Bozdag Letter
Hello there,
Unfortunately, the covid epidemic did not end because summer came. Humanity had a hope that this virus would disappear with warmth, maybe a few months ago. Time passed, it turned out that it was not. Losses are painful. Not even close. Pain is not in vain, it is real. Life goes on despite everything. However, others end their lives to end the pain. We, those who are in favor of life, are in favor of experiencing pain as an emotion in our most honest state until it reaches this point. This concept, this reckoning becomes the subject of literature and art and is processed. Pain gives us a state of sharp experience. The important thing, if we call it ingenuity, is to keep the continuity of the wisdom and experience brought by pain in our lives. But the formation of the pain-experience-wisdom path in every human life is easy and not equal for everyone. Because we have fugitives. Even if we put it in our container, we also have losses because we cannot eliminate our leaks. The same mistakes are repeated again and again, and the same mistakes are invited again to suffering. In a parable the Tao Te Ching says:
“close your exits
Plug your holes
blunt your sharpness
Untangle your tangles” (Proverb 56)
If we turn to relationships, the Tao Te Ching that has been the subject of modern psychology at least five thousand years ago.
And if we consider the defective social situation in these lands on the subject of “continuity”… When I see that a job is rarely done with continuity, I actually experience a joy combined with astonishment. I am not pointing out that being wise is only dependent on the concept of pain. This topic takes a lot of water. Let me stop now.
I spent this period delaying virus transmission and being active outdoors. As you know, the 2020 Almond Tai Chi meetings have been good for all my participating friends and me. Interesting communication examples kept the experiments alive. Yes, we all ate together. This is a foreign intervention-based diet. Someone comes out, creates a community to share his knowledge on Tai Chi, organizes, touches lives and conveys it most sincerely, while the soul is in the body and the mind is at the head. Of course, he takes a lot when he gives. In fact, he learns the most. However, I attribute what has been taken with this whole sequence to the phrase "turning a mill with carrying water", even though the individual has voluntary participation. The essential thing is that the information is taken everywhere we go, after it is received, that it is operated within our organization with continuity and that it is "living" in us at the end. It is being able to continue on the road and development with inner strength, without being dependent on anyone. By the way, we'll be happy if we can find partners on the way! Unfortunately, I am seeing serious disruptions in this process. What happens next is this: “Signage” That is, efforts to find identity under a sign, to make life meaningful. The path that is taken as the "inner path", in fact, there is a very "external" experience. I say this without ignoring the reasons why this is so, of course, without ignoring the fact that it is related to the social society we live in, the current state of the world. But what should we do, there are those who dare to go around and do signposts, bumping into our lives.
After meeting with Bademli, we returned to Istanbul and stayed at a nice place on the Bolu, Kartalkaya road a week later. A boutique hotel where we can do Tai Chi weekends in the future with a small group. Especially if they make the spatial preparations that I have pointed out, this will happen easily. Let me name it, Villa Neva. 950 m. It is a place where you can take daily forest walks with an altitude.
Let me come to Bozdag now. I have an old friend. We met within the same company and experienced a rapprochement that my generation, who were in the same department (METU-Elk) and did not come into contact with during my university years, but experienced a high break after the September 12 coup, could understand. Instead of a team that competes within itself, we have become the core of a team that cooperates and is productive and efficient in this way. I left the company in 2001 and changed my line completely to Tai Chi Chuan study and teaching. He retired at the end of 2019. Over the years, our bond has never been broken. It came to be in the country's political agenda, one of us phoned; "are you coming?" said. For a rally or demonstration. Sometimes we thought separately, we discussed. But there was no trust problem between us. We became real to each other. In the warmth of our feelings, maybe we couldn't hear what the other was saying. But trust never disappeared between us. That's it! Life has given how the feeling of trust is a great wealth. What a wealth it is to have a friend to whom one can surrender everything "without purpose" without questioning. These concepts are; friend, sister, wife, comrade. If there is in our lives, real wealth. But if it has not become a sign. If the word is lived faithful to the act of sound reproduction.
Friend: You trust in the fight, you see and watch your way. It's not easy to watch your back. That's what makes it the friend you turn your back on.
Sister: Wife, your mother's womb is the first common place on this planet for you and her. With your parents' passwords loaded, you prepare for the outside world in this warm, secure environment with high partnerships. If there are no high malfunctions in the family environment, you will lovingly make the first experiments of communication with him. You prepare for life. You have a lifetime bond.
Spouse: He is the one who completes his deficiency. If you are one wing, it is the other wing. With the harmonious flapping of these two wings, life is flown. There is pleasure in these flights, in passing through difficult places. Neither joy spoils harmony nor difficulty. It's the name for it. He is given life. How old is the story of Deli Dumrul, one of the Dede Korkut stories, in expressing the love of a spouse. When the Azrael comes and knocks on his door, his parents will not give his life for his sons. His wife accepts to die wholeheartedly, instead of Deli Dumrul's life. He also does not accept this out of love for his wife.
Comrade: Those who follow the same path. Those who dare together to make an ideal a reality. For this, they are side by side and securely connected to each other. Those who are far from individualism and can share their ways.
From Özdemir Asaf
All colors were getting dirty at the same speed,
White gave first place.
It expresses our age enough.
My friend called me. “Suha, the house turned out quite well. It comes from your hands. Do you make the floor coverings? I have all my tools!”
What he calls a house is a small village house in Bozdağ, Ödemiş. Destroyed, uninhabitable. While walking around with his wife, they see the "for sale" sign and buy the house with his wife's push. Again, one of his old friends says, "We are already doing this kind of work, let's bring this house back to you at a cost." There is Ödemiş on one side of Bozdağ and Salihli on the other. 1200 meters at altitude. The temperature difference between Ödemiş and Bozdağ is at least ten degrees during the day. A valley spouting abundance at 1200 meters. I have never seen a plane tree that is at least a thousand years old. There are. I have not seen 700-800 year old chestnut trees. There are.
Just in time for this offer to come to me. I immediately said yes to his call. We arrived with a comfortable eight-hour journey, chatting. A stone house in its solitude, almost at the beginning of a street that opens to the village square, placed on top of stone. When you go down from the side with the difference in elevation, it also has a garden of 250 m2. With cherry and two walnut trees. Also the sunny side for tomato seedlings. It consists of the garden floor and the upper floor where the roof structure of the house is open. The old fireplace is beautifully restored. If possible, I will try to do the rest.
We immediately started laying the flooring. They chose chestnuts. Chestnut is a hard, water-resistant wood. Suitable for boat building. However, the wood cutting quality is not very good, the waste is high. Despite this, I act thrifty and lay it with the philosophy of minimizing loss. Bend down, measure, get up, cut. Thousands again. Again, repetition! Good repetition creates good pattern. That is life. Whatever we choose to repeat, its pattern emerges. This is also the will. We choose!
But I thought about the emergence of this structure. It was paved one by one with the stone of the region. Suddenly I looked at the walls. “All these stones have been touched,” I said.
Afghan Ismail:
The order of the world creates migrations. In the Turkish construction industry, there are no longer Kurdish workers, but migrant workers. I am learning this. Here is the worker Afghan Ismail and his friends who laid these stones. One trio, all three illiterate. My friend asks “but why?” that. "War, brother, the Taliban," they say. Ismail is a devout Muslim. My friend tells about his cleaning. He is someone who has been in countries such as Syria and Iraq due to his duty. He praises Ismail's comparative cleanliness. He says that he eats the rice he makes with peace of mind. However, Ismail's faith is not enough for the Taliban. They say you will believe like us. The Taliban dominate their villages. If belief does not connect with conscience, it becomes the most dangerous weapon. My friend makes İsmail tell how they escaped and how they entered Turkey. This story was a golden hit for me:
They are at a snowy pass on the Iran-Turkey border. From different nationalities. Those who organize this work for money; “Now you have to go through this section very fast, as fast as you can!” says. They're rushing forward. For a while, İsmail sees a silhouette on the snow behind him. Looking up, he realizes that it is a baby. He asks the people in the group. A family with two children, one in swaddling. "Why did you do this? Why did you leave the baby there?” says. Dad said, “We had to quit. If we had taken our baby, our grown up child who could run and the mother would be in danger. We had to make a choice,” he says. Afghan Ismail returns, runs, picks up the baby from the snow. The baby runs in her arms and joins the group again. The woman, the mother, comes crying and hugs Ishmael: "You are my brother from now on!
My eyes fill with tears, I'm crying inside.
This Ismail changed the meaning of this structure for me. I made ties.
Nazim's
The builders sing
The building is not built as if singing a song.
The lines came to my mind.
Who knows, there will be a day, after we complete this house and make it livable, we will do Tai Chi practices in the garden by creating a communal environment. We collect sour cherries, plums and apples spilled on the streets. We visit the memorial trees and hug them.
There is this reality in the life of young Afghan Ismail. Afghan Ismail has a bond with that baby and his mother. So ask yourself now, despite everything, despite the pandemic, what values do you have? What ties do you have? How aware are you? What and how do you own it? Do you carefully protect the soul while the body is in the mind?
Stay in health, love, care and good action.
Suha Ertekin
11 August 2020
