Folyosó Autumn 2021 - Page 4

Sarin Nevruz

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Life is an illusion created by absolute reality. In our environment, there are many realities that we can’t deny. However, as human beings, even though we live under the same roof of physical reality, in fact every single person creates realities as he perceives them. Despite the fact we live in what we see, our real lives are our minds. Therefore, sometimes perceptions bend reality. Life is built in clear lines, but as long as the human mind exists, these realities change and develop. As a result, contradictions—or, in other words, “paradoxes”—occur.

Life is a jigsaw formed by opposite pieces. Imagine that you’re in a museum. This museum contains a white room, and let’s assume that there is an empty painting. And now imagine that each visitor adds a different piece. Such is society. No matter how white the room is, everybody adds some piece and starts to watch this jigsaw formed by a riot of colors. So while the room is representing our world, the produced big picture is the “created” reality. Although we all live in the same physical world, the thoughts and the ways of looking at things of every country, every culture and people of all ages are different; consequently the created realities vary as well. And this destroys the “one” truth created by our physical world, and our approach to things changes. We all are a whole yet very different. Each person wants to be free but in fact everybody is connected / tied together like a chain. Every decision we make, every step we take creates a breaking in this chain. Our minds are the ruler of our lives, even if they run counter to the realities of our life. We can achieve something that looks impossible, or make it impossible to do a very easy job. Moreover, only a small spark of thought is enough. Which is why, despite mankind being the most intelligent being, it seems that on the whole, each person’s ideas, perspectives, prejudices, or more precisely the “memorizations” that they create in the environment they live in, separate us from each other. Life turns into a pit of contradictions. We say that life is difficult, but in fact we are the ones making it so. While we are judging a person for thinking in an absurd way, we can worship another person for thinking otherwise. For a mentally stable person(!), reality might be when a bird flies; for a crazy one(!), it might be when a cat flies. Society excludes the one who thinks differently, thinking that he is disrupting the integrity and the harmony. But in fact he creates grouping, and separations start. Therefore it’s best to look at realities as possible things, through “the possibilities window”.

Meanwhile, speaking of cats, l guess you probably heard about Schröndinger’s cat. You know, this famous cat, the one that is simultaneously both alive and dead and in some sense represents the “paradox”. Well, did you ever think that you are the one who is Schröndinger’s cat? If you didn’t think, let’s think together from my perspective.

Unfortunately we all went through a hard process called Lockdown. In this process we were alone with our own selves for a long time and started to question our lives in a much deeper way. Maybe the hardest thing that could happen to a human was to stay with his thoughts. Because reality is constant, but the mind is complicated and bends reality. This period turned into a social experiment to make us understand better why our lives are a big “pit of contradictions.” We were always in the small box built by four walls. But, actually our mind was trapped in a small box since we weren’t interacting with the social environment. Hence, we have moved away from real life and started to dream very often and produce our “realities.” We created in our head a lot of probabilities, positive/ negative, for the future. After all, the interesting thing is that while these created dreams detached us from reality, in the meantime we started to question why we were alive, what our purpose was. That is, simultaneously we were detached from life but also were clinging to life. Because the fact that we dream a lot actually represents our craving for life. So, both hopeful and desperate, we were both cut off from life and also clinging to life. Now do you feel closer to Schrödinger’s cat?

As humans we want everything to be clear, but as our minds work, we can’t avoid the contradictions in our lives. The reason we exist is that we actually have the opposite of ourselves in us. Contradictions confuse us, yet they are the inevitable complex probabilities that keep us alive.

Kitti Lili Tupi

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Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be outside,
what it feels like to be on the other side,
what it feels like to feel the wind which makes my hair go wild,
giving me goosebumps all around.

But why can’t I go?
There’s no person who could stop me from fooling around.
Holding little butterflies and running around,
while my hands touch the sky.

I may be chasing my dreams,
but i’m slowly drifting away from my own reality,
the urge to go outside is consuming me from the inside.
and still after all this time… I’m losing my mind.

Admiring the wind, even though i haven’t felt it in a while.
Being scared to step on the grass but still wondering what it feels like,
looking at the blue sky and the blinding lights,
being scared of the dark night but looking at the beautiful star sight.

It’s just a single dream… which feels like a threat,
wanting it so bad… but fearing it like death.

Roza Kaplan

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I could hear her breathing.

I could feel her presence.

In the cloudy night, her figure was covered with darkness.

Books with yellowed papers lined up on the wooden shelves from which emanated that familiar scent; a bouquet of wilted roses on the table scattered with colored pens; pieces of paper with illegible writings; postcards from distant countries, from distant times, words written to beloved ones in languages I didn’t understand, of which I imagined the melody; black and white photos of strangers with smiles shadowed by melancholy, that I had bought in antique libraries, that I collected and conserved carefully; the bed with white sheets, color of the first snowflakes of winter, the whole room was plunged into darkness, which was warm, familiar.

“Don’t you want to sleep?”

Her voice was like a whisper.

“Not yet.”

We had met that afternoon but I felt as if I had known her all my life. As if she had always been there.

“Autumn has come. Finally.”

“Autumn? I believe I will hibernate in a tree hollow for eight months and wait for someone to wake me up with the first rays of the May sun.”

“Would you like to be alone for such a long time?”

“Would you not?”

“I enjoy my loneliness. I enjoy my dreams. My books. My room. My darkness.”

“And I like to be around people. I like candlelit conversations in winter evenings and herbal teas. I like warm hugs and handmade cookies. I like singing, dancing, walking, laughing and crying, together. I like to never feel alone.”

“I don’t believe in the loneliness of human beings. Nor in togetherness. In friendship. In love. In selfishness, in hypocrisy. Nor in altruism, in self-sacrifice, in honesty. In good and in bad.”

“I don’t believe in dictionaries.”

“I don’t believe in agreements on unique definitions of words. I don’t believe in definitions. I don’t believe in the action of defining.”

“What do you believe in?”

“In nothing. And in everything.”

“Is this even possible?”

“Don’t you think it is?”

“It’s contradictory.”

Our voices mingled with each other. I couldn’t understand which sentence had been spoken by whom.

As though we were talking at the same time, saying the same thing.

Or not talking at all. Sitting in the silence of the room.

Finally, I could hear her breathing.

I could feel her presence.

At the end of the day, I was tired, sad, angry, hopeless, disappointed, betrayed, scared, and I was joyful, lively, optimistic.

And in the silence of the room, the present mingled with the past.

The door opened with a creak.

Ghosts entered the room. A melody entered the room with cinnamon scents and rain drops.

I could hear laughters and sobs that were distant but as if they were in the room.

“I have a small voice. But you can hear me, right?”

“Yes, I can.”

“People say that I talk with whispers.”

“However, I’m actually shouting.”

“Sometimes, I’m afraid people will hear me.”

“But at the same time, I want to be listened to, understood, appreciated.”

“I want someone to tell me that those words, coming out of my mouth, caressing my dry, fine lips like petals of a wilted rose, have a meaning more profound, more intelligent, that they are worth listening to.”

“I can tell you this. I can tell you everything you wish.”

“I want it to be someone else.”

Shadows entered the room and the door closed. Shadows of strangers, of migratory birds, of spring flowers, shadows of dreams about the future were fluttering in the darkness of the room. I could hear my heartbeat and hers.

“I am not sure if I know what I actually want.”

“I am not sure if I know who I am, what I am.”

“Sometimes, I have this feeling in my heart that I am ‘me’, just ‘me’. But ‘me’ changes in each breath I take. My past swirls around me like a thick fog. The fog is so thick that it blurs my view. Everything I see, I see through it.  And each time I see something, it’s different.  And ‘me’ is different. Sometimes, she is strong and sometimes she is weak. She is fragile, broken. She is exhausted. She has a brave heart though, I know it because it’s mine. She is a dreamer. She wants opposite things at the same time. She is human. Perhaps, she would like to be a pine tree in a vast forest, that in winter and in summer, under snow and under sunlight, never loses its leaves.”

“ ‘Me’ changes.  Blurry images of the past with coffee stains and tears change. The present changes.”

“I am the chaser of chimeras in autumn, which has finally come.”

“Do you believe in illusions? Because I don’t. Because I don’t believe in reality.”

“Do you believe in contradictions? Because I don’t. Because things that contradict are just things, of which some people denied the coexistence, that, however, complete each other.”

“Often, I feel drowned in my contradictions. Although it may sound scary, it’s also calming. It’s like finding nowhere to hide under summer rain, being cold but alive, regretting your loneliness but seeing others getting covered in rain drops just like you.”

She laughed. For the first time since we had been together.

Her voice was sweet, like a chamomile. I noticed that I was sleepy.

“We live in our contradictions. They are dolorous, torturing us.  At the same time, they complete us, even though we may not always see it clearly.  Isn’t life itself contradictory? We say that it’s real but it could be a dream, and sometimes I feel it is. And isn’t this the mystery of life that for centuries the human reason has been trying to understand?”

In the darkness of the room, I couldn’t know if my eyelids were open or closed.

I couldn’t know if she was still there, in the silence.