Everything is toxic, my friend

Last year, wow, what a year, it was! It is still not over, it will not be over yet easily. We are in the interim of a new era, my dear earthling friend NFR. It is painful. Of course, this painful situation is only for ordinary people, the bosses are in very good mood, and they even made incredible profits in this period.

This year has been a toxic year. The pollution on the planet seemed to fade at a time, but then it went back to its bad old days in short time. However, the toxicity I’m talking about is a brain toxicity. Humans act like they’re crazy. Logic is in the background. It used to be like that but now more so. And almost everyone lives their days behind a mask. Except for politicians. Since they always wear natural masks, they don’t see it necessary to wear a second mask anyway.

There was something I’ve wanted to do very, very much in this year, but I couldn’t. Maybe later.

Of course, there were other things I wanted to do, but things I couldn’t do.

For example, 14 years old boy who had to go to work instead go to school at his age, because of the ones who closed the schools under the name of quarantine, also because of this system; I’d like to support him holding by the arm of that boy who fell out of exhaustion and hunger on his way home from work and then died in the hospital. I’d like to say him “Hang on, these days will pass.”

For example, when a family, three siblings committed suicide together, because of financial difficulties, I thought I wish I had known them. I don’t know what I could do, but maybe even getting to know WD would have given them a life energy. Still I don’t know.

Maybe I would shown them that comment you wrote years ago, maybe they would give up on their decision, when they have read it; I don’t know.

I have never forgot your words, my dear friend… When I was most angry, or when I was sad, I never forgot. I tried to value it in my own way. You have contributed a lot to me as a friend, even if in a short time compared to human life.

Or, for example, when a good friend of mine was encircled by his government because of he tried to tell the truth by saying “No, that’s wrong”, when they blocked even his communication channels which he could breathe, I’ve wanted to reach out to him and pull him out of that country, – as if I have a giant hand which raises on the sky- but I couldn’t.

Yes I am an extarterrestrial, but you know I never had super powers like WD always wants. 🙂

Anyway, my dear friend, everything is so toxic.

We simply watch how deep this toxicity goes. Maybe when it hits bottom…

But despite all this, just like the poet said:

Wherever you are,

Inside, outside, at class, at work,

Walk on, come at the face of opportunist, mischief, traitor,

hangman.

Spit at their faces.

Resist with a book,

hang on with work,

with nail, with teeth,

with hope, with love, with dream…

Like the poet said, we on this lonely planet, we resist and hang on with all against the brutal capitalists!

And NFR, thank you again for adding value to my life with your existence on this planet.

Sleep under the lights my dear friend, rest in well…

ps: What NFR said was about life in one of my old posts. I didn’t add it here as a link, because if I did, it was going to seem that I directed you to rate that post. They were the promising words about life.

“The human takes place in universe with its heart, not with its body” by Yasar Kemal

I want to tell you about author Yasar Kemal, who used Turkish language best, and opened up Turkish language’s horizon.

“From his page in wikipedia“: Yaşar Kemal, 6 October 1923 – 28 February 2015) was a Turkish writer and human rights activist. He was one of Turkey’s leading writers. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature (1973) on the strength of “Memed, My Hawk”. An outspoken intellectual, he often did not hesitate to speak about sensitive issues, especially those concerning the problems of the Kurdish people.

He was not just the novelist, except his novels he had written stories, children books, poems, some experimental books and made reportages also these were published as books. His works are more than forty.

He was a child of a Kurdish family. He was a child of a Kurdish family who emigrated from Van city during the Russian occupation in 1915 and settled in a Turkish village in Adana province. The city of Adana, in southern Turkey and close to the Mediterranean, a region famous with cotton production. In Yasar Kemal’s novels and stories, especially in this challenging geography, the oppression on the people (the oppression of the landlords), the desperation of the people, the cunning of some, the revolts, hunger and etc, are explained with socialist and realist way. While they are being explained, he uses such a rich Turkish language that the less number of Turkish writers can achieve this level.

Many people used different identifes for him. I had seen in a writing, I do not remember where now, and he was saying for Yasar Kemal, “he was the wind god of Turkish language.” I think he was right about this.

Yasar Kemal’s politic opinions have been always in left-wing. In here we can ask how was he describing his politic opinions? He was describing himself as socialist and Marxist. For this, we need to look briefly at his life. He lost one of his eyes after an accident at the age of 3.5. His father was murdered when he was five years old. Yasar Kemal, who witnessed his father murder, became a stutterer and difficult to speak until the age of 12. He had to abandon his education life in secondary school due to the financial impossibilities. I mean, he had no school life after secondary school. Until 1950, he worked as construction supervision, clerkship of farm labourer, a petiton-writer, foreman in cotton fields, water watchmen in rice fields, librarian, substitute teacher, tractor driver, in more than 20 lines of work.

While he was working in these jobs, he established relationships with many intellectual writers and artists. In the beginnings of 1940 when he was 17 years old, he was arrested for political reasons. I do not know how long he has been in jail these years, but in 1942 and after then he had a working life, so I do not think it was more than a year. In 1950, this time he was “arrested” on charges of communism propaganda. He came out of prison in 1951 and went to Istanbul. He worked as an anecdote and interview editor in the Cumhuriyet newspaper between 1951-63. Between the years 1962-1970 he was the member of Executive Committee of the Turkey Workers’ Party Central Committee, made the Presidency of the Propaganda Committee. All these years he also wrote many books.

Another law case opened against him in 1995.

“From wikipedia“: In January 1995, the German Spiegel magazine published his article with title “Lies Expedition” which told decades of repression by the state policy towards the Kurds in Turkey, describing the ongoing conflict in those days. According to the Anti-Terror Law, Kemal was accused of “separatism propaganda” and the case was filed at the State Security Court. Kemal in fact, had written that article for his book collection of “Freedom of Thought and Turkey”. The book was published in February 1997 and was confiscated on the second day and it released from the book shelves. On January 23, 1995, hundreds of people, including (some Turkish writers) Orhan Kemal, Demirtas Ceyhun, Erdal Oz and Adalet Agaoglu, went to court to support Yasar Kemal. The writer was acquitted on December 2, 1995.

Well, how was he describing his authorship?

From an interview with him (1971):
“I believe in two things. I believe in infinite power, infinite creativity, infinite change of the two things; people and nature. I do my work together with my people, in unity with its great creativity, for it. Politics can not separate from my art. Who is oppressing the people, who is exploiting them, which one, feudalism or bourgeoisie… Who is against the happiness of the people, I am with the art and with all my life, I am against it. I do not want to separate my art from people like how flesh and bone can not separate from each other. In this age I do not believe in an art that has been broken off from humanity. “

The quotes from another interview with him (1-2 May 1993):
“When we are talking about a single man’s adventure, we can not place it in the sky… It is on an earth, has in some relationships, in a social order, in a local culture… We can extend that relationships more… A person is a person in the conditions for me. We can not ignore his conditions while giving his psychology.”

I will add some quotes from his some books or interviews to explain how was his authorship. So you will understand better what a great master he was, my earthling friends.

“You should revolt against the all evilness of the world. Sometimes your goodness can also be evilness for someone else. You should also revolt against your goodness.”

“Memed, My hawk”, Volume I, 1955

The novel “Memed, My hawk”, which has been translated into more than 30 languages to date, is 4 volumes. Also in 1984, the novel was freely adapted by Peter Ustinov into a film.

“If I was iron I would have rotted; I have resisted by becoming soil.”

“Memed, My hawk”, Volume II, 1969

“While there is a fear in you and there is a righteousness in me, we cannot come together.”

“Memed, My hawk”, Volume III, 1984

“You cannot revive once, if you have not died hundred times at these mountains.”

“Memed, My hawk”, Volume VI, 1987

The following quotation is from Yasar Kemal’s novel-theater play “Canister”, 1955.

“You’re not a liar because of you trust yourself. Because of you do not know what the lie is, you will be defeat against the lie. The power of lie is not because of your weakness. The lie organised, the truth is alone. There is tradition of lie, but the truth have to be reborn every day. It needs to reopen like a dawn flower every day. You will defeat. You will taste the defeat. The truth must be defeated. The truth which did not defeat, does not regard as winner. The truth should become so sharp with defeating… Like a pebble that washed up and become smooth in a hundred thousand years under water.”

I began to like this quote in novel of “Canister” more and more over the years. Because against the countless lie propaganda in the world, the truths are always defeating. As an extraterrestrial, which has tasted defeat quite a bit, I want to say that I want to emerge the smooth pebble as soon as possible!

“The human takes part in universe with it’s heart, not with it’s body.”

“The children are human” -collect into a book of the interview series about Istanbul’s street children in 1975 by Yasar Kemal

“Those beautiful people, got on their beautiful horses and rode away. We stayed with worst of iron and with bastard of human.”

Homicide of the Ironmongers Bazaar, Novel 1973

“If the mountains, people and even death are tired, now then the most beatiful poetry is peace.”

From an interview with him

I said, “Did humanity die?”

“No,” he said, “it was not dead, not dead, but something happened, it must have been stuck elsewhere.”

“The birds have also gone”, Novel, 1978

“Not suddenly, since thousands of years, we have exhausted by leaving every piece of us on each land decreasingly by becoming smaller.”

The Legend of Binboga, Novel 1971

“We will find a language that reaches everything; that can tell something… We are not going to move around such a voiceless, hostile, bit by bit on the world.”

From one of his poem

If someone who wants to understand the Anatolian people’ social structure and people’s living conditions, definitely needs to read at least one of Yasar Kemal’ novels. If you ask me which one is my favorite novel of him, I would tell you my favorite is not inside this post. I did not put my favorite Yasar Kemal’s novel in here, because that one needs to be showed the special interest in my opinion. 😉 I will add it as one post in future, for you. But until that day, you can read one of these books that I added into my post in here.:)

Из искры возгорится пламя – From a spark the fire will flare up, Alexander Odoevsky

Only one thing to do, say NO!

Wolfgang Borchert
Then There’s Only One Thing To Do! (1947)
Translated by Ryan Wilcox

You. Man at the machine and man in the workshop. If they order you
tomorrow to stop making water pipes and cook pots and start
making helmets and machine guns, then there’s only one thing to do:
Say NO!
You. Girl behind the counter and girl at the office. If they order
you tomorrow to fill hand grenades and mount scopes on sniper rifles,
then there’s only one thing to do:
Say NO!
You. Factory owner. If they order you tomorrow, to sell gun powder
instead of talcum powder and cocoa, then there’s only one thing to do:
Say NO!
You. Researcher in the laboratory. If they order you tomorrow, to
invent a new death to do away with old life, then there’s only one
thing to do:
Say NO!
You. Poet in your room. If they order you tomorrow not to sing
love songs, but songs of hate, then there’s only one thing to do:
Say NO!
You. Doctor at the sick bed. If they order you tomorrow to certify
men as fit for war, then there’s only one thing to do:
Say NO!
You. Minister in the pulpit. If they order you tomorrow to bless
murder and praise war as holy, then there’s only one thing to do:
Say NO!
You. Captain on the steamer. If they order you tomorrow not to
transport wheat but cannons and tanks, then there’s only one
thing to do:
Say NO!
You. Pilot at the airfield. If they order you tomorrow to carry
bombs and incineraries over cities, then there’s only one thing to
do:
Say NO!
You. Tailor at your table. If they order you tomorrow to start
sewing uniforms, then there’s only one thing to do:
Say NO!
You. Judge in your robe. If they order you tomorrow to report to
the military court, then there’s only one thing to do:
Say NO!
You. Man at the train station. If tomorrow they order you to
give the signal for the ammunition and the troop trains to
depart, then there’s only one thing to do:
Say NO!
You. Man in the village and man in the city. If they come for
you tomorrow and with your induction papers, then there’s
only one thing to do:
Say NO!

You. Mother in Normandy and mother in the Ukraine, you, mother
in Frisco and London, you, on the banks of the Huang Ho and the
Mississippi, you, mother in Nepal and Hamburg and Cairo and Oslo –
mothers in all regions on earth, mothers all over the world, if
they order you tomorrow to bear children – nurses for military
hospitals and new soldiers for new battles, mothers all over the
world, then there’s only one thing to do:
Say NO! Mothers, say NO!

Because if you don’t say NO, if YOU don’t say no, mothers, then;

then:

In the noisy port cities, hazy with steam, the large groaning ships
will grow silent, and like titanic, mammoth corpses, filled with
water, they will lethargically totter against the lifeless, lonely,
algae-, seaweed-, and shell-covered walls of the docks, the body
that previously appeared so gleaming and threatening now reaking
like a foul fish cemetery, rotten, sickly and dead –

the streetcars will be senselessly bent and dented like dull,
glass-eyed birdcages and lie like petals beside the confused, steel
skeletons of the wires and tracks, behind rotten sheds with holes
in their roofs, in lost, crater-strewn streets –

a mud-gray, heavy, leaden silence will roll in, voracious
and growing in size, will establish itself in the schools and
universities and theaters, on sport fields and children’s playgrounds,
horrible and greedy and unstoppable –

the sunny, juicy grapes will spoil on the neglected slopes, the rice
will dry up in the desolate earth, the potatoes will freeze in the
plowed fields and the cows will stretch their dead, rigid legs into
the sky like upturned milking stools –

in the institutions, the ingenious inventions of the great physicians
will become sour, rot, mold into fungus –

the last sacks of flour, the last jars of strawberries, the pumpkins
and the cherry juice will spoil in the kitchens, chambers and cellars,
in the cold storage lockers and storage areas – the bread under the
upturned tables and on splintered plates will become green and the
melted butter will smell like soft soap, the grain on the fields will
have bent down to the earth alongside rusty plows like a defeated army,
and the smoking, brick chimneys, the food and smokestacks of the stamping
factories, covered by eternal grass, will crumble, crumble, crumble –

then the last human being, clueless with slashed intestines and
polluted lungs, will wander alone under the poisonous, glowing sun and
vacillating constellations, wander lonely among immense mass graves and
cold idols of the gigantic, concrete-block, deserted cities, the
last human being, scrawny, mad, blasphemous, complaining – and his
terrible complaint: WHY? will trickle away unheard into
the steppe, waft through the burst ruins and die out in the rubble of
churches, slap against inpenetratable bunkers, fall into pools of blood,
unheard, answerless, the last animal-like cry of the last animal human being –

all of this will come about, tomorrow, tomorrow perhaps, perhaps
already tonight, if – if – if – you don’t
say NO.

Poem was taken from WP blog, Antiwar literary and philosophical selections

 

 

Today every human being should be Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht, is described as German poet, playwright and theater director. His works are recognized and rewarded with respect for internationally. He is the founder of “dialectical theater”. Brecht is defined himself as “communist”.

Here, some of his works,

………

I see the system. Its surface
Has long been known, but not the inner workings.
I see some people, a few on top and many down below,
and those on top shout down to those below: Come up, then all
of us will be on top.
But if you look closely
You’ll see a hidden something
Between the ones on top and those below.
It looks like a path, but no, it’s not a path.
More like a plank, and now you see it plainly,
it’s a seesaw. That’s it. This whole.

System’s a seesaw with two ends
Depending on each other.
Those on top are where they are because the others
are down below.
And they will stay up top only so long as the others stay down.
They’d be on top no longer if the others, leaving their
old place, came up.
And so it is that those on top inevitably want those below to
stay there for all eternity and never rise.
And anyway, there have to be more people down below
than up on top to keep the seesaw in position,
that’s why the whole system is a seesaw.
(Brecht 1931)
……
One of the quote from his opinions about capitalism and fascism:
“Those who are against fascism without being against capitalism, who lament over the barbarism that comes out of barbarism, are like people who wish to eat their veal without slaughtering the calf. They are willing to eat the calf, but they dislike the sight of blood. They are easily satisfied if the butcher washes his hands before weighing the meat. They are not against the property relations which engender barbarism; they are only against barbarism itself. They raise their voices against barbarism, and they do so in countries where precisely the same property relations prevail, but where the butchers wash their hands before weighing the meat.”
……
A Worker’s Speech to a Doctor…
We know what makes us ill.
When we’re ill word says
You’re the one to make us well
For ten years, so we hear
You learned how to heal in elegant schools
Built at the people’s expense
And to get your knowledge
Dispensed a fortune
That means you can make us well.
Can you make us well?
When we visit you
Our clothes are ripped and torn
And you listen all over our naked body.
As to the cause of our illness
A glance at our rags would be more
Revealing. One and the same cause wears out
Our bodies and our clothes.
The pain in our shoulder comes
You say, from the damp; and this is also the cause
Of the patch on the apartment wall.
So tell us then:
Where does the damp come from?
Too much work and too little food
Make us weak and scrawny.
Your prescription says:
Put on more weight.
You might as well tell a fish
Go climb a tree
How much time can you give us?
We see: one carpet in your flat costs
The fees you take from
Five thousand consultations
You’ll no doubt protest
Your innocence. The damp patch
On the wall of our apartments
Tells the same story.
Bertolt Brecht
…….
Another quote of his opinions:
“injustice does not justify, if those who fought against them have fallen down.
because our defeat, only proves of the our numbers of fighting against dishonor, only it proves we’re few in number..
and we expect from the remaining who stayed in quiet,
they should feel ashamed.”
……
And the last one;
“Who didn’t unite against the fascism, they would meet in the dungeon of fascism.”
……
While I was examining this great human being, I’ve realized Brecht’s works made me feel very rebellious and kind of stormy in Turkish and in Russian. I guess this was about my English lack. And, I am wondering if I knew the German language, what would I feel?:)

 

“…however and wherever we’re, we must live as we will never die…” Nazim Hikmet

On living

Living is no laughing matter
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.
You must take living seriously,
I mean so much so and to such a degree
that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
your back to the wall,
or else in a laboratory in your white coat and safety glasses,
you can die for people
even for people whose faces you have never seen,
even though you know living
is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
I mean, you must take living so seriously
that even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees
and not for your children, either
but because although you fear death you don’t believe it,
because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

2
Let’s say we are seriously ill, need surgery
which is to say we might not get up
from the white table.
Even though it’s impossible not to feel sad
about going a little too soon,
we’ll still laugh at the Bektasi jokes being told,
we’ll look out the window to see if it’s raining,
or still wait anxiously
for the latest political reports.
Let’s say we are at the front
for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
We’ll know this with a curious anger,
but we’ll still worry ourselves to death
about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let’s say we’re in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
before the iron doors will open.
we might fall on our face, dead.
I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die…

3
This earth will grow cold, a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day.
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space.
You must grieve for this right now
you have to feel this sorrow now
for the world must be loved this much
if you’re going to be able say “I lived”…

1947-1948, Nazim Hikmet Ran

Turkish communist poet Nazim Hikmet Ran (1902-1963)