Excerpts from a pretentious kid’s journal: Writers

06/03

Jorge Luis Borges

The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary . . . More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books.
— Jorge Luis Borges

His complex mind constructs dreadful labyrinths and myths, I have always thought of his blindness at the end of life as an essential help to this great imagination, I remember a short strange story about a young villager whose memory suddenly changed to a keen record, he could’nt sleep, he was always remembering the things in the past and was floating in numerous worlds, he could always tell the exact time, he had devised a new system for enumeration, he had named every number after a thing, for example ‘one’ was ‘chair’, ‘two’ was ‘ cup’ and … , the writer had a short conversation with the boy…

I remember another interesting tale about a Roman Soldier who drank the immortalizing water in the middle of the desert and was suffering a lengthy life through the mankind’s history. At the end he found a way to kill himself.

Italo Calvino

He can make complicated and allegorical labyrinths out of simple, pure and everyday ‘s usual objects all around us. His masterpiece ‘invisible cities’ is a mixture of bright mathematical thought, endless imagination and a great sorrow for lost scenes in the dust of centuries, Marco Polo describes to the Mongol emperor:

…

“From now on, I’ll describe the cities to you,” the Khan had said, “in your journeys you will see if they exist.”
But the cities visited by Marco Polo were always different from those thought of by the emperor.
“And yet I have constructed in my mind a model city from which all possible cities can be deduced,” Kublai said. “It contains everything corresponding to the norm. Since the cities that exist diverge in varying degree from the norm, I need only foresee the exceptions to the norm and calculate the most probable combinations.”
I have also thought of a model city from which I deduce all others,” Marco answered. “It is a city made only of exceptions, exclusions, incongruities, contradictions. If such a city is the most improbable, by reducing the number of abnormal elements, we increase the probability that the city really exists. So I have only to subtract exceptions from my model, and in whatever direction I proceed, I will arrive at one of the cities which, always as an exception, exists. But I cannot force my operation beyond a certain limit: I would achieve cities too probable to be real.”

…

Is he describing land of the free?

”Cities & Desire 5

From there, after six days and seven nights, you arrive at Zobeide, the white city, well exposed to the moon, with streets wound about themselves as in a skein. They tell this tale of its foundation: men of various nations had an identical dream. They saw a woman running at night through an unknown city; she was seen from behind, with long hair, and she was naked. They dreamed of pursuing her. As they twisted and turned, each of them lost her. After the dream, they set out in search of that city; they never found it, but they found one another; they decided to build a city like the one in the dream. In laying out the streets, each followed the course of his pursuit; at the spot where they had lost the fugitive’s trail, they arranged spaces and walls differently from the dream, so she would be unable to escape again.
This was the city of Zobeide, where they settled, waiting for that scene to be repeated one night. None of them, asleep or awake, ever saw the woman again. The city’s streets were streets where they went to work every day, with no link any more to the dreamed chase. Which, for that matter, had long been forgotten.
New men arrived from other lands, having had a dream like theirs, and in the city of Zobeide, they recognized something from the streets of the dream, and they changed the positions of arcades and stairways to resemble more closely the path of the pursued woman and so, at the spot where she had vanished, there would remain no avenue of escape.
The first to arrive could not understand what drew these people to Zobeide, this ugly city, this trap.”

His list of works includes some other remarkable novels like : If on a winter’s night a traveler , marcovaldo, The Baron in the Trees and more.

It looks elegant at the beginning of ‘If on a winter’s night a traveler’ . Starts this way:

“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, “No, I don’t want to watch TV!” Raise your voice–they won’t hear you otherwise–“I’m reading! I don’t want to be disturbed!” Maybe they haven’t heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell; “I’m beginning to read Italo Calvino’s new novel!” Or if you prefer, don’t say anything; just hope they’ll leave you alone.”

Vladimir Mayakovsky

words from his ”A Cloud in Trousers”

…

It happened.
In Odessa it happened.

“I’ll come at four,” Maria promised.

Eight.
Nine.
Ten.
…

Octavio Paz

Brotherhood

“I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.”

Excerpts: Media

06/03

The Structure named government and defined by constitution should maintain a balance for and with the factor who is serving and making profit of, say “nation”. An active system like a territory cannot be stable unless by having an active feedback. In democratic countries this active feedback device is Media. Totalitarian regimes make people believe in the way they want by teaching kids in schools. Democracy repairs itself by continuous flow of media stream. A piece of news from “Nowhere” in the other side of the world does’nt have any meaning for the people in a far distant democracy. These are the media kings who decide which part they should see. A social fact is nothing, without interpretation. The happening itself is empty and meaningless. Its explication is the one which matters.

Last Fall II- Miranda

11/03

In Miranda,

You can not get away form the things you’ve done and written in your twenties.
You write poetry instead of prose because Mr. President’s gang don’t understand poetry.
You burn books, you flush them in the toilet, you bury them in green fields, and you trash them in rivers without any reason.
You go behind bars as a thought criminal.
You buy your life back by saying: I love president of Miranda.
You are happy to be alive.
You shut up.

In Miranda,

You shout a lot.
You obey.
You don’t ask too much, do not like the guys who ask much.
You and your friends manage all those sheep around.
You settle down in the mansion of the former betrayer to Miranda.
You fight for your belief, you kill for it and you are clean.
You will go to heaven; there you will keep having fun forever.

In Miranda,

Many living under heels of few, will end; someday will end

Last Fall

11/03

(1)

I will leave this page white because of all my respect for silence. I will leave it white because silence is the mixture of all sounds. Like the white being mixture of all colors. I will not put dirty words on this page to respect all non sayable conflicts of talking, silence avoids. For its greatest sad and happy and mad and vulgar and serious drama. I will leave this page white in celebration of silence coming to me. I will put it in four corners of this page, without saying anything else to have it for the days in which no joy or sorrow matters. Just silence, within this to be white paper. I will not break the silence in this page because silence is the same in all languages. You do not have to shout it in your words. It comes so smooth and gentile. It comes without words in a world made of words. I won’t pitify this page by pathetic words in sake of silence. I will let it lie in all corners of this page as a mark of flawless spirit coming to these virtual pages. I will leave this page clean and white and alone by the silence of silence. The probability of infinity. The Pure.

(2)

– I do forget him.

-I do not do not pay attention last night he came and he was with another girl, and I do not care… disconnected by the wind… my cell phone is not … disconnected by the wind although her voice appears within the corruptions through the cloudy sky. It is just an internal matter you know.

I know

So it happened this way, I called and shouted and had a big nice quarrel, I told you I do not care , I can’t care less.

I know.

The fact that … I am relaxing. There are four birds here are so white , you cannot imagine.

hung up the phone.

(3)

I am drowning in words. Drowning in this sticky, dreadful, nasty fluid of words so hostile to me.

Communicational crisis.

Words my only windows.

Hate to be descriptive.

(4)

Visualization of figures , schemes, pictures. Pictures break this world, this continuum to pieces , but they come after words, and words have not still come. no picture.

I wanted to be a painter, a musician, an actor, it never happened, I am a writer.

The most creepy one.

(5)

are a spot, a singularity in the world full of dimensions and they do not know how it is possible to be such without pipes to out. Those singularities do not know what dreadful singular means. How they try to communicate and how they fail.

Words do not bear me.

I do not trust them anymore.

(6)

What do You want to be described about?

A Tree?

A City full of stormy nodes running to closed semi-dark spaces within four walls no more?

A Sunny day, smell of grass, love in the air?

Her Eyes when she looks like a biological structure full of protoplasmic fluids?

My Prof.?

The Start, the End, the Struggle within?

The Laughter?

The Big nose?

Which One?

(7)

We have got no choice but being boring and abstract. Words do not lift the meaning and the words are too heavy. The images are so light and I am stuck between both, light and heavy. Still it helps to write in simple words, in a language of technical papers not the artistic playful. The primary one, Language of the wrong words. Language of wrong grammar points and I write the words the way I want.

Here is the long story of the heavy things, heavy words on my back.

(8)

-Jason; … our research, your communication rate is limited to your resources, you cannot go flawless faster than a certain rate.

-Oh yeah? You know those French guys are saying the same thing? Was he Lyotard?

-More interesting a node in network will receive nothing in average when he receives from everyone as he is going deeper in the mess.

-Fantastic, you should email Baudrillard.

-Avoid interference.. wait.. you know how cure it?

-nope.

-Cooperation. Good cooperating nodes.

(9)

If I scream, isn’t it better? How you get it when I am happy, sad, ambitious, furic, fanatic, fatidic, regretful, pitiful, …ful? How do get it? If I scream isn’t it better? how do you understand each other ? Are you leaving a lengthy , stupid self ignorance, a lengthy stupid crime? A lengthy stupid happiness? What is it called?

I become repetitive, boring and I should avoid it. This is the style, to people write you, to people read you. Let’s say you are not the captive of words much smaller than you. You are free.

(10)

Epilogue( I could not find a better word, so let it be epilogue, sorry for all the things I did’nt say here)

Here is Ivan’s room. His world hung on the walls. He tells me:

Dramatic finish? Drama fin? What? What’s wrong with you. You are so dramatic.

I am dramatic because I do not have my world hanging on myself or my walls. It left me since long ago. You cannot be dramatic or do not want to doesn’t matter. Because it s still with you, he grumbles

another one?

I: this is not another one. The paradox is here. ME as a writer as the speaker cannot deceive them, cannot make fool of audience. This is how this drama is different. you cannot adopt a style to hide something. A writer cannot hide behind his words, his mode, his style. His genre. This way he is showing himself something else. This is felony( I learned it in a humanities class, Prof. told us that it causes ban from voting). I do not want to deceive them. I even cannot write…(Sobbing)

You poor boy.

See, the hero exists with the helpless in anybody.
Deceiving is the thing I hate.

God vs Evil, Diplomacy of Fear and Hatred

Theo Van Gogh was stabbed to death in the “flower land”. Mosques were set on fire and churches were attacked: just one of the examples of bitter conflicts all around religious centers of attention. The Israeli-Palestinian skirmish is in a crucial point after Arafat’s death and the US war on Terror is going on in Iraq and other places around the world, inspired by a will to crush the fundamentalist Islamists.

Common factor among all these confrontations is the terminology of “Good” and “Evil”. Fighters on both sides have God on their side for granted. They are fighting for Good against Evil. This is a single fact that makes these conflicts so bloody and bitter.

If one wants to excite a crowd, what would he use to make them sympathetic to his intentions? Isn’t it going to be something common among them, and yet emotionally powerful to subdue the rationales of millions of people? Ready choices would be religion, faith, or ethnic prejudice. The ones who set the fire of the second World War used the ethnic hatred. Those avenging America have used and are using religious beliefs of their followers. Theocracy in some Islamic countries is armed by this very source of legitimacy.

All the participants of this war on Terror, both sides, are working for Good (or God) and Evil simultaneously. Just switch the names when you switch your side.

It is easy to misuse one of the most heartfelt passions of mankind, namely, religion. The Godless territory of darkness was named “Evil Empire” by Ronald Reagan. He started a diplomacy of Good against Evil which was used and re-interpreted many times consciously or unknowingly by different sides of other conflicts since the cold war. Islamic Republic started this rhetoric for the first time in Muslim world from a governmental tribune. They denounced the Superpower as the “Great Satan”. It is a dangerous game; religious atrocity does not need any reason.

Red brigade lost to the fighters for humanity and goodness. Western light was shed through the iron curtain. The pleasure of victory makes the white house strategy makers believe that the same solution will work for the new Evil clients. There is a big big difference however. If Evil last time didn’t have God on its side and was based on a ideology that proved to be vulnerable and outdated by time, the new one has indeed a God and all the rituals of its own. Good and Evil are in their own place and Mujahedeen will go to heaven.

Using religious rhetoric with familiar words like God, “the good of humanity”, “good doers” and “evil doers” has had a great impact on the world dynamics. Nowadays the main motor of democracy is not the logic and facts about the world, it’s not the struggle for bringing back the reason to diplomacy after the shock of 9/11. It is in the direction of pushing the religious faith and using emotions, once supposed to be intact and personal; bringing the sacred to the battlefield of democracy and populism and violence, in both sides of this unfortunate war. This populism deep in its nature, is similar to the soviet propaganda and Islamic fundamentalism. In a world pushed to the brink of sentiments and emotions, feelings of fear and insecurity will work better than reason.

Word Sphinx

Jacques Derrida passed away early in October. To my opinion, his idea of “déconstruction” will make the linguistics and literature criticism go through the way psychology did.

I’m not sure if Borges knew Derrida has been to “The Aleph”.