Nietzsche on ‘Friend’

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Thinking Ahead: Ashes Scattered on the Bosphorus Whilst This Playing

I can tell you’re feeling lost
Wondering round without a clue
The road you will cross
Take my hand I’ll lead you

Now, I don’t know it all
But if you fall
I’ll be there for you
The things that you can be
Are there for us to see

I believe in you
(I believe in you)
I believe in all the things that you do
(All the things you do)
I believe in you
(I believe in you)
I believe

I’ve seen you and your battle scars
Caught up in these rattling chains
I wonder how you are
Inside this so called fame

I wanna fill your empty shell
Free you from the spell
Throw away the blame

I’m gonna set your soul at ease
Thaw you from the freeze

I believe in you
(I believe in you)
I believe in all the things that you do
(All the things you do)
I believe in you
(I believe in you)
I believe

We’re travelling full speed
We got all that we need
Let’s go out on that ride

It’s time for you and me
And all that we can be

I believe in you
I believe in all the things that you do
I believe in you
(I believe in you)
I believe in all the things that you do
(All the things you do)
I can tell you’re feeling lost
(I believe in you)
(I believe, I believe in you)
I believe in you
(All the things you do)
(I believe, I believe in you)
Yes, I do
I can tell you’re feeling lost
(I believe in you)
(I believe, I believe in you)
I believe in you
(All the things you do)
(I believe, I believe in you)
Yes, I do
I believe
(I believe in you)
(I believe, I believe in you)
I believe in you
I believe in you

Stop

Sometimes life just seems to scream STOP. Stop. Look back. Learn. Do not make the same mistakes over and over again. Process. Do things differently and act in a way that bring no harm to you or others.

This STOP moment can be induced through various means. A health scare. A fall-out with a friend. A mental breakdown. You name it.
It must be a talent to recognise those moments and act accordingly. A talent I seem to lack.

Those moments have come and gone. I always ran. As far away as possible. The other end of the world not excluded. That’s how I deal with it. Run away and turn inwards. Ignore whatever fucked is happening.

A very selfish way of dealing. No thought spared for others, who in hindsight, care for whatever is going on though details of the fuckedupness are never fully enclosed. That is simply the person I am. Or shall I say; I was.

I simply can’t run away anymore. I must face whatever evil lurks in the shadows. I must fight. For survival. Because what’s coming ain’t no bullet that means fuck all. It ain’t no heartbreak that pushes me into the abyss of depression. It ain’t no Freudian shit involving my parents.

It is life. It is survival. A fight my body and soul must fight simply to exist in this breathing organism as it is now.
From that I can not run away. Stop me if I even hint at trying. Scream STOP to remind me.

Désenchantée

Tout est chaos
A côté
Tous mes idéaux des mots
Abîmés…
Je cherche une âme, qui
Pourra m’aider
Je suis
D’une génération désenchantée

Hasret

Senden uzaklarda geçmiyor günler
Duygu hasret, gönül hasret, ben hasret.
Hasret ile yapılmakta düğünüm.
Sevdam hasret, yürek hasret, ten hasret.

Yar olur geceler, duygular düşte
Bana inat tüller her gün cümbüşte
Hayat denen şu karmaşık dövüşte
Durum hasret, gidiş hasret, hal hasret.

Gönül çetrefilli kızsan usanmaz
Kalemler kırılmaz yazsan usanmaz
Aldırış etmesen sussan usanmaz
Gönül hasret, yazı hasret, söz hasret.

Finding The Greatest Love Of All

For days now R has been having this song on repeat. Not because she is trying to continuously pay tribute to the legacy Whitney Houston has left behind. Not because the death of Whitney was such a devastating moment in R’s life since she grew up listening to her songs.
But because this song means so much to R.

Having grown up without any perception of love, the concept of it all. |Not knowing what Love even meant R had never been capable of feeling any kind of love for herself. How could she? Love was simply a word that was overused in so many circumstances she found herself in but never an emotion she felt in reality. Emotional poverty at its worst.

When R heard this Whitney song for the first time she cried. Tears that came from an unknown place, some hollow space situated somewhere within her. R still feels like tearing up every single time this song is played. And since it has been on repeat for the past few weeks, tearing up is just what she did. So many times. Over and over again.

For now R still has no idea what love is. No matter how many philosophers she reads, she still has no clue. Neither does she know how to love herself. That is the brutal honesty that lives within her. She is looking. She is searching for it. Desperately. But for now without success.

If only she had more to lead her on this journey than this song alone.

Drowned World/Substitute for love

Fuck yeah. every single word. you

Story – Only The Beginning

This is not one of those stories that begin with a ‘Once upon a Time’ and end with ‘And they lived happily ever after’. This is the story of a little boy who, many would agree, suffered greatly at the hands of those who should have cared for him, guided him towards adulthood and protected him from forlornness – but ended up growing up knowing little about love and what to expect of life in itself.

For the sake of this boy’s anonymity we shall call him R during the the telling of this story. Many reading through this story might recognise some of the anecdotes, many might think they know who he is and many might identify with him. And you might not participate in any of the former described.

But his anonymity is crucial. Survival, whether emotional or physical, is simply not a joking matter. He needs to remain anonymous, as such, to keep on breathing, to just continue; to remain the person he has now become, having lived through the horrible but formative times of the past and now looking forward to the future, whatever that may bring him, with a passion for life. Never forgetting the struggle that has made him who he is today.

The story begins in a lovely town, then known for its liberal tendencies. It was the first Liberated and Free city of the West but little has remained from those so-called high days except their crumbling positive policies on drugs, sex workers’ and gay rights. It was during those days, in the glorious 1980′s that R was born. He was born to a women and man. Not that that is as such unusual, but to be frank, in hindsight they never even tried to fulfil the duties that society wants and even, in certain terms, obliges parents – mothers and fathers- to obey.

They left him only a few days after he was born, separating their ways for 4 years, during which time they never came to visit or even enquire after him and left him under the care of his maternal grandparents. If only R received care by them. Because of his mixed raced heritage his White grandparents did little more than make sure R would not die of malnourishment.

As one can imagine little R was one of the saddest babies in that part of the privileged world. From what he was told later by other family members who sometimes pretended to show some interest in little R’s life he did not start walking or even talking till he was at least 3 years old. He was mostly known for just sitting in a corner of a room, or hiding behind whatever he could find, with a sadder than sad look in his eyes. It made some of those who came round to his grandparents house, who were intrigued by the little boy, think R was most probably severely autistic or, as they used to call it during those days, retarded.

R himself remembers little of those first four years of his life. Most he repressed for a very long time – but some memories are not meant to be forgotten. And some can’t be, even from that young an age. R sometimes has flashes of emotions running through his body, where he recalls the utter loneliness he felt during those years. The feeling that nobody actually cared about him enough to give him a cuddle was something that was all-enveloping. Love, as such: he did not have a clue what it meant or stood for.

He remembers clearly however that whenever he was dragged out of the house and out into the world, R always felt like everything surrounding him was what he could only describe as abnormal. Nothing he encountered seemed familiar or in any sense comprehensible, since his own little reality felt so different than anything he saw in that scary world outside.

Other children seemed surreal. So different, yet so appealing. The interactions they seemed to have with their parental figures felt like something he wanted desperately though he did not yet know the emotion of jealousy. Deep down R knew he was missing out on something in his own life when he was confronted with the wider world, but could not place any of it. That realisation only made him feel sadder and more withdrawn from what was going on around him – if there was anything happening at all, except the constant ignoring of his mere existence.

The only comfort R had was a little teddy bear a distant relative had once brought over and given to him at age 2. It was probably the only gift R had received before that moment, given out of compassion for how very troubled and sad he looked. That teddy bear unfortunately did not survive very long. His grandmother thought it looked too childish for a boy of 3 to carry around everywhere, took it away one day and threw it away. R looked everywhere he could to retrieve it and upon realisation he would not see it ever again cried for days. Those tears shed were more than just for a thrown away teddy, they stood for everything he felt was missing in his life.

At the age of 3 he finally began to realise that he was not abnormal or retarded. R was just lonely. R was in desperate need for love. R was coming to the conclusion that he wanted someone to care for him, that everything and everyone surrounding him was what was wrong. It wasn’t R that was troubled. It was the surroundings he found himself in that were so emotionally destructive and he is still to this very day grateful it did not destroy him completely, but made him the person he now is.

When R turned 4 his parents returned into his life, pretending that they had resolved the issues they had with each other and pretending even more that they were finally ready to take care of the little boy. They obviously knew little of care since they could not even look after themselves, but off they went, together, a little family, more of a façade than a reality.

For R nothing really changed. Instead of his grandparents it was now his biological parents who fulfilled the role of… neglect is what it would be called now by social services. But because certain things did change, because of the constant moving around to a new city every 6 to 11 months, those state institutions never got involved. Things might have ended up differently if they had, but maybe not. No regrets to be had there. Because if there was anything that their so-called family did very well, it was holding up the pretence that everything was all right. R should thank his mixed raced heritage for that. Being part Irish, Dutch, Turkic and Arabic does that to one. That kind of cultural heritage creates those masks quite naturally.

But R changed with every new situation he found himself in. Every new city, every new school, every new person he met made an everlasting impression upon him. His eyes opened. His mind took in everything it possibly could and more positively, his heart began to feel something more than only sadness. R’s soul had begun to form and, though many horrors were awaiting him on the road, he had begun a process that might possibly lead to something positive. And this is only the beginning of his story.

10 Conversations On Racism I’m Sick Of Having With White People

The following are 10 conversations that I would be happy never to have with white people ever, ever, ever again.

Phenomenal Woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the of my hand,
The need of my care,
‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Maya Angelou