397

Tıpkı ilk randevusuna yetişmeden önce makyaj yapan bir kadın gibi, dünya da doğduğumuz anda bize doğru koşarken makyajını çoktan yapmış, maskesini takmış, hazıryorumlardır. Üstelik, ona tek aldananlar da konformistler olmayacaktır; her şeye ve herkese karşı çıkmaya doyamayan asi varlıklar kendilerinin de ne kadar itaatkâr olduğunun farkında değildirler; onlar ancak baş kaldırmaya değer olduklerı şeklinde yorumlanmış şeylere (daha önceden o şekilde yorumlanmış şeylere) karşı başkaldıracaklardır.
M. Kundera, Perde (s. 91)

396

John Cage ...once told me, ‘When you start working everybody is in your studio – the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas – all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.
Philip Guston

395

In the face of the essential homelessness of man, there is a struggle for a home, for a grounding. Heidegger sees this homelessness as, most fundamentally, the symptom of man's oblivion to the question of Being. The truth of Being remains unthought and we have closed ourselves off to the meaningfulness of the question. "This homelessness is specifically evoked from the destiny of Being in the form of metaphysics and through metaphysics is simultaneously entrenched and covered up as such. (link)

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