394

I rolled onto my back again and made my voice casual.

“If you were going to kill yourself, how would you do it.”

Cal seemed pleased. “I've often thought of that. I'd blow my brains out with a gun.”

I was disappointed. It was just like a man to do it with a gun. A fat chance I had of laying my hands on a gun. And even if I did, I wouldn't have a clue as to what part of me to shoot at.

I'd already read in the papers about people who'd tried to shoot themselves, only ended up shooting an important nerve and getting paralyzed, or blasting their face off, but being saved, by surgeons and a sort of miracle, from dying out right.

The risks of a gun seemed great. “What kind of a gun?”

Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar (:175)

393

Do you know what constitutes a great poet? He is a person without shame, incapable of blushing. Ordinary fools have moments when they go off by themselves and blush with shame; not so the great poet.

...Do you know what Victor Hugo did in 1870? He wrote a proclamation addressed to the people of this planet in which he strictly forbade the German troops to besiege and bombard Paris. “I have grandsons and other members of my family here, and I don't want them to be hit by shells,” he said.

Hamsun, Mysteries (:44)

392

In a certain Chinese encyclopedia it is written that 'animals are divided into':

(a) belonging to the emperor,

(b) embalmed,

(c) tame,

(d) sucking pigs,

(e) sirens,

(f) fabulous,

(g) stray dogs,

(h) included in the present classification,

(i) frenzied,

(j) innumerable,

(k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,

(l) et cetera,

(m) having just broken the water pitcher,

(n) that from a long way off look like flies.

Foucault (Order of Things) from Borges.

391

Style is the answer to everything.
Fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous day.
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing
without style.
To do a dangerous thing with style, is what I call art.
Bullfighting can be an art.
Boxing can be an art.
Loving can be an art.
Opening a can of sardines can be an art.
Not many have style.
Not many can keep style.
I have seen dogs with more style than men.
Although not many dogs have style.
Cats have it with abundance.

When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun, that was style.
For sometimes people give you style.
Joan of Arc had style.
John the Baptist.
Jesus.
Socrates.
Caesar.
Garcia Lorca.
I have met men in jail with style.
I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.
Style is a difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.
Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water, or you, walking
out of the bathroom without seeing me.

Bukowski

390

clipped from www.evreninharitasi.com seni arıyor gibi yağıyor bütün yağmur...

389

“Kundera goes on and uses Kafka’s The Castle as an example how translators smudges the original ideas. Kafka’s vocabulary is relatively restricted and Kafka is using simplest, the most elementary verbs: go, have, be, do, must, can. Translators, however, “correct” Kafka and enrich his vocabulary by replacing “have” for “never ceased to experience”, “be” for “advance”, “thrust”, or “go a long way”, and “go” for “walk”.”
P. Bilak, notes on translation in Kundera's work (1999)

388

Like a grandiose despot, the East in its power and splendor casts its inhabitants to the ground and, before man has learned to walk, he is forced to kneel, before he has learned to speak, he is forced to pray; before his heart has attained an equipoise it is forced to bow, before his spirit is strong enough to bear flowers and fruit, Fate and Nature drains all his strength through horrid heat. The Egyptian is devoted before he is a whole, hence he knows nothing of the whole, nothing of Beauty, and what he calls the highest is a veiled power, an awesome enigma; the dumb, dark Isis is his first and last, an empty infinity, and out of that nothing reasonable has ever come. Even the most sublime nothingness gives birth to nothingness...
Hölderlin, Hyperion.

387

386

...They say it is a dangerous experiment to include dreams (actual dreams or otherwise) in the fiction you write. Only a handful of writers –and I'm talking about the most talented– are able to pull off the kind of irrational synthesis you find in dreams...
(murakami, sputnik sweetheart)

385

biz beş kişiyiz...

384

clipped from www.boston.com

383

382

Kafka & Beckett

"I spoke (I must have spoken) of a lesson. It was "pensum" I should have said: I confused pensum with lesson. Yes, I have a pensum to discharge, before I can be free (free to dribble, free to speak no more, listen no more), and I've forgotten what it is. There at last is a fair picture of my situation. I was given a pensum (at birth perhaps), as a punishment for having been born perhaps (or for no particular reason, because they dislike me) - and I've forgotten what it is. But was I ever told?"
(Beckett, The Unnamable)

381

Where there are people (it is said) there are things. Does this mean that when you admit the former you must also admit the latter? Time will tell. The thing to avoid (I don't know why) is the spirit of system. People with things, people without things, things without people - what does it matter? I flatter myself it will not take me long to scatter them, whenever I choose, to the winds. (I don't see how.)
Beckett, The Unnamable.

380

Yaşamanın olduğu yere vardı
Elini uzattı Hasan
Yaşamak biraz öteye gitti
Biraz daha biraz daha derken
Ayağı bir halıya takıldı
Ondan sonrasını bilmiyor Hasan
Vurdular eline kelepçeyi
Candarmalarda insaf ne gezer
Koydular Hasan´ı mapusaneye
Hasan dışarı baktı
Yaşamak duvarın dibindeydi
Elini uzattı Hasan
Yaşamak biraz öteye gitti
Nevzat Üstün, Hırsız Hasan

379

Play is an interference phenomenon. Two children playing together create a balanced binary opposition. Three children is a more fluid, but also more dynamic, harmony. Four children polarize again in two doubled units, more stable than the triangle. Five is again fluid; six is normally the largest number of children that can play an improvised game that isn't organized by a dominant leader among them. Only once had Kaspar seen seven children play together in a fair and balanced way. That had been artists' children who had traveled with the circus a whole summer; it had been at the end of the season, they had known they would be leaving each other, and it had lasted less than an hour. Games for more than seven children required rules set and supervised by adults, like ball games, for example.

There were no adults in the scene before him, no dominant sound. There were eleven children. And they played in perfect harmony.
...
The Quiet Girl, Peter Høeg.

378

the mysteriously disappearing grapes... since two days... emerged up from my sleeves today...

377

'Dolce Vita'da Marcello, 'Hayatımı seni severek geçirmeye niyetim yok' diye kıza bağırdığında, çenem düştü. Manda gibi bakakaldım. Ellerim, alkışlamaya benzer bir reflekste bulundu. 'Dur dur' dedim, 'gürültü yapmayın, ne diyo anlamıyorum!' Ağzıma bir üzüm daha tıkıştırdım. Başa alıp, bir daha izledim.

376

she sings
a woman in the streets
the last cigarette
or the night goes on
or the train is coming back
or the train is coming back
and my baby
i have dreamed of
in many places
is coming back

whatever she sings
words are like bread in her mouth

Sam Cornish - The Blues

375

the guy at the counter said, "why don't we keep the cigarette, and you take these two?" he pushed the coffee and the single banana aside, "then it'll cost a dollar and 86."
including the cigarette the due was 10.08.
"or," he said, "we can trade it for a child," "...yeah, bring us your first born."
i searched my two pockets for eight nickels. the thought of quitting made it difficult to smile.

374

He stirred in his chair, his face turned to gray light that came in through the shady garden, and he asked me out of the blue if I knew German. Without waiting for an answer, he said, "Schachmatt." Then he explained that the word "checkmate" was an European hybrid made of the Persian word for king, "shah," and the Arabic word for killed, "mat." We were the ones who had taught the West the game of chess. In the worldly arena of war, the black and white armies fought out the good and evil in our souls. And what had they done? They had made a queen out of our vizier and bishop out of our elephant; but this was not important in itself. What was important, they had presented chess back to us as a victory of their own brand of intellect and the notions of rationalism in their world. Today we were struggling to understand our own sensitivities though their rational methods, assuming this is what becoming civilized means.
O.Pamuk / The New Life

373

o insanlar
A4 kağıt gibi
erişim kusursuz

372

Albino girl with a red coat. She was blind.

A fire truck pulling another truck carrying a piano.

Birini anneme benzettim. Bej kaban giymiş, yaşlı bir adamdı. Sırtını dimdik tutarak asker gibi yürüyordu, ama usul usul.

Motorlu polislerin parlak mavi ve yusyuvarlak kaskları var.

Ikinci kısa kollu t-shirt giymiş adam geçti.

Biftekli sandviç güzel degildi. Üç peçete harcadım.

Yaşlı bir çift. Ikisi de beyaz saçlı. Iyi giyimliler. Adam, acele etmeden kadının sigarasını yaktı. Kadın bir nefes çekip, düşüncelerine devam etti. Adam, şimdi pipo içiyor. Ara sıra da uzanıp, kadının içeceginden bir yudum alıyor. Alışkanlıklarından farkında olmadan mutlular.

Jung, kadınların animasına ne isim veriyordu. Bir rüya gördüm. 'Kadınların bir erkegi olmaz' diyen kız haklı mı? Ve, loyalty'nin Türkçesi ne?

Staples'da 26 dolara 'boşanma seti' satılıyor. Evlilik öncesi anlaşması dahil, borç ve malların paylaşılmasıyla ilgili tüm kanuni formlar içindeymiş.

Artık kısa kollu kimse geçmiyor.

371

The propositions describing this world-picture might be part of a kind of mythology. And their role is like that of the rules of a game; and the game can be learned purely practically, without learning any explicit rules.
Wittgenstein/On Certainity, 95.

370

Birazdan yağmur patlayacak. Yazın ıslandığında insan umursamıyor.

Geçen sefer şemsiyeye rağmen adım atamadım. Bir saçak altına sığınıp, ıslanmaya orada devam ettim. Koşarak gelen biri daha saklandı aynı kovuğa. O, baştan aşağı sırılsıklamdı. Şemsiye altına davet etsem mi diye düşündüm. Sonra, 'şemsiye de işe yaramıyor zaten' bahanesiyle durdum.

Hava karardı, ama kuru. Bir yarım saat daha bekler mi? 5:05.

Yine günleri, saatleri saymaya başladım.

Sınıftan tanıdığım biri yan masada arkadaşıyla oturuyor. Yağmur yağarsa birlikte yürürüz. Şemsiyeyi biriyle paylaşmakta kararlıyım bu sefer. Şirin bir kız.

Tuhaf bir Haziran. Geçen yıl da böyle miydi? İstanbul'a mı gitsem? Acaba orada da saatleri sayar mıyım?

Yağmur başladı bile. Yan masadaki yaşlı adam, "şemsiyenizi paylaşabilir miyim?" diye sorup, karşıma oturdu. Bu kadar basit olabilir mi?

Sigarası bitince gitti. Yazmaya devam edebilirim. Açık havada, hava açıksa daha keyifli oluyorum, evet. 5:23.

Ithaka'ya dönüp ne yapacağım? Hoş, televizyon seyrederken insan saatleri unutuyor. O da bir yön. Yarın bilmediğim bir kütüphanede, bir kitap avlamam lazım. Yoksa, 15 dolara satın almak gerekecek.

5:30. Yapılmayı bekleyen işler. O şarkı çalıyor yine, 'Wonderful, wonderful'. Nat King Cole muydu?

369

- "For the purposes of clarification... when you said you didn't... did you mean you didn't say you wanted to see me... or that you didn't, in fact, want to see me?

- "Hah... Isn't language a curious thing?"

(The Importance of Being Earnest/ Wilde)

368

kandıracak birini bulursam, ancak
ona yazarım

herkesi kandırılabilirim
ama değmez

yazı, kandırmaktan başka da işe
yaramaz

hergün kaç kişiyi kandırıyorsun?
hiç

yalan söylediğimi biliyorlar, hava
hoş

kandırmak için kanmak lazım, ancak
öyle yazarım.

367

A fabulous bird that flies backwards and thus does not know where it is going, but likes to know where it has been.

clipped from www.pantheon.org Ouzelum Bird