The Truth
There was full moon. The village was asleep. Suddenly a dark shadow glided through the walls. The peaceful silence was broken by the sound of the footsteps of a stranger. As he stood in the center of the village the moon covered itself behind the clouds.
Except one of them he was loved by all. She was a fourteen year old simple village girl and she was the only one who disliked him from the moment she saw him. She wanted to warn her people against him but she had no evidence. He was smart and cunning so she could not even dare to discuss with him. One night she decided to follow him. He was residing in a cave close to the village.
When she came to the cave she heard that he was talking to someone else. He said: “From now on nobody will believe anyone except me. No one will be able to convince them that there could be another truth about god except my stories. Even after I pass away and even after centuries they will be fighting against anyone who will try to tell the truth about God. They will always believe that there is only one definition of God. In near future they will start attacking to other villages under the name of God and make them accept their own stories. My mission in this village is complete. Now it is time to move to next village and tell them different stories and make them accept these as their own. When this village comes to convince them they will definitely fight back. Soon there will be big wars which will last eternally. They will commit the biggest sin by killing each other but they will think that they will go to heaven by dying for the name of God.”
She was thrilled to hear all these and she decided to warn her people but before she went back to the village she wanted to see who he was talking to. When she looked a little closer, she saw a tall man wearing a black cloak. The priest was sitting in front of him. Suddenly the man turned towards her and looked into her eyes. She couldn’t see his eyes but she felt that he looked at deep down her heart. She was scared and wanted to escape but she couldn’t move. He spoke: “Please fetch her!” Priest silently stood up and walked towards her. He hold her arm and fetched her. Both of the men were neither angry nor panicked. Both were very calm. He spoke again: “Do you think that we will kill or harm you? There are worse things in this world than being dead, like being cursed. Killing or hurting a human is the biggest sin. We never do that. Instead we give you what you wished for. I saw your heart. I learned your biggest wish. You want to tell the truth to your people. So be it! Be the word of truth and tell people about us and about our game. Soon you will learn that telling the truth won’t solve anything. You can get what you wish but you cannot control the consequences. Nobody will believe in you. First you will be banished from your own village and then any village you visit. You will have no home or land. You will have no friends or family. You won't be accepted or remembered. When you get old you won't have any power to move or run away. Thus you will insist to stay and you will be tortured by big crowds. Finally they will kill you and by the help of you they will come to my hell. “
The Visitor
It was a dry hot summer day. A man with long brown dress and leather sandals was walking among the rocks. As he walked by, the rocks got wet. The water was pouring from his cloths. He was tired so he sat down. He knew that he had to got rid of his wet cloths as soon as possible before others notice him. However he had no more power to continue. Then he slowly closed his eyes and fall asleep. When he woke up, there was a girl watching him. She was 6 years old. She did not know him but he knew her. He knew all about her from the beginning of her story but she wouldn’t remember him. That was the rule. They had to forget everything.
Although she did not remember him she felt herself very close to him. She was watching him with amusement and a big smile on her face. Then she asked “Who are you?”
He knew that he cannot lie but cannot tell the truth as well. Thus he decided to tell part of the truth. “I am just a visitor”
She asked again. “Why are you wet?”
He answered. “I was swimming”
She asked again. “Why with your clothes?”
He answered. “When the waves came and took me I was walking on the way back home.”
The Experiences
When I was doing my MBA I got to know a famous organization theorist called Peter F Drucker. In one of his articles he told about 10 experiences which changed his life. I really liked three of them which also became my life lessons.
First Lesson from Peter F Drucker:
When Drucker was working at the age of 18 in an export firm, he used to go to opera once a week. On one of those evenings he went to hear an opera by the great 19th-century Italian composer, Giuseppe Verdi--the last opera he wrote, Falstaff. Although it was one of Verdi's most popular operas, it was rarely performed because both singers and audiences thought it too difficult. Even though he had heard great many operas up to that time, he was amazed by this piece of art work.
However not only the opera itself but also the reality behind the opera stunned him. That opera was written by a man of 80! Writing such an opera in that old age, impressed Drucker. He made some research on Verdi and found out that Verdi was also asked why he had taken on the hard work of writing an exceedingly demanding opera at that age, when he was already considered to be one of the foremost opera composers of his century. Verdi answered that "All my life as a musician I have written several operas and I had striven for perfection. I surely had an obligation to make one more try." When they asked Verdi “Which opera was his best opera?” He answered that “I did not write it yet.”
After this day Drucker promised himself that whatever his life's work would be, Verdi's words would be his lodestar. I agree with Drucker If I ever reach such an advanced age, I would not give up but would keep on. In meantime I would strive for perfection and keep Verdi’s words in my mind.
Second Lesson from Peter F Drucker:
It is a story of the greatest sculptor of ancient Greece, Phidias. He was commissioned around 440 b.c. to make the statues to stand on the roof of the Parthenon, in Athens. They are considered among the greatest sculptures of the Western tradition. When Phidias submitted his bill, the city accountant of Athens refused to pay it. "These statues," the accountant said, "stand on the roof of the temple, and on the highest hill in Athens. Nobody can see anything but their fronts. Yet you have charged us for sculpting them in the round--that is, for doing their back sides, which nobody can see." "You are wrong," Phidias retorted. "The gods can see them."
After reading this it hit me as it hit Drucker. I knew that I will write several stories and strive for perfection even if only the gods notice.
Third Lesson from Peter F Drucker:
Drucker’s father was a friend of famous mathematician. At that time the mathematician was about to die from cancer and his father was often visiting his friend and trying to be with him in his last days. One day Drucker joined him in his visit.
Drucker’s father smilingly asked his friend “how should we remember you after you pass away, either as the most famous mathematician or as a lady killer?” His friend answered that “remember me as the teacher who educated the most famous mathematicians of the world.”
This answer also stunned me as it stunned Drucker. I also wanted to teach people and share the knowledge that would make them capable of shaping their lives in a better way.”
Evren
Evren
The Ones
There is a difference between a clown and a writer. Clown steals from the talented ones and imitate the way they write and act if he/she is a writer. The description of these clowns are unlimited. They are ready to do anything to be published. They are so proud when they are published. They write about their daily activities and talk about their pets and upload their photos and they categorize themselves talented writers. They are funny that’s why I call them clowns. They only rape the words and humiliate the sentences. I think I wasted enough time talking about them while the real ones are waiting to be talked about.
Today I want to talk about a gay poet in my country. I had to say gay because he likes telling this often. I am not going to mention his name here. However I think people from my country who are really interested in literature will easily understand who I am talking about. I don’t think that he is published in English speaking countries. Besides poems are fragile. If you translate them you kill them. They suddenly lose their soul and turn into standard combination of words. All poems should be read in their native languages. I am really sorry for you that you will never taste his poems.
When I first read him I was amazed. None of the words were useless and no part of his pain was fake. He was writing from the dungeons of his darkness. He was trying to describe his unlimited crises with the limited words. You sadly follow his frustrations. You witness how he is trapped in the net of words while his pain and talent was beyond.
“I loved you like an organ donation.
…
I loved you like keeping a very dangerous secret.”
Evren
The Curse
4 am in the morning. After several years it started again. I knew that it was coming and I tried to avoid or ignore it but it had never worked. I am one of these few who born under the curse of being a writer. Do you know how this curse works? Let me tell you!
When you are a child people ask you what you want to become when you grow up. Each time you give another answer to the same dull question. Even they try to manipulate you for one job or another it doesn’t work because you are already a dreamer. You cannot help yourself dreaming of having different jobs and living different lives. Then they start ignoring you and hoping that you will get rid of this dream world as soon as you grow up. Thus they keep on manipulating you with the hope that you will have a nice title and a well paid job.
Actually you are also ready to think in their way. A well paid job and a nice title, why not? However if you are unlucky like me, you have a mother like Cassandra in Disney’s Hercules who starts fortune telling all of a sudden in the middle of a standard conversation. “How are you?” “Fine! It’s better you to watch out. Your husband will have a terrible accident!” As you all guess people run away with fear and then you feel even worse when all these things she said come true.
If you have a mother like mine she keeps on telling you that you will become a writer despite all the continuous manipulations of other family members of becoming a doctor or a lawyer.
Even my mother had deep passion for fine arts she never gave me colorful pens or papers for making pictures as she did to her nieces or my friends. Instead she gave me a standard pen and paper and told me to take notes starting from now that I can use when I become a writer. I was only 7 and I had just learned how to write. As you all guess I never took notes. To be honest I never took her seriously into account. I always ignored her and her lunatic ideas. However she never gave up telling me that I am going to be writer so I have to read as many books as I can. She just kept on buying boxes of books. The strange thing was she never gave me a book to read. Instead she kept them in her closet in their sealed boxes.
As you all know if the iron and magnet are close enough, the pull is unavoidable so same thing happened to me. I was attracted to the presence of the books. One day the curse took its turn. I went into her room, opened one of the sealed boxes and started reading. I read one book then the other for days and nights. I was tired but I did not stop reading because I could not stop reading. I read all the books till the bottom of the last box. Seeing me nearly swallowing all the books my mother did not say anything. She did not even have an expression of victory on her face. She just knew it.
One day one of my aunt’s friend asked me the same unavoidable question: “What do you want to become when you grow up?” I was 9 and I think I have said the most terrible thing I could ever say in my life. “I will become a writer.” I saw the thunderstorms and lightenings in my grandmother’s and aunt’s eyes. My grandmother interfered in panic: “Of course not! She is just a child and she doesn’t know what she is talking about. She will become a doctor like her father.” My aunt followed her: “ Of course she is not going to become one of these penniless losers.”
It was sad to hear that all these magical worlds created among the books belonged to penniless losers called writers. At that moment I stopped reading books and consider myself becoming a writer. I decided to prepare myself for a better job like being a doctor. Why should I care what my lunatic mother says! I started making my plans for my life but life had other plans for me.
In the following months the deaths of my family started. My loved ones died one after the other. I was in shock. Dead was real. Life was transitory. Since I couldn’t handle this “dead trauma” I traveled to the borders of sanity.
When I was at the age of 14 I was at the edge of losing my mind. There was no one to talk to. I had no friends and my parents were dealing with their own psychological issues. One day I was sitting in front of my father’s library and that curse worked again. A book pulled my eyes on its name. I read its name. I read its name again and again. By just reading its name I was amazed. “ The Brothers Karamazov”. What a name! It was echoing in the dark space of my mind. Then I read the name who wrote it. “Dostoyevski” I still remember what I said to myself: “This name can only belong to a king.” For the first time in my life I wondered about someone else other than me and wanted to get to know him.
I took the book from the shelf and started reading it. I read hours and hours. I realized that how much I missed the flow of the words. At first it was hard to get used to all these complicated Russian names but that was also so much fun. His style of writing was very impressive. No doubt that Dostoyevski was a very talented writer but there was also something else that I couldn’t explain about him. It was like seeing a very dear one again after a very long time. I had already known what he will tell in the next page. I had known his way of writing. Somehow he was so familiar to me. When I put the book to the shelf back, I had a new friend called Dostoyevski. I used to keep diaries since I learned writing and I started filling my pages with his name, Dostoyevski. For the first time in my life there was someone who could really understand me. We had similar frustrations. We were suffering from same unexplainable pain. His novel was an epic on sorrow. His words made me write on my own sorrow and I started describing it for pages and pages. I always wished to live in his time and show my writings to him. I always wanted to come across to him on one of the bridges of St Petersburg and look into his pale grey eyes for a second and walk away. I thought maybe I was the only person who could really understand and respect his loneliness.
By the help of him I divided deep down into Russian literature. I had also other friends called Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol and Chekov. I wanted become one of the members of this crazy gang. In my dreams I met them in freezing cold dining rooms and ate cold meat with them. At that time I was not a vegetarian.
One day my mother saw me crazily taking notes to my diary and she said: “It’s good that you are taking notes now, you can use them in the future when you become a writer. “
When I was 15, the curse shifted to a another level. The words started haunting me in the middle of the night, making me wake up and forcing me to write. Then they started haunting me in the middle of the class, in the middle of a meeting, in the middle of anything which is not appropriate time for writing. I had to keep papers around my bed and in my pockets. I always hated waking up in the middle of the night for writing or trying to write when I was walking. I tried to get rid of and stop it but it didn’t work. There was a power pushing me to write. The words were flowing like a river and telling a story which was not easy to catch in the speed of my pen. Ignoring the words never worked. They always came back in a stronger way.
I wrote any type of literature. I wrote poems, haikus, short stories, long stories, novels, academic researches, articles, interviews, translations. Some of them were published , some of them were not. I never cared if my writings were published or not. I have always been obsessed with writing itself. Besides I never claimed myself to be writer. I have always been focused on my professional carrier never on writing. It followed its own curse.
As I said before you don’t become a writer you born under the curse of being a writer. Nowadays I am working on the translations of my fantasy book. People are telling me how it is hard to be published and how competitive the writing world is. I am really not interested. Maybe I am only writing for God. They really have no idea what they are talking about.
They think writing makes you a writer. They think being published and sold makes you a writer. They think being famous makes you a writer. They don’t know that you can born under the curse of being a writer. They don’t know how the taste of a blank page. They don’t know the magic starts working when you start moving your pen. They don’t know that you write because you have no other choice.
They think you can choose your destiny but in reality your destiny chooses you.
Evren
