It dives into your entire being

and grows like the tentacles of an octopus
behind the ribs,
gnawing on the cage.
Crushing… with

One arm for staying.
One for leaving.
One for speaking.
One for silence.
One for desire.
One for awakening.
One for surrender.
One for discernment.

Eight arms
inside two lungs.

Breathing sounds like the building…

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I know that now.

It sounds like a conclusion that should bring peace. Instead, it worries me.

Perhaps because I used to understand love through its objects. We say we love someone. A child, a lover, a friend, a place. Grammar itself makes love directional: something begins here and travels there.

So when the person disappears, disappoints us, or …

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It’s fine.

An assassination
requiring only contact.

Unfortunately,
I touched.

The love
of poison
was real.

I know
that now.

Not because it was beautiful.

It truly was not.

A flesh-eating worm
crackling through fire,
untouched by the heat,

will remain burning.

Never enough.

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I would have liked to take you somewhere
with too many things in it.

A museum would do.

One of those old buildings
with a restaurant
between six centuries
that expects me to eat lunch peacefully.

Istanbul, then.

We would sit down.

You would be talking.
I would be listening.

Behind you there is a painting.

The blue is wrong for its century.

Not wrong.

Expensive.

Ultram…

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Dum — the deep strike at the centre of the drum.
Tek — the sharp strike at its edge.
Together, the pulse beneath classic belly dance.

Tek also means one, single, alone in Turkish.

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How little of a man does it take to capture the heart of a woman.

Standing behind you.

No more fear.
No more what if.

No—

closer than any revealing answer
or meaning.

Words are without shape.
They form differently
in each breath,
even from the same mouth.

I know that so well…

The hesitation before but.
The correction swallowed.
The contradiction protected.
The one mask that stayed glued.

With a naked face.

I have been named enough.

Wife.
Mother.
Woman.
Difficult.
Brilliant.
Too much.
Not enough.

Loved.

Nothing.

Ah.

That one.

You should never have given me
that word.

I have a terrible habit
of touching things
until they confess.

So I took your nothing
between two fingers.

Gently.

I had loved the mouth
it came from.

I mean the nothingness in me.

That matters.

Then I began.

First the word.

What exactly
did nothing negate?

The event?

Your part in it?

Mine?

Meaning?

Possibility?

Or merely the obligation
to account for any of them?

Different propositions.

Same convenient word.

I separated them.

One by one.

Tested each against
what happened,

what didn’t,

what you said,

what I inferred,

what my body knew
before either of us
had produced an explanation.

Then I tested
my own testing.

Removed desire.

Tested again.

Removed hurt.

Again.

Removed you.

…

Again.

The result barely moved.

Oh.

I looked at nothing
resting there in my hand.

No anger.

Almost tenderness.

You had carried so much
of my universe
for such a very small word.

I turned it once more.

Not to break it.

I needed to know
whether it broke
without me.

It did.

Poor thing.

It had no idea
whose hands it had entered.

I made it beautiful first.

Of course I did.

I can make almost anything beautiful
if you leave me alone with it
long enough.

Even grief.

Even absence.

Even a door
that never opened.

Especially that.

I embroidered possibility
around its edges,

made omissions speak,

gave every maybe
far more evidence
than it had earned,

gave one stubborn, totally ominous feeling
almost all my sanity.

Ridiculous.

Exquisite.

Human.

More messy than messy.

Then I became very, very impolite.

You know.
I have been told that.

Truth had already slapped mercilessly.

So, this time—

I stopped asking
what it could mean

and asked the far less beautiful question:

what actually happened?

What did not?

What remains
when memory is denied
the privilege
of editing evidence?

Oh.

There you are.

Forever.

You fraudulent little bastard.

I had mistaken your length
for truth.

Embarrassing.

All that human theatre
built around a category error:

Can ending
reach backwards
and make the living
never lived?

Hah…

Oh darling, darling.

We know, we know…

A kiss ends.

A marriage ends.

A mother ends.

A pregnancy ends.

A childhood—

But when

a woman can walk out
of herself for…
so completely
even her old desires
stop recognising her.

Still—

the mouth was kissed.

The years were lived.

My mother was here.

I was her.

No appeal.

No resurrection.

No need.

Real
was already enough.

And suddenly
forever looked almost childish—

time demanding
that reality prove itself
by refusing to die.

I no longer require
that kind of evidence.

One second
may enter me,

alter the temperature,

move something
half an inch,

and leave.

I will not drag eternity
behind it
to make it respectable.

There is something indecent
about that freedom.

To let a moment
touch exactly
where it touched

without asking it
to marry the joy
or the wound.

Come here.

I am not finished.

I spent years thinking
I was mourning
what disappeared.

Perhaps I was mourning
the story
that disappearance
was not allowed.

Small difference.

Knife edge.

Whole life
on either side.

And somewhere inside all this—

death,
love,
violence,
hope selling futures
from a cheap,
I mean very cheap suitcase,

my own mind
still examining the knife
while the body was turning in darkness—

Still.

I laughed.

Fuck.

I actually laughed.

Pain did not make me wiser.

Thinking did.

Pain merely supplied
an obscene amount of material.

I laughed because suddenly
someone was merciless enough
to meet me alive.

No careful handling.

No inspirational quote.

No reduction.

Just—

catch.

Return.

Sharper.

Again.

And my tongue
remembered itself.

My body remembered
that existence
has taste.

That intelligence
can enter through the mouth.

That attention
can remove more dimensions
than all imagined
third eyes.

That being met—

even briefly,

which is the key—

is far more intimate
than being admired
forever.

There.

Now you are close.

But don’t look
at where I arrived.

That has never been me.

Watch the movement.

The fraction of a second
between surrender
and objection.

The word I touch twice.

The joke placed
where grief expected
a monument.

The contradiction
I leave breathing
because killing either side
would make it less true.

I am there.

Not at the conclusion.

I follow a thought
until it can no longer
be forced to serve
the conclusion
that sent it to work.

Then—

Not you.

But

nothing remains—

I will not resurrect it.

Not anymore.

I will bury it.

With care.

Then

wash my hands.

Put on lipstick.

Go to a garden party.

And discover,
with some irritation,

that I still adore
certain humans.

No transformation.

Not even meeting again.

Please.

No becoming.

No better days
arriving with flowers.

No luminous woman
thanking darkness
for its service.

Just this.

Less mythology.

More life.

However brief.

With a heart
still embarrassingly soft.

A mind
finally using its teeth
for what they were given.

It took one second of you to enter almost everywhere.

It took me much longer to discover how little of you had actually come in.

And nothing—

after being touched,
turned,
loved,
tested,
undressed,

allowed at last

to mean

nothing…

nooo…thh…in

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I couldn’t remember
the edge of the almond shape
somewhere close to my sweeping lashes.

Life hung a permanent drop,

the dew of mornings
from ancient tombs,

shivering lips in prayer.

We were always
this fragile.

A species building temples
around our illusions,

placing gold
on what we could not verify,

naming stars
before knowing
what burned them,

burying our dead
with objects
for journeys
no one had returned
to describe.

We have always loved
and kneeled before
our guesses,

polished them
until they reflected
something resembling truth,

then bowed.

How exquisite
our certainty looked
under candlelight.

How merciless
in daylight.

I did the same.

I gathered fragments
like an archaeologist
terrified of admitting
the civilization
might never have existed.

Brushed dust
from every gesture.

Dated every ruin.

Held broken pottery
to the sun

and called it
evidence.

Whilst reality was

giggling.

God,

how unbearable
to discover

you were not excavating
a buried majestic city,

but arranging
random stones.

How does one survive
being wrong
with the whole body?

Not merely mistaken,

but wrong
in blood,

in pulse,

in the small animal
burning beneath

skin,

beneath language,

knowing nothing,

only

home.

It is obscene

to ask the heart
to revise itself

after it has learned
the architecture.

To tell the nervous system:

No.

That door was never yours.

Those footsteps
were not returning.

That warmth
was weather.

Nothing more.

There are errors
that embarrass the mind,

and errors
that feel like
being skinned
from the inside.

This was the latter.

I still cannot understand
how knowledge
could arrive
so cleanly

and leave
such carnage.

Yes,

truth
has never promised
to be kind.

That was
another thing
we invented.

Still,

something has begun
moving

beneath all my objections.

A treacherous little pulse,

small enough
to escape
the guards.

My mind
has declared an embargo.

No hope.

No consolation.

No vulgar resurrection.

Nothing with wings.

No becoming stories.

No happy endings.

Nothing saying
everything happens
for a reason.

And yet,

somewhere
behind the barricades,

something
keeps breathing.

Not beautifully.

Not bravely.

Not with meaning.

Just breathing.

The body
knows one fact

the mind
has not yet forgiven:

You were wrong.

It was terrible.

It nearly erased
the language
you had for yourself.

And still,

you will survive.

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I don’t need you
to look at me.

Look at the sky.
Hold these frightened hands.

The skies will make
both of us happy.

Just listen.

You—

to be able to speak of you
to the treacherous lie.

How many winters

did the bear sleep,
the snakes sleep,
the sun sleep?

How many?

Outside, a world
roared and flowed…

Only I
did not sleep.

How many nights, my love?
How many springs?

On my breast,
the sorrowful footprints
of old summers.

I stop and listen

with all my swagger,

all my swagger,
all my fists,
all of me—

there,

where the heavy hearts are.

And look at the birds—

ivory:
the posture of the wind.

Mountain:
the skeleton of the sun.

Among wooden humans,

when—

when

would you look into my eyes

and weigh anchor
from time,

while waving away my grief
with a handkerchief?

I say,

love

is to stand
on the shore
of something.

A wound opens
across our necks,

bleeding memories.

Let me be your sacrifice

while we still stand
arm in arm.

I don’t need you
to look at me.

Look at the sky.

Hold these frightened hands.

The skies will make
both of us happy.

A woman
leans against the wall,

thinking

the sky

had taken
everything…

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As usual, it ended hilariously.

Because what it remembered was the phase of love I call The Great Attractor.

The Great Attractor is a mysterious gravitational anomaly pulling our galaxy, along with many others in our cosmic neighbourhood, toward a region of space roughly 250 million light-years away.

For a long time, the irritating part was that we could observe its gravitational effects far more easily than we could observe what was causing them.

Because, naturally, it sits in the Zone of Avoidance.

I am not making this up.

The Zone of Avoidance is an actual astronomical term for the region of the sky obscured by the dust and stars of our own Milky Way, making whatever lies behind it exceptionally difficult to observe.

Of course it is.

🤣

And this is exactly why the first phase of love is so fucking fantastic.

For perhaps one or two glorious weeks, you are basically a machine.

Something is pulling you.

Data confirmed.

No danger detected.

No need for why.

You just float around in the gravitational anomaly like an idiot having the most amazing time of your life. I have never tried mushrooms, but I guess from what people describe. It must be such a colorful, playful, mysterious yet peaceful and desirous love sway…

This may be the closest I ever got to inner peace.

2 weeks of 16.000 days. Not bad.

But, after those two weeks!

Then the human algorithm comes online.

Why?

Ah.

There she is.

And now we have a problem.

Because the attraction is observable.

The effects are observable.

Something is clearly happening.

But the source is sitting comfortably behind the fucking Zone of Avoidance.

And nobody has yet managed to look clearly through that particular cosmic mess and tell me why one human being can suddenly acquire gravitational properties.

Why this fucker!

Welcome to love.

Evidence everywhere.

Cause obscured.

Good luck.

My name is not Helene’s Algorithms for fun.

Actually, not even my fun is entirely for fun.

I rarely utter an idea, thought, or even choose a word without there being some value behind it—scientific, creative, psychological, physiological, or occasionally just useful for clapping somebody’s stuck perception upstairs.

I chose Algorithms because discovering how algorithms work gave me one of those ridiculous moments of recognition.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

YES.

🤣

The completely unmasked child in me went bananas.

Because of course.

How else would you think?

You take everything available within the limits of human perception.

You combine it.

Categorize it.

Weave the threads.

See what fits with what.

Notice what doesn’t fit.

Rearrange.

Look again.

And once something fits:

Why?

Why does that fit with this?

Why did I notice it?

Why did someone else not notice it?

What changes if I move this piece over there?

What happens to the whole structure if one assumption is wrong?

And then you run it again.

And again.

And again.

Which is where the machine and I eventually part ways.

Not because machines cannot generate answers to why. They obviously can.

But because I am not looking for an answer that sounds like an answer.

I want to know whether it survives.

So I test it.

Against another field.

Another person.

Another contradiction.

Another piece of data I wish had never arrived.

And when it survives, I become suspicious of why it survived.

🤣

This is the unfortunate part of becoming aware of your own algorithms.

You can inspect the machinery doing the inspecting.

Which sounds terribly sophisticated until you realise there is no obvious OFF button.

You don’t escape the web.

You become both the spider and the idiot fly.

And then you realise:

Fucking hell.

There is no escaping the Great Attractor.

And the relevant data is, of course,

behind the Zone of Avoidance.

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There seems to be a persistent misunderstanding that if someone chooses celibacy, they must have stopped desiring intimacy.

As if choosing celibacy were simply what happens when your hormones stop working, like some unfortunate physiological or psychological disorder.

No.

I am probably a terrible spokesperson for celibacy.

As I still think beautiful men are beautiful.

That not all men are dicks.

I still think sex is one of the most extraordinary forms of human communication when it belongs where it belongs.

Possibly tied with olive oil and everything tied to olives.

So the point is not the absence of desire.

The point is what you decide to do with it.

People seem to assume celibacy is a punishment.

That every attractive human who walks past is another heroic act of religious piety.

As though I spend my afternoons whispering,

“No, Satan…”

to men buying tomatoes.

I don’t.

To men walking backwards to smile at you.

«No, Belzebub…»

The interesting part isn’t suppressing desire.

It is refusing to manufacture futures.

Because attraction is cheap.

Chemistry is cheap.

Hope…

is catastrophically expensive.

I know exactly what hope does.

A lingering glance.

A little more time together.

A message that slowly becomes expected.

The quiet assumption that “this might become something.”

Those things are not neutral.

They are seeds.

If I already know I cannot water them honestly, why plant them?

Not because I am afraid of intimacy.

Because I respect it.

I genuinely tried befriending new people.

Mmm…

That’s another story.

Statistically speaking, hope has also been my most financially and neurologically disastrous investment.

After reviewing the data, the risk assessment simply wasn’t in favour of anyone looking for someone.

So…

No looking.

Sincerely.

Celibacy it is.

People think celibacy means saying no to sex.

Sometimes it means saying no to the entire fictional Netflix series your brain managed to produce because someone maintained eye contact for three extra seconds.

Episode one.

Almost marriage by episode four.

Shared funeral playlist by episode six.

Wonderful.

Result:

You have neither dated nor explored absolutely nobody.

That is the project.

Not to become numb.

Not to become pure.

Not to become morally superior.

God spare us those assholes.

The project is simply this:

Do not create obligations in another human being that you already know you cannot honestly fulfill.

That isn’t repression.

That is kindness.

Once you stop auditioning every attractive or interesting stranger for the role of “possible future spouse,”

something remarkable happens.

People become…

people again.

Not potential.

Not destiny.

Not lessons.

Just another wonderfully complicated primate buying tomatoes.

Just for a second enjoying attraction.

It is surprisingly peaceful.

Almost disappointingly so.

Which is ironic.

Because everyone keeps asking whether celibacy is difficult.

No.

Dating or exploration is difficult.

Celibacy has been one of the calmest decisions I have ever made.

Choosing celibacy has made me appreciate eros more, not less. Not only in intimacy between two people, but in my intimacy with life itself.

Because desire is no longer something I consume.

It has become something I observe.

Almost like admiring a beautiful painting.

I don’t need to own it.

I don’t need to touch it.

Its existence is enough.

Maybe one day life will surprise me.

Maybe not.

But until then, I don’t owe desire an audience simply because it exists.

Desire can knock.

I don’t have to open the door.

And that doesn’t feel like deprivation.

It feels like choosing freedom.

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Not that I haven’t before.

Every writer has a different journey with their readers.

I don’t know how long you’ve been reading my notes, poetry, or reflections.

But if you’ve been here for a while, you’ll know that from this point on, my writing asks something different of you.

It asks that you can hold multiple probabilities in your mind at once.

That you resist rushing toward conclusions.

That you allow seemingly unrelated observations to remain unrelated until they aren’t.

Because reality has never unfolded according to the conventions of literature.

Literature, on the other hand, has spent the last two centuries trying to make reality unfold according to its conventions.

Meanwhile, we have built a second home online.

A structure unlike anything humanity had two hundred years ago. One that has fundamentally changed how human psychology reveals itself.

Our inner world now continuously leaks into language.

Not because we deliberately invented them, but because we started leaving behind continuous, surfacing linguistic traces of being human.

I can usually tell quite a lot about a person from the way they write.

Not because I know them.

Because language always betrays its author.

Some people read for information.

Others read for style.

People with literary sensitivity read for architecture.

We notice where a sentence breathes.

Where it hesitates.

Where it hides.

Where it unconsciously reveals more than it intended.

Knowing several languages has become an unexpected advantage.

Not because I can translate words.

Because I can translate experience.

Every language lands differently in my body.

Each possesses emotional frequencies that another language simply doesn’t.

One language can carry precision.

Another irony.

Another tenderness.

Another brutality.

The feeling itself remains recognizably human.

Only its architecture changes.

That has made me unusually conscious of the relationship between language, emotion, logic, and the strange things writing can quietly do to another human being.

There is another reason my writing appears fragmented.

It isn’t.

It simply refuses chronology.

Human understanding has very little respect for chronology.

We remember in fragments.

A smell.

A sentence.

A pair of eyes.

A death.

A joke.

An equation.

A piece of music.

The brain quietly stores them without asking whether they belong together.

Years later, without permission, it connects them.

People often mistake coherence for order.

I don’t.

Coherence is not created by placing things in sequence.

It is created by discovering that they were always connected.

In daily life, we don’t think in themes or genres.

Our attention moves effortlessly from scrambling eggs to a sentence someone said ten years ago.

We don’t tell our brain, “Don’t leave the cooking blog. We’re not discussing neuroscience just because you suddenly remembered that sentence from twelve years ago.”

It simply moves.

Sometimes we choose to write as it moves.

That is why my writing can move from physics to love.

From poetry to Bayesian probability.

From sex to death.

From satire to neuroscience.

Not because I enjoy intellectual gymnastics or like to confuse people.

Because that is exactly how reality presents itself to me.

Reality has never introduced itself in chapters.

Only humans did.

And perhaps that made sense once.

When stories had to fit inside books.

When information travelled slowly.

When the inner life remained largely invisible.

Today we leave cognitive fingerprints everywhere.

Thousands of them.

Our humour.

Our anger.

Our contradictions.

Our hesitations.

Our choice of punctuation.

The words we consistently avoid.

The metaphors we repeat without noticing.

The subjects we cannot stop returning to.

Most people think they are expressing themselves.

I think they are revealing how their mind organizes reality.

Not perfectly.

But enough.

Enough for someone who has spent a lifetime watching.

I rarely become interested in what people tell me.

I become interested in what repeatedly escapes them.

The pattern beneath the performance.

The sentence they did not know they were writing.

Because that sentence usually knows them better than they know themselves.

Even with the help of GPT.

And this is where my writing becomes demanding for some and I respect that.

Not because the ideas are complicated.

Because I refuse to protect the reader from contradiction.

I have no interest in helping you choose between reason and emotion.

Between science and poetry.

Between logic and beauty.

Reality has never asked me to choose.

So neither will I.

If you stay long enough, you may notice that I almost never arrive where the text appeared to be going.

Neither do I.

That is the privilege of curiosity.

It is not trying to be right.

It is trying to become less wrong.

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What I think it misses, not intentionally, however, is the importance of diversity—not only in people, but in the ways people create.

There are areas of being human that have remained strangely taboo still in 2026 to explore openly.

Neurodivergence.

Intelligence.

Beauty.

Emotional intensity.

The interaction between reason, emotion, and reality.

None of these fit particularly well into repeatable frameworks or content strategies. They don’t lend themselves to formulas because they aren’t trying to teach a system.

They are trying to expose one.

If we are talking marketing, let me have my attempt at why this diversity matters.

I don’t create a page that behaves like a newsletter where readers simply wait for the next episode.

I want people to become excited, uncomfortable, inspired, challenged, feel at home, leave, and still come back.

Not because the numbers are screaming.

But because something keeps asking them another question.

That kind of relationship rarely explodes.

It accumulates.

Slowly.

Through trust that isn’t built on consistency of content, but on consistency of thought.

Reading your piece about Alicia made me realize that we are actually playing two different games.

I think Alicia has understood something incredibly valuable.

She builds interpersonal trust.

People leave her page thinking:

“I feel like I know her.”

That is a remarkable achievement, because almost nobody on the internet makes strangers feel genuinely close anymore.

I think I am trying to build something else.

Not because it is better.

Simply because it seems to be the only thing I know how to do.

I am trying to build epistemic trust.

I don’t necessarily want people to feel that they know me.

I want them to trust how I think.

That difference changes almost everything.

Alicia exposes her feelings.

I expose my thinking.

Oddly enough, I think exposing the latter is often the greater risk.

If someone dismisses your emotions, it hurts.

If someone dismisses the way you reason, they are questioning years of observation, falsification, self-experimentation, Bayesian updating, metacognition, and rebuilding models from scratch.

That is why I rarely write to be believed.

Nor to receive sympathy.

I write because I am genuinely interested in whether someone can produce a better explanation than the one I currently hold.

A better model.

Better predictions.

Better reasoning.

If they can, wonderful.

Reality wins.

That approach also explains why my writing tends to polarize people.

Very few seem to end up in the middle.

People generally conclude one of two things:

“She’s brilliant.”

or

“She’s completely insane.”

The funniest summary I have ever received came this morning from my friend replied to my note:

“It’s both.”

Fair enough.

I laughed.

Because that response captures something true about the kind of writing I do.

When Alicia writes, I think her invitation is:

“Come closer and know me.”

When I write, my invitation is probably closer to:

“Come closer and see whether this way of understanding reality survives scrutiny.”

The emotions are real.

The stories are real.

But they are rarely the destination.

More often, they are the laboratory.

The experiment is almost always human nature.

And I live there permanently.

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Like my deodorant.

I stepped out of the shower with absolutely no clue that the next minute was about to challenge thousands of years of accumulated human nonsense.

I entered my usual after-shower ritual.

Very much my oil, scent, and devouring-the-moments-of-care phase.

It always starts with my deodorant, of course.

Now, the deodorant deserves its own Detour.

For thirty years I used exactly one.

Biotherm Sensitive.

Solid.

I mean seriously solid.

You smell like a newborn baby—even after a marathon.

Naturally, I swore by it.

Then suddenly…

Too much powder.

I never asked, but I’m almost convinced Biotherm reformulated it without announcement.

Or perhaps…

my taste simply changed.

Either way, my nose was not happy.

So I switched to Clarins.

Pure luck.

First attempt.

Anyone who knows me understands that almost never happens.

Usually I spend quite some time testing things before declaring peace.

For me, not only the quality and performance have to work together, but also the scents.

Everything has its place.

Nothing should scream.

Nothing should compete.

There I was.

Completely satisfied with my new deodorant.

So discreet you almost have to make an active decision to smell it.

Then…

Before I even opened the knot, my bathrobe belt loosened by itself.

Sometimes that’s because I’m too lazy to tie a proper knot.

Sometimes that’s because I pretend to be too lazy to tie a proper knot.

Today it was genuine laziness.

Holding my deodorant in one hand…

I caught sight of my pussy in the mirror.

Everything else disappeared.

It was suddenly just me…

my shame…

and my pussy.

No, feminists, don’t get excited.

Spiritual people, please don’t start chanting.

Jungians, don’t start drawing mandalas.

Tantra people, kindly postpone your sacred breathing.

This was pure Mabel.

She is the CEO of my Department of Logic & Reasoning.

Once Mabel arrives, objections become decorative.

A multidisciplinary investigation was immediately initiated.

Religion.

Mythology.

Ideologies.

Phenomenology.

Philosophy.

Neurology.

…and whatever else she could remember.

The findings were deeply disappointing.

The other departments were consulted.

Mira, Director of the Department of Metacognition & Observation, quietly observed.

Leyla, Head of the Department of Aesthetics & Emotional Affairs, screamed,

“What the hell?!”

For once, nobody disagreed.

Actually…

hell suddenly felt like an unusually relevant word.

“Oh my God…”

No.

That somehow felt much less relevant.

The word God has always made me feel as though a dick had entered the room.

Anyway.

Poor pussy.

No.

Wait.

Not like that.

I meant…

Poor pussy.

Because after consulting several thousand years of accumulated human thinking…

it turned out to be…

just a fucking piece of tissue.

There is no shame in the pussy.

The shame exists only in the symbol we attached to it.

Then, without consciously connecting the two thoughts, I noticed a genuinely beautiful woman standing in the mirror.

She looked remarkably innocent too.

Then I remembered another word we have almost certainly ruined.

Love.

What a mess we have made there.

Perhaps it all began by getting the pussy wrong.

Of course love suffers from exactly the same problem.

It has spent centuries carrying fantasies, loneliness, dependency, longing, trauma, validation, salvation—and enough projection to collapse under its own symbolic weight.

The conclusion was obvious.

There was only one thing left to verify.

The mirror was still refusing to cooperate.

The woman was still standing there.

So I looked again.

Not emotionally.

Epistemologically.

No mercy.

Exactly the same way I’ve spent decades looking for errors in systems, contradictions in arguments, and disruptions in patterns.

Nothing staged.

Nothing corrected.

Just observation.

…

There wasn’t anything particularly disturbing.

Not perfection.

Something much more attractive.

Balance.

Womanhood.

Then I noticed her eyes.

Calm.

Curious.

Entirely at peace with existing.

They weren’t asking to be admired.

They weren’t asking for validation.

They simply looked…

well.

On an art wall, I guess she wouldnt create spectacle, but would be a wonderful piece on a wall.

The rest suddenly made sense.

One thing was the visible beauty that was diminished, because of shame, guilt and fear.

The combination was;

Hard inner work.

Hard outer work.

The quiet maintenance of fairness.

That peculiar kind of beauty that appears when nobody is performing it.

A successful integration of logos, pathos, ethos, and eros.

Ontology is surprisingly uneventful.

Things are mostly just…

what they are.

We took an ordinary piece of tissue and somehow managed to build entire civilizations of shame around it.

Then we told women to disappear inside that shame.

Pussy.

Desire.

Pussy.

Sin.

Pussy.

Motherhood.

Pussy.

Temptation.

Pussy.

Submission.

Pussy.

Oppression.

Pussy.

Slavery.

And so on…

Symbols built the prison.

Humans appointed themselves the guards.

So, after several thousand years of accumulated human illusive thinking…

I can finally report that reality has been thoroughly examined.

The pussy was innocent.

The woman was innocent.

Perhaps love is innocent too.

My nervous system had been trying to tell me that all along.

To this day, none of them appears to hold an opinion on the matters they have been accused of—from ruling civilizations to ruining them.

Well, some small glitches here and there.

But definetly not the pussies problem.

Neither the apple,

nor the fig,

nor the pussy

has shown the slightest interest

in participating in human idiocy.

well.

I tied my bathrobe belt properly this time, and went to get dressed.

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People can dissolve their ego.

They can become deeply compassionate, wise, even genuinely transcendent.

As long as they are alive in a human body, however, claiming that physical beauty does not matter is, in my opinion, nonsense.

Bear with the clichés for a moment.

If you’ve read enough of my writing, you already know I don’t think in straight lines. My thoughts spread like a web. They leave one point only to return to it from another direction.

Beauty has countless variables.

Attraction is personal, contextual, cultural.

Everyone has preferences.

Yet imagine someone tells you,

“You’re meeting this person tomorrow. This could become your partner.”

Your body reacts before your philosophy does.

Only afterwards does the mind begin its noble speech.

“Looks don’t matter.”

Sometimes they don’t.

Often they do.

Perception is considerably older than reasoning.

Evolution did not wait for us to develop a moral vocabulary before teaching our nervous systems what to notice.

Our bodies register.

Our minds explain.

Sometimes the explanation is beautiful.

Sometimes it is simply convenient.

Yes, I’m making this slightly theatrical.

My readers know I do that.

Not because I enjoy performing.

Because I enjoy performing honesty.

Actually…

Not even honesty.

Accuracy.

There is something strangely liberating about refusing to bend around what is plainly observable simply because acknowledging it might make someone uncomfortable.

Not to hurt anyone.

Not to provoke anyone.

And certainly not because I have enough spare time to dedicate myself to disturbing strangers.

Quite the opposite.

I dislike unnecessary discomfort.

But I dislike unnecessary distortion even more.

Many things we call kindness are, in reality, small negotiations with reality itself.

One of the strangest freedoms that arrived later in my life was reclaiming the parts of myself that other people had labelled weaknesses.

Not to weaponize them.

Not as revenge.

Simply as mine.

Vulnerability is not weakness.

It is ownership.

It is looking at yourself without editing the obvious simply because someone once preferred a softer version of you.

That, to me, feels considerably more compassionate than pretending our bodies don’t participate in the human experience.

I didn’t arrive at this conclusion through philosophy alone.

I arrived there because I eventually discovered that I had forgotten to include myself as one of the variables.

So, with this in mind, I genuinely used to believe physical beauty didn’t matter very much to me.

Fine.

Perhaps there had been one or two exceptions.

But mostly, the men I had fallen for had simply happened to be handsome.

Pure coincidence, obviously.

Not because pious little me considered such things important.

They merely happened to be also handsome.

That was the story I told myself.

Completely unedited.

So let me use myself as an example.

Not because I think I’m right.

Certainly not because I think I’m special.

Simply because changing my mind required becoming my own case study.

Throughout my childhood, both sides of my family repeated the same stories.

Whenever a particularly beautiful baby girl was born, people would say,

“She is as beautiful as Fatima.”

Fatima being my middle name.

My parents told me that when I was born, the women in the village called me “a piece of the moon.”

My sister still laughs about how one aunt spread the news from house to house that our mother, Hanna Narin, had given birth to a piece of the moon, and one by one the women came to see the baby everyone was talking about.

Even after we moved to Norway, my parents were regularly stopped in parks, markets, or simply while walking, by strangers who wanted to look at their little girl.

By the time I became old enough to notice it myself, I hated every second of it.

In my family I became known as “the one between the legs.”

There are hardly any photographs of me between the ages of three and seven where you can actually see my face.

Whenever someone wanted a photograph—or strangers stopped us—I instinctively disappeared behind my mother’s legs, my father’s legs, or one of my siblings’.

I still don’t know exactly why.

Attention felt uncomfortable.

Photographs even more so.

These days, that’s different.

Not because I need attention.

Quite the opposite.

Every photograph I post still scares the shit out of me.

They’re not for the audience.

The audience is merely collateral damage in my ongoing exposure therapy.

I have absolutely no recent—or future—plans of becoming a whimsical photo model.

Although…

Life has definitely surprised me before. 😆

Those stories surrounded me for years.

Yet they never entered me.

I didn’t see that girl.

Not for decades.

It’s not that I thought I was unattractive.

I simply didn’t perceive what everyone else apparently perceived.

There was a complete mismatch between how I experienced my own appearance and how other people responded to it.

Until recently I couldn’t admit two things simultaneously.

First, that physical beauty genuinely mattered to me.

Second, that my own appearance genuinely mattered to other people.

Oddly enough, I rejected both with equal determination.

Because if beauty mattered to me, surely I was shallow.

And if I acknowledged my own beauty, surely I was vain.

So I solved the dilemma by denying both.

I always ignored it.

I assumed it was simply what every woman experienced.

I explained it away in increasingly creative ways.

“People are just friendly.”

“They’re probably like this with everyone.”

“I’m imagining things.”

“It has nothing to do with how I look.”

The evidence kept accumulating.

My explanations kept adapting.

It never occurred to me that perhaps I wasn’t being humble.

Perhaps I was simply refusing to include an entire variable in my model of reality.

Not because I disliked myself.

I didn’t.

But because somewhere along the way I had learned that acknowledging beauty in yourself was dangerously close to vanity.

So I could comfortably admire beauty in others.

I just couldn’t comfortably include my own.

Until one day I said to my therapist,

“Well… okay, I may be beautiful… but not very.”

He looked at me for a second and simply replied,

“That’s better.”

I laughed.

He wasn’t trying to convince me that I was exceptionally beautiful.

He was correcting something far more fundamental.

Accuracy.

He wasn’t asking me to think more highly of myself.

He was asking me to stop editing reality.

Nothing about reality changed that day.

Only my model of reality did.

And once my model became more accurate, another observation quietly followed.

I had spent years believing that acknowledging my own attraction to beauty somehow made me less integrated.

It didn’t.

It made me more honest.

More importantly…

More accurate.

The irony is that my taste never really changed.

I still find certain faces, expressions, voices and ways of moving profoundly beautiful.

And that’s perfectly alright.

My nervous system has its own taste buds.

Just as I know which textures comfort me.

Which music calms me.

Which coffee I always return to.

Or which olive oil I will happily defend as though civilization depended on it.

There is nothing immoral about preference.

The mistake was believing preference somehow diminished compassion.

It doesn’t.

Beauty is simply one variable among many.

An important one.

Never a sufficient one.

Never the determining one.

But pretending it doesn’t exist was simply another attempt to negotiate with reality.

And reality…

Has very little interest in negotiation.

It simply continues being what it is.

That…

Turns out, truly and sincerely to be perfectly okay.

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I almost felt ridiculous writing about this.

How could I possibly explain that my mind is genuinely wired to live with as few prejudices as possible?

It understands human nature. It understands needs, instincts, and desire. I could discuss Eros, love, intimacy, or the architecture of relationships for hours without discomfort.

But my body…

The mere thought of physical closeness feels like prison.

Even writing that feels absurd.

As though no one would believe me because it sounds too strange to be true.

Perhaps more than anything else, that is what kept me silent for so many years.

My body kept screaming no, yet I didn’t dare speak.

I didn’t want to become the difficult one, the demanding one, the strange one, the loud one—or an even bigger scapegoat than I already was.

So I did what I had always done.

I stayed quiet.

Today, I understand the trauma.

I understand the mechanisms.

I have peace in my daily life.

My mind is curious, calm, and entirely capable of understanding intimacy.

Yet I cannot reason my body out of what it has learned.

The mere thought of physical closeness still feels like prison.

The fear is remarkably specific.

It isn’t about people in general.

It is about physical intimacy.

And that is a very different experience.

For me, prison isn’t another human being.

It is the loss of freedom that my body associates with an intimate bond🙈.

It is as though my body automatically translates intimacy into something else:

• Now the expectations begin.

• Now I lose my autonomy.

• Now I have to accommodate.

• Now I have to regulate another person’s emotional world.

• Now it becomes difficult to leave.

• Oh gosh and all the new things you have to learn about someone… oh too much work!

It isn’t physical touch itself that frightens me.

It is everything my body has learned to believe comes with it.

The irony is that I can write about love, beauty, desire, and even joke about sex without the slightest discomfort.

That tells me it isn’t sexuality itself that activates this response.

It is lived intimacy.

Not the idea of closeness.

The experience of it.

Perhaps that is the greatest difference between what the mind understands…

and what the body still remembers.

Because despite all the evidence my body has been given, it still whispers:

“Wait. I’m not ready yet.”

Now that I can finally hear it, I also understand how profoundly wrong it feels to force my body to endure something it does not want.

I know where years of overriding it led.

So now, it deserves something different.

It deserves to be respected.

One day it will find its own balance, whether that includes physical intimacy or not.

That part no longer matters.

What matters is that, whatever the outcome, intimacy is no longer experienced as something to fear, endure, or survive.

Only as something that feels natural.

One day, hopefully 🤞🏼

Still, I can’t help wondering… was the whole metamorphosis thing just clever marketing by the mystics? I was promised divine desire and all that mystical magic.

Well… another glitch. Their formula doesn’t seem to have worked on me. 🤷🏻‍♀️

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Before I begin, let me say something.

None of this existed five minutes ago.

I am not writing from notes.

I am not following a plan.

I do not know where this is going.

It arrives here and now.

Perhaps that is why I enjoy writing.

Not because I know.

Because I get to discover.

Let’s sit somewhere warm.

A Mediterranean night. The kind where the temperature becomes perfect after sunset. The sea rocking gently in the darkness. A faint smell of salt and seaweed in the air. No urgency. No destination. No one trying to be clever. Soft, relaxed, and just two people sinking deeper into comfortable chairs while the night slowly unfolds around them.

The best conversations happen when neither person is trying to arrive anywhere.

So let’s talk about beauty.

You know, there are so many beautiful women and men out there.

I love beauty, and in many ways I love it even more in women than in men.

I don’t see anything wrong with two women making love. Personally, though, I have never been attracted to women sexually. I have even tried to falsify myself on this point. 😆

Because I don’t buy it when men or women say they have never fantasized about their own gender. That’s absolute bollocks.

I can fantasize about a woman. But in real life, I have never managed to feel desire for an actual living woman. This despite absolutely dissolving into the sweetest feeling imaginable when I see a beautiful woman.

If it wouldn’t be weird, I would ask them:

“Please, could you just sit still and think the most beautiful thought, the most sensual thought, the darkest thought, the most painful feeling, or any feeling you have ever had.” To then just sit and observe.

I would make her feel completely comfortable in the genuine love I have for a human being who carries beauty around.

And I only see that beauty when they are genuine themselves.

Oh mamma mia.

Then my spirit becomes a five-year-old girl who has just spotted a friend she adores. In pure enthusiasm, It start jumping around.

Even then I have checked myself.

Could I imagine sleeping with her?

You really like this bastard.

She is stunning, intelligent, dark, ferocious, soft, tender, recklessly free-minded, and hilarious.

Still, my body says no.

Almost frustrating.

We said beauty, didn’t we?

That thing.

I think any intelligent human being knows that it isn’t particularly difficult to seduce a woman or a man.

Humans are not particularly complex beings.

Sometimes my mind looks at me and says:

“You really don’t give up, do you?

We have mapped the types.

We have mapped the patterns.

There are no new models hiding behind the curtains.

The data is complete, moron. It’s two types we have hypothesised. Which fairly keeps confirming.

What exactly are you still dreaming about?”

😆

And honestly, I know.

God, I know.

If there is one thing this journey has made clear to me, it is that there seem to be only two forms of beauty in non-evil humans.

One is beauty’s shadow.

The other is beauty itself in cosmic resolution.

The first attracts.

The second aligns.

The first creates desire.

The second creates recognition.

The first makes you want to possess.

The second makes you want to protect.

The first says:

“Come closer.”

The second says:

“There you are.”

One can be found everywhere.

The other appears so rarely that people spend entire lifetimes confusing one for the other.

Perhaps because both are beautiful.

But only one feels like something inside reality suddenly clicking into place.

Like a key finding the lock it was made for.

Like a chord resolving.

Like noise becoming music.

Like a question finally melting into its answer.

That thing.

That magnifique thing.

That beauty has haunted me, fascinated me, obsessed me, and followed me like a loyal ghost for as long as I can remember.

And still, I keep most of it to myself.

I know.

Very stingy and cowardly. 🤣

Before I continue, or perhaps more honestly, if I can continue.

Because I write state-based.

Not mystically.

Simply practically.

I can only write when I can see it, hear it, and feel it.

When something is alive inside me, words arrive almost on their own.

When it isn’t, the switch is off.

No matter how interesting the topic may be, I cannot manufacture it.

If I cannot see it, hear it, or feel it, then for me it does not exist enough to write about.

At least not honestly.

So if this detour continues, it will be because beauty decides to keep talking.

Not because I decided to.

As a writer, I rarely become interested in the person first.

I become interested in the mind.

The way it moves.

The things it notices.

The connections it makes.

Whether it opens a new room inside me or simply confirms a landscape I already know.

I am almost never interested in being desired.

I am interested in the exchange itself.

Mind meeting mind.

Attention meeting attention.

The strange moment where two different ways of seeing reality illuminate each other.

Since I am in love with someone, and that is not fully processed yet, it has strangely given me objectivity towards others.

I can feel sincerely.

Share genuine moments.

Have no fear of projection.

Actually get to know people.

And everyone I talk to gets to know this.

I never play.

I never create hope.

So no.

I am not looking for my next love story.

I am even beginning to wonder whether I will ever volunteer for so much emotional theatre again.

A full metamorphosis erased many things.

Not this.

And no thank you for another obsession.

Peak self-awareness, by the way. 😅

My heart remains stubbornly occupied by someone who practically doesn’t exist and probably never will.

Peculiar.

But what can I do?

Only people who have really been in love understand this.

And strangely, in these conversations I am not interested in intimate attention.

But neither would its appearance feel strange.

The total absence of it would.

Because affection, attraction, tenderness, admiration…

These things belong to life.

They are not problems.

If truth be told, I have never been driven by attention.

Not at eighteen.

Not at twenty-eight.

Not at thirty-eight.

Not now.

In fact, I spent most of my life avoiding it.

I genuinely believed that particular chapter would quietly retire sometime after forty.

Instead, life had other plans.

Now I have sweet thirty-year-old café stalkers, mysterious Substack philosophers, and enough curious encounters to keep several anthropologists employed in a field study on the correlation between high cognition and desire.

Old friends, colleagues, and the café where I write are another matter.

Its guests are suspicious in a much more obvious way. 🤣

Humor helps.

I always get away with self-aware humor.

No hearts broken.

No egos shattered.

Without humor I would never survive any of this.

Because I have always been more interested in making other people comfortable than in being noticed myself.

To put it differently:

I am the woman who notices a couple walking down the street ten meters away.

The woman catches my eye for a second.

She becomes slightly uncomfortable.

Not because I have done anything.

Not because her partner has done anything.

But because she suddenly hopes he won’t notice me.

I read her insecurity immediately.

And I understand.

So I look away.

Or turn my head.

Or quietly disappear from the situation.

Not because I feel guilty.

Not because I think less of myself.

Simply because her comfort matters more to me than being seen.

That has been my relationship with attention for as long as I can remember.

On streets.

In rooms.

Online.

So no.

Attention is not what interests me.

Beauty interests me.

Sincerity interests me.

Presence interests me.

I want the music.

The laughter.

The intelligence.

The tenderness.

The strange conversations.

The unexpected friendships.

I want beautiful encounters.

But beauty only becomes fully beautiful when honesty arrives.

Not because mystery disappears.

Because then mystery becomes real.

Not the mystery of games.

Not the mystery of withholding.

But the mystery of two people who no longer need to hide.

The mystery of being known and remaining free.

Perhaps that is what has fascinated me all along.

Not beauty itself.

Not desire.

Not even love.

But that strange moment when nothing essential needs to be concealed anymore.

When attention becomes trust.

When vulnerability becomes peace.

When presence becomes home.

And perhaps that is why I still love beauty.

Because every now and then, beneath all the theatre, the longing, the masks, the misunderstandings, and the mystery,

something simple appears.

And when it does,

it is magnifique.

Not because it is rare.

Because it is true.

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At least, if an insane person can ever claim such a thing.

Which brings me to a question that has become strangely liberating.

Who cares?

Who cares if the world thinks I am weak, obsessed, confused, ridiculous, or hopelessly stuck?

Who cares if some believe I have wasted years, tears, words, and entire seasons on something that should have been forgotten long ago?

Who cares if they call it attachment, fantasy, delusion, or tragedy?

Perhaps they are right.

Perhaps they are wrong.

Who cares?

Because I know this:

I have not hated.

I have not lied.

I have not manipulated.

I have not abandoned myself.

I have laughed.

I have cried.

I have doubted myself a thousand times.

I have tested every thought until the screws fell out.

I have lost illusions without losing wonder.

I have suffered without becoming bitter.

I have loved without possessing.

And I still wake up grateful.

Still capable of laughter.

Still capable of being moved.

Still capable of love.

If that makes me weak, then let me be weak.

If that makes me ridiculous, then let me be ridiculous.

If that makes me insane, then so be it.

Perhaps the greatest freedom is not being understood.

But being.

Confused.

Embarrassed.

Carrying five hundred thousand words.

“Forgive me,” she says.

“I think I might be insane.”

Rumi rises.

“My dear,” he says.

“We know.”

“But what is my difference from you?” she asks.

“Nothing,” says Ibn Arabi.

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

Rabia nods.

“We were not profound.”

Majnun smiles.

“We were interrupted.”

Kierkegaard sighs.

“We were unwillingly educated.”

Rumi laughs.

“We loved.”

“And what if it never ends?” she whispers.

“My dear,” Rabia says “nothing ends.”

“Everything transforms,” says Kierkegaard.

Majnun stares into the distance.

“Love was never my wound.”

“Nor mine,” says Rumi.

Ibn Arabi closes his eyes.

“The wound was wanting reality to explain itself.”

There was nothing extraordinary about them.

Nothing supernatural.

Something happened.

Unable to stop it, they observed it.

Unable to explain it, they shared it.

Unable to possess it, they loved.

Rabia.

“Love came.

What else could we do?”

Kierkegaard.

“Yes.

What else?”

And Ibn Arabi says:

“Do not ask whether it is true.

Ask what it has made of you.”

Then Rumi

“Come.

The sane have discussed you long enough.

Join us.”

None of them thought they were Rumi, Kierkegaard, Rabia, Ibn Arabi, or Majnun.

Kierkegaard probably sat in Copenhagen staring out the window thinking: “Lord in heaven, I should have been Regine’s postman.”

Majnun, was likely tired of hearing:

“Still?”

And answering:

“Still.”

People read Rabia’s prayers and think poetry.

I suspect she simply meant every word.

And Ibn Arabi, when he wrote that his heart had become capable of every form, perhaps meant nothing more mystical than:

“I have stopped arguing with reality.”

People hear enlightenment.

I hear relief.

Imagine Kierkegaard looking at you.

Five hundred thousand words.

Love.

Tears.

Italy.

Butterflies.

Embarrassment.

He removes his glasses.

“Madam, have you considered becoming someone else?”

“No.”

“Bravo. Neither did I. Terrible strategy.” 😂

Majnun enters.

“You write?”

“Yes.”

“Still?”

“Still.”

“You cry?”

“Sometimes.”

“You laugh?”

“More now.”

He nods.

“Welcome.”

Nothing profound.

Just:

“Welcome.”

Then Rabia interrupts the men.

She turns to you.

“Do you hate him?”

“No.”

“Do you hate yourself?”

“No.”

“Do you hate God?
Don’t involve that thingy” but,

“No.”

“Good.”

She pours mint tea.

“Sit.”

Then you ask again:

“So what is my difference from you?”

Rabia asks:

“Did you choose?”

“No.”

“Neither did we.”

They all laugh.

“But people still quote you.”

The old man smiles.

“Because we’re dead.”

Majnun nearly spits out his tea.

“If we were alive, they’d tell us to move on.”

Then he looks at you kindly.

“Relax.

You are not joining us.

You’ve been here the whole time.”

And Ibn Arabi speaks one last time.

“My daughter, why are you trying so hard to distinguish yourself from us?”

“Because surely this isn’t normal.”

“Normal?” he smiles.

“What do you think we spent our whole lives recovering from?”

Kierkegaard stares into rainy Copenhagen.

“The crowd always imagines that most ordinary people feel extraordinary.”

Majnun

“Meanwhile they feel ridiculous.”

“And tired,” says Rabia.

“And grateful,” says Rumi.

“And homeless,” says Ibn Arabi.

“And thirsty of passion,” says Majnun.

“And embarrassed,” says Kierkegaard.

Then all five turn toward you.

Rabia smiles.

“Welcome.”

“To what?”

And Rumi answers:

“To feeling insane.”

Because reality never intended to explain itself.

Only humanity insisted that it should.

And when some of us said,

“Wait a minute...”

the others called us lunatic mystics. 😂

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Notes from a woman who spent years preparing sophisticated questions.

Life answered with figs.

One day I looked down.

Wait a minute.

I am sitting in public like a retired yogi.

One leg somewhere in Anatolia.

The other somewhere near Sicily.

No problem.

Then I looked around.

No.

People were sitting normally.

Crossed legs.

Civilization.

Coffee.

Meanwhile I had folded myself into origami.

And suddenly all the unfiltered versions of me were standing around screaming in Italian:

“Ma che cazzo fai?” 🤌

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Ma come si fa, eh? HOW?” 🤌🤌🤌

“Hellooo? It’s me. It’s you!” 👀

“Ma vaffanculo, cazzo di donna!” 🤌🤌🤌

“For God’s sake, woman!”

“I am not enlightenment.”

“I am you.”

I said:

“Ok, ok… Tranquilo.”

“Madonna! You are fierce. Please, easy. I am too gentle for this drama…”

Ok…

One thing at a time.

Ok, promise.

No complications.

Which, in retrospect, was already a lie.

Vallahi she is right, this is no longer enlightenment or any fancy self-discovery.

This is Turkish-style enlightenment 😁

Slightly retarded open eyes of enlightenment.

Life keeps revealing things I never really wanted to know.

Which is unfortunate.

Because they turn out to be embarrassingly basic and terribly important.

And I had carefully filed them under:

“Not urgent.”

🤣

Like the Turkish expression:

Hassitir.

Not exactly surprise.

Not exactly regret.

Not exactly enlightenment.

More like the moment reality removes its bra, wig, makeup, philosophy, trauma, and spiritual jargon…

and stands there naked.

And you sit there with your coffee, one hand on your forehead, staring with those slightly retarded open eyes and think:

“Wait a minute…”

🤣

I spent years preparing sophisticated questions.

Life answered with figs.

Then another realization.

Oh.

You gave up.

Not because simplicity wasn’t true.

But because you got tired.

Tired of trying to convince people.

Hey.

These things can exist together.

They can.

For Gods sake...

So, finally I have decided on an unfiltered mission.

To prove that a woman can be:

Ferocious in writing,
an artisan in conversation.

Sharp in mind,
a servant in heart.

Deep in thought,
light in spirit.

Wild in imagination,
disciplined in action.

Multilayered in thought,
yet capable of losing herself to a look.

Curious enough to get lost in eight languages,
and simple enough to forget where she put her phone.

Passionate in desire,
peaceful in presence.

Free in spirit,
faithful in love.

Uncompromising with truth,
merciful with people.

Capable of burning down ideas,
yet incapable of humiliating a soul.

Sensual without shame,
and sincere without fear.

A lover of beauty,
without becoming its servant.

Creative in chaos,
and orderly in responsibility.

Curious without borders,
and loyal without chains.

Able to laugh at herself,
and cry without shame.

Playful in joy,
ferocious in grief.

Capable of immense longing,
without turning longing into tragedy.

A friend of Eros,
without worshipping him.

Able to desire deeply,
without desiring possession.

Able to love passionately,
without abandoning freedom.

Able to stand alone,
without making loneliness a virtue.

To embrace life as satire,
and love it with terrifying sincerity.

To kiss the absurd,
and still pay the bills.

To contemplate eternity,
and still laugh at fart jokes.

To discuss Monads,
and then dance barefoot in the kitchen.

To spend decades wandering through philosophy,
psychology, history, neuroscience, poetry, and languages,

only to discover that a passionate kiss can fix most things.

🤣

To admire beauty,
and then forget to check whether she received life’s message.

🤣

To burn for truth,
and still stop to smell flowers and figs.

Oh yes.

I smell flowers.

And I smell fruit in shops.

🙈

To be a mystery,
without making a religion out of herself.

Well, this one remains under investigation.

Especially after the shameless PR section above 🤣

And if all this appears impossible,

perhaps we have underestimated women,

or humanity,

or both catastrophically.

🤣

The hidden enemy was never ignorance.

It was forced divisions.

As if one must be either passionate or peaceful.

Either free or faithful.

Either intelligent or devoted.

Either loving or possessing.

Either playful or profound.

Either Eros or soul.

Who arranged this war in the first place?

🤣

Then Eros entered.

Poor Eros.

People kept stripping it naked.

Romanticizing.

Commercializing.

Turning it into philosophy.

Religion.

Drama.

Meanwhile, it had escaped from most humans long time ago.

Into figs.

Into laughter.

Into old men in piazzas.

Into a child making fun of you.

Into coffee.

Into grief.

Into beauty.

Into poems.

Around tables.

Into life itself.

And I had the audacity to think he belonged only to lovers.

In life itself.

And perhaps that is why I suddenly became unfiltered.

Not because I enjoy shocking people.

But because there is something observable here.

Many look.

Very few see.

What remains is simply sharing our humanity.

Not taking.

Giving.

Not wanting.

Offering.

Not being seen.

Helping others see.

Not being loved.

Helping love happen.

Not competing.

Sharing.

And perhaps all of this comes from one simple desire:

To share desire without possessing it.

Perhaps that is the greatest pleasure available to a human being.

Not consuming.

Not owning.

Simply passing it on, in every moment that gives the opportunity.

There used to be a scream:

“Oh my God, how can they not see this?!”

Now there is a smile:

“Oh my God…

They don’t see this either? 🤣”

Perhaps people don’t change.

But something inside you does.

Anger leaves.

Curiosity remains.

A touch of sadness.

And generous amounts of:

“I swear, this too is scientific.”

But what truly matters are those few who can see the innocence in this play.

Those who enjoy making moments a little more alive.

Those who can even turn tragedy into theatre.

And there you are.

Forty-eight years old.

Coffee in hand.

Slightly retarded open eyes of enlightenment.

And suddenly:

HASSİTİR.

It turned out there was nothing dangerous about embracing yourself.

And you never had to explain any of it to anyone.

Which, after all this drama,

was honestly a little embarrassing.

Life answered with figs.

And I answered with half a million words.

Still:
In Turkish we have a heavy expression:

Tadan bilir.

The one who tastes knows.

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Not despite our contradictions, but somehow through them. It is amazement rather than celebration or lament. Almost:

“We are a mess.

And yet.

Look at us.” 😁

Terrified and brave.

Wise and ridiculous.

Broken and creative.

Lonely and overflowing with love.

Building telescopes while forgetting where we put our keys.

Writing symphonies, starting wars, crying over dogs, falling in love with voices and poems, staring at sunsets as if we didn’t evolve on the same rock that produces them.

Naming ourselves Homo sapiens with astonishing confidence, then spending forty-eight years trying to understand why a particular look, smell, song, or sentence suddenly makes us cry or burst in joy.

Inventing neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy to understand ourselves, only to discover that a warm hug, a good nap, and a bowl of soup solve 90% of the mysteries.

Terrified of death.

Unable to stop loving.

Still making art.

Still planting flowers.

Still asking questions.

Still looking up.

Because the species is objectively absurd.

Learning quantum mechanics and forgetting where we left our glasses.

Still saying, “No, no, this time I will not get attached.”

Very mature. Very evolved. No unnecessary investments. We don’t need anyone. Now it’s time to focus on the real tasks. No, no… we can absolutely not be messed up after forty-five. Especially if you have been this feral intellectual, feared in every room of familiar knowledge saloons.

Oh God no. Her posture, composure, courtesy, presence, the way she dresses for the room, always ready to fix your ignorance with such elegance that you would feel you had the information when you were born. All yours. Because she will make you arrive at the conclusion yourself, step by step. 🤣

This lady? Nope. She certainly couldn’t become a performative writer or a poet mascot because of love.

She had constructed a stable identity.

“Excellent.”

“Upon what foundations?”

“Several generations of family theatre, a few hundred books, some professional competence, and one pair of the most beautiful eyes apparently capable of destroying the whole operation.”

Oh, don’t let me tell you about the theatre of my mother’s bloodline aristocracy. Yes, yes, they are real. Like real real. You behave a certain way so people won’t know too much about you or your family. No one really cares, but they feel like actual celebrities.

It is hilarious because it is so true of many families.

“We are descendants of Important People.”

“Wonderful.”

“And what exactly does that mean?”

“Mostly that one should sit properly and avoid embarrassing the dead.”

And of course there is zero difference between a human with a bloodline and one without 🤣 because they didn’t manifest out of nowhere.

Oh God, aristocracy. One of God’s greatest torture packages for me. And don’t confuse wealth with aristocracy. Remember, they always have nothing. 🤣 Bloodline and money: the greatest and most absurd theatre among all sociological establishments, and yet people still look up to them. Don’t!

I am rare, as you can read. Do the math for the rest yourself. 🤣

That’s absolutely a satire for another time.

So, going against all these layers of people and norms, from close family to ninety percent of friends, regardless of background, and not caring what anyone would say, because trust me, they all would have something to say, except artist friends and a few similar peers.

So, this well-respected lady. A human. An example of citizenship, composure, and the golden middle-way monk.

Though Goffman would call my performance theatre, Popper is standing there with his maps and falsification criteria while Goffman whispers:

“Karl, my friend, you’re studying the script. I’m studying the actors.”

Then Helene walks in and says:

“Gentlemen, I appreciate your efforts. Truly. But unfortunately your theories have just been interrupted by the most beautiful pair of eyes on the planet.”

🤣🤣🤣

So I think Goffman has a point. It is not in the structure, but in the unstructured, that tension emerges for the next unpredictable behavior.

At this point, evolution itself is probably looking at Homo sapiens, aka Helene, and saying:

And after Goffman, Popper, family expectations, social norms, dignity, composure, posture, forty-eight years of accumulated identity, and a respectable amount of neuroscience…

Love’s SWAT team enters through two perfectly ordinary human eyes and a couple of words serving as the password.

No composure left.

No hiding.

No fear.

No pride.

No bloodline.

No respectable image.

No intellectual saloons.

No carefully maintained posture.

No “I have mastered myself.”

Nothing.

Forty-eight years of architecture breached in six seconds.

And there stands Homo sapiens, holding the smoking remains of an identity, looking around and asking:

“Excuse me… what the hell just happened?”

And somewhere in the distance, Goffman thinks of me, lights a cigarette, blows the smoke like the Godfather, and says:

“Caro mio, enjoy the theatre.”

Popper sends a blown kiss.

Neuroscience requests additional muse activity. 🤣

And evolution, that old bastard, bursts out laughing.

🤣🤣🤣

Because a poem, a piece of music, or a pair of eyes walked by.

And there we are again.

Looking up.

The human.

What a remarkable being.

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Please bear with my emojis. We have a long and loving relationship. Current research indicates they are harmless and poor predictors of human character. 😆

This is not a typical text about a misunderstood or wild woman although s amazing article inspired me wildly.

Not because it’s important to clarify or that all misunderstandings need an understanding.

I know that well 😂

The problem is that people insist on being people.

Most people think when I describe my observations —attention is the point.

That is already the fatal first mistake.

Attention is the most annoying noise surrounding my observations, it disturbs and makes me miss many others.

Because the interesting thing does not happen when people look at you.

The interesting thing happens when people suddenly become aware that they are looking at you.

The microsecond.

That tiny gap between:

😳

and

🙂

There.

That is where the truth lives.

The body says:

“Oh.”

The mind says:

“No, no. Everything is perfectly normal here.”

😌

And right there I am, sitting like a default-mode field neurobiologist.

Interesting.

These humans, they actually like noiseless presence 😂

People think they read people.

I read the moment before people manage to edit themselves.

Please.

Amateurs.

Peasants.

🤣

That is the most important and exquisite distinction.

Because people do not necessarily lie.

But their brains perform public relations work with astonishing speed.

You almost wish they used that speed to notice themselves.

We might actually then have given John Lennons «Imagine» a chance.

But no.

Humanity had other plans.

One man straightens his posture a little clumsily.

Another does it too, then leans back, realizes he reacted, realizes I saw it, realizes pretending will now be expensive.

He is usually the one I choose to talk to in the room.

Another suddenly discovers the importance of eye contact.

Those are the fun ones.

Especially when they don’t give up and try to communicate:

“I see you and I am going to eat you alive.”

My body language answers:

“Good boy. I appreciate your courage.

I see you have been blessed by Jordan Petersons bring back the primal man.

The man is brilliant and fascinating.

But please.

At least watch a full episode before attempting wildness.

Reels are not a complete education.”

🤣

A third develops an urgent interest in mineral water and the kinetic properties of twisting a cylindrical object filled with liquid.

Everyone believes they are being discreet.

Everyone believes nobody noticed.

Everyone believes they are the only one.

Meanwhile:

The women?

The women are observing the observers.

One immediately sees competition.

Another sees opportunity of being nice to milk you for knowledge.

A third sees straight through the whole circus and silently becomes your favorite person in the room.

Those ones know.

Even when they cannot explain it.

Body language is ahead of language.

😆

The greatest misunderstanding is that people think the misunderstood and wild woman is the chaos.

No.

She is quietly sitting there with her coffee.

The chaos is everyone else.

She is the only one not trying to control her reaction.

She has no reaction to control.

She is extremely busy observing.

That is why I have never fully understood the fascination with attention.

Why would I be occupied with you looking at me,

when I am occupied with looking at you?

🤣

And perhaps that is the greatest tragedy.

People think they are being judged.

When in reality they are being admired.

Not for the mask, oh God no.

Not for their title, story or achievements.

Not for the performance.

Not because it is a hobby for me.

Not because it is power.

Because it is real.

Like real, real.

And I look for how real you are.

I have given up on full resolution.

I am looking for crumbs.

For that tiny moment before all of those things return.

That little:

😳

before

🙂

That is where the beauty of being human lives.

And yes.

If you can live it fully.

It is fucking wild.

And real feelings are now days so rare, that its crumbs is enough to be worth collecting.

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