MIRRORS, JOURNEYS, ARTISTS
What kind of love, passion can we speak of if we are afraid of having a “spiritual bleeding” as in Heinrich Böll’s “The Clown” Maybe we give others that dagger to others, if I feel that I have a heart is not it worth that pain, if I want to feel that I am a human being all the time, if I reject ordered love? If I want to throw away fear of the future that I don’t even know whether it will be? If I am ready to welcome the loneliness they will bring, if I prefer embracing my loneliness to suffocating hell of habits?
By Nevin Ulusoy
I am in front of a mirror, the mirror that shows the things I know the least. What if I am in front of this mirror and I cherish myself in spite of all the things I do not like? If I smile at the woman I am, if I like all the things I have done, my dreams all alone. Because I am alone on my way, I must walk, with my own lights, again, I must discover myself again. If nobody hugs me, do not I have myself? Unconditional love, I do not know whether it exists, but is the one that is most needed. My eyes are on trees, yes, it is raining leaves, yellow, they are so beautiful, mad drops on the grey sea. The sky rumbles in my heart, when I walk in the rain for hours, get wet to the bone, on the streets, those deserted, misty, wet streets as I have always dreamed of, it is good for the heart. The tears that cannot be shed for the eyes like Istanbul nights, are shed from the skies on my heart, my skin. The sharp winter wind caresses my clothes, I am in a wave of shuddering. It is as if I am roaming in the scenes of a sad, romantic film, grey desolation, a mad rain, deserted boats. Loving a photograph, falling in love with a picture, that will never fade, never condemn, eyes that will always look with a smile. Just like in Keats’ poem “Ode On A Grecian Urn”, young people who cannot touch each other, will never know the lessening of the beauty of touch:
“Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave,
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal-yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!”
That boat at sunset must be alone maybe, a vacancy to find yourself, with yourself, in you, a piece of vacancy, to be filled with sunshine.
But the colours of the vase fade, the red colour of the lips that have not been touched get dim, photographs go yellow. The essential thing is to live the feelings to the full, without drawing your imagination on what might happen tomorrow, that feelings might change, stopping the maddening proceeding of time at those beautiful moments. What is the meaning of life if we do not get caught in our mad feelings, how can we live with passion then, how? I am walking, pain and sorrow in my eyes, I am hugging my pain and sorrow, I know the fields of love in my heart that nobody knows, the blue behind the clouds of sadness. The things we dream out of our control, always before our eyes are mixed with our dreams at night, we wake up with them, live with them all night long, the pillow is full of them, we turn into bitter-sweet beings by the embrace of reality and dreams. Dreams, not being afraid of our secret desires, when we have the courage, approach things with courage, very different doors are opened, never to be closed. If you get into a canoe that can be overturned with a small wrong movement on a bottomless lake, when you cannot even swim, without the smallest trace of fear, you find yourself in indescribable waves of pleasure. Is not the essential thing to be ourselves in this journey of life, our walk to ourselves, the walk to reject, always, without stopping, the lifestyle that always tries to throw us in the suffocating comfort of habits, the lifestyle that is taught to us and placed in our subconscious without our wish and walking to the unknown, pain, the sorrow, grief of knowing. Comfort is always praised to us, houses, cars, marriages with suitable partners, traditions of thousands of years, discriminations, it is decided who we must love, life is a boring thing that we know how it is going to end. In D.H. Lawrence’s great novel “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, Lady Chatterley’s disabled husband tells her that the aim of our lives is to continue the family, family is a tradition, too, because “one is only a link in a chain.” He goes on:
-“It’s what endures through one’s life that matters; my own life matters to me, in its long continuance and development…It’s the life-long companionship that matters… We have the habit of each other. And habit, to my thinking, is more vital than any occasional excitement.
The long, slow, enduring thing… that’s what we live by… not the occasional spasm of any sort.” Habit, oh that thing that makes us blind, eating out our lives, the thing that we need to fight the most and those that want to cage us in habit. Can we say that real freedom starts by refusing to become a link in a chain, struggling in the still lake of habit? A person can make mistakes, actually one must, how can we walk otherwise? If we are too careful on our steps, we cannot proceed, we just wander in our circles. If we cannot dare to wander with a dagger in our hearts, without being afraid of the warm tear drops that might fall on the dagger, how can we see the sun scattering her golden hair on the sea, her smile, how can we hear her calling voice? What kind of love, passion can we speak of if we are afraid of having a “spiritual bleeding” as in Heinrich Böll’s “The Clown” Maybe we give others that dagger, if I feel that I have a heart is not it worth that pain, if I want to feel that I am a human being all the time, if I reject ordered love? If I want to throw away fear of the future that I don’t even know whether it will be? If I am ready to welcome the loneliness they will bring, if I prefer embracing my loneliness to suffocating hell of habits? If the never-changing rule of life is change, walking with this knowledge, leaving behind those who believe in living denying this rule. That boat at sunset must be alone maybe, a vacancy to find yourself, with yourself, in you, a piece of vacancy, to be filled with sunshine.