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3 min

An interval of unease

I sleep a lot. Most of the day I am asleep. I wake up very late in the afternoon. I need the little black cat to be with me, and she usually does not make an appearance until sunrise. So, I toss around waiting for her – not having gone to bed myself until close to dawn. I dream a lot. Long dreams like stories almost. In them everyone is still alive. My mother, my father, my aunts, my uncle, my grandmother. And we do things together. Go on trips. I find myself in a lot of unk

1 min

The music that we lost…

Which is also the America that we lost… Because regardless of whether we ourselves were Americans or not, the music was ours. We lost the music. They bid their silent adieus and gracefully vanished into the night. So gently, so quietly that we didn’t even hear them leave. Maybe the last bloom of Western Civilization – they knew it was time, these American musicians. And they fell silent. This is a song list. It is random. There is no particular order. I add whatever comes int

3 min

Isn’t it my job to fret?

My nearest and dearest appear to be worried about me. “What difference does it make if you fret like this?” “You cannot change anything, so why not try to be ‘more normal’ about all of this?” These are the kinds of things that I am getting asked. This was the gist of a long phone conversation that I had with someone especially close to me last night. And others have asked me as well. I am no one special. I am just an ordinary, somewhat above average talented graphic designer

2 min

Üsküdar

I haven’t wandered inside this market area for years. Normally I have no business there, no shops to go to, no friends to visit. I made the whole specifically for the page. What surprised me was that it wasn’t nearly as conservative as I remembered it to be. Obviously there are far more women wearing scarves, and shorts are somewhat thin on the ground. But the difference between my avowedly “progressive” neighborhood and “conservative” Üsküdar is far less pronounced. Which is

2 min

Beşiktaş

I am not terribly patriotic when I think about Turkey as a whole. Sure I want the country to be OK. Sure, I want it to get out from under this yoke of oppression and tyranny – which I am fairly confident that it will, sooner or later. Sure, I like hearing the music, or eating the food. But, I do not well up in tears when I see the flag or anything like that. I do not think we are better than anyone else on the globe. I become a bit more involved when it comes to Istanbul. Bu

2 min

My city is Istanbul

I may have found a way to put my street photos to some use. Not in terms of creativity, or design. I still have no ambitions or confidence in that regard. But there is something else that has been bugging me for ages, and there I may be able to do something with them. Which is trying (against all odds) to change the perception that people have of my city by starting a Facebook page (awful design, but nothing to be done about that, it is the thing that has the reach) where I s

2 min

The Selfie

Whenever I see a photo of myself taken by someone else I have a massive shock. This isn’t something new, or something that is age related. Obviously I no longer look as good as I used to, and I wouldn’t expect to come across as a glamour puss in photos. And like I said, it isn’t a new thing anyway, I have had this experience for decades. The shock has less to do with how I look in these snaps than it has to do with my expression. Really really sour. Bad tempered. A very nasty

1 min

While transferring the blog…

I encountered myself from years ago. There is even a photo that Lanfranco took in Singapore in 2008 where I look not just 10 years, but 20 years younger than my current age of 65. I could not transfer the blog from wordpress to blogger with an xml file, like one would normally do, but had to bring the posts over one by one. And, I ended up reading a lot of them, of course. For the most part, I cannot believe the naivete. I certainly cannot believe how shut off I seem to have

1 min

After 6 years…

I want to start blogging again. shorter posts this time around. Mostly, just jotting down ideas, really. But maybe sometimes a bit more. During the years that I neglected this blog I became engrossed with how our planet is run. How totally screwed up it is. It started out with my being no longer able to ignore what was happening in my own country. But, then from there I quickly spread out since I came to realize that what happens here is completely tied to what happens “there

1 min

Reasons for staying around

Animals are a good reason to stick around. And then I like walking in the streets and sitting in cafes, I guess. Watching the animal-loving population of my city, I really like to do that. Crossing the Bosporus is nice. Buying nice clothes is another good one. Making stuff, that’s probably one of the most important ones. And I guess, that’s it. Those are the reasons to still be sticking around, continuing to live. Other than that – forget it… I would bid my farewells tonight

5 min

Is the Internet making us crazy?

I came across this on facebook (of all addictive places!) thanks to an old friend of mine, Nazif Topçuoğlu, who posted it there. And yes – I too think that online social networks and domains are wreaking havoc on our psyches. And if I am saying this, if I am observing some very adverse effects in myself that have come about from being a virtual worlds resident of 5+ years, then I may well be a good candidate for some of the research that these folks are conducting. http://ww

5 min

Smoking…

During my last trip I bought very little, which is not really usual behavior for me, normally I go crazy shopping whenever I travel (or when I am at home, for that matter…). A lighter is one of the few things which I brought back with me. Because of the contradiction that it represents. I found it at the airport in San Francisco as I was leaving for New York. I am not sure if they still have this thing where you can not take lighters with you on board planes in the US, but ob

1 min

Full Circle

So here I am, back where I started. When I look at this blog I notice that it has 3 quite distinct phases. In the beginning there seems to be much optimism and good will towards my Second Life. Which, looking back on it now, is so naive that I want to kick myself. The second part is when I start to get sad and maudlin. And then there are the posts from last year where I become insufferably self-important. So, looking at all of it together it is a rather embarrassing process

3 min

No Trust

I am sitting here and thinking: How many people do I know that I can trust? In the true sense of the word? Who, in their turn, trust me and would therefore stick up for me and stand by me, no matter what? Answer: One. The Boss. I think it is in the nature of the beast which is now spilling out all over the pavement as social structures are breaking down. There are no more tribes. No more extended families. No life long friendships. People move around too much. Living has bec

2 min

continued…

I do not know how many people read this blog. To judge by what the wordpress stats give me, not too many at all. 12 today. 5 yesterday, none the few days before that, then 4 and so on. But recently I found out that I do not see all the viewings. And not only the ones via RSS but even regular page viewings. Some of those seem to slip the radar as well. So, really I have no idea. I also do not know why I keep this blog. It is not really a diary. I have a separate one for that

5 min

Something

I have been taking photos of the Annex and posting them on Flickr. Venk’s photos have finally shamed me into doing it, which meant spending some time there, of course. The Annex is about death. It may be dark and gloomy below the water but I am realizing that I am looking at death as a good thing. The way I did things over there seems to point at that, although in most cases I did them more or less unawares: The poor old carousel horses who are then finally released as ghost

4 min

Was it the t-shirt?!?

Grapho is the one who created all the avatars for Burning Life. They really do fall into his domain of expertise: They are dark, textured, evocative of unconscious things. So, he has been spending a lot of time in-world lately. Now, there are some remarkable things to do with his prolonged presence. One is that no matter how often his name gets mentioned in all the note cards and no matter that his name appears on every single prim and inventory item, almost everyone he has e

4 min

My Pantheon

I have been thinking about The Beatles. Small wonder, since I have been listening to them pretty much on a loop during my entire trip last week. I seem to listen to music only when I am out on the street. Going back and forth from work, wandering around, shopping – that type of stuff. At home, for some weird reason, I forget to do so. So, I am not sure how much of a music connoisseur I really am. Hardly at all, I would say. And quite recently, I admitted that my love of The

3 min

alpha.tribe

It is time to talk some more about alpha.tribe. I am spending a lot of time working on the output – to the extent where sometimes I have a hard time falling asleep because there is some new thingy floating around in my head and I get up in the middle of the night and fire up photoshop to do things. Wander into the shop in the early hours of the morning and start rezzing prims. It is a full fledged obsession. And not only the work but all of it. Sometimes a few days go by and

3 min

My many designer person(a)s

Once the alts start interacting within a parameter, such as a joint design venture, it really all starts to happen. No longer are they lost and disjointed entities wandering the grid but suddenly they are, in fact, the diverse parts of me. They now have to learn to live with one another, they have to make up some kind of a psychic Gestalt, whilst still retaining their identities. And what better opportunity than whilst they are engaged in design work, given that they are all

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