The Circular Ruins

Frog-Taming

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:43:22 +0200

Any fool can learn to catch a frog—
the trick is to do it blindfolded,
lying there, in the wet grass,
listening for the hop and the croak.

And the real trick is to keep it alive,
not strangle it, or squeeze it dead—
that way you can take it home
and tame it, make it your pet.

But early on, keep the cat locked up.
Soon she’ll get used to her odd sibling—
meanwhile put a bit of time into
picking a suitable name for a frog.

And research a frog’s ideal diet,
also the best sleeping arrangement—
water somewhere nearby, of course,
and plenty of air, plenty of air.

Be sure to play the frog the right music
so it can learn hopping tricks—
one it can reproduce on the cleared table
when you have dinner-guests around,

while you find your blindfold and put it on,
holding your hands out and grasping
the air the frog has just vacated—
making it clear you’re deliberately missing.

~ Matthew Sweeney

At first, I saw you everywhere.Now only in certain things,at longer intervals.~Part 3 from...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:45:42 +0200

At first, I saw you everywhere.
Now only in certain things,
at longer intervals.

~Part 3 from “From the Japanese”, Louise Glück

Happiness

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:01:20 +0200

So early it’s still almost dark out.
I’m near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren’t saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other’s arm.
It’s early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn’t enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

~ Raymond Carver

Büyükbaba

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 14:39:10 +0200

Ağrısına katlanamadığın bir an gelir,
çektirtilir. Ben de korkarım iğneden,
koltuktan, hele o koku - hastaneleri
içimde hazırlanan ölümü hatırlatan
dipsiz bir koridor olarak düşlerimde
beklerim. Biliyorum canım, biliyorum
dişten söz etmediğimizi. Unutma ki
bu saçı sakalı değirmende ağartmadım
ben: Farkı yoktur bazen dişlerin -
apseli, çürük, durmadan içimizde
zonklayan birini söküp atmamak için
ağrıyı korkudan fazla sevmek gerekir.

~ Enis Batur

Andrew Bird ve St. Vincent

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:02:21 +0300

Andrew Bird ve St. Vincent

It's Raining in Love by Richard Brautigan

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:02:16 +0300

I don’t know what it is,
But I distrust myself
When I start to like a girl
A lot.

It makes me nervous.
I don’t say the right thing
Or perhaps I start
To examine,
Evaluate,
Compute
What I am saying.

If I say, “Do you think it’s going to rain?”
and she says, “I don’t know,”
I start thinking: Does she really like me?

In other words
I get a little creepy.

A friend of mine once said,
“It’s twenty times better to be friends
with someone
than it is to be in love with them.”

I think he’s right and besides,
its raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
That’s all taken care of.

BUT
if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
“Do you think it’s going to rain?”
and I say, “It beats me,”
and she says, “Oh,”
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think: Thank God, it’s you, baby, this time
Instead of me.

Kings of Convenience, Boat Behind

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:42:54 +0300

Kings of Convenience, Boat Behind

bir kac hafta once aykut’la metroda bir adama denk...

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:12:01 +0300

bir kac hafta once aykut’la metroda bir adama denk gelmistik, aykut’un paris’ten ayrilmadan onceki son gununde. adam, cat pat anladigim kadariyla doktoruna ve fransiz saglik sistemine bir guzel verip veristiriyordu. neden’ler, boyle de olmaz ki’ler yuksek bir ses tonuyla havada ucusurken yanindakiler de adamin bu sozlerini biraz korkudan ama hak da vererek onayliyorlardi.

su iki gundur sabahlari ise giderken yine denk geliyorum ayni adama. bu sefer bagirip cagirmiyor, daha sakin. konusmadigi icin o anlar aklindan neler geciyor bilemiyorum tabi. gerci yuzunde belirmis hayatin o curumuslugune dair bezgin ifadesi her seyi anlatiyor bana.

resim: ferdinand hodler, a troubled soul

If a Clown by Stephen Dunn

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 16:06:00 +0300

If a clown came out of the woods,
a standard-looking clown with oversized
polka-dot clothes, floppy shoes,
a red, bulbous nose, and you saw him
on the edge of your property,
there’d be nothing funny about that,
would there? A bear might be preferable,
especially if black and berry-driven.
And if this clown began waving his hands
with those big white gloves
that clowns wear, and you realized
he wanted your attention, had something
apparently urgent to tell you,
would you pivot and run from him,
or stay put, as my friend did, who seemed
to understand here was a clown
who didn’t know where he was,
a clown without a context?
What could be sadder, my friend thought,
than a clown in need of a context?

If then the clown said to you
that he was on his way to a kid’s
birthday party, his car had broken down,
and he needed a ride, would you give
him one? Or would the connection
between the comic and the appalling,
as it pertained to clowns, be suddenly so clear
that you’d be paralyzed by it?
And if you were the clown, and my friend
hesitated, as he did, would you make
a sad face, and with an enormous finger
wipe away an imaginary tear? How far
would you trust your art? I can tell you
it worked. Most of the guests had gone
when my friend and the clown drove up,
and the family was angry. But the clown
twisted a balloon into the shape of a bird
and gave it to the kid, who smiled,
let it rise to the ceiling. If you were the kid,
the birthday boy, what from then on
would be your relationship with disappointment?
With joy? Whom would you blame or extol?

“it never ceases to amaze me how changing one single note...

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:55:18 +0300

“it never ceases to amaze me how changing one single note can change the whole song. it’s direction, it’s mood, everything. The whole story…” ~Ólafur Arnalds

It's this short by Richard Brautigan that holds the only beauty for this hot Paris day..

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:11:56 +0300

A High Building in Singapore

It’s a high building in Singapore that holds the only beauty for this San Francisco day where I am walking down the street, feeling terrible and watching my mind function with the efficiency of a liquid pencil.

A young mother passes by talking to her little girl who is really too small to be able to talk, but she’s talking anyway and very excitedly to her mother about something. I can’t quite make out what she is saying because she’s so little.

I mean, this is a tiny kid.

Then her mother answers her to explode my day with a goofy illumination. “It was a high building in Singapore,” she says to the little girl who enthusiastically replies like a bright sound-colored penny, “Yes, it was a high building in Singapore!”

~ Richard Brautigan

"Gün usulca karardı pencerede, Gece oldu. Lambaya bakıyordum Camda, yalnızlığı gördüm..."

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:24:24 +0300

“

Gün usulca karardı pencerede,

Gece oldu. Lambaya bakıyordum

Camda, yalnızlığı gördüm derinde.

Baktım ki başıboş bir sokak, mutsuz,

Taş kesilmiş yüzümde, ellerimde.

”

- Oktay Rifat’in Gün Usulca adli siirinden..

"There are two kinds of people, those who like to sleep next to the wall and those who like to sleep..."

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:17:52 +0300

““There are two kinds of people, those who like to sleep next to the wall and those who like to sleep next to the ones who’ll push them out of bed.””

- from Missing Kissinger by Etgar Keret

"When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog..."

Wed, 27 May 2009 17:16:13 +0300

“When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table.
I spent my life learning to feel less.
Every day I felt less.
Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?
You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”

- from Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

gecen gun sabah metroyla dil kursuna giderken son anda yetisip bindigim kompartmanda bir anne-kiz...

Sun, 24 May 2009 19:08:37 +0300

gecen gun sabah metroyla dil kursuna giderken son anda yetisip bindigim kompartmanda bir anne-kiz hemen dikkatimi cekti. kulagimda kulakliklar bir podcast dinledigimden onlarin ne konustuklarini tam olarak duyamiyordum ama gorduklerim herseyi aciklamaya yetiyordu: kucuk kizin bir sinavi vardi o gun ve o kisa metro yolculugunda annesiyle birlikte son bir tekrar yapiyordu. annesi kizinin eline tutusturdugu kitaptan kizina sorular yoneltiyor ve o da onlari cevaplamaya calisiyordu hatirladigi kadariyla. cevabini bilmedigi bir soruyla karsilasinca da soyle caktirmadan ustten kitaba goz atmaya calisiyordu. annesi bunu farkederse ki hemen farkediyordu kitabi kendine dogru cekiyordu. bu soru, cevap, bilenemeyen sorunun cevabi icin yapilan mucadele bir sure devam etti anne-kiz arasinda. metro bir durakta durup da kucuk kiz metrodan inerken annesiyle son bakismalari annesinin ona olan guvenini yansitiyordu.

"Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules and brush the edge..."

Sun, 24 May 2009 00:05:52 +0300

“Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules and brush the edge of acceptability in the search for solutions. Mathematicians are more like classical composers, typically working within a much tighter framework, reluctant to go to the next step until all previous ones have been established with due rigor. Each approach has its advantages as well as drawbacks; each provides a unique outlet for creative discovery. Like modern and classical music, it’s not that one approach is right and the other wrong - the methods one chooses to use are largely a matter of taste and training.”

- from The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene

gunun ozetidir..

Sat, 23 May 2009 18:30:26 +0300

Ogleye dogru Palais de Tokyo’daki modern sanatlar muzesine (Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris) gidilip Giorgio de Chirico sergisi gezildi.

Yarin sona erecek olan bu sergiye katilma eylemi bir son dakika karariydi, uzunca zamandir planlanan bir sey degil.

Bu son dakika kararina yol acan nedenler kisaca su iki maddeyle ozetlenebilir:

1. Sozlukten; Yves Tanguy‘un Chirico’nun bir tablosunu gordukten sonra eline firca alip resme baslamaya karar verdigini ogrenmem,

2. Gecen aksam, Haruki Murakami’nin halen okumakta oldugum kitabinda Chirico’ye yapilan bir gondermeyle karsilasmam.

"Calvin: Do you believe our destinies are determined by the stars? Hobbes: Nah. Calvin: Oh. I..."

Sat, 23 May 2009 09:38:12 +0300

“Calvin: Do you believe our destinies are determined by the stars?
Hobbes: Nah.
Calvin: Oh. I do.
Hobbes: Really? How come?
Calvin: Life’s a lot more fun when you’re not responsible for your actions.”

- Calvin and Hobbes

Bir Jean-Pierre Jeunet Kisasi - Foutaises (Things I Like, Things...

Mon, 18 May 2009 22:51:07 +0300

Bir Jean-Pierre Jeunet Kisasi - Foutaises (Things I Like, Things I Hate)

“I love listening to the Lovin’ Spoonful. Their music is sort of laid-back and never...

Sun, 17 May 2009 22:24:29 +0300

“I love listening to the Lovin’ Spoonful. Their music is sort of laid-back and never pretentious. Listening to this soothing music brings back a lot of memories of the 1960s. Nothing really special, though. If they were to make a movie about my life (just the thought of which scares me), these would be the scenes they’d leave on the cutting-room floor. “We can leave this episode out,” the editor would explain. “It’s not bad, but it’s sort of ordinary and doesn’t amount to much.” Those kinds of memories - unpretentious, commonplace. But for me, they’re all meaningful and valuable. As each of these memories flits across my mind, I’m sure I unconsciously smile, or give a slight frown. Commonplace they might be, but the accumulation of these memories has led to one result: me. Me here and now, on the north shore of Kauai. Sometimes when I think of life, I feel like a piece of driftwood washed up on shore.“

Yukaridaki satirlari Haruki Murakami‘nin daha once de alintiladigim What I Talk About When I Talk About Running kitabindan aldim. Su hayatta gercekten de baskalarina siradan gelebilecek ama bizi biz yapan kucuk mutluluklar ve uzuntuler yasayip duruyoruz. Murakami guzel yakalamis her zamanki gibi..