30 Ekim 2013 Çarşamba

Canakkale

     The Canakkale trip was very interesting for me in the fact that it was the first time I had ever been to a spot where so many people had died. Thinking about the dead made me feel as though what I was living was not a reality.
     Whenever I think of big happenings in history, like the war in Canakkale, I can not help feeling like  I am really in a book and that none of it actually happened. To think that this many things happened before I was here, that the world is almost 4 billion years old, is both mind blowing and hard to believe.
       I always wonder what happens to the things we do, the wars we fight,  after they are over. What happens to the memories that go unrecorded, do they just fade into the air? Are they absorbed by the things around them? If we were to somehow take the air in Canakkale and compress it so that it becomes little droplets of water , would we be able to see the dead soldiers in them if we looked at it through a microscope? Logically if animals have a memory, then plants and particles must have some sort of memory to, maybe not like ours, but a memory non the less. What were the trees thinking when everyone was dying for a country, did they understand what was going on? These thoughts flew into my brain through one ear, and left with the wind through the other. They were passing thoughts, thoughts that were only brought out by the mystic winds of Canakkale.

29 Ekim 2013 Salı

An attempt at poetry

In a distant village
an old man drinks his tea.
His hair is white,
His tea is cold,
His glass is broken.
Screw you all.
He cries,
Then dies.
End

21 Ekim 2013 Pazartesi

I never know what to write in my blog. Once every two or three days I become inspired by something and decide to write about it in my blog, but can never get past the first three sentences. I can never understand why or how people are able to write regularly without their pieces coming out forced. Here I am again, I've only written three sentences and I'm stuck on how to continue on a piece that is about how I'm always stuck on how to continue. I'm not sure I have anything more to say, about having nothing to say, so I think I'll stop here.

7 Ekim 2013 Pazartesi

Reflection of "The Bridge of San Luis Rey"

          When I first read the book, "The Bridge Over San Luis Rey" by Thornton Wilder, to be completely honest, I did not like it. I could not imagine the characters in real life situations, and I had found the plot of the book to be quite flat and a bit cheesy. To me, "The Bridge Over San Luis Rey" was just another book that I had to read for school, that is, until we did our oral presentation.

         The characters to me did not feel very genuine, a priest in search of god's will, a crazy old lady, her faithful servant who can do no harm, a deep and mysterious twin, an old womanizer and a silent little boy. They all felt like characters I had read about in other books. The only character who I had found interesting was Esteban, and even he seemed a bit redundant to me, the classic twin who looses his other twin and can not get over the loss.
           The book is a story of a priest who tries to see if there is a thing called an Act of God by looking into the lives of those who died in the collapse of the Bridge of San Luis Rey. He learns that they all died after they had made a big change in their lives, the Marquesa had just decided to be kind to Pepita, Esteban to start a new life, Uncle Pio gave up on Camila, Don Jaime left home for the first time, but they all died before they could put the change into motion. People dying before they can do good, a man searching for answers about their death years later through those that knew them. It just felt a so cheesy.
         Researching acts of god, writting about each character and writting about piety did not change my opinion on the book. These only made me feel like I was working on a school book even more. Only when we did the oral presentation a few days ago did my opinion on the book change.  When everyone was playing a character from the book, it was as though they became alive. I could see the sadness in Estebans eyes, I would feel the regret in the Marquesa's voice and the kindness in Pepita's. It was a strange experience, one that changed, "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" from a school book, into a normal book in my mind. Now if anyone asks me what I think about the book, I believe I would say that it really was not half that bad.

1 Ekim 2013 Salı

Bridge of San Luis Rey Reflection

          When I first read the book, "The Bridge Over San Luis Rey" by Thornton Wilder, to be completely honest, I did not like it. I could not imagine the characters in real life situations, and I had found the plot of the book to be quite flat and a bit cheesy. To me, "The Bridge Over San Luis Rey" was just another book that I had to read until we did our oral presentation.
         The characters to me did not feel very genuine, a priest in search of god's will, a crazy old lady, her faithful servant who can do no harm, a deep and mysterious twin, an old womanizer and a silent little boy. They all felt like characters I had read about in other books. The only character who I had found interesting was Esteban, and even he seemed a bit redundant to me, the classic twin who looses his other twin and can not get over the loss.
           The book is a story of a priest who tries to see if there is a thing called an Act of God by looking into the lives of those who died in the collapse of the Bridge of San Luis Rey. He learns that they all died after they had made a big change in their lives, the Marquesa had just decided to be kind to Pepita, Esteban to start a new life, Uncle Pio gave up on Camila, Don Jaime left home for the first time, but they all died before they could put the change into motion. People dying before they can do good, a man trying to understand this years later through those that knew them. It just felt a so cheesy.
         Researching acts of god, writting about each character and writting about piety did not change my opinion on the book. These only made me feel like I was working on a school book even more. Only when we did the oral presentation a few days ago did my opinion on the book change.  When everyone was playing a character from the book, it was as though they became alive. I could see the sadness in Estebans eyes, I would feel the regret in the Marquesa's voice and the kindness in Pepita's. It was a strange experience, one that changed, "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" from a school book, into a normal book in my mind.
         
        

19 Eylül 2013 Perşembe

Today, for the first time in many long months I have finally decided to voluntarily write something on my blog. It's a topic that I have been thinking about quite freqently actually, and that is life. I have begun to find life very tedious and almost trivial. I have started questioning things that I have been doing almost robotically for the past few years, like school.
School in itself, the education that we receive, the purely human education. What are we being taught in school? The truth that we think we are learning in school is a purely human truth. Only we are able to understand it, only we are able to handle it, and only we are able to create or change it. After I graduate, the only place I can use my knowledge is in a human society. When I graduate I won'te know how to talk to nature, or how to be a part of it, instead I will only know how to be with humans. Nature speaks a universal language that we are taught to forget in school. The fact that many of my fellow students in school dislike going in to nature, and would rather stay home and participate in man made activites proves my point.

8 Eylül 2013 Pazar

How are Franciscans, Incans, Mechanism and Bridges alike?

                      Both Franciscans and Incans have their own belief system, their own opinion on how the universe was created. The Franciscans believe that it was created by one all controling god, while the Incans believe it was created by a number of gods. The Franciscans colonised South America, with the idea of creating religious bridge from there to Spain. They wanted to spread their belief from Spain to South America by forcing the Incans to believe in their god.