There's a hell of a universe next door: let's go!

For the confusion of this world

2011-09-04T19:50:00.000+03:00

The universe isn't a part of anything bigger. Dwelling on that thought makes my heart completely empty and completely full at the same time. Is there any bigger tragedy in humans' lives than being able to understand the insignificance of everything? How utterly beautiful and brutal.

I walked through the pitch dark forest to the rocks and laid down on my back. Every time I'm facing the night sky like that, three hundred and sixty degrees, I think about the same things. I wish I could capture the moment when you can feel the vast emptiness around you and the fact that we can't see behind the universe. And give that thought to somebody. And get the same feeling from them. This is all you've got. You'll never know what it's about, but you can feel it, witness everything. I feel lucky to be able to see it even for a second. Don't live like it's the last day of your life, live like it's the first one. Seize everything. Breathe every moment like you've never breathed before.

~ 09:20:00 - 09:20:01

2011-03-30T16:41:00.002+03:00

I reached the surface again after floating somewhere deep in the mazes of my incredible mind, focused my sight on the road and for a short second found myself thinking, "What bus am I on?", then, "Where am I going?" and finally, "Who am I?". I found answers to at least the first two questions before I stood on my feet and got off but the feeling dwelled for a while. What a feeling!

Being unhappy is a crime towards the life itself

2010-12-17T16:40:00.000+02:00

- I hate birthdays. I hate every new age. It's a countdown to my death.
- There's no sense in living like that. You can't live hating each new year, you simply can't possibly enjoy your life like that. Be sensible: you can't do anything about this matter, so why worry about it?
- Exactly, I can't do anything about this matter! I can merely stand and watch the time pass. It's like running blind towards a cliff not knowing when you're going to fall. The powerlessness makes me frustrated, angry and sad, because I just want to live.
- I know you love your life but you should focus on the things that are good and see that you get so many of those amazing experiences and places and people every single year that comes, instead of worrying about the time that has been given to you. You can't live like that, woman!
- I know what it sounds like. And I highly appreciate you being able to live like you do. It makes me envious. But I couldn't live like that. This is what my life is like. It makes me real, and it makes me feel this world. It makes me feel it through my fingertips and eyes and ears and love each single detail I see. In this world everything is inspiring. Everything is beautifully complex or beautifully simple. Feelings are true and pure but not overwhelming. And then in the right scale nothing has any purpose or any significance whatsoever. In the most beautiful moments when I look around I see the world as if it was already gone. The fact that evidently everything I see will be lost in time forever makes me want to cry tears that spring from both happiness and powerless sorrow. Knowing that everything I have is borrowed as if I was already dead makes it all a billion times more beautiful. My life is to sadly love what I see. And to feel I never want to leave this world.

Sanna is in Istanbul vol 2

2010-11-02T17:07:00.000+02:00

It's a rainy evening in Istanbul and we walk against the wind near the bus station to a small booth where a man sells bread. We step in through the backdoor, shake his hand and buy two loaves of bread for 0.4 Turkish lira while two women leave with five. He wants to offer us tea but we step back out to the stormy weather and Erdoğan tells me that the man has only one leg (but he drives a car). In one day he sells hundreds of loaves but for the day we need only two for four people because I eat so little.

I learned how to peel sunflower seeds and that çiğ köfte is the best way to eat traditional food cheap (1.5 TL for two, 0.4 euros for one). Suddenly in the middle of a movie shown in television a shiny picture of Atatürk and a waving flag of Turkey appear in the upper corner of each channel. The next day is independence day.

Aşkım

2010-08-19T16:51:00.002+03:00

In Turkey, Erdoğan tells me, bread is compareable to the Quran. You can swear with your hand placed on a loaf of bread. You never disrespect bread by placing it on the table upside down. He looks at my way of eating my bread and advices how to make it more Turkish - always eat by ripping off one small piece at a time, and never use your teeth for that. I've also learned that to show respect you should never lay down during the call to prayer and that local men are usually surprisingly talented at singing.

The day I arrived was the second day of Ramadan. Every evening people gather in their yards, homes and around tens of tables placed in each park and wait until the time is 10 past 20 hours. Lights between the minarets in mosques say things like 'Merhaba Ramazan' or islamic wisdoms, my first nights here I woke up to ramadan related sounds from the streets in the middle of the night but I've gotten used to them already. I've gotten used to crossing the street running and stirring my Turkish tea furiously to cool it down. I've gotten an invitation to a wedding and joined the group of people who dislike şalgam.

The first day, when I was left for half an hour in the yard of the Sultanahmet Camii still wondering what is going on, listening to the call to prayer that started at that very moment, I thought I was so happy I could die.

Parking lot games

2010-07-08T21:24:00.000+03:00

I was already walking after him but then for some reason I turned around and went back and all the way home I wanted to drive and hit a wall. Am I not done with this yet? Leaving doesn't feel as good as staying feels bad.

I love gravity.

2010-06-16T20:16:00.001+03:00

All right now, now I admit that I'm rather seriously interfered and obsessed. I never forgot the name. I remember the absent-minded fingering of the hair and the look through the car window, too. Things have changed in a way I've yet to figure out how.

And when you really just think about the pointlessness of existence, just say, "How brilliant everything is." Sometimes every piece of my surroundings and myself fit together like a jigsaw.

Hillitä veren ja ruumiin rajua kiihkoa, joka pistelee silmiäni mielettömällä riemulla

2010-04-29T17:51:00.000+03:00

When I read the thoughts of these men of 19th or 20th century I feel a great desire to be able to see myself facing the inevitable death full of such blissful peace that M felt. But even though I can very well say I've been happy like him, I don't think I would be capable of accepting such horrifying destiny without being crushed by endless terror. Sometimes in the night time when I listen to allah akbar thinking of the desert at night I feel strong longing and insensible restlessness, for I believe that after seeing that view I might be able to die happy. After that feeling I might be able to pinpoint my location in the universe and state that I know what I am. And yet all of a sudden I can see myself lying on the golden sand watching my life slip through my fingers. If something happened to me in the desert, I might die in front of the most beautiful sight of my life but I would nonetheless be filled with horror.

Lev Nikolajevits Myskin tells about a man sentenced to death, who splits his very last five minutes to three parts: two minutes for saying farewell to his loved ones, two minutes for thinking about himself and his life and the last minute for looking around. And I think I would stare at the sky trying to see all of the universe behind it, feel myself a part of it and be happy and thankful for my life. How can I ever leave this world?

-- piikkilangan läpi. Kun käännän katseeni --

2010-03-29T00:00:00.000+03:00

The cat looked around with curiosity at the tall drums of fish food, pills, dips and chips and at the body floating face down from the shallow end to the deep.

Oksusu

2010-03-22T18:51:00.003+02:00

For a short moment I thought I'd leave applying for architecture school and go back to Istanbul. Here I see things again as if everything's temporary, as if I had to adjust to yet another new environment. During six months I've seen so many men whose genotype differ from that of mine, that people here simply won't move me. I'd rather not get involved.

Sea of Marmara at noon. Call to prayer. أوروبا - اسيا View to the Black Sea. Too much staff everywhere. The elegant shisha bar owner. People stopping on the street to see what you're doing. Çemberlitaş. Backgammon in coffee houses. Hakimiyet Allahιndιr. Teşekkür ederim. I want to get on the bus wherever I want and cross the street between moving cars.

I want to stretch my open palm towards him so that he can pick 1,5 lira and hand me two sesame seed pastries. In both my favourite locations you can watch the sea and listen to الله أكبر.

I do it so it feels real

2010-02-22T01:27:00.003+02:00

She talks to me about splitting my 24 hours into periods of 60 minutes, then 60 seconds... And I merely feel that same familiar anguish that I've never really understood. The next day I stand in direct sunligh in the graveyard and I'm not even cold, I watch the yellow and red lights swimming on the inside of my eyelids and I think of summer on the Baltic Sea. A man smiles at me and I want to be more like Henk Hofstede.

You can't tell if I'm serious or not. I look at people pretending to be accomplishing a lot and I think, "Fuck, that's it", and I walk back home and try to think of something else. There are more blank spots in my memory than I want to admit.

He has long hair and he laughs. I'm a paranoid idiot elitist shit. He wondered if she had some information about swamps that the rest of us lack. You can't tell if I'm serious or not.

v = fλ

2009-12-26T12:15:00.003+02:00

This is all very lovable. We're waves. Every cell of our bodies, decluding the brain, renew on average every seven years. Cells in skeletal muscles renew on average every fifteen years and in non-epithelial intestinal tissue the average age of cells is sixteen years. People say everything we have is borrowed, and I talk about it physically. We were all stellar matter, once all our quarks united to form the nucleons in our bodies, and that's fucking great. We're, in its deepest meaning, a part of the universe. However, besides the lend of my atoms, the most thankful I am for the manner in which my atoms form my body, permitting a consciousness. The fact that I know I'm a wave. Makes me fucking pleased. EXQUISITE.

2009-08-19T18:53:00.001+03:00

Vaari

2009-08-12T20:23:00.006+03:00

I wonder at which point --

2009-05-24T12:02:00.003+03:00

My phobia is claustrophobia. Now it is embodied by these losses, these deaths. And the pain is nearly physical. Every moment of separation moves the walls a little bit closer to me.

And I'm still or again looking for him even though I don't know what to look for. I hope he would find me instead, even if it wouldn't be right. I want to be found. I will tattoo it in my forehead. I have to get rid of some things, and replace some things with others.

The river

2009-03-15T21:49:00.002+02:00

Why can't you all stay. Life is so short that I get claustrophobic.

One night I sit in a friend's kitchen and on the halfway of the wine bottle she tells me about panic attacks in which one feels as close to death as possible, still being alive. "The worst one can go through, and that a hundred times." She spills wine on her dress and as I do the dishes I think about how much I love her and her tiny apartment, the painted walls and the photograph beside the bed. I love the fact that there is someone with whom I can talk about death.

These years have made me live. I've learned to relax. I've learned to reveal some of myself. I've learned to express my endless excitement by running and shouting and waving my hands. And still I'm afraid that I will never in my life find a way to express my inner love for living, the strange fear and will for adventure. I'm disappointed with myself, because what used to make me live nowadays makes me dull and I have a terrible need for a congenial company, mad experiences and the bizarre and exciting feeling of being one with the world.

I get out of this head by filling my thoughts with people and often that seems to be the only way out. She said, "sometimes it breaks my heart and sometimes it’s killing me", and I could say the same about so many things.

And I wonder whether the person sitting next to me ever thinks about the same things as I do

2009-03-09T20:16:00.008+02:00

Perspective.

Electrically charged elementary particles form electrically neutral objects. If one looked close up they would look like an endless desert consisting of numerous units linked to each other by an electric interaction. One could live a whole life observing the features of each one of them, write an encyclopedia of five parts. Then finally, in the end one would raise one's look satisfied to see endless similar shapes repetitively surrounding one, strecting to eternity. And understand the insignificance of such a complicated object. A drop in a galactic sea, an atom in the empty space between groups of galaxies.

We live 30 000 short lives. Each one can not be good, but every single one seems to have a purpose. I spend a day sitting in an old house, surrounded by echoes, staring in front of me and calculating simplified simulations of The Real World, because I will need that skill in the future. I feel joy of success, I feel pride; because of a single cup of warm, soft coffee I feel endless pleasure. When sitting late in the night in a tram travelling through darkness I am able to enjoy the soft lights, the content look on a man's face and the familiar melody I've been longing for the whole day.

Is an outcome the sum of its individual parts? When from close up one sees the variations of electric charge and from a distance the galaxy groups spinning around dark matter, what ever could be the right perspective? Is a day equally valuable to a year, a decade, a lifetime? What is the sum of the parts?

Does a happy life consist of a daily cup of warm coffee and an absent-minded touch on the arm, is twenty-four hours the right scale for a human?