i've crossed that river

so temporary settlement, lovers.

i got back late last night and did not have the chance to post. i'm leaving again possibly tomorrow morning, but i'm gonna try to pour my heart out here first. i have to start getting ready in a minute too.

so crazy stuff have happened. turns out my coughing and heaviness wasn't a simple cold or anything. as the doctor puts it--my right lung is filled up to its neck. i have a nasty infection that caused a starting phase of pnemonia to take hold. i was given injections twice a day for a week, and heavy medication. i got my last injection this morning (my ass hurts--i'm not kidding, i know, personal and all but when did i never know what to say at the right time at the right amount?) and in truth i am banned from even getting out of my bed. but my dearest colleagues are leaving at the end of this week and this is my only chance to see them off. so as i see it, friendship trumps pain.

i have been under blankets for about a week now, not doing anything but reading and hanging out with my big brother, which had been suprisingly wonderful. that restlessness that i used to feel back here disappeared. i don't know how, but being spoiled and taken care of, and being forced to do nothing but lie down has been quite refreshening. last few days i have been devouring some eliot, whom i always sorta wasted on my glorious path of pound, and that has been good to my soul.

i felt as safe as kerouac did with his own mother in his faithful lowell. i felt cleansed and rested. my coughings are terrible, and i still can't walk up the stairs without almost fainting at the top. i have butt load of pills to take. but i just cranked up my bob and realized how much i had missed the man--i sang outloud (interrupted by fits of coughing but oh well) and prepared my last minute arrangements.

like i said, i'll be gone till the end of the week. if you wanna find me i'll be on the couch with a cup of ıhlamur in one end and eliot on the other.

i don't know what it is, but life seems much more insignificant when you're sick.

unlike me, you be good lovers. take care. i'll see you and this city of mine when i get back.

my old voice

so i found what's been bugging me for days

i need something larger than myself. i need to lose all that makes me who i am on a pathway to something i love and cherish so dearly that i wouldn't mind becoming a bleak spot on its progress. something inhuman something bigger than my fears and boredom something that i would love with my nails in the stone and my face dripping with tears i need something i would waste myself fot a glimpse of its coming something that would make me feel blessed and proud to be a part of something that would take this vacant life and give a different sense of belonging

something that would carve out devotion and simplicity out of this egotistical individual being of mine

something that would give me a purpose a way to lead

what--i can not tell. love tends to do all of that i suppose but i wish for something different. a cause. a center.

a song or a story.

the shark incident

my original plan was to post sad eyed lady here and talk about that, about how misconceptions of love happen and how youthul desire may or may not be mistaken for love and all that--BUT-- then i blasted in my zeps and dear god have they turned the entire mood around.

see i was a good music virgin till that holy day of my first zeppelin song. i soaked all those songs in like a spong--crazily obsessed with them--and things have changed ever since. though i forget about them once in a while i always go back to them. they're like you first lover whom you love and cherish but don't hold on to crazily--yet always come back to when you need who really knows you.

so tonight it's all about those lovely golden curls and swaying hips and double-neck insane guitars and bleeding hands and angelic midnight riders.

ps: i am leaving sunday morning to spend a few days outta town. i'm gonna try to post a little tomorrow but if i can't--well--then i'll see you when i see you.



edit: hahaha that video looks huge.

when i learnt how my time had been wasted

so it's officially the last day of work!

in a minute (after i'm done with this post, that is) i'm gonna take care of a few last minute tasks and then it should be freedom. we're probably gonna head out to my grandma this weekend, or on the first few days of next week.

but before that--i met up with a good friend of mine the other day. a girl whose visions and desires are far far different than mine --i've known her for about 3 years now. we had had a very enlightening conversation a couple of weeks ago--when i had asked her about somethingi heard and we had figured out that we have been both lied to on the matter. me especially--i knew people would talk behind your back or misintrepret your words but dear god i never though people would so bluntly and openly and pathetically lie.

i mean let's face--we all talk about people and we all carry on what we heard from someone to someone entirely different--girls, boys, young, old--everybody does it. and i'm fine with it, i mean, i'll try to be as true and brave as i can but even i slip from time to time. which in itself will turn out to be a nightmare if you get obsessed with the whole unsecrecy thing. but that certainly doesn't mean you get to go around and bash people all you want. my personal scale works as this--if i can't say it to someone's face, then i don't say it behind their back. and if i can't say it to their faces that means mostly either i'm wrong or that i'm overdramatizing the whole deal. and to this day it worked out fine with me, i managed to keep my head light and my heart proud.

anyway--never before in my life though i had noticed that people lie the way a person i know does. it's funny, and sad, and really weird. you know the whole systematic misunderstanding deal of that horrid freedman, well, i think that could apply to me and people who lie like that. it makes you wonder how their brain works--and boy how deadly scared they must be to live their own lives--sad, broken, empty with all the shortcomings of their talents--to actually just randomly create something entirely unrealistic.

now i'm not saying these to be mean--i'm just genuinely confused. it should be a very unhappy life to wanna escape the way they do.

for i have said here before, i think you lie only and only when you're afraid. it's as simple as that.

then this song came up on my ipod while i was walking out of the subway station and i remembered how great of a song it was:



Led Zeppelin Plaza Hotel,New York June 1977

Guitar Man | MySpace Video

sticks and stones

has it not been ages my dearest friends?

truth of the matter is i'm sorta getting better, my throat is still unpleasantly itchy but you gotta suck it up at some point. and the more memories pile up the fewer incentives i find to write about them.

let's start with the simpler ones--the events. last weekend was fun. i hung out with the delegation squad randomly touring town (well random for me-the whole schedule was in fact pretty strict). we went through some wonderful sights--mosques and bazaars and all the touristy stuff--and one especially that had been first built as a cathedral then became a mosque then a museum, was quite breathtaking. i walked around with one of my newly made lovely friends, and we had a blast. daily life feels awfully simple and unimpressive after you walk through beneath those hundreds of years old ceilings.

before that--the girls with curls was back so I had a lovely dinner with her and a few other friends. other than that it's been mostly all work--and for the last few days i was too sick to do anything of worth. though I did take my wonderful friends to my campus--we rolled down the notorious hill with the most beautiful view at our feet, then walked around in pitch black of the night, accompanied by a few friends on four feet--and what can i say, i miss the place. it was like walking through my own back yard. i looked at the benches wishing it was 8 am on a friday morning and i had a book in my hands.

my moods have been a little low for the past few days--first the illness, then the obligatory cancellation of a trip that i was very excited about, and i kinda have this feeling of wanting to just pull back on everything. i feel like avoiding any kind of scenes or anyone involving in scenes, i just wanna sit back and relax and feel like the way i do at the benches with the crows. i can't seem to read and i can't seem to write, i sometimes get mad or envious, or just lazy--but whatever it is i'm not exactly at the top of game.

but either way i can't say anything's been bad, it's just a phase i guess. i don't even listen to music that much. i feel needless of an aim. i could be tired too i guess. my head's not straight.

anyhow take care. i'll be around.

not a second time

as you see we're back on the old look. truth is i've been meaning to write--first i didn't have enough time and now i'm getting (already am actually) terribly ill. my ehad feels a ton my lungs are tired there is a spot where i think the tube attaches to the lungs kinda hurt. add endless hours of work to that and i'm kinda grumpy. plus i was planning that trip which now is not gonna happen but oh well.

i'm gonna try to get better soon and get back on the tracks and post here. a sound head is found on a sounf body they say. i seem to agree.

be well lovers.

what i thought of you now

funny thing this sleep deprivation is. remembered what a lovely song street of dreams was with that manly mr rose growl

"he was gruff, a mass of bristling hair, don't give a damn attitude, a confident hunter"

ah finally that holy day friday.

just made to the end of the week--and the end of another month's work. the delegation that had been in town is taking off on sunday, i'll be hanging out with them in the morning doing a city tour, then will be heading to my aunt for a family iftar (which in itself putting every religious holy mumbo jumbo aside is a very spiritual and loving thing--the way you wait for the warm pide and the butter, the way you watch about 12 plates being filled and refilled, everyone at the table, older boys usually pouring out the drinks, rest goofing around, cathcing up and all--cozy family gathering). i never realized i actually liked those crap so much, till this year plans changed and my grandma's annual one got cancelled, and all of a sudden it all seemed terribly sad.

then sunday will be visiting a friend over at one of the islands, which i'm thinking will be a great event, a very mixed group of people will be involved. the girl with the curls is back home, and i'll be seeing her lovely face again and the act of eating ice cream with her which seemed so distant and impossible when she was gone will happen, hopefully, and two lovely friends from work who are just slowly grasping the myserious turkish world and my in between cultural confusion will also join us--and a third one too actually whom i just met today, who from the moment you see her reminds of some woodstock traveler, and who have proven me in thinking so by telling us how she took off at 5 30 in the morning and walked around town on her own, in back alleys and all--so that all should be fun. we'll see.

don't think i'm slacking off on the sixties week. my computer at home is now finally a senior citizen, poor things takes 5 hours to just get turned on, so i usually end up not waiting for it after i come home from work, beat and tired. but that doesn't mean i haven't been thinking about it, especially with occasional the doors tracks, smiling to myself on the bus thinking there is a certain way to see beauty and whatnot and noticing newer details in taking woodstock like how lang and the gang always pays cash (which i'd like to take as a reaction towards the evil banking world--cash is easy and decisive and it rarely ever bites you in the ass). but most of all i've been thinking about the way the fifties evolved to be the sixties, or more precisely how anything evolves into anything--you know, people, movements, revolutions etc. and that wilentz book excerpt which i enjoyed so dearly has also contributed to that one way or the other.

truth of the matter is i came down with a decision, but i won't share that for now--for i am saving that one for the big finale (i'm guessing, on monday, i won't have time on weekend to do so).

anywho--what i wanted to talk about today was something--well, someone--i wanted to talk about ever since the idea of the sixties popped into my head--or more accurately someone i wanted to talk about for ages since the first day i heard him roar "a red-headed woman..." in the most beautiful way (that line--though one of the most powerful lines of my life--i only have a vague notion on the words, they are not really clear to me) so the sweet, tough man of my inspirational pool: dave van ronk.

i met him through dylan, lemme get that out first. first time i saw him was on no direction home but i'd like to think that we've grown on each other over time. as i do often i had heard about him a few times, peeking my interest, and one day finally got my hands on one of his albums. then on another one. and my admiration for the man just grew.

now i don't know much about the background of his songs--i know that he usually arranges traditional tunes, i've seen him do a few covers (including buckets of rain)but van ronk's voice is so magical, otherworldy and beautiful that he is one of those--hang on, the only one, in fact--that could make me possibly not worry or care too much about what the words are about. and that is saying a lot for a poet wannabe like me. his tone is soft and grand, bluesy and cheerful, fatherly and flaming at the same time and he has this talent of mastering the songs so differently that you feel like they all of sudden have a reason to exist.

but besides that heavenly voice there is this warm humanity in dave van ronk that just gets to you. there is a feeling of safety and affection not only in his tone but also in his appearance--i do really wish i had known about him before he passed away in 2002, i mean i love and listen and read a lotta people who are dead and buried, but i do honestly and truly wish that in some different plot of events i could have known about him sooner and that we could have met.

dylan describes him as the "big surly guy" who looked like "he'd come from the Russian embassy"--which is different that the feeling i got from van ronk, but also amusing, considering anything involving the word "russian" in it makes me giggle--and i kinda know exactly what dylan means when he says that. then again he met the guy, hung out with him, played with him whereas i did none of the above. so i don't really get a say on that.

anyhow, if you like music, you should listen to dave van ronk. if you play music, you have to listen to dave van ronk. but overall if you're looking for another reason why and how people exist, and looking for something to warm up the pit of your stomach--if you enjoy humanity and what it has to offer--then i say give him a try. don't see it solely as a sixties thing. think of it on its own.

anyways i got way too excited over this one. i had posted wanderin' here before and mentioned it a couple of times so i honestly don't think i need to do so again. but i'll try to add a few songs when i get home. i'll post here the review i wrote on him months ago, a few weeks after the first time i had heard his just dave van ronk.

http://whatthedeadpoetsaid.blogspot.com/2010/05/traditional-tunes-part-i-just-dave-van.html

so keep on wanderin' lovers. i'll be back.

rocks off

so before i leave work few things that happened--a lovely teacher of my sent me a great dylan link, i amazed my coworkers with my ability to get distrated, i ate such good chicken meat and finally am getting ready to go meet with a few of the girls in honor of the return of the girls with the curls.

don't think i'll be home till later, and tomorrow will be super hectic at work so don't wait up. but i will catch up sooner or later, and i'm thinking dave van ronk, ken kesey and allen ginsberg still deserve a mention before the sixties week goes out.

if you ask the question then you probably won't understand the answer

so continuing to my lovely 60s lists--i decided to take an item or a theme on every post. think of it as "my fave 60s events-items-people-music-etc" list.

so what's on the menu today? well, the lovely fierce scary glorious hells angels, of course.

as you all know hells angels are a group of motorcycle freaks--very dangerous very violent very enraged. but all the same, all that leather and macho man appeal is kinda--well--appealing. not that i support violence or anything, but i kinda find them interesting (and oh man and that they are)to learn about.

esp their portrayal in Wolfe's wonderful tale (Electric Kool Aid Acid Test)was just magnificent. the way everyone got freaked out when they showed up--how everyone was just uneasy and tense about their existence, and a bunch of colorful acitivities they took part in (won't go into details here, just in case), but the best part was how they accepted--gosh, was it mountain girl--that should be the name, mountain girl--because she won't take any bullshit from anyone. i thought that was pretty cool.

so apparently they are still around as a gang, but i personally don't hear much about them nowadays. which could be due to their reputation of blood and tears, and the Rolling Stones concert incident in which they were hired as security people (i know, wonder who was that genious who thought of that) and ended up stabbing a kid to death because he tried to come up to stage with a gun. that should be at the end of the sixties, if i'm not wrong, and the more the major scene dissolved, the lesser known its actors became. so the hells angels legend soon became somewhat milder, yet still even today they are considered to be--for some, at least-- a form of an "organized crime" gang.

as i said--they weren't exactly the nicest people that walked the earth but i'm not exactly sure if they were entirely devils on the loose. as their motto state "when we do good noone remembers, when we do bad noone forgets"-- it kinda is true. i tend to think of them as more of free highway spirits with beautiful rides rather than a gang of sons of bitches who want nothing but tearing people apart. i'm sure they have done lotsa bad things, but let's face it, who hasn't? (ok maybe theirs were on a bigger scale but oh well)

long story short i like them and i am kinda fascinated by them. i don't think they have the same spirit they had in the 60s nowadays but still i think they're kinda cool. not to mention that those lovely harleys are sweet. there's a harley davidson store on my way home which i drool at every single pass. and let's face it, what gives a man a charisma boost better than a lovely harley?

anywho--here's a picture of mick and the angels at that infamous concert:




peace out, lovers.

let me through

don't get me wrong i am dying to smother you with all my lovely sixties gems but work has been borderline crazy, so i'm hoping i'll have a chance to post when i get home

revolution now spinning now now invisible

needless to say I love the sixties. I do truly believe the times that were changing (says the man who has changed even more than the times) were different than the changes we go through everyday. I do believe that more good than bad came out of it. I do believe that people really believed in what they fought for.

but revolution is tricky business. it tends to spin out of control, forget its roots, crash and burn its followers and betray the very essence that it had risen out of. every revolution follows the same path-- for revolution as the poet believes is the explosion of desires and feelings--and explosions do not last forever. the minute revolution becomes regulation, it loses its beat.

whether or not the revolution of the sixties worked out is another discussion for another post, but tonight I’m gonna talk about a little piece of that revolution—the part to me which resembles the most "revolution" as a concept. sure loving mother nature and denying anyone over 30 is a way to go, but when you come down to really wanting a change, these guys were the real deal. they are one of my favorite things of the sixties, and they are not talked about that much. so I thought I’d kick of the week of sixties with them—the diggers.



the diggers were what the radical left stood for in those days. they hated and rejected all sorts of private property and loathed the use of money (I know, my heroes). they cooked free meals, feeding the flock of kids sunbathing in the streets of san fransisco; opened up shops that you can give and take as you like for free, they gave people housing and shelter, medical care, they organized free concerts and theater performances. they were also against the ‘hippie’ sensation, warning the nation against a spreading, seemingly revolutionary but just as dangerous conformity.

they were to me the true children of the revolution that was needed. don’t get me wrong, they were radicals—their free meals came usually from stolen products or bullied butchers, they did what they could to get what they needed. they weren’t all peace love and music. there was a real flame in the pit. still, what they wanted, what they worked for—to me, that is—was the real deal. they wanted to stop any and all sort of societal consciousness, and that soon included the hippie movement that spread like wildfire over the kids. they were anarchic and after absolute freedom. hippies to them were a product of the media. dylan was still working for ‘maggie’s farm’. none of them so called counterculture icons were relevant.

I had a chance to read some of their sheets that had been published throughout the sixties. at first, I took them to be some sort of providers for the community, but they were in fact a very intellectual, idealistic group of activists. their papers include spiteful remarks not only about people like dylan and ginsberg who were hailed to be the upcomers and messiahs of the hippie ‘please force’ (my fave term from taking woodstock), but also about the flower mindset of the sixties.

“Forget the war in vietnam” begins one of their declarations, “flowers are lovely.”

so to me, the music of the sixties, the colors, the love, the drugs, the beauty are all parts of a bigger picture, but not the picture of a revolution. it’s certainly a great deal when 500 000 people gather around on empty fields to love their neighbors but they never really chose to change the storylines.Instead, they existed in some far away fantasy land that was bound to be destroyed. the diggers on the other hand were what stands at the heart of what you call a revolution—intensity, desire to change, and the balls to do so.

I’ll be posting some of their sheets here—hoping that I’m not crossing any copyrights lines on this one. I found these on a lovely diggers website with a wonderful archive and believe they should be shared. they are not that far off from where we stand now.

read them if you can, and then let me know if you wanna “start a religion...or plan a murder.”

but the kids are all right

whaddayaknow--apparently we are in the glorious dates of the lovely woodstock. so guess what? i think i may have some woodstock goodies on this blog for 2 more days. so technically, without knowing about it, i watched taking woodstock on a perfect day.

so peace, man.

for a few days at least.





edit: you may have noticed the perky new template--don't freak out, it's just to get ourselves in the mood. it'll change once we're done celebrating the wonder that is the 60s.

edit #2: on a second note, how about we turn this into 60s week? if you guys wanna add stuff, that'll be fine too.

"maybe even dylan"

so did everything i wanted to do tonight--even managed to take a baby nap. still feeling tired and outworn but oh well. there's still one more day left of this precious weekend.

watched that bundle of joy of a movie taking woodstock. it's not a life altering movie but it's cute--and if you have any interest in the time period like i do (though i had in my drunken state once declared that the 60s flower power did nothing but "taking all that (which was the anti material loving drug induced way of seeing life of the 50s) and turned it into nothing but sex drugs and hair") it's a fun couple of hours to spend.

first off--obviously, there is the essence of that flowery, rainbow colored, love- peace-music philosophy that gets to you. crazy people sliding down the hill only to end up in a puddle of mud, making love randomly in the bushes, taking their clothes off without fear (forget your underwear! we are free!) and the constant gazing up to the fields and the soft sounds and the acid trips and the good music and the general vibe of the whole love your neighbour love your animal love your earth deal--not to mention the incredible uproaring of the human spirit against the war--it's all not just fun and also in a charmingly unrealistic way, moving. it gets to you. or it got to me at least--as it always does.

second there's the little hints that make the movie tasty for us the 60s buffs. like the wonderful unexpected and lovingly resentful yet at the same time mocking mentioning of dylan's absence. the hopeful "maybe even dylan" remard and that legandary dude standing with a card that reads "bob dylan- please show up" among the crowd makes you smile. not to mention that they are priceless details to someone like me who knows dylan's place in the 60s (though my dylan fanaticism for example almost holds the 70s above the 60s)and the expectations and the politics of his existence. it's not just historically relevant and smile-worthy but also cherishable from the dylan angle. because no matter how much of a product of the times he was or how the times were the product of him, dylan always stands out of context--never belonging to a place or to a time to such an extent that you soon give up on seeing him on a real time scale. but when his name comes up like the way it does in taking woodstock or the lovely electric kool aid acid test it reminds you that he as a person one time or another existed on a very daily basis.

and also the very cunning hilarious line of the movie--that can be picked up by someone who knows a thing or two about woodstock "it's august--it never rains in august" was a blast.

and then there was the music. say what you want about the 60s but god i bluntly declare that there had never been a decade that could top that one when it comes to its tunes. when maggie mcgill blasted in i was just thrilled. or when the song that you will listen to when and if you get to the end of the post started up--reminding me how good of a song it really was--i vowed to myself to make myself a tasty 60s playlist tonight (which was exactly what i did-- soft parade is on as we speak).

anywho as you see i always get excited when i speak about something i like. but here's a snippet that is far more enjoyable than my ramblings--fare thee well lovers!

you probably didn't think i did

so what's in store on this deadly cooked up saturday--me in my unexpectedly good mood, taking woodstock then some devils. and this lovely song which despite its complicated setting always makes me incredibly cheerful--


Joan baez love is a four letter word
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