i need a million hearts to love you (a poem)

i need a million hearts to love you because one is not enough

i need a billion hours a day, a million orbits a year, because with you time flies away

i need all shakespeare's sonnets to tell you what i humbly fail to say

in this short poem, but my hopes and love...- Oh love! Oh such a tragedy, such a cliché!

but you my sweet and only dare to drag me wholly this low and high

as to write and sing in words as corny as Willie Cobbs's I'll Love You Only!

What is Love ?

    I’ve always believed that if love were a product in the 21st century, it would be cheap and sponsored by BIC. I will start by defending my cynicism; it is due to a recent love affair disappointment. In this article I will try to fight my urge of sharing personal details, and I will try to look at this topic from outside, but No Promises ! "No promises" is ironically a phrase I’d heard several times from my ex, a red flag which evidently forecasts the breaking of those non-promises (which is what I’ve just done, Oops!).

    If I attempt to answer the question I raised in the title, I will either end up singing Haddaway's "baby don’t hurt me," or write some more intense gibberish in this short un-researched article. So I will confess herein that I have no clue on what is love, but I will tell you through my experience ‘what is Not love?´

    Love is, first and foremost, not giving up on love. Once you give up it's over. The unpredictableness of one of the couple giving up on a relationship could sentence even the most beautiful love stories to death. Love is not always beautiful, sometimes it gets very ugly. Love is not hurting the one you love. Love is not refusing to apologize when you're wrong. Love is not using dating apps. Love is not cheating, and cheating is no longer physical or sexual, but now in 2020, it is mostly virtual. Love involves a deep sense of commitment. Love is Not many things, but it is also many other things. 

    Before writing an article on my blog, I usually ask around and try to get as many opinions and viewpoints as possible. This article is no exception. What puzzled me the most this time is that no one used the word "love" when answering all my inquiries on the topic. Some of the words I heard instead include: open-relationships, disappointment, ephemeral, non-existent, and by all means: sex. Is this what love is in 2020? a disappointing ephemeral open-relationship pumped by sex? Does this century represent the death of love? Or a renaissance of new forms of love? New forms which are struggling to survive in a world that has already been deeply touched by the modern gods and goddesses of romance like Frank Sinatra, Jane Eyre, and Julia Roberts. Should we discard all of them now and replace them by a Kardashian love model? Was Walsh in Mrs. Dalloway the only person who truly saw society's perception of change in its right form, a change that is "primarily sexual"?

    Love may not be a Breakfast at Tiffany's, and it is certainly not Shakespearian, but it is a beautiful feeling that has lost all the beauty in it. I will continue to listen to Frank Sinatra, I will continue to read and re-read Jane Eyre and  I will continue to believe in a love that is magical, even if it means I’m the only one to do so. I will end this short article with a quote by my brave hero Anne Frank:

"It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart."

Healing (A Personal Narrative)

Photo  taken from my room in Kef, Tunisia.

I woke up this morning naked under my white crumpled sheets. The wide-open window, which then seemed unusually enormous, exposed the large grey-blue sky. I fetched a cigarette and started smoking on an empty-stomach, contemplating my image on the window’s glass reflexion, and thinking aimlessly about my past. I felt the emptiness inside of me, the lack of joy, the depths of my pain, and I dwelt in the abyss of my idle thoughts. The sky, sometimes too wide, sometimes too small, enthralled me that I hardly smoked at all. The memories rushed back and so did my chagrins. I felt helpless, powerless, and utterly alone. I thought of all the perished friendships, and all the long gone lovers, of the ephemeral pleasures and the agonizing heartbreaks. I thought of all the people I have loved, and how most of the time they didn’t deserve it. I thought of how easily I’ve loved, how easily I’ve trusted, and how easily things can change. I thought of the times I’ve been truly hurt and if I’ve been the victim of other people’s cruelty or the victim of my own making. Then I asked myself: “Who am I?”

Every time we face an immense loss, we feel a dire affliction, a regression of ourselves and our identity, a pain that seems eternal, and a “small death” – after all, every form of loss carries with it a certain type of “small deaths”. I decided not to deny myself all these intense feelings and I let them rush in. I let myself feel all the pain there is to feel, with the hope that once drowned in my excruciating pain my spirit would surrender to an everlasting inner and spiritual peace. I was hurt, sad, angry, regretful, and most of all, heartbroken. I let it all in, with open arms and a broken heart. I found out that we don’t always reach closure, and that’s okay. I also found out that it is wrong to reason with sadness. It is right to feel it and then simply heal.

When I looked for the meaning of the word healing in a dictionary, in a hope of better understanding this concept, I noticed that the word "process" is always present in almost all definitions. I understood that spiritual healing is a never ending process, you lift yourself up and you fall down, you heal wounds and further injure others, you grow and you shrink. It seems that healing is not about either extreme, healing is about finding that middle ground between the extremes. This is obviously a simplistic and a spiritually oriented understanding of the meaning of healing. I believe that the concept of healing itself escapes, as it should, any form of precise definition and seems meaningless when put into words. Healing is to be experienced and not explained.

My journey with spiritual healing has taken several forms over the years. Recently, a heart break pushed me into facing my demons once again. In such a defenceless position, I saw my spiritual and emotional capacities recede and in many ways I did hit rock bottom. I realized I had to do something about this. It takes courage to move on, to forget and continue living as if nothing has happened; but I have never been courageous. I realized that it is important to let go of love, when love is already gone. It is important to let go of the past, when the future is calling. It is also important to smile, even when you can’t. It is essential to realize that when someone you loved leaves you, regardless of the reasons and regardless of how sincere your emotions were, you have to let go of them.

Hegel defines the concept of being as the “indeterminate immediate,” and it is towards this immediate that my focus should shift. Spiritual or healing practices can only truly function if applied in a continuous immediate. Healing is also personal, and it is important to work it out silently and without troubling the loved ones around you, for if healing ends up hurting other people then it is not healing at all. When someone you love leaves, either in death or in life, you stop believing... in life itself, in yourself, and in love. But once healed, you start believing again. I do believe now... I believe in myself... I believe that someday very soon everything will be alright.

After having felt everything there is to feel, I decided it’s time to move on and start afresh. I took a deep breath, and I went out of bed.

The Fear of Breaking Love ( A Poem )

 
Once upon a time, I chanced upon a mighty angel drowned in light,
And the mighty smiled and lulled me into an ephemeral world of absolute delight,
And taught me that love is magical when love is shown,
And through the dark of night and light of day we were never alone.
 ...
Until the fear of breaking love lingered one dreadful night
And then, my love, frightened, darted out of my sight.
 ...
A distorted flower you no longer fancied                    – my  love    you     deserted,
And in your heart, a new collection of roses you       carried,
And lonely I prayed and I cried... And lonely I – my hopes have died.
 
I am but a little orchid, now, in a vast unpleasant field,
Tossed here, like an abandoned prisoner with no shield,
Left alone in a bloody battlefield.
 

Düzce: Turkish Tea (Party)

Photo taken at Editor Café

To describe Turkish tea as a pleasant beverage is to lie; it is however an interesting national phenomenon in Turkey. Turkish tea glasses - full, half full, or empty - can be found everywhere, and even on the sidewalks of the streets you can often see some glasses scattered here and there and young boys on bicycles running around you holding plates full of tea which they distribute; tea delivery guys, I call them. Living in Turkey feels like living in a constant tea party, tea for breakfast, tea after lunch, tea with cigarettes, tea during breaks, etc. A colleague told me that the average Turkish person drinks around ten glasses of tea a day. It was also rather interesting to know that the Black Sea region is where most of the black tea is produced. The Black Sea and the black tea: Edgar Allen Poe would have loved this.

A glass of tea randomly found
on the stairs

The Turkish tea pots are rather unique, two pots on top of each other, the first one only contains boiling water, which must remain on an open stove at all times, and another pot for actual tea. So what the Turkish do is, they fill half the tea glass with the actual tea and the other half with the boiling water, this way it is less strong (but strong nonetheless). Something which skipped my attention and I learned about through a colleague is that the tea pots differ in materials. Porcelain is apparently the best to make good tea, but I haven't seen any so far.

The tea glasses are one of the few small things I fell in love with in Turkey, they are tulip-shaped, made of glass of course, and they differ in size from the quite small to the rather big. The tea saucers are much more diverse in terms of colours, shapes, and materials. Sometimes they are made of glass, other times of wood, metal, or ceramic. I want to own all of them (and this is coming from a minimalist xD). Sometimes I order tea for the simple reason of wanting to look at the glass, or, when I'm at a new place, for the hope of discovering something new, a new shape or colour perhaps; and the Turkish always surprise me.

Be careful though, when you are at a tea-shop, WATCH over your glass, the waiter will take it away very quickly if he assumes you've finished; even if you're still drinking it. My Pakistani friend jokingly said, sometimes they even grab it off your hand as you're sipping it xD. And then he told me a trick I didn't know about, if you put your spoon inside the glass, it means you've finished, even if it's half full.

Now, if you are in Düzce, what are the best places for tea, you might ask? I have two favourite places here: Editor, and Erguvan Sosyal Tesisi. If you're looking for a comfy area for a private conversation, to meet some friends, or simply to play chess or other games, then go for Editor. The waiter at Editor also speaks English, which is quite impressive and adds some sort of a charm to the place itself. The other waiter doesn't speak English but she's awfully lovely! Editor would also be a good option for non-smokers. Besides the tea, they make a perfect Dibek coffee, served with one lokum and a smile :). If it's a good day outside and you want a nice place to have a quick glass of tea at the city-centre, then go for the second option, a nice view, some sculptures behind you, and it's the cheapest tea I've found in the city, so far. There are also many, many small tea-shops all around the city, if you're adventurous enough, why not try one of them! If you're reading this and you have other suggestions, hit me!

Düzce: Are dogs invisible or are we invisible in the eyes of dogs?

If you visit Düzce, within a few minutes you'd notice the amount of stray dogs in the city and you'd find them quite incredible. Scattered all around the city, yet harmless, dogs in Düzce are most of the time sleeping, "like Turkish people, always lazy," a Turkish friend said. And then he told me about how the people (or the municipality, I forgot) always take some of the dogs up to the mountains, but they always find their way back to the city. It is as if they have become as much part of the city as the buildings or the trees, as Turkish as the people...

I was particularly excited to hear about a conspiracy theory (#Drama), I've heard some gossip that they are actually trying to poison the dogs through their food; which would explain their general fatigue and excessive sleepiness. Fortunately though, I've been told that there are many activists and animal lovers who are trying to make a change and to help. Unfortunately however, their presence remains mostly limited online. If anyone of you is reading this, show yourself to me, I come in peace!

Due to my fascination with the rather awkward behaviour of dogs here, I started asking everyone about them: why are they here? Why are they always sleepy? Who feeds them? etc. I was quite obsessed, and I started taking photos of the dogs I liked around the city. One of my students advised me, "don’t run if they attack, just stay calm, they're not hostile, don’t worry." It was obvious that they are friendly, when that student (who is usually terribly silent in class) started to speak I was excited and expected him to say something interesting, something I didn't know already.
I had to cover my disappointment with a smile.

"I don't know, I' don't think about it," is what another Turkish told me when I asked him about the dogs. This made me wonder, are dogs invisible? Can people actually see them? The answer I found is Yes and No. Dogs seem to be invisible, fading into the background of the city, sleeping their existence into complete oblivion. They don't seem to care about the passers by. A friend told me that after I started asking him about the dogs, he became conscious and aware about their existence in the city. He said that now he notices them, he sees them. I was also surprised to find out that the whole city doesn't have any veterinary hospital/clinic. May be the dogs are invisible to the municipality as well. May be if I ask them about the dogs they will start seeing them as well and think about opening a small clinic! I am joking! The municipality actually seems to be the only institution/people who can see the dogs. May be at first glance dogs seem invisible in this city, but if you look closer you'd notice the ear tags put by the municipality to watch over the dogs, you'd also see plates of food and water put for them all around the city. Now, let me go back to the conspiracy theory I mentioned. May be the real reason dogs are always sleepy is because, as a friend puts it, "they ain't got anything else to do . . . What would you do if you were a dog [in Düzce]?"

So, may be Düzceans are unconsciously conscious about the existence of dogs, but what if people are invisible in the eyes of dogs? Sometimes, as I stop to take a photo or two of one of them, they look at me, and start moving away in complete indifference, as if I were a mere invisible breeze they try to avoid.

I see this dog on my way to work almost
everyday so I decided to call him Oscar.

I asked a Macedonian friend living here about the dogs and she said that they walk in the streets as if they don't notice people and start bumping into them while people often have to move to let the dogs pass, "just like Turkish people," she said. I approve. Dogs in Düzce are as Turkish as the people themselves. But they are everything but "a problem." Dogs are not a problem, the way society decides to deal with them is problematic. I believe that we must unremittingly talk about dogs because they are part of this city, and we must include them in our daily lives. Bring them out of the shadows.

Pet them, feed them, take photos of/with them, play with them.
I hope this article was both amusing and interesting. :-)
Feel free to leave a comment before you leave.
And also share the article with your friends if you like it. ^^

Düzce: Observation

When I landed at Istanbul’s airport I knew zero Turkish, had no SIM card, and no WIFI. I reached Istanbul at 13h00 and Duzce at around 20h30. No one spoke English on the bus and for some reason the driver dropped me by the highway close to Duzce; I understood through his gestures that I had to wait there for my pick up. After having waited for nearly an hour, I decided it was best if I walked to a rest stop, which was about 300 meters away, and ask for help. Having assumed that youngsters speak English in Turkey, my target was a group of teenagers. Alas! apart from hello they spoke no English at all. We somehow managed to communicate through hand gestures and Google translation and they used their mobile phone to call my pick up, who showed up shortly afterwards. And so the adventure begins.

Düzce is located in the province of Western Black Sea Department of Turkey in the Black Sea region. It is a small city with old buildings with simple red ridge tiles and is surrounded by mountains on almost all sides. It is a very calm city: the people are calm, the music is calm, and even the stray dogs are calm. Apart from the many coffee-shops and the few parks, the city has only two pubs and cinemas. In one week only I`ve seen everything that there is to see here. But the city's location is strategic, in the middle between Ankara and Istanbul and close to the Black Sea, so I am hoping to move often and discover new places.

On my first day at work as a teacher, I went to the school's rooftop and as I stood there looking at a full void, the adhan announced the call for Juma prayer and people were rushing into mosques, leaving everything else behind: their homes, shops, wives, and pets. In the middle of this seemingly orchestrated weekly routine, what caught my eyes was a pigeon. The pigeon landed calmly on one roof and stood there, fiercely, proudly, like a Turkish. 

My first week felt rather long, I had no friends, spoke no Turkish, and the lessons haven't started yet. I had nothing to do except sipping black tea all day long. I was surprised that many Turkish people preferred the tea to their well renowned Turkish coffee. Although I disliked the black tea (and to my discontent I was offered a lot of it and it felt rude to refuse), I loved the tulip-shaped tea glasses and saucers, and I've taken so many photos of the so many different glasses I chanced upon. 

By the second week I made a few friends. Mostly Turkish. They were exceptionally nice, quite friendly, and truly ambitious. They offered to show me around the city, and told me some interesting facts about it. I genuinely appreciate their company and I hope we remain in touch. I sense that I can learn a lot from them: their humble experiences in life, and their courage and patience. I also wanted to meet other foreigners nearby but it was almost impossible to find any (if you are a foreigner in Düzce feel free to text me☺). Couchsurfing is of no use in this city unless you plan to visit other places nearby; but then again, it will be difficult to communicate if you have poor Turkish. 

My very first encounter with the black sea was at Akçakoca at night. After having had some tea with friends, I mentioned how eager I had been to visit Akçakoca, and a Mexican friend said: “let’s go now then!” I wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not but I expressed my excitement about the idea. And so we went! The black sea was, indeed, pitch black! I couldn’t see much in the absence of the moon, but the sound of the waves penetrated my heart and carried with it a lot of nostalgia. The next day, as I walked past some school boys wearing plain beige t-shirts, my nostalgia deepened. It was and still is difficult to live in a society where nobody speaks your language. as a fluent speaker of three languages: English, French, and Arabic, I have always believed that I can visit any country in the world without having to fear the barrier of language. Unfortunately, that was both naive and utopian (in a way). And here I am, a month later, still learning how to count. Bir, iki, üç, dört, beş.

My first month in Düzce has come to an end. Time, indeed flies. I will be posting more observations on Turkey here, for me: something to remember later on. For my students, if they wish to read about my experience. And for future visitors to Düzce. I hope the next few months will be better, and I hope, somehow, I will make the most of it. If you are reading this, feel free to leave a comment and suggest a few places I can visit. And if we have never met, ask me out ☺.