April, 25, 2023:
The majority of my dissertation has been physically written in a variety of roasteries and cafés – Timbertrain, Pallet and 49th Parallel in particular. For some reason, I work much better surrounded by people in public environments, where stuff is happening around me like a sort of white-noise that infiltrates not only the auditory sphere but also the visual field; a white-sensation promising a contrived work environment. This is similar to how I (and many of my friends) operated in Istanbul, always dwelling in crowded, well-lit cafés, like clumps of dried viscera sheltering in a fluorescent morgue. Pallet on Main Street will always have a special place in my heart; definitely the best location in Vancouver and its staff were delightful; we even bid them farewell when moving away. Also, a special shout out to Grounds on Commercial Drive where I spent most of the cold winter months; good vibes and so many hours of writing/editing. It was good vibes primarily because it fostered a cozy atmosphere with its warm, yellow-tinged phosphorescence, the periodic olfactory visitations of cinnamon mixed with freshly-ground coffee, and the general white-noise of mundane conversation that padded the soundscape, all with the awareness that outside, on the other side of the window, snowflakes were assimilating the world and momentarily returning the juvenile wonder of frozen starlight to our lives. It’s also great that it is deemed socially acceptable to just purchase a single black coffee and occupy a table for several hours. I recall how in Berlin the exact opposite was true; places would have these annoying signs saying “no laptops” etc. Thank god I’ve never seen that here.
It’s interesting to consider in general how different my life is from how it had been at Boğaziçi University; I suppose this is to be expected when circumnavigating half the globe in pursuit of a doctorate. For instance, in Istanbul I had been drawn to political discourse and activism, however cynically it may have been, and actually exerted a mental and physical effort to break the inertia of conformism that now seems to drift through my very bones in Canada. For here I cannot really relate to any of the stuff that is deemed relevant. Marching for the climate or for a pay-rise for SFU’s teaching support staff (despite being one of them) just does not motivate me the same way that marching to stop the dismantling of my university or the erasure of democracy and human-rights had. Or how protesting against my country’s military intervention and indiscriminate bombing of Syria had felt. It is also morbidly amusing how in the West people are actually able to protest without fearing for their lives, without any real fear of getting maimed, and without any real social repercussions for it. People are not kicked out of university or barred from a job here for attending a peaceful protest. This is morbidly amusing because I have often encountered naïve ‘activists’ in the West (both in Canada and in Europe) who make assumptions about non-Western places based on their own comfortable experiences. Why don’t the people of X (country) just protest and object to Y (deplorable practice or person)? Yes, indeed my genius activist friend, while you protest with the protection of democracy and human rights etc. in absolute comfort, the rest of the world is often forced into silence for survival. And it’s not a matter of personal heroism either, because people have families, children and other liabilities that would be targeted in retribution if necessary. I think just this whole contrast frustrates me so much that I feel absolute apathy towards the fungal bloom that is ‘activism’ in the West.
There is also, of course, the whole cavalcade of green activism that is in principle a noble cause but which in places like Canada becomes a complete joke. I see so many people who reject public transport and pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere with their private vehicles because they prefer the comfort, people who heat up massive stand-alone, multi-storey houses using huge amounts of power and resources because they cannot fathom living in a slightly smaller and more sustainable space, people who buy the latest phone-models or other electronics the moment they release and discard their perfectly functioning older models with no respite, all the while these same people utilize a metal straw instead of a plastic one to ‘save the turtles’ and suddenly they see themselves as a bastion of green activism?! Meanwhile I am too poor (as a graduate student) to afford such luxuries like having my own metal straw and therefore I am forced to unwrap a plastic straw under the disapproving glares of the same people. Little are they aware that as they return to their 2-storey houses using their large private vehicles, I am shivering in Canada’s pitiful public transportation on route to my tiny basement-abode where I will try to concentrate on my dissertation to receive a paycheck to survive the exorbitant grocery prices of this city. Who is the greener person in this scenario? I mean, no need to get idealistic, of course being poor is the greenest thing a person can do. Being too poor to fly anywhere, not owning car or anything much, and barely heating a room up immediately bring a person’s net emissions to negligible levels. So, I have no sympathy for so-called climate activists here who refuse to recognize that their very lifestyle is the biggest problem and instead alleviate their consciousness with petty little actions of negligible benefit like using a few green products or a metal straw in publicly visible places. On the bus I often gaze out the window into the freezing void, and I always notice so many poor souls looking up at these aforementioned cubes of well-dressed hypocrisy, trying and failing to emulate this top-heavy charade of “activism” from conditions of misery and entrapment. What a sad sight from so many angles…
May 20, 2023:
Finally, back home. After my successful defence on the 12th of May, I left Vancouver on the 16th and arrived in Istanbul on the 17th (since it took a godforsaken 18 hours to get here, plus there’s a beautiful 11-hour time difference). I flew the first leg with Selin (to Frankfurt) whence she diverged to Portugal for a week’s holiday with her cousins. I hate long-haul flights (and travelling in general), though of course it’s so much less torturous when travelling with Selin. It’s also such a waste of money, almost worse than the scam that is paying rent. Unfortunately, I cannot even claim this to be my final trans-Atlantic flight since I will have to head to the Vancouver Turkish consulate at some point in the coming months to deal with (read: nullify) my military service requirements. Yet another beetling crag looming over my head, which I need to somehow evade lest it crush me under its weight. I mean what sort of a primordial claptrap even is compulsory military service in this day and age? Is it even useful in a real war? Doubt it. But then I remember the Rzhev Meat Grinder, and my doubts get a little shaky. Speaking of, I just came across this gem of a letter that Howard wrote to his friend Rheinhart Kleiner in 1917: “Some time ago, impressed by my entire uselessness in the world, I resolved to attempt enlistment despite my almost invalid condition. I argued that if I chose a regiment soon to depart for France; my sheer nervous force, which is not inconsiderable, might sustain me till a bullet or piece of shrapnel could more conclusively and effectively dispose of me.” He apparently indeed tried to enlist and even passed the physical exam, but his mother prevented him from going: “(she) has threatened to go to any lengths, legal or otherwise, if I do not reveal all the ills which unfit me for the army.”
With the defence finally out the way, I’ve started imagining ways to spin some fiction out of my research material. But before weaving this to fruition I must focus on finishing the final edits and getting the manuscript archived in the university library. With my mind embedded in Medieval port cities for the last 5 years, I have come to truly comprehend the importance of ports as gateways to the wider world. Bustling harbors functioned as conduits of not just commerce, but also of social and cultural exchange; when merchant vessels coming from all around the Ionian, Aegean and Black Sea littorals docked for a few days – perhaps waiting for suitable weather before continuing onwards – sailors would disembark, encounter and exchange views and goods with dockworkers, local traders, and townsfolk. Pre-modern ports were thus particularly lively interaction points where people and ideas met, and endless opportunities presented themselves. They were gateways to the great unknown abyss extending beyond the limits of what was familiar. Strange goods, people, ideas, and customs slipped through these ports to enter the familiar. This notion carries the very fabric of an eldritch tale. During my teaching postings at SFU we covered the isolated and cut-off ports of Newfoundland in Eastern Canada during the 1800’s – again, similar ideas abound in these small, isolated fishing enclaves facing the colossal ocean shelf. When I have time, I wish to write a tale (perhaps in epistolary format, which is always suitable for the genre) revolving around old fishermen, strange creatures they encounter, and the eerie weather or tidal events they witness in one of these isolated, weather-beaten port-towns. What do they dredge up from the depths? How does the lighthouse attendant retain his sanity all alone as he faces the illimitable darkness that calls him as crashing waves batter his abode every night while the fishermen and townsfolk have all left to huddle behind closed doors and closed eyes? I feel that despite being a popular sort of literary setting this sort of scene will forever retain its cosmic mystery, just the same way a dark forest will always have potential things lurking in it.
As a Byzantinist, I suppose it makes most sense to incorporate a tale with the historical specifics of the Middle Ages as its backdrop – despite my fascination with the Late-Victorian era. Fishing was critical for Byzantium since its center of gravity was a mega-port-city. Dockhands, peddlers, sailors, longshoremen, fishermen, foreigners, and various guild and gang members all milled around the fish-smelling jetties that lined the colorful southern shores of the Golden Horn. Mackerel, anchovies, mullet, tuna, lobsters, shrimps, oysters, scallops, and the like were brought in and sold in well-regulated markets across the city. It is particularly the night-fishing techniques practices by the most adventurous fishermen that spark my interest. A basket with fuel in it would be lit and dangled over the edge of the boat causing fish to coalesce around the light source – of course this required it to be otherwise completely dark outside. It is likely these night sailors were involved in black market schemes to avoid the taxes on fish imposed in most large port-cities – otherwise the dangers inherent in such endeavors would not be worth it. Another theory is that certain particularly ambitious fishermen would set out several hours before dawn to out-pace other regulars and net the most lucrative catches. One can only imagine what a small boat carefully navigating the dark waters around the Cyanean Insula may have witnessed in the dead of night. How many fire baskets were pre-maturely extinguished out of fear at strange perturbations on the water surface? What sort of tales did these brave fishermen, many of whom would have perished in those tarry waters, recount about the eldritch phenomena they witnessed out at sea? Did methane flares, eerie lightening clouds, or the fearsome storms that rocked their small water-logged vessel to its limits cause loss of sanity only on a local level? Or is it possible that such fears seeped into the hereditary make-up of the entire populace inhabiting its accursed shoreline? Constantine of Rhodes and Arethas of Caesarea – among a host of other contemporaries – would certainly agree that something haunted the shores of the Black Sea and infected the minds of the poor souls who dwelt along its meromictic waters. Tales of Byzantine fishermen trading with Scythian nomads up the Dnieper River for pelts and occult objects of various magical properties further highlight the function of small fishing vessels as conduits that diffused the unfamiliar into the familiar. Whether it was the twisted, semi-organic masses dredged up from some long-lost shipwreck, the hellish talismans of unknown origin acquired from the barbarians of the North, or some particularly strange looking creature hinting at extra-terrestrial incantations that was fished up from the baleful waters of the Pontos – all such encounters introduced figments of the outside to the familiar world-space of Byzantium.
I am also interested in adding various elements of Medieval, or specifically Byzantine, occultism to such a potential story. Because what can be more interesting than combining the hopelessness of a night-fisherman stranded at sea while formless creations of the depths chase it insidiously and persistently with the tales of witchcraft and necromancy that lurked on hidden pages inside outlawed Medieval tomes? One can only imagine what it must have felt like to be alive when scientific thought had not yet disproven the marvellous terrors that lurk in the darkest caverns of mankind’s mind. That must have been what being truly alive feels like… To peruse the Byzantine grimoires referred to as Hygromanteia or Kyranides, to behold the cursed tomes known as De Operatione Daemonum, Errores Gazariorum, or the Malleus Maleficarum, or to revel in the katabatic verses of the Orphic Hymns or the moon-born madness of the Sibylline Oracles – if only it was possible to read these today as they had been read back then. There is nothing more fascinating, to my mind, than trying to fathom the thought-world of a Medieval village suspended in a cosmic struggle between the diabolic magic of witchcraft and necromancy, and the miracles, amulets and ‘good’ occultism that tried desperately to keep it all at bay. The clash of titans; titans gibbering and howling in the caverns of our ancestors’ minds – a true cosmic struggle that played out on a cellular level. What sort of hereditary remnants of all this remain within us today? Even on a more basic level – can you imagine witnessing a lightning storm without knowing anything about the science behind it? One can only fathom how amazing that would be. That’s what I crave, but sadly empiricism and ‘knowledge’ have dulled the mysteries and wonders of the world in an irrevocable way. I feel I’m in a Stockholm syndrome with knowledge; despite being certain that increasing quantities of it have no benefit whatsoever, I cannot help myself from plumbing it to eternity. However, despite the death of a lot of magic there is always something unknown lurking in the universe – thankfully for our sanity – and currently the outer cosmos or bioluminescent ocean-floor can still cultivate this same sense of wonder (e.g., SETI initiatives).
May 30, 2023:
Having returned to Istanbul, my home city that will forever line my dreams with the power of unfettered nostalgia anchored to the good-old-days before one’s mind declares war on itself; when colours were more vivid, when emotions were of unburdened purity, and when the carefree adventurism of youth clouded all in a haze of enjoyment – having arrived here a few weeks ago, I have decided to re-explore some of its twisting streets to see if anything remains of its past allure. Moreover, I wish to (re)visit some of the main Byzantine sites before they completely crumble out of neglect, general decadence, and religious vandalism. I do not have the necessary minima of brain cells to engage with the election results of the other day, so will refrain from commenting aside from saying that the future of this fine stretch of real estate is looking grim. I cannot believe I took the time and effort to go to the Turkish consulate in Vancouver and vote for this clown-show; what a hoax – a bigger one than those blasted auroras! Anyway, yesterday I therefore took the train to Vezneciler and embarked on a long tour along the whole old-city region, documenting and envisioning its bustling Medieval times. I began at the church of Theotokos Kyriotissa, currently the Kalenderhane Mosque – here I took pictures of its exquisite dome despite signs informing me that this was prohibited. The funny thing is that the ignorant clods were praying at an odd angle towards the side-wall since the building, originally a church, was not pivoted towards the Kible. As their backs were turned to me, I was able to ignore any warning or sensibility associated with modern rulesets and photograph all I wished.
I then wandered the old Mese route, passed the fora of Theodosius and Constantine, gazed at the dilapidated remnants of the Lauseion, St. Euphemia’s Martyrion and the Palace of Antiochos, before finally analyzing the Hippodrome region, the Milion and Hagia Sophia. Holy Wisdom herself represents a tough one for me. While I am upset at the state of its interior – particularly since it was opened to worship again – I am also triggered by the Turkophobic commentary that this issue brings up when discussed in international settings (on Reddit for example). It’s a double-edged sword; here in Istanbul I feel like arguing with the ignorant masses and risk sounding like a complete phil-Hellenic shill for Constantinople and the megali idea, while anywhere else I appear like an ardent defender of Turkish rights over the city and all its monuments and legacy. Before I know it, I’m pointing out Western hypocrisies or cultural-differences in response to any criticism directed against my Oriental brethren – especially since it is very rare that a critical commentary on this situation does not curve into one of a broader nature involving some form of twisting, squirming attempt at covertly declaring Western moral superiority. Labelling this sort of thing as racism – regardless of whether it should be classified as such – is the best and lowest form of counter-attack due to the tremendous fear most educated, liberal Westerners have of this word, particularly when it is delivered to them by a ‘third-worlder’. Unfortunately, I find myself resorting to these petty mind-games out of annoyance at how out-of-touch with reality some people sound when voicing their criticisms of Turkey. It’s therefore best if I just do not engage with the fate of Hagia Sophia or any other ancient or Byzantine historical remnant here. Apparently, I am a space-based creature, morphing into a defender of wherever I am not. I have no idea if all this is due to my dual bloodline (digenes) or simply just a part of human nature – I am inclined to think the latter.
All that being said, I do sometimes feel that many Western countries (particularly what I have seen in Canada) are playing with fire, testing the limits of the Paradox of Tolerance, for there is so much bullsh*t that is tolerated. It’s almost funny how the West is dismantling itself from the inside out. After all, humanity is a large protoplasmic rainbow that lacks color-vision, and which swims hysterically against an illusory riptide; a riptide that is characterized by an obsession with an overdue ‘Day of Judgement’ when all the vast gray-seas of unmeaning are meant to magically dissipate. A time when both hero and harlequin are nailed to the doom-board of reckoning, whence only one emerges unscathed; when all the white-knights of Order rise against the scheming agents of Chaos and snatch back the promised lands, when the dreamlands of Hy Brasil and Atlantis sunder the sea with their gleaming marble columns, and when a cerulean haze covers the globe thrice-over masking all the evil and decadence oscillating between us and the stars. These sorts of wretched, pitiful, and wholly miserable fantasies of group-righteousness animate many a vegetative alt-right’s cranial interior. These resplendent thoughts of meaningless superiority pulsate in a quivering vibrato, driving locomotion and other miserable daily activities in the mentally lazy clod. Speaking of insanity, it is also amusing to cackle in delirium at the diffused power of capitalism that is now so engrained in world-thought that it has completely supplanted any previous renditions of what normal work or life ethics may have been. Someone earned more money so now they get to live in a bigger, better house than someone else etc. – what? What does earning even mean? I wonder if our primordial ancestors who slithered and writhed around magma-crusted lakes had the molecular fabric to comprehend this modern invention? Do we? Anyway, what do I know, I’d rather observe, preferably in silence; there’s no need to create more entropy on this shit-riddled sphere hurtling through the black vacuum.
June 6, 2023:
This week’s the anniversary of our Tenerife trip, as I’ve been informed by Google Photos. Now that was a truly evocative holiday, I still shudder as I think of Teide, the massive volcanic mountain in the middle of Tenerife, which truly defines the island with its abrupt 4000m ascent. Keep in mind this is a relatively small island at sea-level, and then, glancing up you suddenly have 4 kilometers of volcanic rock towering over you. Such a massive altitude difference confined to so small an area – that also happens to be suspended in the middle of the ocean – emits a mood-vector unlike anything else. I fear one cannot feel this absolutely ego-dismantling sense of human negligence at an inland mountain, even with potentially greater absolute elevation. It is truly fascinating to behold. Roads can’t pass through the center of the island for this reason; all transport is around its rim – making it quite complicated to travel around. The weather is also unlike any I have witnessed, the sheer extent of micro-climates is staggering. Due to the mountain creating a cloud-break, the northern and western parts of the island are lush, green, often cloudy, and quite frequently rainy; while its southern and eastern parts are completely barren and parched, having no flora whatsoever. It’s here that a large number of wind turbines are scattered about. We stayed in a little fishing village called El Poris near where all these turbines lurked. Each turbine has a small red light on its face, and at night, owing to the relative lack of artificial light elsewhere, they look quite eerie; hundreds of creaking, slowly spinning constructions with barely-visible blades dancing beneath a maddening dim tinge of red phosphorescence.
One night we got stranded waiting for a bus at around 1 AM in the middle of absolute nowhere on the edge of a road (near a different small fishing village) and with no light sources anywhere to be seen, except for the godforsaken red demons on the hills. No vehicles were passing by; it was just total emptiness. The alcohol saturating our blood was the only reason I think, in hindsight, that we retained our wits. As we were walking in desolation, Selin began flailing her arms around, supposedly emulating something that I was to guess. After much laughter, for this was completely unexpected, it turned out it was meant to be a lighthouse pivoting its beam around; video documentation exists of this beyond-hilarious incident in which she is reportedly only slightly tipsy. We eventually got to the bus-stop and there alongside us was a Venezuelan factory-worker with whom we conversed for several hours using a combination of universal sign language and various vaguely Spanish-sounding noises. I’m half-certain that he told us about the island’s function as a conduit of South American migration to the Eurozone. Due to the summer solstice celebrations (apparently a big thing here) buses had been cancelled or rerouted – or so we learnt from the driver who eventually arrived about two hours later. An energetic chaos had engulfed the main urban hubs. We had indeed witnessed the carnivalesque costumes and massive bonfires the previous night up in Santa Cruz. Even though our small village was far away from main areas, the whole island smelled of burnt wood as massive pillars of black smoke were reaching skywards all over the island. Fierce wind-gusts were winnowing a lot of this smoke southeast towards us. We were nearly forced to close the windows that night, but decided the fresh sea-air would counter-balance it eventually. One of the best parts of Tenerife was sleeping with the window open and hearing the waves crashing against the rocks all night. It’s funny how that eternal struggle between water and rock is so soothing to hear – one batters the other without respite. Unfortunately, there in Tenerife I came to realize that the sound of the sea is the best sound to fall asleep to, much better than even rain; for it is stable, constant, and permanent.
June 10, 2023:
I often hear the ignorant masses howling around and raising a ruckus at the supposed juvenility or uselessness of games – voicing their worthless, unasked opinions. This blend of ignorance and prejudice is common in older folk, rooted in their conservative opinions on leisure and conduct and their severe technological illiteracy. Yet this view is also uttered by a particularly slimy sort of humanoid – generally of business or academic ‘acumen’ – who despite having no major technological or generational deficiency, sees himself above the masses in how he perceives life, but (in a twist of irony) manages to remain below the masses by this very same metric. For what purpose does life have but to behold art – both created by nature and by its various organic subsections? Trying to ascribe some higher form or mission to our brief tenancy within these rotting, cellular cages is indeed amusing. Humanity is essentially a small perturbance that claws desperately and hysterically at the fringes of the ultimate void for a sense of self; a negligible and pathetic subatomic fluctuation that is absolutely imperceptible within the abyss. The pseudo-Camusian inquiry, “should I kill myself today or have a cup of coffee?” is essentially a meaningless question, since there is logically no difference; for the difference lies outside the bounds of logic, and within the realm of Epicurean exposition. One way of thinking of this is such: human sentience requires certain conditions to be fulfilled, continually and perpetually, for its existence to remain a positive quality (i.e., desires and needs). The best-case scenario is to continually satisfy all such conditions, yet the moment all of them are not met, then not possessing sentience becomes the more logical state of existence. And since something that does not exist cannot yearn for existence, and since being sentient is a liability loop bound to fail at some future point, immediate non-existence is by definition the most sensible choice for any sentient being. So where does logic get us? Suicide. There is no other logical choice to ‘win’ the game of life. This is the reason that we must look beyond analytical reasoning and into other forms of argumentation to justify continued existence (enter games, and other such phenomena). Anyway, more on that later, or perhaps never since it is a complete time-waste to even engage with this sort of pseudo-reasoning.
Returning to game-media; the crux of the matter, in my opinion, lies in the cultivation of suggestive prowess. I believe the true beauty and exhilaration of electronic games is hidden in their evocation of certain moods and in their conveying of small glimmers of suggestive mental phenomena – much like any other art form would strive to do. It’s this suggestive power which can transport us to a different time and space, and – when concocted with just the right blend of ingredients – it can imprint on us a sense of profoundness that lingers on. The residues of this ‘lingering feeling’ are then superadded onto our collective mental reserves – something that we then carry around with us and recruit during a range of internal phenomena such as vivid imaginations, nostalgic feelings, or dreams – either consciously or without realization. These mental-entities become part of our epigenetic fabric, together with all the actual and imagined scenes and settings that we have encountered outside or in forms of media that have wormed their way into our cavernous sinuses. Some games achieve this through mood-setting established by dialogue and narrative genius, alongside sound – Disco Elysium being a prime example. Others call upon visceral visuals and the particulars of the setting to achieve similar suggestive excellence, such as Amnesia: The Dark Descent, SIGNALIS or STASIS. Others recruit more primal emotions through their approach and implications, such as Detroit: Become Human or Life is Strange. Often it is a combination of such factors leading to excellence in experience. For instance, what began in Portal by Valve and was continued, in my opinion, by Croteam in The Talos Principle provides a truly difficult form of excellence to categorize. Games with high mood-setting capabilities in the somber realm of cosmic horror are particularly evocative, such as The Room series, The Last Door, Conarium, Penumbra, White Chamber, Sinking City, Dredge, Strangeland, Darkwood, the METRO series, Homesick, Outlast, The Longest Journey, Alpha Polaris, Slender: The Arrival, Vampire Masquerade, or The Forest, to name a few. There’s also a whole host of smaller, indie games that are too numerous to list but which hit this spot.Sometimes as I gaze out across a mundane landscape – across treetops lining the hills opposite my house for instance – I will get a mental whiff of a certain feeling associated with a scene that my mind recalls from, say, The Last Door. Or I may be idly looking at the rain beating down on the dark waves of the οἶνοψ πόντος as I take my usual Kadıköy ferry route, when I will suddenly be struck with a fleeting memory from DREDGE, when the cursed night-trawler pursued me around the Great Marrow. These raptured visions are truly exhilarating and momentarily supplant the mundane, dull, and derelict nature of the everyday with evocative and fulfilling suggestions of a world just beyond our own; of a haunted dreamscape of infinite terror and violent beauty trapped within the endless possibilities squirming beneath the dark ocean surface or beyond the ever-scintillating stars. While this occurs for but a moment, figments of it can linger on, and it almost becomes such that whatever that incident was could have just as well actually occurred.
June 15, 2023:
Selin left for NL last night, I now remain all alone in the Cyanean region of Northern Istanbul – I hope she settles in well and likes the area for I will be joining her (I hope) at the end of next month if all goes to plan. However, I just got rejected from the teaching post I had applied for in Delft and the postdoc position in Antwerp – either of which would have been great to be able to live with Selin in a meaningful way; to somehow match the rays of starlight that are always mirrored in her eyes… When I consider my situation, I both find it a bit disheartening and upsetting, but also quite amusing – I am smiling as I pen this, and not just cause synthwave is elevating my spirit. For what truly excellent piece of literature, art or even academic research has ever been produced by someone living in comfort, security, and tranquility? Do these qualities, which we inherently and biologically seek out, actually sap our creative and mental abilities? Kafka, Poe, Melville, Tesla, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Monet, Vermeer – and one can extend this list indefinitely – all died in poverty, battling their share of internal and external shit-demons, never attaining the security or comfort levels that lead to abject apathy. After all, a system that has reached homeostasis has no incentive to do anything that may endanger itself. It is a sort of cosmic irony. Much like squeezing a wedge of lemon to extract maximum juice, life itself squeezes us, sifting through blood, sweat and tears to extract the exquisite things that a mind under duress can produce. Or perhaps this thought is just a coping mechanism I have developed for the suboptimal situation I find myself in? Regardless, it is a fun little mental game to play that puts me ahead in an arbitrary metric that I have perhaps now invented – not that I think I will ever create anything akin to the legendary figures I recited above. Anyway, it’s nice to take a breather after completing my doctorate, I missed doing nothing in particular and just sort of coasting while advancing various ‘hobbies’ instead of moving from one self-imposed research deadline to the next. My plans for this Summer/Autumn are to conjure up a Marie Curie application and an SNSF application for two separate institutions. Despite rejecting my postdoctoral applications, they both expressed their admiration of my research proposal – which was completely different for each of them – thus offering to facilitate me on these grants. Due to their super competitive nature, I am not very hopeful, and it is going to take a lot of work to write 20–30-page application packages to pitch-perfection, which then, if and when rejected, will basically be time lost to the illimitable void. But you never know maybe something will worm itself out of some opportune hollow or crack in the surface of European academia (copium inserted into rectum).
In the meantime, I am interested in having a wander around the Cyanean shore of Istanbul, the triangular area where the fearsome Symplegades (Cyanean Rocks) annihilated those sailing through and where the magnificent, elevated twin-lighthouses of Rumelia and Anatolia beamed their lights out into the Black Sea, illuminating its dark waters for up to 20 miles. It is no surprise that a little hill attributed to the wind-king Boreas (Poyrazburnu, a derivative of Boreas) used to furnish a temple to the sea-god Poseidon, who, in turn, was in communion with Apollo Invictus who stood menacingly on the Western rock. It is here that so many sailors met their demise up until very recently when the wicked alliance between scientific inquiry and technological progress begun its full-scale dismantling of any wonder or marvel that may have wormed its way into the legends of yore. One may yearn for a merciful lobotomy to expunge this mental straight-jacket that we find ourselves entangled within. For by extending our current trajectory to its hypothetical end-point, to the state of omniscience, we may envision true horror – omniscience is truly worse than death; it is the theoretical equivalent to being trapped in a solitary-confinement chamber suspended in isotonic darkness for eternity. As a wise man once said, “the most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.” The funny thing is, I don’t think that the phenomenon of ’empiric-death’ has played out to the same extent everywhere, and the Cyanean inlet is one such place. Spurred on by my recent delve into its ancient lore and various travelogues, I began investigating the region further. What I have discovered is that many of its mysteries remain unexplained and thus unspoiled. Reading about the Late-Victorian travels of Dr. Edwin Grosvenor got me particularly interested in its reported geological history. For despite today there being little trace of the menacing rocks reported in so many sources from antiquity, the legends that cling onto this portentous area ought to have at least a half-plausible origin. This is when I encountered the theory of Dr. Choiseul Gouffier, who claimed that many aeons ago this northern entrance to the Bosporus was the rim of a giant crater; the southern arc is what we see today, while the northern arc was slowly battered away to oblivion by the restless onslaught of the Black Sea. He surmises that tectonic convulsions and the hurling of lava masses may have bred the legends of the ever-swinging Symplegades. After all, Apollonios explicitly stated that, “hideous tempests of fire simmer on the wandering rocks”. Other geologists have commented on the remarkable mineral composition of the rocks, its fissures revealing stratified volcanic ash-beds with voluminous pieces of black doleritic porphyry that are traversed by green-tinted, hydrated silicates of iron and magnesium – the latter indicating cretaceous origin. This small cerulean inlet perched on the northernmost reaches of Istanbul – and also very close to where I am currently residing – was thus the staging ground of a truly blasphemous union between the illimitable depths of both earth and sea. It would appear that an eldritch shoreline therefore lurks right beside me. Perhaps this explains the strange red shimmers I saw the other night hovering in the sky in that direction? Thankfully a semblance of proof remains since I sent a grainy photograph to my close friends. Anyway, all sort of imaginations aside, it is indeed worth visiting the shoreline up here to just behold its magnificent and relatively untouched nature – especially when compared to the rest of decadent Istanbul.
While my thoughts linger on in this portentous realm beneath the shadows of antiquity, in the real world of resolute inertia I am trying to harness the mental energy to prepare yet another postdoctoral application. Since digitalia is the future of the humanities, and since I have some experience with GIS and social-network mapping software from my doctoral work, I have been looking into expanding my digital toolbox. I’m trying to stop my imposter syndrome from disillusioning me too much from seeking an academic future in digitalia, however it is hard for someone who wrote a historical dissertation that was not very digital-heavy (aside from some GIS analysis) to maneuver into this realm. Although I feel these days one must squirm and writhe and worm one’s way into whatever shape or shadow may be required to fill a given position’s application requirements. I’m trying not to lie or exaggerate my prowess in these things, yet perhaps this approach is wrong – since so far, I remain very much jobless.
June 20, 2023:
I’m having difficulty concentrating on what I need to be doing lately; I think it’s a matter of lacking motivation and enthusiasm. In hindsight I now realize that throughout the last year or two of my doctoral studies – when I basically wrote the entire dissertation – there was an unreal amount of drive pulsing through my amygdala. Back in Commercial Drive, and particularly throughout last Christmas, I was secretly staying awake in the wee hours of the night to read through my drafts and edit them over and over again for the trillionth time. Secretly – because Selin was concerned that I was overdoing the work and may burn myself out! Almost seems funny now since it’s currently the exact opposite. I gather my work material and situate myself in some motivating abode (like our balcony overlooking the Cyanean hills or in a café somewhere in the city), get my caffeine hit, plug in some synthwave or other non-lyrical type of elevating atmospheric sound, and then, having created this satisfying backdrop, I proceed to get sidetracked into things I’m more enthusiastic about – since the setting is so perfect for elevating one’s creative mood. I feel like preparing my puzzle-game, working on a short-story (which I then usually immediately scrap), or writing one of these intolerable babbles. The Saturnine colossus I need to conjure up for the MSCA’s first-draft deadline next Tuesday – which I am yet to even begin – is so demotivating compared to the thrill of these other ventures. I guess I need to be working on some actual research instead of what is essentially a plea to be selected by the lords who move money around to conduct said research (i.e., grant applications). Modern academia is really something else… it tries desperately and insanely to pluck you out of its insular, privileged glades that are full of closed-orbit cliques spinning yarns of microscopic drivel at each other in asinine conferences that no one else has even heard of. But, for some twisted, Stockholm-esque reason that I am yet to fully comprehend, I continue to chase an inlet into this ridiculous subspace. Life is indeed amusing.
June 24, 2023:
Today the heat has ramped up considerably, edging us closer to that classic, unbearable Istanbul heat-dome. I took the M2 line to Vezneciler with the goal of exploring the Zeugma and Platea districts of Byzantine Constantinople. Upon disembarking and surfacing one is immediately hit with a strange cacophony of sensory input; the faintly nostalgic yet ever-vile stench of sun-baked asphalt mixed with exhaust, sweat and an odd assortment of floral and baking tones invades one’s olfactory core, while a high-reverb echo-scape suspended between concrete and metal-scaffolding, and occasionally broken-up by the billowing of over-tuned calls to prayer is thrust upon one’s auditory system. Such are the streets of Istanbul. Entangled in overlapping layers of history, yet never quite in the now, Istanbul is indeed a relic of temporal stasis. Wading through the crowds that mill around the narrow streets in an endless pantomime, I headed north into the old karbounaria (coal-district) of central Constantinople. Here a wonderful remnant of eleventh-century Komnenian architecture (the Church of Saint Theodoros) juts out of the landscape on the north-facing banks of the third-hill with glorious views of the opposite shore. The sun was painting such a glorious vista; rays of noon-light glinted across the small ripples generated by the countless fishing vessels moored to gently-oscillating buoys all along the Golden Horn. Slightly above this cerulean gleam, Galata herself rises to consume the horizon, buttressed by the enduring glory of forgotten aeons. From there I visited Valens Aqueduct, Pantokrator Monastery, Pantepoptes Monastery (under restoration sadly), and attempted to enter the apartment block in whose basement the recently-discovered remnants of the Church of St. Laurentius lie in slumber.
The streets are interesting; lined with grime, poverty, and that truly disheartening sense of a ‘lost future’ that so pervades the Turkish youth in 2023. This intrinsically stellar entity (as is any given nationality of youthful energy) has been sapped of all its vitality and hung out to dry between two fires: mounting internal troubles and dwindling external sympathy. The latter, unfortunately and in a stroke of ultimate irony, follows the former, pushing the system further into positive feedback. The result is that the dreamscape of the Turkish youth has contracted and retreated into a sad, broken shell. And, in my opinion, the even sadder reality is that kids you see on the streets today are trying desperately to cling onto shreds of happiness and tiny slivers of hope without any concrete cognisance that this struggle really is not normal. Seeing starry-eyed youngsters dip in and out of the borders of poverty yet still smile and face life with such fervour is, for some reason, even sadder still – I’m not sure if that’s the right word for what I feel witnessing the state of this city; it’s a strange mix of melancholy and annoyance at beholding the state of things. Having grown up prior to this sharp socioeconomic downfall, seeing the scions of such a magnificent heritage trying hopelessly to have the life that my generation had 15-20 years ago pains me greatly. The only merciful saving grace here is the absolute plasticity of the human mind, which continues to astound me. Resilience and adaptation really are our two most prominent ancestral markers, and I say this particularly after having just finished my dissertation on a 600-year slice of this bilgewater-treading speck of cosmic disturbance we call human history. Anyway, of course, I compose these words from a café after having completed my trip and therefore from within a somewhat more positive, caffeinated mood – while in the fray of things a lot of these melancholic feelings hid behind rage and frustration.
Walking around particularly the coastal stretch between Balat and Haliç was a mild hassle due to the sorry state of public infrastructure: sidewalks are closed-off forcing pedestrians to clamber over uneven surfaces and creaky planks, and also necessitating a curve onto the main road for almost 100 meters (including the busy Atatürk Boulevard intersection). Alas, seeing the nonchalant manner in which everyone seamlessly greeted and dealt with the vanishing of the walkway made me smile, for it reminded me of the over-coddled and over-sheltered way in which these things are handled in the West (esp. Canada) – something I find ridiculous. Even if there’s a tiny disruption in something like 3 meters of sidewalk in a low-traffic side alley, there is still usually an obnoxiously large, well-lit signpost saying something along the lines of “PEDESTRIAN WALKWAY REROUTED” while pointing to an elaborate and costly temporary-reroute so that people do not have to step onto the road for 2 meters, lest they somehow get injured or manage to die (god only knows how). In first-world countries the common person is stripped of his volition to such an abhorrable extent it seems wrong. Is ‘civilization’ really the luxury to be totally oblivious to one’s surroundings? I feel it’s a small step from this sort of elaborate coddling for small sidewalk inconveniences to having things like cardboard tea-cups with “BEWARE HOT CONTENTS” plastered all over them in red ink. I mean really where does it end? Boiling water is hot, ice is cold, water is wet – where do these warnings which nullify human volition, common-sense and situational awareness stop? I’m not sure if this really is ‘advancement’ since it seems more like an excuse for ignorance and social decadence. Moving on, a few days ago a Titanic sub went missing below the midnight zone in the North Atlantic and all I could think of was HPL’s The Temple – such exquisite nightmare fuel. Anyway, now I must turn my attention to the MSCA’s internal deadline on Tuesday for I have squandered enough time as it is these past two days – what with social calls and the Sevgi Gönül Symposium. I have, at least, finally selected my project acronym: GEODISC – which I’m feeling satisfied with.
June 29, 2023:
The highlight of these past three days has definitely been working my way through The Bookwalker, while hoping desperately that it wouldn’t end. What an incredible experience; the writing and the subtle, well-delivered humour it contains, the evocative ambience boosted by the expressive soundtrack, and the graphical allure of the different biomes the books are set in are all so enthralling. The creative end-product of a dedicated and passionate group of people, in which slices of the most hauntingly beautiful corners of their individual minds become fused, is truly something else to behold. While I sometimes whine about being cursed with living through the numerical peak of the global population, it is of course also a blessing in disguise. For there are over seven billion people thinking, conjuring, creating, and increasing entropy in one way or another around this magma-crusted sphere. Everyone, and I mean every single person inhabiting this godforsaken space-rock, is trapped within a small, cavernous orb attached to a slowly-decaying piece of organic garbage that they are forced to drag around all their life. What sort of an existence is this?! In some twisted form of further cosmic irony, our imprisonment within this orb is made all the more inescapable by a strong osseous cage that we call the skull. The condition of entrapment and slavery we find ourselves within is therefore ripe for conjuring things inside its shadowy confines. While upon inspection the overwhelming majority of what is created turns out to be worthless noise, there is occasionally something of such splendour that it manages to exit the cage in which it was reared, roam the interplanar void, and penetrate into other osseous enclosures. While the bulk of what’s generated is inconsequential, due to the sheer sample size we are dealing with, inevitably and perhaps even by semi-accident, some incredible things are roaming about out there. If you sift through and filter out all the waste, which is perhaps as much 99.99% or even more of the total, you are left with humanity’s most tantalizing fabrications. From such a pathetic decay-state, destined to death, and trapped in teleological torment, this whole ‘wetware’ condition we are born into surely does create some exquisite things against all odds.
All this babbling aside, I received news of yet another rejection, safely bringing my pending postdoc applications to zero as of today, what a disappointment… I’m currently sitting on the balcony with my ‘work stuff’, unable to generate even the minuscule amount of energy needed to wade through my job-postings tabs yet again. Looking out over the hills to the north, past the steeples and minarets and other manmade disturbances, over the groves and thickets that animate the valley below, and up towards the shimmering viridescent hue that greets the horizon near the old bridge road, one cannot help but feel a certain elevating detachment from such mundane matters. As twilight trickles in, I notice the heaving and rustling of trees increasing in vehemence, gray clouds drawing ominous circles around Libra, the odd absence of the usual cicadaic din, and gusts of wind billowing forcefully southward; a portentous storm appears to be brewing. My parapet camping vigil is clearly over, for the gusts have begun blowing my papers all over the place. Not that anything of particular importance is scribbled upon them. Finding myself inside, as I now compose this unendurable ramble, I notice the darkness slowly beginning to encircle the terrestrial plane; the wonderful marvel of nightfall is about to commence, that marvel which is so delayed on these long suffocating summer evenings. Thankfully the storm has brought a premature blackening to the horizon. It may even be time to kindle these candles I recently acquired. I enjoy watching the evanescent flames dancing on little wicks, oblivious to the much larger shadows mirroring their every move in a mockery of their short little lives. These shadows are of course alive by virtue of their only very slight difference from their progenitors, in this case, in size and slant.
July 6, 2023:
Great to see some old friends after so many years. The wedding of our mutual friend (Rasso) created the perfect storm for a gathering of hitherto unimaginable size. It’s always intriguing, engaging and illuminating to see everyone and learn about their unique life experiences, idiosyncratic approaches to common problems, and coping mechanisms for a variety of setbacks and grime that God inverts upon us. I am once again pleasantly reminded that fellowships forged in the fires of youth have an enduring, eternal quality, howling through the vitreous tinnitus that gradually subsumes all else. What happens is that echoes of the past perpetually mutate and morph into newer and ever more humorous, unhinged semi-abstractions and imperfect copies of our joint history. Not many activities can beat the enjoyment of mentally re-enacting these hilarities in ever more exaggerated and ridiculous hyperboles with a bunch of like-minded mates. 14 years instantly disappears as if it had never even passed, taking me right back to high-school and its immediate aftermath. One particularly poignant strand here leads to Besiktas and the literal eternities that passed in smoky LAN-cafés grinding away at the most beautifully debased games like a bunch of demented apes prior to the advent of online-gaming. The entire catalogue of Frozen Throne custom maps was farmed to oblivion, as was all the other multiplayer classics of the late-2000’s Istanbulite cyberspace: AoE II, Pool Day, Quake, COD II: Moscow, COD Zombie, Flatout, Jedi Academy, etc.
When Adeks, our favorite cyber cell, closed at 2AM, we would lurch down to the illegally open net-cafés around Besiktas Square to continue our sinful acts in pitch-black darkness behind locked doors. Yes, there’d be a door man who would open the door into the void of Gomorrah after scanning us through the peep-hole to make sure we weren’t undercover cops. Thence we would feel around for empty spaces in the half-light generated by tens of cigarettes, our eyes burning from the smoke and from a general lack of sleep and enveloping computer-vision. Parking our backsides in inch-thick layers of someone else’s organic debris on eternally un-wiped leather chairs that slowly curdle in the summer heat afforded a luxurious comfort like nothing else. Occasionally a window would be opened to let out the cigarette smoke, affording our lungs a few precious seconds to regenerate their charred alveoli. The smell of the bakeries dotting central Besiktas (which began their morning operations around 5AM) was the generally accepted cue to retire home, so that the cycle may continue the following day without too much brain damage. Ah, the glorious summer of 09…
In fact, I operated as a net-café crawling lifeform for several years, peaking that summer, but spanning many years either side of it. We had Bora the Mighty, our designated driver and ‘chauffeur’, alongside a crew of gamer rascals that were associated with either Bora or our own high school group. One time while I was still something like 16 or maybe 17, I was whipping the shit out of some gamers sitting upstairs in Adeks in the original DotA game (then a Warcraft III mod). For in those days matches were always across the local area network (LAN). Sometimes I went there on my own just to play some good, quality DotA. Anyway the ‘big boys’ sitting upstairs threatened via all chat to come down and find me and “rip my intestines out” if I did not stop owning them. I remember ignoring this and continuing to gank and kill them in the game with renewed intensity before quickly scadoodling out into the street when I noticed they were AFK and searching for me downstairs. I still vividly remember playing that match as Bloodseeker, he was a beast back in those days. We used to purchase Kir Pide of questionable quality for 1TL each to fuel our mouse clicks and optical reflexes throughout the night. And of course, as I’ve already mentioned, indoor smoking was permitted, and every single person smoked. I wonder how many years I shaved off my life in those hallowed halls, of course it was all completely worth it, I would not have it any other way. I hereby salute Serkan Abi of Besiktas Adeks.
The biggest conundrum of those days was the unresolved issue of whether alcohol consumption or gaming ought to come first; both sequences had their unique advantages. This question remains unsolved to this day. The fields of psychology and physiology have each sought to illuminate this maddening enigma in their own way, yet each have remained bogged down in the illimitable complexities of sequential logic. I fear this dilemma will forever perplex the most intelligent minds that grace the world. People will forever be puzzled and pushed into a form of maddening hysteria each time they attempt to order these two options. It would appear that cold logic can be of no use here, one must disregard all shreds of reason and listen only to the call of the void in this particularly menacing condition. Thankfully and in an act of ultimate cosmic mercy, time itself has removed this problem from the intake lists of sanatoriums since the entire conundrum rested on the fact that net-cafés did not sell alcohol – meaning this is a relic of the past in today’s homegrown cyber-age. Thank god for that, otherwise we may have all ended up in an asylum. Although, I do lament the demise of net-cafés, probably the only places in the world where mayonnaise encountered a motherboard.
July 27, 2023:
Two interesting pieces of news have begun orbiting around mainstream media outlets. One of these is the dissemination of a recent Nature article that revises the collapse of the AMOC thermohaline circulation to the 2030’s with severe consequences for the Atlantic climate. This is reminiscent of Robinson’s Fifty Degrees Below – are we finally approaching the sweet embrace of the lesser apocalypse? I sure hope, if for no other reason than pure nihilistic glee. What if in some twisted version of the Gaia hypothesis, we evolved because earth needed plastics and semiconductors (to create AI?) and our sole purpose was to produce these and perish? The second piece of news is the whistleblower David Grusch’s claims that a US-led UAP program holds physical evidence of ‘non-human biologics’. I really wish this were true, although it seems highly unlikely… Moreover, it’s amusing to read about the mounting fuss over AI snatching people’s jobs, particularly the Hollywood writer’s strike. Rejecting the future is so futile. AI will take over, and please let’s let it. Issues such as a climate change or other sorts of man-made problems (social issues) could become a thing of the past. Let our AI overlords rule us all, chip everyone’s brainstem or something, maximum surveillance, zero privacy, whatever – who cares? What the hell even is privacy, I pity people who are hung up over ‘privacy’. I mean it’s such a pseudo-problem, I can’t even… Anyway, ‘twas good to see some friends these last few weeks, including the newly-wed couple in Cyanea, Edge-Moe in Chalcedon, King Dorky in the uni-skirts of Ankyra, the lad-crew in Sin-City central, and Juju all across the Queen City. With J we have been touring the city quite thoroughly for the past 4 days. It was somewhat (edit: excessively) hot and humid weather, but we survived and pressed on with our mission of discovery and perusal. On the train to Ankara, I was able to really test-out the prowess of the Steam Deck by doing a complete play-through of Conarium – which churned out a surprisingly evocative experience (by two Turkish developers). On the return train I read Tolkien’s essay On Fairy-Stories, which has a very intriguing tri-partite sectioning of elvish essence into ‘mystical’, ‘magical’, and ‘mirror’. He argues that the true essence of elves is magical, which binds them to nature; something that was diluted in the post-Medieval era (e.g., by Shakespeare or in Victorian fiction) harming the conceptualization of elves and forcing them into the more restrictive other two categories. He is particularly critical of the small, fairy-elf typology and seems obsessed with tying stuff back to older, more longstanding concepts of primal mythic resonance. Now back home I am working through Hidden Deep which was released in beta access; it has lots of bugs owing to its early release, yet it seems like a work of passion and is strangely addicting and places me right into that satisfying flow-state of “not too hard to be tedious, but kind of hard and therefore rewarding to complete.” Also, it’s clearly based on John Carpenter’s The Thing, so there’s that glaring amazingness that bumps its vibe up a notch or five. Last week I also had the honor of meeting Kaldellis in the electrical non-space that oscillates in the optic fibers stretching between us. He guided me on how to go about publishing my dissertation as a book; what steps to take, how to craft the proposal, who to contact, etc. I further got myself entangled in a translation project for Seljuq-related source material thanks to my Byzantine textual expertise being relatively rare in Turkey. It seems to be a long-term project with little payment but is nonetheless a great opportunity for outputting something semi-academic.
Last week I read Thomas Ligotti’s Conspiracy against the Human Race. It is overall somewhat ‘malignantly useless’ to use Ligotti’s own terminology. His overly pessimistic take on existence and relentless advocation of anti-natalism gets a bit repetitive and tiresome, I must admit. And I had a hard time working through its dense, verbose paragraphs, which I normally enjoy in his horror fiction. The only benefit of slogging through it was my introduction to the fatalistic Norwegian philosopher Peter Zapffe, whom Ligotti regurgitates in his book insufferably. Some of Zapffe’s ideas are indeed intriguing, such as his argumentation for anti-natalism which Ligotti paraphrases with the words: “All children have been born at the best possible time in human history, or at least the one in which the most progress toward the alleviation of human misery has been made, which is always the time in which we live and have lived. While we have always looked back on previous times and thought that their progress toward the alleviation of human misery was not enough for us to want to live then, we do not know any better than the earliest Homo sapiens about what progress toward the alleviation of human misery will be made in the future, reasonably presuming that such progress will be made. Will there ever be an end of the line in our progress toward the alleviation of human misery when people can honestly say, “This is without doubt the time to produce children”? And will that really be the time? No one would say, or even want to think, that theirs is a time in which people will look back on them from the future and thank their stars that they did not live in such a barbaric age that had made so little progress toward the alleviation of human misery and still produced children. The pessimist would advise each of us not to look too far into the future or we will see the reproachful faces of the unborn looking back at us from the radiant mist of their nonexistence…” I also began reading Algernon Blackwood’s A Descent into Egypt after being informed that it evokes a cosmicism unlike anything else (despite not being a work of horror); so far it seems good although perhaps a bit rambly. Anyway, these next few weeks I must take a second swing at the MSCA draft and grind out the complete application.
October 4, 2023:
I recently waded into the hellish energy swamp known as LinkedIn, and I have to say it really is the worst place I have ever seen on the internet – and I’ve seen my fair share of shit on the unmoderated sub-boards of old 4Chan. But LinkedIn is something else entirely. It’s supreme horror in plain sight. Pure, unapologetic DARKNESS. It seems to be a showcase of everything that is wrong with humanity; an egoistic and tribal sinkhole where dignity and meaning are flayed away from all who enter, one strip of bloody flesh at a time. The entire thing is so ‘phony’ that Holden Caulfield would have an aneurysm after just a glimpse. Seriously though, it is the worst thing I have ever seen on the internet. I mean, I knew that corporate business culture was an energy swamp of astronomic proportions, but I had no idea it was this bad. It’s full of actual, living breathing people – fucking human beings, though you’d be surprised – posting these de-personalized, copy-paste niceties and other non-elements to each other. It’s a negative space where reality seems to be inverted, and where non-conversations take the place of any real thought or opinion generation. God forbid you have a single molecule of uniqueness about your character or worldview. I cannot enter LinkedIn for any length of time without losing irretrievable segments of my dignity and sanity, but – and here’s the sad part – I’m forced into it by the winds of shit that billow from the lord’s window, the lord who holds my future salary and rent-money and sustenance. The Capitalist cyclone blows strong, and I’m just a leaf drifting around like a headless monkey, together with all the other headless monkeys that squeak and grunt in the sinkholes like LinkedIn that continue to fuel this broken system.
October 26, 2023
Well, it’s been a while. Sh*t that is elongated is just more sh*t basically, much like how Twitter got Elongated. Although wading through the sewers of life one does occasionally encounter some exquisite amusements to momentarily latch onto. But I’m still waiting (in a progressively less and less ironic way) for the singularity or at least something resembling non-organic ascendancy that will dismantle or at least substantially alter current society; a sweet, sweet intelligence vortex. But with my generation’s luck, I doubt we will see anything so paradigm-altering. It would be nice to have been born inside an electrical board instead of as a protesting glob of rotting tissue discarded from an amniotic sack. Anyway, I finally finished writing my book proposal a few weeks ago. I sent it to the historical editor of a highly reputable academic press (that I will not name lest I jinx it), and I received a positive reply that he’s interested in reviewing my manuscript. The thing is, in the proposal I somewhat optimistically wrote “January 2024” for the delivery date, but that was before I realized I have the two grant deadlines looming ahead in early December, an online presentation at the end of November, a career workshop (that I shudder at agreeing to attend), and a trip to Canada in the middle of it, all alongside a variety of job applications and other dull ways to shed time and integrity. Oh well, back to the grindstone.
The Netherlands has been decent, I suppose. What defines the Hague for me has been the clean ocean breeze and the nostalgic sound of seagulls, the smell of pasture-land that winnows through the suburbs when the wind blows from the right direction, green canals lining almost every street, lots of mosquitoes that seem to live well into October, and the nigh impossibility of finding a house to rent. It took us about a month of full time working to finally find a place; I think we were on the 95th row of our Excel sheet. While I was initially moaning about the joblessness, the numerous rejections that kept trickling in, and the facial myalgia that afflicted me, I eventually completed my MSCA grant proposal, the most critical of my recent applications. Let’s see if it leads to anything worthy of all this hassle. But the real pearl of last month has been Baldur’s Gate III. What a work of art. May well be the best thing I’ve experienced on a screen, or perhaps that is still Disco Elysium. In any case, BG3 has earned a radiant spot in the digital constellation that festoons my frontal cortex.
Last week we went to England via the Eurostar to bid farewell to my grandparents’ house in the haunted hills of Devonshire. It was both nostalgic and a bit unsettling, and also sad to be making my last ever visit here – a house inhabited by so many cheerful memories. The stairs breathe with each step one takes, creaking and groaning like a grumpy doorman, ushering us up to the five-bedroom landing that is decorated by a timeless green carpet. So many marbles were launched along its soft contours and fluffy rivulets in days bygone. I filled a spare suitcase with books, trinkets, old letters, photographs and other stuff that I wished to rescue from the catacombs of time, since I was thus instructed to do so. This was as much a salvage operation as it was a farewell. It was tiresome returning via 5 separate trains to the Hague with all that stuff, but well worth it now that I’m here. It was great to find an early-twentieth century edition of Charles Lamb’s letters, since just last year I was appreciating some of his letters online. I half-wish I’d pursued an engineering career like I had first intended to all those years ago. This is a thought that emerges for a brief moment as I sift through my grandfather’s letters and documents (that was his profession). It’s very melancholic to look through items from a past aeon; to gaze at problems, excitements and ambitions now all lost to time, now all irretrievably buried beneath layers and layers of more recent problems, excitements and ambitions. There’s something deeply saddening, but also interesting, about handling the leftover valuables of someone who has succumbed to the vortex of time. After all, what memories imbued those items with their perceived value? We shall never quite know.
In times like these or worse, we must remember Keats’ Ode on Melancholy, which expertly reminds us of the sublime nature of melancholy as an emotion. No, no, go not to Lethe, the weaver begins, before dispelling other vices and suicide too. Thence he treats Melancholy as a female personification, urging us to: emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, and feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes. In the third and final stanza, he adds that Her beauty is one that must die. Here Keats not only underlines that beauty inevitably dies, but that it is imperative that it dies (he uses the word ‘must’ instead of ‘shall’ precisely for this reason). Why is it imperative that beauty dies? Burst Joy’s grape against your palate, and you shall understand, thence you can taste the sadness of her might and be among her cloudy trophies hung.
Anyway, moving on, in considering these pastel-shaded domains that quiver in our minds with the immovable power of times bygone, I’ve been thinking… and I’ve come to the conclusion that certain key memories of ours, over time, morph into what I am going to call core memories; moments of overwhelming clarity that pierce the vitreous substance of time with such alluring luminance that we cannot help but attempt to relive them in vain; specific instances of often-mundane happenings in particular and highly specific settings that exude a sense of comfort, happiness and safety. This comfort, happiness and safety becomes considerably exaggerated in hindsight and is erected on a pedestal of impossible reciprocity that threatens to cloud the present with a sense of eternal melancholy. These memories may involve people or places or versions of ourselves that are long lost and to which we yearn to return. More vexing still is the nigh impossibility of sensing a core memory while it is actually happening. It is futile to even begin trying to divulge a single core memory of mine in writing, for I do not believe that the power of these memories is in any way conveyable among people. They have close to no transferability and are absolutely unique to each particular mind.
I believe this is also what Howard was tackling when on Christmas Day in 1930 he wrote: “It seems to be the plainest of all truths that no highly organized and freely developed mind can possibly envisage an external world having much in common with the external world envisaged by any other mind. The basic inclinations, yearnings, and ego-satisfactions of each separate individual depend wholly upon a myriad associations, hereditary predispositions, environmental accidents, and so on, which cannot possibly be duplicated in any other individual; hence it is merely foolish for anybody to expect himself to be ‘understood’ more than vaguely, approximately, and objectively by anybody else. For example, I am perfectly confident that I could never adequately convey to any other human being the precise reasons why I continue to refrain from suicide – the reasons, that is, why I still find existence enough of a compensation to atone for its dominantly burthensome quality. These are reasons are strongly linked with architecture, scenery, and lighting and atmospheric effects, and take the form of vague impressions of adventurous expectancy coupled with elusive memory – impressions that certain vistas, particularly those associated with sunsets, are avenues of approach to spheres or conditions of wholly undefined delights and freedoms which I have known in the past and have a slender possibility of knowing again in the future. Just what those delights and freedoms are, or even what they approximately resemble, I could not concretely imagine to save my life; save that they seem to concern some ethereal quality of indefinite expansion and mobility, and of a heightened perception which shall make all forms of combinations of beauty simultaneously visible to me, and realisable by me.”
These last few weeks news has been dominated primarily by the rekindling of the Israel-Palestine conflict when Hamas launched a blitzkrieg strike on Oct 7 (approx. 1000 dead and about 230 hostages). Militants plowed through some electronic music festival type hippy-get-away near the Gaza border making it traumatic for Westerners who identify closely with the middle-class, culturally White, educated sort of person who attends these entertainment activities. In response Israel killed around 7000 Palestinians so far (and counting). Let’s see how this shit-show plays out. If the Palestinian side wasn’t Islamic, I’d probably be sympathetic towards their general cause, but I just cannot, especially given their overall inflection (sorry innocent civilians with no fault and who have no karmic reason to be harmed in unnecessary bloodshed). And the Israeli leadership is just pure vile, so yes, really nothing to support here. Although it is fun watching the geopolitics subreddit and most large Western universities so divided on this matter, with absurd arguments hurled left and right – it really does bring out the best of humanity(!) It’s amusing noticing the average clod realize that all most nothing in life is binary black and white; conflicts cannot be placed into neat little boxes like people are so fond of doing all the time. Anyway, back to appreciating Natasha O’Keeffe in the Wheel of Time while waiting for Keanu Reeves to render his 2.02 persona in Cyberpunk 2077. I really hope this nine-gigabyte patch isn’t bloatware.
November 8, 2023:
Might as well have a short, quick nerd-gasm interlude here. The last days of October had some ongoing cyber activities that I was particularly interested in following; I mean is there a better way to pass one’s irretrievable and evanescent time entombed within this wetware-prison than roaming around Night City, following TI12, or watching the Starforge Mak’gora tournament on Twitch of all places? Probably not. Nothing much has really changed from 20-years ago when I was fishing greasy Pokémon slammers out of minuscule crisp-packets to gamble them away in heated curb side tourneys near our flat’s front entrance. I have been tuning into the Pshero’s Zen-stream lately, it’s truly fascinating how he keeps going on with his expressionless face, constantly traversing Azeroth ganking any and all alliance he encounters in his boring-ass era-server with the exact same key combinations over and over and over. Middling-streamer income really does not seem worth the torturous nature of the job; long-hours, supremely sedentary nature, and an abysmal clientele that make Medieval zealots seem pleasant. It’s the same “I’m dead inside, please kill me” aura I used to observe in ChocoTaco after he quit his day job back in 2018 to stream PUBG full-time. What a horrendous career indeed.
One potential source of mild excitement, although likely a hype-deluge, has been the announcement of Season of Discovery at BlizzCon last week. This is meant to be the long-awaited precursor to “Classic plus” (an oft-dreamed return to the roots of World of Warcraft) that will launch on November 30th. It’s about time Blizzard breathed some fresh-air into the classic community since Icecrown’s honeymoon phase is indeed coming to an end, which also coincides with my retirement from guild officer status last week after 4 years. I cannot be bothered to organize and dissect the squabbles of ungrateful men-children any longer. It was really fun when we first formed our guild back in 2019 with Berk, Aycan and Mert, slowly growing, strategizing and dismantling obstacles in some of the most iconic dungeons and raids in Azeroth. But this has lost most of its charm by now, I’ll probably quit all together soon. But WoW Classic generated a lot of relaxation during my comprehensive examination year in Vancouver. I was entombed in an apartment somewhere in the desolate suburbia of Burnaby, and I remember it snowed a lot that year (the winter of 2019-20, just prior to the Covid pandemic). I was working towards the exams, conducting my TAship, and at night, I was hounding Azeroth like a nocturnal zombie – the only thing that broke this rhythm up was the periodic warmth injected into my life through my phone’s screen when Selin’s animated face lit it up. Because I was on an EU server – since, let’s be honest, I’m a European at heart – when I sat down to play in the evening it was the middle of the night for the server. Only total nutjobs and the most demented of players were online that deep into the night. We had some fun skirmishes and engaged in wild shenanigans across the haunted forests of Felwood and the frigid hills of Wintergrasp. Sweet days of yore…
My roommate that year was a Chinese-Canadian named Steven; he was a kind person, a little younger than me, finishing up a master’s degree in microbiology at SFU. That was the year when the Hong Kong issues flared up, and I remember conversing with him about it. That was also the year that I tore my pelvic floor in the gym, somehow, and had to trek to a godforsaken ultrasound place in the mud-splattered gutters of North Burnaby. Our house was quite close to Metrotown, that concrete boil that towers over the idle herds that mill about its shadows. It really is a grotesque example of capitalist construction; a meaningless non-space where people eviscerate their paycheques, their hard-earned (for that’s the North American motto) paycheques that they slaved around to acquire in conditions no better than those found in many so-called third-world countries. It’s quite sad really. I sometimes notice people in Canada say: “… well, even though I work long hours, have low holiday allowance, suffer wait times of up to 12-months to see a medical specialist, and receive close to zero societal warmth, I’m just so glad that I’m not living in X, Y, Z country.” X, Y, and Z are often places such as Turkey, and it always makes me laugh. People are really clueless about their own conditions. Of course, life isn’t rosy in Turkey, but people in developed western countries often really over-inflate how well they have it, especially in NA, an over-estimation several orders of magnitude off the mark.
November 15, 2023:
One thing that is getting a bit tiresome these days is how every time I open Reddit, I notice a post on r/Turkey that somehow grinds me the wrong way, mostly by foreign trolls who are unable to comprehend the country’s current position on the precipice of a self-destruction spiral and its long-standing, geopolitically unique relationship with the rest of the world. Are we Asian, are we European, who knows? Does anyone? To illustrate this conundrum allow me to wind things back a few years. When applying to graduate school in the US (a country obsessed with race, for some godforsaken reason), application pages kept requiring me to input my race/ethnicity. I remember thinking in despair before asking my Turkish friends, which resulted in an equally fruitless yet heated debate as to what we are. In a strictly ethnic sense Turks are Caucasian (we are literally right at the Caucasus) and therefore white. But in a social and more general sense, Turks are not white, insofar as the privileges that accompany that label go. Most of my friends concluded that we do not feel white, and I therefore selected something odd like ‘other’ since the categories Asian, Arab, or South Asian – my options – did not reflect anything I could consciously choose. This issue is particularly annoying for culturally secular and well-educated Turks with sensibilities and worldviews more aligned with the West (rather fittingly often associated with the label White Turk in Turkish). Compounding all this is the fact that most Turks despise being labelled Middle Eastern, reject it profusely, and hate being lumped in with that region. The rising tide of anti-Arab racism caused by millions of refuges trapped in the country due to Western inadequacies is further galvanizing this. At one morbidly funny moment in history, sometime near the end of the twentieth century, Turkey was supposedly on course to full EU membership. Perhaps then we could’ve called ourselves White? God only knows how these things operate. Since Ukraine’s whiteness, whatever that means, is boosting the sympathy it generates in the EU, I suppose we may conclude that Turkey’s exclusion will permanently harm its reputation on this insular land mass.
But aside from these theoretical curveballs, what else so frustrates the ‘real whites’who descend like vultures on small subreddits with ill-intentions? First of all, our country is frustrating to behold due to its cordial relationship with a number of foreign actors that have entered the little brain-spaces of the common western clod these days. The Russian invasion of Ukraine brought Turkey’s equally cordial relationship with Russia and Ukraine and the US to the fore, while the Israel-Palestine conflict brought its complicated stance towards all sorts of entities in the region under the spotlight. Furthermore, Turkey has less than cordial relations with China due to the Uyghur situation that an imagined ethnic fellowship hinges on the moral-radar of many people in the country. Then there’s the whole US-YPG situation, the endless international debacles on the Armenian Genocide, and Turkey’s neo-Ottomanist power projections most clearly seen in its recent invasion of Syria but also in its increased military presence in North Africa. The real mental blow for these foreign observers, though, appears to be Turkey’s contentious membership in NATO, the ever-powerful military organization which seems to be the lynchpin of the average Western’s ability to sleep soundly at night. Of course, Turkey’s membership is contentious only to the mentally lazy ignoramus who is unable to comprehend that Turkey’s partnership in NATO is second to none, and moreover, it is important as an area denial token more than anything else. “Why won’t NATO kick Turkey out?”Such annoying, repetitive posts rattle a variety of subreddits on a biweekly basis, where the poster is always seeking some great confirmative catharsis for their narrow-minded voila moment of genius foreign-policy deduction. “Why doesn’t the US withdraw its nuclear weapons from Turkey?”Etc. the circus goes on. It is of course amusing to read these. I mean, it’s akin to me baiting Americans by penning them a post titled: “Why do you guys keep shooting each other?”A question with zero constructive or inquisitional purpose.
Returning to the matter at hand, the vitriol-spewing Westerners who descend upon Turkish people in online fora are actually, in my current opinion, projecting their dislike for the Turks they observe around themselves in the West. For as any educated, middle-class Turkish traveler to Europe knows, the archetypical ‘third-generation Turkish immigrant’ is sadly a conservative, backward-leaning, Erdogan-supporting waste of space who refuses to integrate culturally. This is very embarrassing for us as a country. I mean, even Homer said it: Ξένος ὢν ἀκολούθει τοῖς ἐπιχωρίοις νόμοις. So, I too feel a sense of dislike towards the general vibe that is emitted here in Europe (Germany, Austria, Netherlands) by my kinsmen. And if even I feel this, god knows what people with less understanding of the sociological backdrop of the ‘1960’s and 1970’s immigration waves to fill low-skill labor gaps in the EU’ situation must be thinking. For despite knowing how the conservatism and backwardness of the people here came about, it still annoys me. It’s quite sad that one of the biggest ‘compliments’ me and Selin receive here in Europe from our European friends is when they say: “Oh you really don’t seem Turkish” upon hearing our nationality. Because they notice we are not culturally conservative, we are not shisha-huffing oriental paradoxes, and our worldviews and hobbies are akin to their own. They essentially realize we are the same as themselves, minus some of the privileges. When you breakdown what they are saying to us, it is essentially racism. They are subtlety complimenting us for how non-Turkish we seem in their view. Of course, this is from their vantage point, buttressed by the pitiful Turkish profile here in Europe, and that’s even when compared to the social decline of Turkey proper. It’s still miles better than the Turkishness presented to Europeans here on their doorsteps. It is indeed an upsetting notion to be embarrassed of one’s nationality. Yet quite often when someone asks me or Selin where we are from, and we are forced to say Turkey, we utter it with our heads bowed down low and in hushed voices, not wishing to divulge this fact during an otherwise cordial conversation. Sometimes we even perform the extra embarrassing coup-de-grace, which is to say: “We’re from Turkey, but…” and then continue with some unasked characteristic about ourselves that not-so-subtlety places us on the secular side of Turkey’s political and social spectrum. People must be surprised with our enthusiasm to share personal facts about ourselves in these scenarios, but that’s easy to cover-up by playing into the Turkish or Mediterranean ‘warm-blooded and eager’ stereotype.
December 20, 2023:
It is indeed amusing how good news tends to morph into frustration so very quickly. The first week of December I was finally informed by phone-call that I had been offered the job that I had recently interviewed for; a research support position at a reputable university here. Excellent news, or so I thought in the 2 days before it became clear that in fact the little sticker in my passport is apparently not good enough for the issuing of a work contract. For even though the IND says, “don’t worry while we take 6 months issuing your work permit you may immediately begin working with this temporary one”, it seems that many places do not wish to sign a contract and be forced to nullify it and sign another when the full permit arrives. I am now stuck in a rather annoying purgatory where despite being offered a position that I was excited to start (I even met the team last week, great bunch of people), I have been told to wait for the full permit to be issued, which could take until mid-February, and that is if the IND sticks to its own timeline. Meanwhile, of course, I am terrified that the whole arrangement will fall through; optimism is not my strong suit. Indeed, I would like to thank Brexit once again for putting me in this situation; if not for the glorious leave vote, I would be starting work on the first of January… Perhaps if rampant neoliberalism had not hollowed out the state and resulted in the traditional bastions of cross-national unity and comradery – the working classes – casting their votes as a reaction, as an anti-establishment statement against the sacks of meat that line the upper echelons of this pantomime and no longer serve the people who vote for them, well, perhaps then I would’ve indeed been starting on the first of f*cking January. Anyway, until then, I’ll just keep trying to disregard the tiresome state of material affairs lining this planetary sanitarium, and instead bask in the soothing rays of the Cosmic Microwave Background like the good little product of stellar exogenesis that I am.
In order to break free of the dreary gray clouds that consume all color that might otherwise animate the sky here in the Netherlands, at the end of November we tried entering a sort of holiday spirit mode by listening to carols, placing decorations around the house, sending out physical cards, and acquiring a real Christmas tree about 1.5m tall, roots and all. But much to our dismay we have been unable to keep the tree alive, despite the indoor temperature never exceeding 20.5, and despite us utilizing a spray cannister for its leaves in addition to following an online watering and caring guide, its pine-needles keep falling off. In fact, these last few days it’s been like listening to the rain as the needles patter against the wooden floor. I am going to try placing it on the balcony (tying it to the railing to combat the intense nocturnal winds) and hope it recovers. Another ridiculous development revolves around our purchase of a barbell kit near the end of last month, which I was eagerly using for deadlifts and several shoulder exercises. Rather annoyingly though I somehow managed to injure what I think is my serratus anterior; it keeps spasming quite relentlessly, twitching and spasming in rhythm with my pulse for hours at a time, sometimes even keeping me up at night. This is the exact same muscle that I injured many years ago when training on the punch-machine at my university gym in Istanbul. Oh well, so much for exercising and enthusiasm and all that charade of positive intentions… Meanwhile, I have found some electronic solace in the cozy atmosphere of Elywnn Forest and the power of nostalgic Warcraft music while working my way through Season of Discovery. It’s been a good time-sink these last few weeks, and it’s great to have most of our guild there (and on Discord) for banter and shenanigans as we distract ourselves from the illimitable void that life’s ultimate unmeaning has left within us by staring at heart-warming pixels. I also am eager to work through Talos Principle II when time permits.
Anyway, the other day I found myself in a discussion on issues of environmental preservation – in context of Western countries turning a blind eye to their plastic ‘recycling’ exports to third-world countries that then get burned into gaseous carbon by-products in large pits. One interesting thing is that, beyond other arguments, a large part of the logic behind trying to ‘better’ the planet in the long-term seems to hinge on the concept of preserving the human species. Or at least this is what I keep hearing. What is the moral argument stating that a human being ought to preserve its own species? It seems to be taken as a given far too often, lumped into a vague Wille zum Leben. While I am reluctant to extoll an anti-natalist view, it is indeed hard to make a solid case for preserving humanity. From a utilitarian outlook, one may make the argument that since human happiness is, on average, increasing with increased technological progress, it would be lamentable to cull the species and force the cycle to begin anew with a different intelligent species who would then have to go through all of the ‘less happy’ early phases of development once again. Forcing an undetermined future species to unnecessarily go through these same developmental hurdles would be morally wrong, I suppose. If one assumes that a technologically advanced future society will likely lead to increased happiness when compared to earlier phases of human history, then from an ethical perspective a case may be made for preserving our species. The same ethical idea may also be extended to other, non-intelligent, species inhabiting the planet, who in a future technologically advanced state of humanity may be assumed to also benefit from an elevated quality of life. Still, all this seems rather convoluted and not the most obvious (or strongest) of arguments, at least not as obvious as what I hear being put forward by many people, who just take the self-preservation of the human race as some absolute given quality ‘just because’.
I occasionally think of David Benatar’s unevenness argument which goes something like; since the presence of pleasure is good and the presence of harm is bad, and since the absence of harm is good but the absence of pleasure is not necessarily bad, then ‘absence’ is in general better than being in existence. Our inability to see this asymmetry is, reportedly, due to a variety of psychological factors including positive memory prioritization (The Pollyanna Principle), the incredible resilience and adaptation capabilities of humans, and the positive asymmetry provided via comparison with those less fortunate (The Comparison Principle) that is perpetuated in our modern age through consuming ‘news’ for instance. Since the overwhelming majority of news that we consume is either upsetting or horrifying or in some other way negative, there is a tendency to be grateful for what we have rather than realize the primarily burdensome quality of our lives in comparison to non-existence – so goes Benatar’s argument, or at least my interpretation of it. On the other hand, Benatar’s argument is weak since there is no quantification of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and both are treated as statistically equivalent in one’s self-assessment of life, whereas people are quite often willing to suffer a bit for a long while for a short amount of pleasure at the end, indicating that perhaps good > bad in terms of its assigned unit-per-unit weight in one’s life. Another problem seems to be that while this logic is solid for arguing against coming into existence in the first place, it does nothing to address the differing situation of one who is already in existence by some cosmic misfortune. In other words, life may indeed be bad enough to argue against coming into existence (anti-natalism), but it is likely not bad enough to argue for its premature cessation once one finds oneself entangled within it. After all, no one chose to be born. Anyway, there appears to be some form of ethereal, highly inexplicable reasoning which tips the balance in favor of the positive, perhaps some form of Epicurean exposition as I had previously suggested, but it is very hard to explain what I mean by this with these pathetically insufficient linguistic and logical boundaries we are stuck with in order to ‘communicate’. I wonder when mind uploading will be a thing.
December 28, 2023:
I’m currently gazing out the window as dusk slowly sets in, watching the solitary tree that was once bursting with green leaves now barren and waving rebelliously in the evening breeze. Its darkened branches flutter against a glorious orange horizon that slowly peters out towards the East. Two crows are perched atop its uppermost boughs, appearing jet-black by contrast with the gleaming scarlet rays that assault the skyline, almost like shadows; silhouettes of time and space. Such spirit-lifting sights momentarily transform the most prosaic of daily views into ocular poetry. This transformation happens for but a moment and is based upon the onlooker’s momentary lapse of cognition; it requires an empty mind to actually look at and behold. While on many an evening has my gaze drifted across crimson horizons of likely comparable beauty, unfortunately it is only rarely that I have found the mental sobriety to stop and actually look, with not only my eyes but also my mind. And just like that the crows have taken off. A random firework startled all the birds in the vicinity once again, causing winged-panic to darken the Dutch skybox, once again. For some reason Dutch people seem to love fireworks, and they seem to launch them either legitimately or maybe as some form of ‘test fire’ at odd intervals throughout the day including when it’s not even fully dark. And it’s only the 28th…
One of my favorite Christmas memories, that I still cherish as a form of what I previously suggested may be termed a core memory, took place on 25/12/2004. Me and my brother had just recently installed Half Life 2 on our computer and were playing through it, sitting next to each other in front of the small screen, taking turns to play while the other watched. I distinctly remember that while waiting for my mother to call us for dinner we were trying to navigate the water-bike level with its sewer and water puzzles. This means we must have played through the Ravenholm level and the crazed Father Grigori scenes in the previous day(s) – what an exquisite piece of art to experience for the first time. Anyway, on that day I had also received a box of WHFB Bretonnian Knights of the Realm miniatures that I was hyped to prepare for the battlefield. I remember unpacking and gluing them together and then painting them on the kitchen counter while listening to Travis’ 12 Memories album on a cassette (super random) connected to my small speakers. All the while it was snowing outside, as far as I remember, or as far as my core-memory has morphed. The faint sound of carols echoed in from the living room and Peanut whizzed around the house as a bundle of youthful black energy. An absolutely random assortment of memories has become glued together with such force that whenever I think of a ‘happy Christmas’ this is the only one I think of. Very strange, and probably absolutely meaningless to anyone but me. But the power of hindsight has corrupted this memory fragment, blurring everything mundane and painting it over with layer upon layer of color, absolute warmth and complete tranquility. Of course, no doubt it really was a nice, pleasant day, but my mind’s singling out of this particular day from amongst that whole year or those times in general appears to be somewhat arbitrary. Interesting stuff, or maybe not, who knows.
Well, upon yon calendar’s weary page, doth yet another purposeless annum draweth to a close. The sands of 2023 hath traversed with swiftness and yet, in their measured descent, also wrought a ponderous slowness upon our mortal torment, which has doth reacheth many leagues into the nether realms submerged in the vast underworld. That being said, this current ‘holiday season’ has actually been surprisingly courteous. Some entertaining happenings have been: a fun, 10-hour-or-so Pathfinder campaign with Melanie, Danielle and two others where I played as a flesh-warping sorcerer; a weeklong visit by Selin’s brother which involved an unhinged amount of board-games including Architects, Carcassonne and Mastermind, and also a frenzied farming of the god-forsaken Triviaverse game on Netflix; a trip to the M. C. Escher museum here in the Hague; and our attendance at a glorious Christmas Eve dinner hosted by Ozzy the Great and Vera in Amsterdam. And I have just received word that Rasso the Crazy and Elif have arrived in the Netherlands, so hopefully I may meet them in the coming days. Beyond all that, a composite mixture of thinly-sifted crap threatens to cloud all meaning and reasoning in one’s delicately placated existence. This mixture contains lots of little baby crappingos, seemingly harmless upon first glance, such as the dismal and dispiriting weather here, which when superadded onto other lil’ crappingos injects into a person a sense of indecorum and languor. Anyway, pushing aside this useless blanket and ignoring the gray clouds that press upon the windows all day, I am energized to continue working on my manuscript; may Thoth or Hermes or whoever be guiding my quill bestow upon me the most persuasive ink.
**
Cover Image: Rime of the Ancient Mariner illustration by Gustave Dore
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