Category Archives: Reflections

February 10, 2013 · 6:42 am

Love

The complex phenomenon called love finds its one description in the following words of Lao Tzu: “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage (http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/2622245.Lao_Tzu).”

This conviction of love’s ability to give strength and courage found a home in me beginning with the year of 2005, the end of a year during which I faced one of my most trying ordeals.  The summer of 2008, while being a time to take me to a new state of trial, enabled me a realization that heightened anew – and continues to intensify today – my passion for life.  All along, I had been deeply loving the same someone, gaining courage from my love during my thus far most difficult experiences.  I had, however, not been aware of the depth to which extent that someone had been loving me.  All along, having to face and come to terms with the unwavering tribulations of my mutually wounding ordeal, nesting within the one of own.

Coming across Lao Tzu’s words just recently when a late January 2013 blog on my host platform – WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE: LOVE– was still on my mind now feels like this coincidental bridging was meant to be. Hadn’t Kant claimed that coincidences are not about a coincidence, after all?

Sara Rosso, the writer who conceived the challenge in question, had one invitation to other bloggers: “share a picture which means LOVE to you!”

I haven’t had the chance to participate in that challenge on its deadline.  I am, however, dedicating this Sunday’s post to it.  Aside from the obvious (a scene from Venice), my photograph captures that someone with whom I share love at its ultimate state, gaining strength and courage from the depth of its multitude of dimensions.  To fulfill my lifelong wish, I had made arrangements to visit Venice and Florence with her.  When I arrived in Germany for a brief visit with her first before we took of to Italy, she started feeling sick.  Everything for our trip was arranged, yet she only got sicker.  Without skipping a beat, she forbade me from cancelling our entire trip – which I was ready to do and kept me company to her best capacity while at our destinations.  She knew that I wouldn’t go to my dream sites on my own.  She knew how important that trip was for me for reasons that only she and I knew the best.  In addition to her sickness, she had to leave her husband behind, for no visa arrangements could be completed for him.  They were still newlyweds.

My daughter.

Image of love

Out of respect for her most cherished privacy, I have opted for a picture that shows only her back.  Instead of her outer beauty that is in immense harmony with her inner beauty.  Dear Sara Rosso, here I am sharing a picture which means LOVE to me!

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February 3, 2013 · 6:30 am

“How old is s/he?”

His mother died when she was 48.  His brother died, having been able to pass a mere 32 birthdays.  His sister died also at the age of 48.  He had to give his daughter to death when she was only 31.  He had cancer before she was diagnosed with hers.  Soon after she died, his body formed another type.  A third struck him last week.  Not metastasis of his first, or the second.  A new one.

He is 82.

He practiced medicine right after his graduation from the medical university in Istanbul, Turkey.  Having served for decades in Germany as the head physician in the hospital from where he retired years ago.  He knows what must be done when, whenever medical interferences are concerned.  He has led countless surgical procedures during his tenure.  He has tended to post-surgery needs of his numerous patients of all ages and walks of life during his time.

The medical staff of the hospital where he has had two surgeries in short intervals, responded to his two calls for alarm after half an hour had passed.  One was for dangerously low, the other for dangerously high blood pressure – both along with breathing difficulties. Half an hour of a wait!  On the night of his surgery!  Why not take longer to let the patient develop fatal post-surgery complications?  He lived 82 years, after all, isn’t that enough?

Describing the ordeal she and her 55-year-old husband had because of his cancer and ensuing death, Cheryl Eckl makes a remarkable statement in her essay, Elder Grief: The Hidden Burden of Advanced Age. Why growing really old may be worse than dying young (Published on May 24, 2012 by Cheryl Eckl in A Beautiful Grief: “[…] what he was not suffering was the additional burden of advanced age.”  Referring then to her mother’s declining health at a very advanced age, Eckl considers “that perhaps even worse than dying young is living to be very old, with little quality of life due to several serious ailments, but not being sick enough to leave this world.”  Her mother, Eckl writes, knows several people “who would be very happy not to wake up tomorrow.”

On this blood-freezing sentiment, Eckl contemplates as in the following: “That is the cruelty being suffered in obscurity by millions of the elderly who are shut away in nursing homes and senior living centers across the United States. Bored, lonely, in pain, or so demented or sedated that they don’t know who they are, these are the forgotten mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunties, and uncles who deserve better attention than they are receiving.”

For the onset of her cancer and the metastasis of it, my mother was treated through surgical procedures in Turkey and in Germany.   Three decades ago.  My mother didn’t want to be advanced in age to the extent that she would no longer be able to live a life of quality.  She got her wish.

My uncle’s “case” is happening in Germany.  Today.

The United States, in other words, is not the only cultural entity where this “cruelty” goes on.

For people who are among those living beyond their expected age of death – whatever that may be, Eckl invites us to imagine how for them “the borders of daily experience narrow as distress grows and the ability to perform all but the simplest of tasks disappears.”   What does Eckl suggest as a balm for a life having to consist of “a succession of doctor appointments and increasingly invasive and dehumanizing treatments”?  Love and our presence in their lives.

He is 82.  He has always been present in my life.  And still is.  In Eckl’s words, he has never deprived me of his “heartfelt presence” (Eckl) Or, of his love.  Unconditional love.  After my mom’s death, he told me he finds in me his mother – “Anamsın” and his sister (my mom) –“Bacımsın.”  After his daughter’s death, he saw her in me – “Kızımsın.”

In him, I always found a fully involved father.  I still do.  I went through many ordeals.  He was there for me during each one of them.  I love him so.

Where is, though, my heartfelt presence when he needs it the most?

Dayı, beni affet.

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January 27, 2013 · 6:30 am

Privacy Settings

“One hour and ten minutes,” the young man says.  Huge round eyes.  He doesn’t need those long, curled-up eyelashes, I decide, with the attitude of myself about forty years ago.  This time keeping to myself what my best friend (of my childhood and early youth) and I back then protested out loud at every sight of her brother – the owner of a set of huge round eyes: long, curled-up eyelashes included.  Each time, we concluded that no man needed eye enhancers; we, however, did – and in desperation, at that.  We were in big envy for any and all of our male counterparts in those insecure years of our lives.  They just must have cut in front of the line when such beauty marks were distributed, we deliberated after such encounters.  Eyes, after all, meant everything in my home culture.    The history with volumes of literary and musical work attests to that.

One hour and ten minutes, I realize, is a long time just to be waiting.  My friend (of this and any upcoming age) isn’t here yet and I don’t know if she would want to try elsewhere.  So, I squeeze myself through a shoulder-to-shoulder as well as elbow-to-upper/lower-back lobby crowd all the way into a one-and-a-half-person corner close to the entrance, somewhere between the exit-to-patio door and the line to the bar area.  If she thinks we should not wait here, we can leave with ease.

She likes it here as much as I do: We are staying.  Along with the non-wavering wait-time estimation.  We comment a little about what on earth could be going on – again –to have such a big crowd in line.  Our complaint is short-lived.  Soon, we get lost in our mother tongue with all its unwritten requirements for hands and face gestures.  Until a soft voiced question cuts it: “I’m sorry but what is the language you are speaking?”

Oh no!  Intrusion!  If this situation had risen on any of my friend’s social media accounts or those of mine, … .

Had we been talking with that much of an increased volume in our voices, my friend’s questioning eyes meet mine.  We had only been trying to outdo all other vocal power structures around us.  With a shaking twitter, I ask, if our conversation had been too loud for them.  The answer of this very good looking, young couple – yes, they talk together all at once – is negative.  They were only curious, is the word.  Now, my friend and I, too, succumb to curiosity.  Not about the English they are speaking in flawless mastery.  About them.  They started it after all!  Also: They don’t turn their backs at us as soon as they find out the language of communication between countless generations before us in our home country.

An inquisitive female – one of the two core components of a delightful pair.  He, not as talkative in words as she but sharing with us in generosity an equally warm and charming personality, while being openly as eager to interact with strangers who speak strange languages.  Neither one of them being nosy, pushy, or obnoxious but graceful in their apparent enthusiasm.  Turkish, French, Greek, Swedish, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Italian are the languages, and Turkey, Greece, Italy and China, the countries we visit together on a virtual tour.

Our seats are ready exactly one hour and five minutes later.  The young man with those remarkable eyes wasn’t exaggerating after all, for the sake of a surprise intended only for my friend and I.  By having our table be made ready for us sooner.  (When a woman has matured, finally to keep up with her biological age at least on occasion, she allows herself the luxury of self-tease even in a basic restaurant setting.  It is a far more wondrous of an experience when a dear friend meets her on that very same platform at the very same time.  The laughter that ensues such non-decodable secrecy is pure happiness.)

Stomach-hungry but with even hungrier eyes, we earn the privilege to be seated down.  Our eyes are searching for other diners being led into the dining quarters.  None of them resemble any of the two core halves of the couple we had the joy to meet and talk with for an entire hour (the five minutes had passed in our lonely one-and-half-person corner).  Throughout our wine, salad and dinner routine, we sum up with thirst the highlight of our long wait’s award.  We agree that this time it isn’t the food or wine of our usual selections.  As we have had many times before.  That it rather is the intrusion we welcomed two strangers to make into our private spheres.  For, through their refreshing presence of innocent and passionate curiosity, they gave us a sense of rejuvenation.

After that evening, I decide to alter my rather rigid privacy settings I had for long copied from my social media environments, having pasted them on to my real life time and again.  I since realize how much more wonder there is to enjoy in the seemingly most mundane interactions with strangers – people we tend to leave outside our comfort zone at any chance we get.  How, though, a kind word of attention, a question of curiosity, a reaction of astonishment from them can transform itself into a memorable moment as it has with me.  And to what significance that moment matters on the scale of life.  It is, after all, not merely breathed in and out but rather lived in the full extent that it deserves.

 

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January 20, 2013 · 7:37 am

The “Now”

Dear Reader,

I am sorry for having no reflections this Sunday.  Nothing that flowed from within me achieved the capacity to be worth your time.  Perhaps, because I lived in the present last week, experiencing only the “now” to the best of my ability.  While I am not claiming to have attained what Abraham Maslow is said to have stressed in his Personality Theories, I aim to hide my week-long attempt behind the following pronouncement of his: “The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.”

I remain with the hope not to have disappointed you too much and to once again being able to delight in the privilege of  your visit next week.

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January 13, 2013 · 6:24 am

The So-called “Brides” of Destroyed Childhoods

Many scenes of Osama – the first film made in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime are memorable.  Students of semesters past in my course, “Short Story, Film, and Islam,” will attest to this claim.  Offered under the category of Women and World Literature, mostly female students tend to enroll in this class first, although several male students register before the first week passes.  Still, the majority of class is made up of women.  Very young women.  Never, though, as young of a female as Osama, the film’s main character – a 12-year old girl.  Around mid- and end-semester, I give my students an anonymous survey, seeking their feedback on the course films.  There is one scene in this film that seems most disturbing to all every semester of its in-class showing and discussion – with the exception of maybe one or two out of a large class of students.  It is the wedding night of Osama – when she hides herself inside a lidded hole on the floor of the room where she has been locked to wait for her husband.  He is old enough to be her grandfather.

I remember getting much negative attention at a women’s studies conference not too long ago for including this film into the curriculum through large-group viewing and ensuing discussion.  “Why would you show such a controversial film in the first place?” were the exact words of one co-panelist.  Several others had joined her in her remarks of disbelief.  Reactions can and will, of course, take place in any setting, to any situation.  That fact is not worth any space here or elsewhere.  How those responses to my focus of debate of the time affected me, however, is.  For after that incident, I silenced myself as a mediator between teaching and learning.  In fact, I eliminated all films that were (and are) conducive to awareness-raising and thought-provoking deliberations by people of any age from my course design and schedule.  Not anymore.

While the film “Osama” is claimed to have been only inspired by a true story, outrageous happenings of the same nature seem to be in abundance when the world news are concerned.  One only needs to look at a few sources to gain insight into this human drama: PBS (“Child Brides: Stolen Lives”), National Geographic (“Too Young to Wed – The Secret World of Child Brides”), BBC (“The Truth about Child Brides”), New York Daily News (“PICTURED: Agony of the child brides forced to marry as young as SIX to men up to EIGHT TIMES their age”), UK Mail Online (“The terrifying world of child brides: Devastating images show girls young enough to be in pre-school who are married off to older men”).

The most recent news on this horrifying problematic of humanity came to me from CNN World (“70-year-old man marries 15-year-old in Saudi Arabia”): “She” is a “new bride”, a “15-year old”, “a teenager”, sold “for the equivalent of $20,000” – in other words, this young female victim has no name yet.  May she become also the inspiration for a film to at least be able to assume a memorable identity.  In order for this transnational debate to continue to spread awareness for this crime against humans of female birth under the disguise of religion.

"The status of a woman in a society reflects that social entity's level of civilization and advancement."

“The status of a woman in a society reflects that social entity’s level of civilization and advancement.”

 

 

 

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January 6, 2013 · 6:30 am

How to …

The first time I had heard the concept of “How tos” – with the exact words – was in graduate school.  A German professor used it in one of our seminars, in a succinct tone of sarcasm: He was referring to the “American way of life,” in terms of expecting instructions on everything.

I didn’t agree with him back then and can’t say that I do now, as I have a serious problem with overgeneralizations.  For indiscriminate conclusions about a person, any person, violate the realities of individual cases.  But, I admit, with all the preparations for celebrations of events in the last two months alone, a large number of “how to”-texts had my full attention.  I had, of course, noticed such writings before but this year, in particular, I felt a substantial increase in the intensity of generic assumptions.  The seasonal events have passed us already.  Therefore, I won’t dwell on them here.  I will, instead, compile a miniscule “How to”-sampler from online sources on being single – a status I share with numerous others everywhere in the world.

Let me first stop by a “sorry for you”-speech: “There’s nothing wrong with being single but at some point most people reach the point of wanting a relationship (20 Reasons You’re Still Single).”

Holding on – in tight grip – to the given list but still feeling relieved for the crucial confirmation that there is “nothing wrong” with me, I move on only to run into a counter-How-to: “Check out 101 reasons to stay single and see why you should be staying single! (101 reasons to stay single)”

Even scan-reading 101 items is too much of an eye strain for me.  Since many more lists of this nature appear on the same page, I look for a shorter instruction and find it: The 50 Best Things about Being Single – I let out a sigh of relief (50 as opposed to 101 is pretty good, isn’t it?)

I keep looking and my small effort is not in vain: 18 Reasons to Love Being Single will do much better than 50.  I am, after all, in a time crunch as I must determine whether to stay single or not before I reach the end of these manuals.

It turns out there are far less ambitious how-tos on one’s private life than my first sampler item: Being Single Is Great — And These 11 Someecards Agree or Ten Reasons to Celebrate Being Single or another one that agrees with the magical number ten, 10 Reasons Why Being Single is Awesome.

Still, hoping to shorten the reading I must do to attain the expertise for a decision, I search more and find what I can manage, given my impatience: Top 3 Reasons Why Being Single Is Good For Your Health.  I stop at this one.  Only 3 reasons?  And a promise for health benefits I can’t afford giving up as someone who has been living intimately with a chronic disease?

Once my decision is made thanks to the many “How tos”, my mind goes in to the resting mode.  A sneaky urge surfaces somewhere among the aging but still healthy, hence active brain cells.  As if to speak face to face to one of the writers of these relationship manuals, I ask: Why 3, 10, 18, 50, 101, and so on and not 1?  Namely: Choice?

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December 31, 2012 · 3:55 am

Thanks to all my visitors and followers! 2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,800 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 7 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

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December 30, 2012 · 6:28 am

2013

Dear Reader, as usual, you have my thanks for your visit.  I look forward to greeting you with my first post of the new year next Sunday.  While we will all go our own ways for the time being, I am leaving you with my best wishes for the new year today.  Happy New Year!  Guten Rutsch ins Neujahr!  Yeni yılınız kutlu olsun!

I hope you will enjoy the audio, visual and textual offerings of the following links:

New Year Celebrations Around the World

http://www.familien-welt.de/freizeittipps/familienfeste/1221-neujahrsfeste-in-aller-welt

http://www.cnnturk.com/2011/dunya/12/31/dunyadan.yeni.yil.manzaralari/642765.0/index.html

http://www.myspace.com/video/vid/107282502

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December 23, 2012 · 7:19 am

“What Kind of Times Are These”

While putting my first thought into words, I envision Adrienne Rich having approved my relying only on the title of her poem, What Kind of Times Are These in my search for the language of my need today.  I picture her joining me in my outburst and deep state of sadness for and disbelief in the massacre of innocence last week on Friday, December 14, 2012.

I don’t live in Newtown, CT .  Never have.  I didn’t have any personal acquaintance with Charlotte Bacon, Daniel Barden, Olivia Engel, Josephine Gay, Ana M. Marquez Greene, Dylan Hockley, Madeleine F. Hsu, Catherine V. Hubbard, Chase Kowalski, Jesse Lewis, James Mattioli , Grace McDonnell, Emilie Parker, Jack Pinto, Noah Pozner, Caroline Previdi, Jessica Rekos, Avielle Richman, Benjamin Wheeler, or Allison N. Wyatt.  I didn’t need to.

Knowing that our society has not done far better by its most precious and vulnerable members hurts regardless.  “Is it not so that the failure to protect little children from harm is the most shameful weakness an adult human can present?” James Howard Kunstler conceives this question on his blog site, Clusterfuck Nation in his post of December 17, 2012, America The Horror Show.  Kunstler’s podcast presentation, “It’s Too Late for Solutions,” published by Chris Martenson on July 14, 2012 seems eerie in its preemptive warnings: “[W]e are past the state where solutions are possible – instead, we need a response plan to help us best brace for the impact of the coming consequences.  And we need it fast.”

Only “the failure to protect little children from harm” happened fast, as the entire country has taken part in “the most shameful weakness an adult human can present [.] (Kunstler)”  I am no exception.  In fact, worse.  Friday, December 14 was the date of my birth.  The sense of guilt for having lived this long and well compounded the sorrow I felt for the massacre of all those children whose names I reminisced above.

The semester was also ending on that day – with me still not knowing that childrens’ lives were taken away from them and in such brutal way.  I had just left my literature students with a reminder to take pride in their own poetic creations, a special assignment they completed after our examination of German poetry.  A project I asked them to conceive as their contribution to the next generations.  Next to Adrienne Rich’s poem, we had spent significant time analysing and reflecting on  An die nachkommenden Freunde (“To Our Successor Friends”) by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and An die Nachgeborenen (“To Those Who Follow in Our Wake”) by Bertolt Brecht– poems transferring knowledge and wisdom about the poets’ lifetimes to the reader of generations to come.

Imagine the morning of Friday, December 14, 2012 as a time when we were not “past the state where solutions are possible” (Kunstler) for all those slaughtered children – whose names I recall here one more time.  Imagine one, some or all of them leaving another “What Kind of Times Are These” or “An die nachkommenden Freunde” or “An die Nachgeborenen” for the human race to seek wisdom in and from for centuries to come.  Imagine each of them having had the chance to live a full life, the way they were supposed to.  Before their life ties were severed by a psychotic who happened to have all that he needed for his monstrous murder act right at his finger tips since he himself was a child for reasons I have no understanding, tolerance or sympathy for.

In the words of Rich but with the emotional outburst solely of my own, I ask in despair in the aftermath of this unforgettable butchering of innocence: What kind of times are these?

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December 16, 2012 · 6:38 am

Dear Reader

Please accept my thanks for your visit to my blog site.  I am sorry for the lack of any reflections today.  Once a year, on the occasion of my birthday, I will allow myself only private deliberations and starting on Friday, this weekend marks one of those occasions.  I look forward to your visit next Sunday!

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