Well, here I am again.
It seems that I am drawn to write by this mechanism, whatever unbeknownst to me, at least annually. It might be genetic. It might be defensive. It most probably might be escapist. It might also be total bullshit. Whatever it is, in the end, it feels strangely good, almost as good as the imprint of a pen on my fingers after writing something I’d like to read years later. Almost. And it is just as much bittersweet though, that I find fewer things to write and even fewer words to use.
There are some things the online fortune-tellers never fail to predict: something new is on its way, right at this moment. And it is left to your imagination and current longing to whatever it can be. Right now for me: it really feels like that, the inevitable consequence of nature sequentially processing the life forward. “And for every ending, there is a new beginning”.
It is almost comical that the every-day routine I often failed to appreciate is what makes me the most intrigued nowadays. I know there were days I was immensely grateful for being under the sun of the city I had loved the most. And I know there were days passed in a hurry, without a second glance to the sky, already forgotten about the existence of stars. Lately, though, I feel awake or more like being awakened. Lately, every time I’m crossing the bridge, it hits me in the sweetest possible way, a smile finding its way to my eyes, that it’ll be hard, -and achingly so- to say goodbye to this city. The city who knew who I was once and transformed me into the person I am now – in a way that only a few cities are able to do – cities that breathe, and are sleep-deprived, ragged in every other corner, but unmistakably hold themselves high no matter what, like İstanbul.
Every corner is interwoven with memories of sad and happy and each scene alone or crowded – usually with people I knew, people I cease to know, people I have a vague recollection of: people from past, from present, people that I pray that always be with me. Each corner comes with a flavor, like the smell of chocolate in Çengelköy and the taste of fried mussels in Anadolu Kavağı. They are precious and irreplaceable. And it hits me again and I am in a daze, that how lucky I had been all those years.
Weird as is, just like the author of this note, this story comes in two parts. Then and now. Then had just finished and now have already started. And it starts in a city and end in another.
Now that I am where a new story has already begun, a city that is a thousand kilometers away from where another just ended. A city where a docile river welcomes wild geese, familiar faces for half-centuries, but also forlorn souls, strangers, and foreigners just like me. It feels like I am in a movie of some sort, and I am as much there as the geese are. Wanderers like us, that do not speak the language, but curious enough to set their feet to the unknown lands. Which is a secret between us and this might be what camaraderie is.
Time has this funny way of twisting things into something older, way older than that they feel. But this is not how I feel right now – I feel younger than I have in years. Die Anfängerin. That is who I am right now – a wonderstruck kid, a beginner. And I think, that is a good way to be to start a new year.
dream a little dream 