this the real meaning of being a man? A strong guy who can hadle toughest issues, who is a warrior, who gives lives and who takes lives when necessary, who can compromise, whose heart is full of love. A man who takes the woman away, who can set up a world and make it last...

Wow! What a man? Are you that sort of a man?

There exist lots of ancient, modern and holy books about being a woman. Their dilemmas, problems, solutions, organizations, clothes, shoes, needs etc. However, I cannot remember well known works of art which examine the man as an object and a subject. Because the man is considered as the default form of human beings. Men are thorough and simple. Nothing more to say about men. Men are men! Gods are men! And men are gods! Plus, being a man is usually defined by using clichés: You can be a family guy, who can sacrifice, or you can be a free spirit, an excursionist who merely amuses himself. Are there any intermediate forms between those 2 stereotypes? Are there passages between them? What if you use those passages to see the other side if they exist?

Nature may show us the right answers. Lions, apes, wolves, birds, whales... How do they found and perpetuate families?  

I know that I have just asked questions in this post. I have got no answers, but the questions.

Oh Life...

I wanna flow like water...

Great life!

P.S. After a couple of days I had written this article, I started to read the book Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution Of Human Sexuality by Jared Diamond and I think this book has got the answers to my questions. 

Schuldiner

December 13th, the day Charles Michael Schuldiner died at the age of 34, in 2001.

To me, his story is the most dolorous one amongst the musicians whom I listened so far...

What I am doing now is listening to his songs: the philosopher, spirit crusher, crystal mountains, voice of the soul, mentally blind and trying not to cry for his very early and sad death.

It might be meaningless to re-introduce a real musical legend here but I will give just a brief information about him.

Althought Chuck Schuldiner had never believed in the ramifications in metal music, he is considered as the creator of death metal, especially technical death metal. He was one of the first performers of death growl (brutal vocal). Schuldiner owned 3 bands in his life: Mantas, Death and Control Denied. He really opened the doors of a new understanding in metal music with his distinguishing guitar technique, brutal sound and touching lyrics. In fact, he was a poet:

Time is a thing we must accept.

The unexpected I sometimes fear.

Just when I feel there's no
       excuse for what happens,
                          things fall into place.
I know there is no way to
        avoid the pain that we must
                    go through, to find the other
                                                half that is true.
Destiny is what we all seek.
Destiny was waiting for you
                                         and me.

I believe behind confusion,
                   awaits the truth for us.
Past the obstacles we face.
I value our life and trust.
Years of questioning why
       things happen the way they
                                          do in life.
Wishing that I could turn back
                 time, so we could join our
                                                      souls.

Gifted, humility, dignity, deep thoughts are the words that connote him to me. His words about himself were "I am a lover of life, friendship and animals" during an interview.

In 1999, Schuldiner consulted a doctor about the constant pain on his neck and he diagnosed with brain cancer. The tumor had been necrotized by radiation theraphy and the rest of the malignant tissues were cleaned by a surgery. Two years later, cancer came back to Chuck and this time he had no money for surgery which was urgent for his case. His insurance company refused to pay for his surgery beacuse this was the second cancer experience of Schuldiner. He started chemotherapy sessions. At the same time, some charity campaingns were organized for him by the heavy metal community in the summer of 2001. However, he had pneumonia because of his weak immune system which was a result of the chemotherapy and passed away, in December 2001. And we cried, cried and cried...

He once said "I would like to live forever, if it was possible" in contrast to his very short but "rich" life.
I wish he would still be making great music for us all.

The Reality

I have been thinking about the conception of life itself since I was at the ages enough of to be considered as an adult. The great questions of the great philosophers: What is life? What are we doing here? Are we going anywhere?

At the exact point where I came so far, I think that we are creating unreal,  mystic shells over the naked real things in life by making up stories comprised of virtual connections between the feelings and the events and the materials in our lives and considering those stories as our personal particular meanings of life. We are always the main characters of those stories. Actually, I am searching the book stores in these days for finding the books, which I can easily understand, about evolutionary psychology. I think the answer is there, in the evolutionary psychology. Something in our evolution motivated our brains to think in this way: Create subjective relations between things. Look, see but don't believe in or realize the sad reality. Imagine the death: We are looking at the dead bodies on and under the ground, watching them becoming into the soil but most of us telling stories about these dead human beings' souls are not dead, the only dead things here are the rotten corpses. The souls are eternal, etc. What is the basis of this belief? We just don't want to feel the cold death. Knowing that one day you will disappear permanently frightens us and our brain starts to create a complex myth to give us hope. And the life goes on...

We are creating those illusions as a protective manner. We locate ourselves in the centre of the universe, consider everything, every animal, plant, planet, galaxy, river, sea, mountain, simply everything is created to serve us. What a selfish approach! And unrealistic. And sick, especially when you open up your eyes and try to see the reality that we are technically not much more different from a bacteria colony. Who says a human has a seperated soul and a body? Who says we will live after death? Who says there will be angels or demons around us in the eternal life after death?

When I am able to see the pure life, as it is, with my eyes wild open and my mind crystal clear, I just relieved. I distinguished that life is unique and short and very very valuable, and we are going to be real deads after our deaths. There is no need for myths. The life need not to be meaninful. No one designed it. The life is life: Chaotic, simple, iterative, evolutionary. Once you realized the truth about the life, that there is no fate and death is not inevitable, you suddenly desire to overcome the death, in my own words, end-of-life disorder. You can feel energetic enough to find scientific ways to beat the death, you don't need to be dead. Some life forms in the universe never die, some of them die but are able to recorver from the death, some are highly regenerative.

(Provided from http://www.handprint.com)

However, we are at the very primitive stages of our evolutionary process. The first modern human appeared on earth about 200,000 years ago. We are living and evolving anatomically and mentally for thousands of years but when you look at the calendar we are using, it is just in the year of 2009. What a dramatic gap! 200,000 is our chronological age and 2009 is our mental age. The ratio, "2009/200,000", might be considered as our intellectual maturity index. Maybe, when our calendars show the year of several hundred thousands, we will be living in a world where there is no need to make up unrealistic stories about our lives. At those maturity levels of humanity, people would live in peace with the pure reality itself.

I wish I was born 10 thousand years later.

Amen :)

A Tiny Miny Picture

This photograph was taken by using my cell phone which has just 1.3 megapixels of resolution rate. Besides, I had to be quick enough to take this photograph without disturbing the ones I was shooting. Therefore, this picture has minimal quality with maximal definition of life itself.

One life, live it!