elemental, issue #14
catching up
Hello,
How are you?
I’m just sort of alright, writing these lines as I slowly emerge from the other end of almost a week-long sickness that has given me a “Kristen Stewart in Twilight after giving birth to a half-vampire baby” sort of look.
It’s really strange and remarkable, the way our bodies are able to handle so much and bounce back relatively quickly. I hadn’t been this sick (stomach + regular flu combo) in a while and therefore have truly, once again, have come to realize with (not so fresh) eyes how much more resiliant we physically are than we (I) would give ourselves (myself) credit for.
On the grander scale of things, so much has happened since the last issue of elemental went out: There’s now a war (?!) going on just in our southeastern border that’s been started by a few idiots who have no idea what they’re doing, yet have no problem killing innocent people and f*cking up the planet as they try to figure out how to get out of the mess they’ve created without losing face or bruising their fragile egos or after covering whatever it is that they need covered (*cough* epstein files *cough*).
On the flipside, we collectively fell in love with a tiny monkey in Japan over social media (more on that below). Lots of red carpets happened and some great music got released.
Winter Olympics ended and tennis season started (yay!). And of course, days started to get just a bit longer; trees started budding, birds started chirping, and the weather became more confusing than ever, hinting at the arrival of spring. <3
It’s been several weeks of opposites coexisting; the beauty in the cyclicality—and therefore—reliability of nature; the magic of the persistence and resilience of new life; our human nature and inclination to love and care for other beings we haven’t even seen in real life against the backdrop of our species in its greed, unsatiable hunger, selfishness, and utter lack of empathy in its quest to satisfy its DARKEST desires.
Amidst it all, on the smaller scale of day to day life, interpersonal relations, and “normal” things, life goes on. The consistency of certain people, places and things, alongside surprises of sheer human creativity, originality, care and effort continue to make life just a bit more joyful, full of hope, and, well… worth living.
Wherever you are and whoever you’ve arrived here this month, welcome.
I hope you enjoy.
on the word ‘beginner’
In December, I invested in two incredibly beautiful notebooks. I’d been following Paper Republic for several years and so, during my trip to Vienna at the very end of last year, I treated myself to a whole binding/personalizing experience at their beautiful store. The only issue is that I already have 2 other really beautiful notebooks (from Midori, for all the stationary nerds out there) which left me with biggest indecision in trying to figure out how best to put the new ones to use. Nothing mundane felt worthy enough to fill the soft, smooth pages of my Paper Republics. So I went through a rabbit hole on Reddit to borrow ideas from other notebook weirdoes like myself.
Ultimately, one idea that I loved and decided to build my own version of was to make a list of words I love.
The first on my list: beginner.
**
The first time the word ‘beginner’ stood out to me was through my girl Angie’s song, Beginner:
I had to reach the bottom
Begging at the door
Praying it would open
To who I was before
I reached the peak of the mountain
While I was crying on the floor
Felt like I was dying
But I was just being born
Some are wild
Some are blessed
Some are kind
Some are restless
Some will take
To be the winner
I am always a beginner
Like most of her songs, Beginner has deeply moving, relatable, raw, and vulnerable lyrics.
And as with most things in life, once something enters your radar, you suddenly start seeing it everywhere. So it has been the case with the word ‘beginner’ for me.
A couple of days after I wrote the word down in my new notebook, I received an email from Are.na, which included the piece “Learning to Float” written by Peter Johnson. Immediately, the following excerpt stood out:
This is the humility required to start from the beginning: a willingness to look foolish, to admit that you don’t know what everyone else seems to know instinctively.
In the pool, I practice what I’m still learning in life: that the most radical act might not be to exert force, but to release and let go. Sometimes strength looks like stillness. Sometimes growth looks like surrender, and surrender is its own kind of salvation. The kind of surrender that doesn’t require you to save yourself, but to just stop fighting long enough to be saved.
A beginner’s mindset requires giving back and surrendering many things: expectations you have about yourself, the fear of looking or sounding or feeling silly, the desire to master something (or at least get over the hard part) quickly, your ego, comparisons to others’ journeys… It naturally begets humility. It’s good for our brains to be a beginner from time to time and to try and navigate a completely new skill, language, sport, relationship, city, job, or whatever else ‘it’ may be.
It can even be joyful if we let it.
And, for all these reasons, it’s a lovely word.
on spring
There’s a tradition in Turkey (that’s also widely practiced in Balkan countries) where on the first day of March, we gift our close friends and family members a Marteniçka, a red-and-white striped rope bracelet that sometimes has a charm (evil eye, horseshoe, etc) attached to it. The ritual is simple: you make a wish as someone else ties this bracelet snugly on your wrist. If you see a stork before the end of March, you’re supposed to remove the bracelet and tie it to a blossoming tree and the belief is that your wish will come true! Another sign that your wish will be granted is if it gets untied and falls off on its own.
And so, one of the ways we can tell spring has arrived in Turkey is by the sheer number of marteniçkas tied to trees around the city, which of course, grows as the month goes by.
Then there are the other reminders.
One of the joys of walking Kiki daily, approximately around the same time each day, is getting to catch and witness even the most minuscule of changes that take place along our path. A lifted tile, a dead bug, a dried patch of grass, a newly pruned tree, another animal’s poop, a new plate of leftover food left out for stray cats… Anything that’s even slightly different than how it was the evening or morning before becomes noticeable, for an eye that’s paying enough attention.
Last week, almost overnight, we started witnessing the arrival of spring. A white version of a Japanese quince tree (“bahar dalı” in Turkish) was first: every branch blossomed seemingly out of nowhere, all at once, giving off a fresh, slightly sweet aroma. Then, a yellow flower whose name I don’t know started to blossom slowly, one flower budding at a time, the brown of the branches making way for more and more yellow as days went by. Walking past the same flowers each day, observing their gradual yet steady and certain growth, I became invested in the process of visually registering the arrival of a favorite season.
And I’ve been taking it personally: signs from nature that good things are coming, slowly but surely; that despite the cloudy weather, there is always hope and spring always comes around.
On yet another walk, Kiki and I were watching our neighborhood cat take a leisurely nap under a patch of sun on the grass when I heard a distantly familiar buzz. It was so unexpected and out of place that it startled me as I looked around to find its source— surely a bee, but how? It was 7 degrees Celsius out, rainy for the last 10 days, with the sun just peeking out a few hours ago. The sound of a buzzing bee felt as strangely surprising as it might be to come across your second grade teacher at a grocer store in your parents’ neighborhood: technically possible, but a bit startling, random, or unexpected at first.
Anyway, there it was— a bee after all, flying and buzzing. After the initial startle washed off, I found myself smiling :) I’d missed the sound of bees; of different forms of life slowly coming back around and reminding me—a cold weather girl at heart— that warmer weather, longer days, swimming, wet salty hair, long dinners, late night conversations, sunset drives with good music on blast, weddings of dear friends, sun-kissed skin and warmed up bones are around the corner.
on making moves
The hardest part of my Paris visa application was approved last week. I ugly cried tears of joy and relief for 10-15 straight minutes when I first received the news. I think the last time I anticipated any sort of news with this much anxiety was during the college acceptance process 16 years ago. There’s still some admin work left for me to do before I actually get my hands on my visa, but the most stressful part is behind me.
And so, this is an (early-ish) ask: If any of you have friends in Paris who you’d be open to introducing me to, anyone looking to lease an (pet-friendly) apartment, or anything related to Paris, please let me know. I’m going to need all the introductions, assists, love and support I can get.
on humanity
I have such contradicting feelings towards humans at the moment.
On the one hand, I hate us. I hate how greedy, evil, heartless, demonic, ignorant, dumb, and arrogant we are. I absolutely hate what we’re doing to each other, to animals, to the planet. I’ve also been watching a lot of Love Is Blind and Selling Sunset, and I’m grossed out (albeit entertained) by how we treat each other in romantic partnerships and friendships for the sake of temporary fame. I’m ashamed of us. I’m ashamed to be associated with this species; especially when I interact with animals who, I know for a fact, we simply don’t deserve.
And then on the other hand, I’m hopeful.
I realize the opposite of hate isn’t “hope”, but that’s as far as I can bring myself to say at the moment. And the reasons or the moments I’m hopeful are things like this:
People from all sorts of backgrounds (ethnic, religious, socio-economic) uniting in their empathy, care and love for a monkey they’ve never seen IRL simply because of the relatable experiences of isolation and rejection it’s been experiencing. I mean, COME! ON! Punch came into our lives at a time when 2 of the evilest men to walk this planet decided to singlehandedly destroy the peace and harmony of not just an entire region and its people, but also of their own citizens. Just when everything and everyone is so polarized, we bonded over a baby Japanese macaque that held onto a TOY monkey when others if its kind wouldn’t take him in. And it reminded me (us?) that most of us have a heart and a soft spot (or two) for others who feel vulnerable or left out, that we can relate to the experience of alienation regardless of who’s experiencing those feelings and what their sexual orientation, religion, ethnic background (or even—their species) is. Punch kind of saved us.
On one of my walks with Kiki, we found stray puppies that made a home in the forest behind my parents’ house. It’s been super rainy and cold here for the past 10 days, and so, my dad and I bought a waterproof tent for them. We set it up and lined the bottom with blankets so the puppies could stay dry and warm when it’s raining. The next morning when I went to check on them, I saw that other people had brought food for them.
These kids in Gaza.
This girl who appreciates her dog the way he/she deserves to be appreciated.
Talent like this.
Amazing writers, who are, by nature, incredible feelers. Lately, I’m admiring James Baldwin, Mary Oliver, Nazım Hikmet, John O’Donohue.
a few more important things
Before I bid adieu, a few more important things:
It is my girl Kiki’s 5th birthday on April 4th!!! Please send her birthday wishes and wishes for a long, healthy life alongside me. I love her so much more than I’ve loved anything in my life and just feel so happy and lucky that out of everyone she could have had as a mom, the universe decided to match her with ME and me with HER!!!
Not that we need more podcasts in the world, but for a few months now, I’ve been sitting with the inkling of wanting to start one myself. The idea came from wanting to do something that speaks with and to Millennial women about everything from navigating the challenges of singledom, married life, motherhood, IVF, egg freezing, the myriad issues in corporate life, as well as commentary on lowbrow and pop-culture moments and happenings. I don’t quite know why I’m sharing it here, but perhaps as a way of manifesting?
I read “The Crane Wife” by CJ Hauser in The Paris Review about 2 years ago for the first time, but don’t think I’ve shared it here before. It’s truly one of the rarest pieces of writing that has left an imprint on me the first time I read it (perhaps because of a relationship I had recently left), and has stayed with me since and I cannot recommend it enough.
This playlist, which I started making this weekend. It’s a work in progress and in my very biased opinion, very solid and feel-good.
Thank you very much for tuning in & see you on the next issue.