A Baby Sleep and Don Quichotte

It was a very hard day for me in the middle of which I felt like Don Quichotte (which means: nuts, making a battle in every corner with the unseen enemy, ashamed of her own reactions).

But then the sleep and the trust of the new baby cat helped me to think back about serenity and confort.

I have been working hard to be able to cook in the new kitchen. Today my new home smelled baking börek in the owen.

A special day where at the end of 4 months, I could cook at home.

Many New(s)

I have been quiete for a long while.

1- Me and the cats, we moved to my parents basement flat in October. It took me months to find back the beautiful light on a photo taken.

2- I have started to go to sewing classes. I knew NOTHING about sewing but I sew a skirt on my first lesson and my second project is a coat (!)

3- This is our new family member, our baby chinchilla cat that Thomas acts like a leopard with and roars most of the time.

4- I dated with my primary school friend. All I remembered from those times, was that he was the only one who wanted to become an astraunot like me and that I liked him. It is good to be given the chance to go back and to see although it does not last long, it was a beautiful fly to try.

5- I had a chance to visit Arabia again with the precious company of my new knitting friend Bob.

It is good to feel your feet at the end of all the roads.

New Moon

The new moon tonight is told to symbolise "our feelings of Home, safety, our conditionings from childhood, our capability of intimacy. I reread this now in the colorful and lovely banualagoz.blogspot.com as I entered home and plugged in my computer.

I was late for the class(I was there towards the end) but did not miss at least, Banu's special New Moon course of Kundalini Yoga. The affection and the light of Banu embelished the evening. The united force of the participants was heard, their souls together formed this undescribable magnetic field. In my belated first kundalini yoga class, I was between mockery, maze, awe, admiration, peace, purification and lately tears when it came to pour the water behind and receive the new waters of the river.

Two days ago, I decided to stop playing the music I was bored with, embrace my lesson and get ready for the new day and hear the new songs played.

This afternoon, I met Leyla in my sister's new restaurant and was amazed by her energy. Especially her  unexpected way of grabbing people passing by. Her energy to catch "now" and her pleasure of tasting the fusillini pasta.

The yoga class ended singing all together May the Long Time Sun; once for the ones we were leaving behind(tears), once for our "now" and third and last one for our wishes:

"May the long time Sun shine upon you,

All love surround you

And the pure light within you

Guide your way home."

And I have to leave you behind, you that I wrote posts for, in the hope of creating a body of this absence.

May the pure light within you, guide your way home, because I couldn't.

I have a new day tomorrow. As blue as Leyla's eyes.

And I have my arms. My healthy arms.

Reading Wars of Alexander in Peace, at Home

  

Yesterday, I turned off the tv for awhile. I took my books of world history from my library and had a beautiful time reading the Hellenistic wars of Alexander and Persian and had to have some greek coffee.

This afternoon I went on with my reading upstairs in the bed with the company of Thomas and Chocolate.

I enjoyed the peace in our home while reading about the wars in human history.

The way to read, I copied it from a writer I always felt near: Montaigne. His reading is wondering between his books, with no worries and obligation. It is a pure bliss.

If you are as null as I am in history you may be interested in my books:

1- A Little History of the World by Ernst GOMBRICH which I love because it is written for young readers and is the opposite of boring

2- Toute L'Histoire du Monde by Jean Claude BARREAU that enchants you and grabs you from your world and tells a lot about the world history giving the consequences of the story told iin an easy style, as if chatting with a friend.

3- The Old Testament, the reading of which has always been like listening to a piece of Bach.

4- A World History by William H. Mc NEILL.

My Home as a Tupperware Catalog

I lately found the winter 2008-2009 catalog at home while organising to get ready for the moving. And I remember the day I received it and how magical it felt to see that it was as if Tupperware published my home that season.  This absolute feeling of completeness is called happiness.

We buy products looking at some photos, commercials, catalogs, envying that life in there, that home. And we want, we want to have these people, be these people, have these products, the decoration in the pictures, that life which are there for the photo shoots ad commercials and soon to be demounted.

What if the life you mounted, your home appears to be what those catalog tried to capture?

What if when you loose it?

What if when you find your self able to mount many lives, many beautiful homes out of yourself?

What if all catalogs vanish?

What if you are robust but not necessarily complete all the time?

This is the way I feel today. And this is what this blog has been the log, the story of this humble achievement.

Deniz Was Here

The breakfast table was waiting for Deniz.

F and I, cousins, we were introduced to each other only 2 years ago, through our grand-aunt. So bizarre that we never met before although she studied at my brother's school and her sister at mine around same years.

Anyways, lately but still luckily we became friends and "nice surprise cousins" although she lives abroad.

Last year we organised a family gathering at my home, on F's arrival to Istanbul with her new-born Deniz.

And today they were back.

Chocolate and Deniz became very found to each other and D's tiny index finger was touching Chocolate's nostrils iside his ears to which it was ok with even happy of its new friend's existence.

I liked the particular way they were so gentle to each other.

Thomas though, dared to come downstairs only at his nap time, and I had the impression he was watching him over while he was sleeping defenseless.

We had a peaceful rainy day in together.

and were sure to miss this extraordinary kindness and friendship even at the moment of goodbyes.

Doorstep - Letting In

The reason I was not writing since my birthday post is very understandable: I lost my job again.
When my boss told me the company is not doing well at all and they can not afford my salary that was ok, but when I heard the words "we have to close this position" that, that seemed like a joke.
It will feel as unreal to you if you would read my previous post. 
Well, nothing to do. I gathered my belongings and rushed home to join H that learned about the cancer diagnosis of her mother.

All these words, what do they have to do with a doorstep?
Well it was in that awful rainy weather that I returned home in a hurry with all those bags full of my office stuff, in the doorstep of the building sitting there looking for my keys in all that clutter that from my back I heard this voice for me: "what is that does not exist in a woman's bag?". I turned, this was the waterguy, smiling with his limpid blue eyes. I wiped my cheeks and avoiding my face I said " oh, yes, what is it?", he replied "order!" and laughed.
I knew him from before. His name was Mesut which meant "happy" but somehow I saw the deep sorrow in his immense blue eyes before.
It was only in the lift that he learned about my day. He was sorry to hear. He said that he has blue days as well and that the ones we love are the ones that hurt the more. He told me about how he overcomes bad days like these, with his glass of red wine going to his favorite hill or with her 3 years old daughter.

He was polite and said he had to leave for new orders and left with his warm words. I was sweeping my tears.

I went to the shower to leave soon for H. Best thing is to cry in the shower when you don't know what to do now and you are sort of collapsed.
The door rang, I wondered who it was.
It was him.. with a bar of chocolate and a bunch of water bottles in his other hand.
I hugged. And thanked.
...
The days that followed, I was busy but I had a plan.
But I could not contact him since he was not working for my water company I realised.
It was only after second time where I had this magnet of another water company that dropped when I opened my door of my 2 cat populated home, that I realised it was him and he was trying to contact me as well.
The photo above is taken this morning, my very human touch, M and my cat and my new water bottle.
He was surprised for gift package for his daughter and the small note I wrote for him as well as a letter of appreciation to his company where I explained the reason why I converted to their water.
After I told him my part of the story after he left, he told me his.
The day afte he left, he had a terrible car accident where people were surprised that he survived.
In his hospital room, he saw a dream where he wakes up and sees me as a nurse, my smile and a bar of chocolate that I hand to him saying "this chocolate will make you feel better and ease your pain."
What a beautiful story to write back to you..
What a life..
Such a healing of strangers, in a doorstep.
Where indoors, it is the ones that we love the most, that hurt the most

Making A Home, So Far Away from Home

I have joined to sis' friends to be together for a special sunday breakfast in Polonezköy in the occasion of a good friend 's birthday

Polonezköy is in the countryside in the very north of Istanbul

ut what makes Polonezköy so special and so different than the texture of Istanbul is not only the greenery,

The history of the village is quite interestng. It was built as an emigration center to Polish in 1842. So far away from home..

Hence the name Polonezköy which means Polish Village in Turkish.

"At the beginning, the village was inhabited by 12 people, but there were no more than 220 people when the village was most populated. In the course of time, Adampol developed and was flooded by a lot of emigrants from the rebellion in November 1830, during the Crimean War in 1853, and by runaways from Siberia and from captivity in Czerkieska. The first inhabitants busied themselves with agriculture, raising and forestry. After Polish independence in 1918, many returned to Poland. Before World War II, the first tourists already began to arrive to the village. The remaining inhabitants of Adampol (Polonezköy) took Turkish citizenship in 1938."

Still the inhabitants speak the Polish language and the signs are both in Turkish and Polish

Today Polonezköy is an excellent escape for Istanbullers like us on weekends.

The spring, the unaging spring is already here. I enjoyed my short walks to take photos and caught up the birthday wishes at the end of their long wee session.

The 100th Post - Biography of A Home

This is my 100th post.
I have published 99 before.

I had a lot to say and I still have more.

In order to tell something, one has to have phrases. What makes us build phrases? What makes us share them here?

I worked so much on this post but I can not express my self as  do not know how much shall I let myself say?

I can not say.
But at least I can share some photos here.

I first started a blog two years ago on 27th of February 2008 in my mother tongue Turkish but even the first post made me realise how far I was from my dream home.

In April 2008 there was a visit to the wish-hill where we climbed thinking about our wishes and did not speak to each other.

The wish hill seemed to work out miraculously..

I remember the first day I visited this apartment

I came from the office in a lunch break, I was so sleepless, so in love, that I secretly, desperately fell asleep on the bed. I could not believe I could afford it. Then my officemate H loved the appartment and convinced me to try.

So I moved in.

Head over heels..

A story I am not able to tell. There is a hole in me that I can not put to words.

An Empty Nest

Yesterday, on my way to the farmers market, I fell on my head and back quite brutally , on the stony asphalte, at the icy end of a slope. Not only the physical pain of my head but I felt so ashamed as tha cars stopped to the incident. And sweeping my tears from my cheeks I realised I suddenly felt so uniquely alone and felt the urge to shed more tears.

I felt as if being alone is "fearful in an offending way / Sometimes one gets exhausted of living captive on a blade". This how I felt it just the way  Atilla ILHAN describes "loving" in one of his very well-known poems*. 

Now and then I am asking myself, although my home is blessed with friends, with dreams came true, joy and love like my cats jumping each other, is there an empty nest inside of me? Is it an obligation?

Does purification bring isolation?

The back of my head and my neck hurts still, but not these thoughts anymore as I am putting them down here.

* - I AM OBLIGED TO YOU

I am obliged to you, you can not know
Like a nail this is how I am keeping your name in my head
Your eyes get bigger and bigger
I am obliged to you, you can not know
I am warming up inside with you

The trees getting ready for the fall
Is this city, that old Istanbul?
The clouds shredded in the darkness
The street lights are on all in a sudden
The smell of the rain on the sidewalks
I am obliged to you, you are missing out

Loving is sometimes fearful in an offending way
One gets exhausted suddenly, on a late afternoon
Of living captive on a blade
Sometimes
His passion breaks his hands
Makes out many lives from his living
Whichever door he knocks sometimes
The sneaky whirling of loneliness at his back

A gramaphone is on in Fatih
Plays a Cuma from the old times
I wish I could listen at the corner perpetually
If only I could bring you an unused sky
The weeks crumble in my hands
Whatever I do, whatever I hold, wherever I go
I am obliged to you, you are missing out

Maybe you are the child in blue dots
Oh noone knows, noone knows you
A cargo vessel oozes away in your deserted eyes
Maybe you are taking a flight in Yesilkoy
You are soaked, you have goose pumps
May be you're blind, you're broken
The evil wind hurls your hair

Whenever I think of a living,
May be hard around this table of volves
Without a shame, without getting our hands dirty
Whenever I think of a living
I say shush and I begin with your name
Your secret seas moves inside me
No, there is no other way
I am obliged to you, you can not know

Atila ILHAN
Ben Sana Mecburum
through my modest translation

Home : A Shelter Under the Snow

in the loving memory of A. Kuruc

Well it snowed, snowed, snowed..

We had to stay in. For days..

drank a little..

ate a little

were bored a little

starwarsed a little

and laughed a lot..

This snow break..we lived it so well.

A Home Was His Dream

We met up.

He called. At the end of a long silence, he did, he called. After I met him by coincidence in the street in Greece with a young girl. After by the same chain of coincidence we returned back in the same bus, me, him and this new girl, it was a week after....

She came up.

She was sparkling.

She .. was amazed. That big smile on her face.. She couldn't eat the fajitas I so studiously prepared for her. She couldn't do much, but told me about last night.

She has liked him for years. She trusted him for months as a buddy. She worked with him in two different companies.

And then last night..

It was hot. It was August.

He was married.

..

He never called her and that shock of seing him with another in Greece.

Photo courtesy of i-gunler.com

So we met up in the January cold.

He was busy with the relocation and settling down after divorce. Messy as usual. This neat figure. He chose the vegetarian restaurant in the Cookie Street Zencefil where we had a nice evening, a good dinner and a sincere chat.

He was the pratogonist I told, like those ones in Hemingway novels: cool, good but unsuffiently heroic, somehow egoist, the other end of interventionist. And I was the narrator. He was just passing by my window .

He frequented many while keeping her wife's abandon secret.

He frequented many and my friend's sparkling eyes must have been among many. Just among others.

And now he was left by one.

His eyes were emptied this time, in the vast plains of not knowing what to do.

..

I listened.

My pratogonist was crawling and trying to find the answers. He was lost.

I asked him to leave the names and the complexity of so many concurrent relationships. I asked him to answer me about what he would like to do.

The surprise of his answer reminded me it was a life and not a novel:

"A home" he said, "I wanted a home, build my own family".

My heart melted, leaving the advocacy of my pure sparkling eyes girl friend  that was betrayed by his absence and his adventure in Greece.

My heart melted.

My hands that moved to hold his, froze on their way. I couldn't get that close to him,

I didn't dare.. to touch the wounded beast.