Autobiography of an Anthropic Germ
Born in 1990, on a god-forsaken Monday morning as nocturnal cataracts dissolved into a polluted Istanbul skyline, Mete began his existence as the scion of urban blight. He considered returning to the warmth of non-existence as amniotic crud was still dripping from his swollen eyelids, but a week-long hospitalization soon set that thought straight. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in December of the following year greatly troubled his one-year-old heart: “What will become of mankind in an unfettered monopole?” he cried at night, during the very short breaks he took from jamming objects into his buccal cavity. Initially devastated at the dismal prospect of dragging around a useless sack of viscera for his entire existence, he eventually came to terms with it around the age of three. He feeds it now – his pet – from time to time, and it gives him back little presents, from time to time, like aches and pains and packets of bodily waste.
For twenty-eight years he marinated in exhaust fumes and seagull shit, never living more than an eyeshot away from the world’s throat, where rusty buoys gyrate above glittering wave crests. After a dull and wholly pointless elementary education and an abyssal cramming school experience, his dormant and almost completely deadened vivacity was revived in Robert College, Eton of the Orient, where he marvelled at the scientific and literary wonders of the world from the safety of an elite education, financially conferred upon him by his mother’s employment in said establishment. Common trifles of adolescence accompanied his high school journey; electronic guitars, sci-fi novels, computer games, et cetera.
The acceleration of time began in his late teenage years, when a whirlpool of indecision sucked him into the maw of academic indigestion. The chief problem being his fascination with nearly every field of science except the overtly made-up ones (such as law) and his dislike of everything corporate. He studied engineering, physics, and history – in that order – at bachelor level. While the call of Byzantium came as naturally to him as the subterranean howl of a sinking future comes to any denizen of Istanbul, he is still mesmerized by physics and the cosmic mysteries that hide in the dark pits between the stars. After twenty-eight cycles in the petri dish of Istanbul, he cauterized his roots and travelled to Canada in pursuit of a doctorate.
He now combs through the incoherent annals of the Medieval dark ages, listening for murmurs of frozen secrets buried beneath the weight of time. He has examined and published on the long lost lives of Anatolian villagers and townspeople left undulating in the antiseptic fabric of history – an activity he still thoroughly enjoys. He plans to keep writing inconsequential ephemera that nobody cares about, both professionally, and amateurly on this blog, until the decelerating oxygen pump lurking behind his solar plexus finally stops fueling his receding hairline. But for now, horror literature, puzzle games, outer space, ancient folklore, and a variety of other exciting minutiae keep him afloat. He is rumoured to inhale and exhale with a faint alveolar lisp that sounds almost exactly like the name of his partner Selin.
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Mete's Personal Blog 