In Memory of

January is a strange month, full of birthdays and death days in my family. Since in Islam, the tradition is to hold prayers to commemorate (dead) loved ones, I feel like I should acknowledge these days. I pray less each day, each year for those who’d loved me.

If my grandma were alive, she’d turn 99 on January 30th. The first year she “missed” her birthday-5 months after her death, I realized that my grandfather died on January 29, 20 years before.  What a horrible birthday that must’ve been for her.

My grandmother’s death was a shock to me in many ways. Her death (and not she) made me feel small in the face of loss, incapable of comforting another, naive regarding the gravity of grieving and unkind towards an elder. Grandma was so old that it didn’t really register with me that she wouldn’t recover, so in many ways I took those last few months for granted. In her own way, she tried to engage me in the spiritual discussions revolving around her imminent death. But she -in her ailing mental capacity-had very little trust in me, my age and my awareness, that I could comfort her in her pain. In passing grandma made me think about where I was headed in life. When my father helped lower her into her grave next to my grandfather’s, I had many questions about my burial. Where will I lie? In Istanbul? Somewhere in the United States? Who will I lie next to? Those thoughts are pretty scary, even though I am not rootless. I’m sure such questions haunt those who dwell as refugees on Earth. 

Allah rahmet eylesin, nur icinde yatsinlar. They were wonderful grandparents.

 

 

faith, hope, and anger

Sometimes I lose faith and hope, and the only thing that gets me up and going is anger. Here I am again floating all by myself. I had so many random fears as a child-I was a happy child, so I had no real fears. One of them was to be an astronaut who got accidentally cut off from her spaceship, floating away to infinity. How would anger help in that situation?

The Hours

So I watched “The Hours” again-3rd time.

Tt’s supposed to be about 3 women, 3 different eras-with connected stories. Frankly, I really think it’s more like 2 women and the third character is kind of a two people-one wo+man in one character-she is his storyteller.

One woman is mentally unstable (Virginia Woolf) and wants to die. One woman feels like she’s dead because she isn’t happy being a suburban mom, one woman is assisting a man on his way to death by AIDS. I really haven’t grasped the point of that last character other than that she completes the “female trilogy”. Basically, none of them fit the cookie-cutter woman/wife role. So they are all a bit off-and I think the characters are very gender neutral, other than the dresses, flowers and cakes-they’re unhappy souls not just women.

Greatest thing about this Oscar-winning movie: you can watch it over and over and find a new character to relate to/criticize. Certainly themes that people would pick on are 1) women’s role, 2) humanization of gays, 3) aversion to motherhood (abandonment) …I wonder if I would ever meet anyone to enlighten me on Clarissa. She’s the only one I don’t get.

The title is from the quote at the end. “And what about the hours? the hours during …and after…? the hours until the end…[until death]”

Is “Medical” Selection OK?

http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/29/are-kids-with-down-syndrome-on-the-road-to-extinction/

According to the article (link above), a new “maternal blood test [is available] for Down syndrome that can be administered as early as 10 weeks, long before a woman looks visibly pregnant.” This is great news, but still comes with a whole baggage of ethical considerations–should we genetically modify our children for a variety of serious (disorders) and not-so-serious (brown eyes) reasons? Should humans be able to pick and choose what to make out of our children? 

I think in the end there’s going to be an arbitrary cut-off on what conditions are acceptable to eliminate with genetic intervention. Personally I don’t think gender discrimination (and elimination) is acceptable-it’s illegal in some countries. But in terms of genetic disorders, I want to be pragmatic.  

Think of an MP3 player. You go to Walmart to buy one.  You want it to function smoothly. You want the buttons to be responsive, the remote control to have standard batteries, the plug to fit in right. You definitely don’t want something you can’t upkeep if the parts are so specific that they are expensive and unobtainable. Now think about a child in those very terms. I may be super insensitive, but deep down we all want “healthy” children, for social and economic reasons.

You worry about your child all your life, no matter what special situation they’re in. But would you really want your child to be different and to start out with disadvantages? What characteristics would you say would keep your child at a disadvantage?

Talking to God, But Who is Yours?

For the sake of posting a blog, let me quote from Eric Weiner’s “The Geography of Bliss”

“Who is my God? His is not a name I expected. Ambition. ..When Ambition is your God, the office is your temple, the employee handbook is your holy book. The sacred drink is coffee, imbibed 5 times a day. You rise early and kneel before the God Ambition, facing the direction of your PC…”

hahahahahaha. On a quest to happiness, exploring alternative sources of happiness worldwide, Eric Weiner blurts out some pretty funny stuff. Why are liberal Westerners sooo scared of religion?

In the very words of Rinpoche (Bhutanese Dalai Lama whom Weiner interviews) ” if you seek proof for faith, you will never attain enlightenment”

Love this book!

To Be a Gay’s Child

Children are not supposed to know about their parents’ sexual lives nor details of intimacy-gay or heterosexual. Being in a steady gay relationship does not change that value. But the focus should be the ‘steady’ (stability or whatever you call it). What matters is that children are raised by a sense of love, appreciation and safety. I think it’s really hard for people to see “gays” as anything close to being capable of providing that love and safety net. Perhaps high-profile stories like this could change the average mind: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/opinion/21bruni.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

Being in a gay family certainly has its own complications, not related to sexual activity of the parents, but questions of paternity, [genetic] lineage and just the general burden of being different. I think another difficult thing to grasp for most, is the making of a child in a lab with donated sperm, egg and surrogate mother. Then again, it seems that gay couples go through so much trouble to bring a child into the world, wouldn’t you rather be THAT child, then the bastard of a drunken prom queen?

Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts 2011

Day 1 at the Arts Fest in State College, PA. I figured I won’t hang around the booths again much, so a premature review is sufficient.

Baby A and I took a quick 40-minute tour this morning, starting at the Strudel stand with a delicious Apricot strudel for a ridiculous $9. This is definitely how you want to start your tour-chomping on sugar pastry.

The Arts Fest is a great venue if you have plenty of funds to afford and lots of space to clear for cluttering semi-functional crafts. Last year, I thought it was disappointing. This year, I found two artists that appealed to me.

Watercolors by Joe Jacobs and etch prints by Ann Eldridge.

Joe Jacobs was a no-brainer. He had several paintings of horses. I’ve been off and on interested in motion drawings that involve les chevaux In Printmaking class, I’d experimented with linoleum prints to create anime-like color prints. Jacobs’ horses are still but bizarrely dynamic. For one thing, the horses are multi-color and sit on needle-thin legs. His style is almost like collage. But in fact he’s chosen watercolor as a medium.

Ann Eldridge’s most striking piece was her etching of a set of bird’s eggs on the ground-in a nest of grass, leaves and bushes. I don’t recall the name of the etch.
It’s breathtaking-the detail is mindblowing. I remember doing an etch–since I like general outlines and more comic-like characters I’d found woodcarving a lot easier than etching. Plus etching requires a little bit more thinking ahead–the process involves chemistry. You have to make sure not to carve too thick and dense, otherwise you lose details.

…check out the links anyway. See for yourself.

This morning I tried very hard to feel happy at work. It lasted 1 hour and 11 minutes. I looked through permission request forms and budget documents. I read them out loud, so I don’t just dream away. I wrote an email in French to request copyright permission for an image. and I smiled when typing. But then I drifted onto a balcony with a view on the water. I was sitting under the shade, sipping coffee with lots of milk and sugar, eating bread with butter and white cheese. I smelled like sunscreen.
Scrap that.

Just a Thought and Longing by Nazim Hikmet

My favorite Nazim Hikmet poems

Bir Fikir

Ne güzel denilen bir yüze degil,
Sevdaya vurgundur benim bu gönlüm.
Geceye, mehtaba, gündüze degil,
Hayata baglidir kalbdeki dügüm.

Gögsüme hangi renk saçlar yayilsa,
Kalbimi saracak gölge aynidir,
O ruh, Kabe’de de secdeyi kilsa,
Dua’nin gittigi ülke aynidir.

Hasret

Yüz yıl oldu yüzünü görmeyeli,
belini sarmayalı,
gözünün içinde durmayalı,
aklının aydınlığına sorular sormayalı,
dokunmayalı sıcaklığına karnının.

Yüz yıldır bekler beni
bir şehirde bir kadın.

Aynı daldaydık, aynı daldaydık.
Aynı daldan düşüp ayrıldık.
Aramızda yüz yıllık zaman,
yol yüz yıllık.

Yüz yıldır alacakaranlıkta
koşuyorum ardından.

Books in Progress

I’ve started just a bunch of books.

I’m still trailing behind on Corelli’s Mandolin–which feels like a place I’ve been to, and people I’ve talked to. It’ll be hard for me to finish that one, even with 200 pages behind me. I’m done with war novels (with romance) for this spring.

Another book I’ve been tagging along with me since March is Milanovic’s Have’s and Have Not’s This one’s a little more on the academic side. But easy read. The main question is “how to best evaluate income inequality”. The author has a few chapters on the historical quest, with Pareto and Kusnetz–and finally praise of the Gini coefficient. It’s a new book and he touches on China, India&their impact on global inequality…etc. So it’s a practical discussion on inequality and how to study it.

I haven’t followed David Brooks of Nytimes much, to be honest.

His “Bobos in Paradise” is a good read–depending on your mood. The book is about changes in middle class values and behavior over a few decades. He compares/contrasts the merit-based success of contemporary frappucino-drinking, polyglot, volunteer yuppies to the “what’s your last name”, East-coast, patriotic, Harvard elite of the 50′s. Your mood is the key here, since the tone is either amusing or ranting. He’s got some interesting observations that you end up agreeing with. Overall, he sounds quite critical of the new elite, even though he praises them for paving the way for equality of opportunity.

Lastly, I’m now onto “The Help”. I will definitely finish this one. The goal is April 23rd.
I was supposed to read this at the Book Club my friend Alice and I’d planned to set up in January. The club worked out OK. I never attended, due to high participation levels from local Mormons, and due to lack of time. Novels based on the Civil Rights era aren’t always an easy read. “The Help” is hard to put down. (for reviews see Amazon)