The Glass Cage

I started running when I was 15. I don't remember what exactly brought me to the idea. All I remember is first time I felt like doing it was when I was on a holiday trip with my parents on the Gallipoli peninsula. We were staying in a little hotel nearby the beach and the atmosphere with all the old retired people around me started to become a bit depressing. One day, I took a walk to the main gate of the hotel which was opening to the side of nearby country road. I looked at the quite road that was shining so beautifully in the light of evening sun, watched the cars passing by every few minutes disappearing in the hilly horizon. Then all of a sudden, I started to run.

On that particular day, I ran for kilometers. My legs took me to a great trip through now with pine forests covered battlefields that witnessed one of the many horrible battles of WW1 where roughly 250000 young men lost their lives. I imagined to be hearing their sad voices through the twilight of the forest. Occasionally blue of the sea was shining from between the trees in distance providing a feeling of comfort.

Then it happened; I found myself in the glass cage and as ironically as it sounds, when I came back to the hotel well after darkness fell, I instinctively knew I had discovered what freedom must have been all about.

In the following years, I searched for the same kind of feeling in different kind of activities including photography; but even though I'm not much of a runner anymore, I found myself comparing the feeling I got doing these to the wonderful mindset I find myself in when running.

When you are about to start to run, the world doesn't like you. The road doesn't like you, the air doesn't like you, the sun doesn't like you, the forest doesn't like you, even your own shoes don't like you. You feel being rejected. But despite all of these you start to move in protest. You take hesitant, very slow steps. It doesn't feel right at all but you keep running patiently, getting slowly faster and faster until you suddenly find yourself under the feeling's spell.

Now you realize that everything around you is sliding by your existence in a pleasant manner. Branches of trees above your head, lane markers under your feet, beams of sun light on your face; they all are sliding. Wind caresses your hair. Everything becomes quieter. You forget about your breath pace. You feel your pulse has become one with the earth's as if you are one giant metronome to the ultimate music. You become the lazy dog sitting at the corner of the street. The fish in the sea. You let go thinking. You are at a place where there is no need for answers. Without the need for words, you become a true voice in the universe.

You are a tiger in the glass cage now.

Please Take All Your Belongings With You

Went to supermarket to shop for groceries yesterday. The fridge was all empty; so it was a big one. I strolled through the aisles in a kind of strange joy - the joy of consumption. As I proceeded through the aisles, my trolley got heavier and heavier and eventually became difficult to push it around in narrow aisles. So I parked it in some unpopular corner and went to some section to pick my stuff.

On my way, an itch came whether it was safe to leave all my stuff there. Then I realized that my wallet was in my pocket, so was my phone. Rest in the trolley was goods that I hadn't paid for yet. So it was OK to leave them there. Even if the trolley was taken away, I could have started shopping from the beginning which wouldn't be very pleasurable but certainly not end of the world either.

Suddenly I realized that the level of attachment I felt for that basket was the level of attachment I wanted to feel against my actual belongings. I realized strong relations between objects and my persona wasn't something I wanted to cope with.

And what about the idea of belonging to a person or a person belonging to us? Can the above mentioned sentiment be applied here? Does fear get involved here? If yes - fear of what?


This text brought me again to this G. Marquez quote that I had posted on my FB profile the other day: "...The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary."

Bad Eye

Today, I have come across a scene that would have been possible in only very few places on earth, fortunately or unfortunately including Istanbul.

A woman at her 40's is walking on one of the main shopping streets of Istanbul with her daughter. Very conservative in her moves, the mother looks quite poor and is wearing an old fashioned hijab. The uncovered daughter walking beneath her mother is throwing wannabe sexy smiles around; she is at most at her 15. The big inscription on her tight t-shirt says: "NO SEX CAUSES BAD EYE".

The incident looked so weird that I questioned whether or not it could have been that long since the last time I got laid. Or whether or not Istanbul is the bad eye itself.