Mona Mojita
Just after the rain started, I arrive at the seminar where I plan to meet some soon-to-be-writers. It is all my hope that I will find some people who can listen to my eccentric stories and we can laugh at them together. Being among soon-to-be-writers is not so different from being locked in a room where everyone speaks a different language. A dozen of cats, full of desires to be heard by others are walking around with their soon-to-be-written crumbs of new ideas in their heads. They are meowing loudly and rubbing their furs to each other’s legs to know more and to be known by more. We read different authors, we like different styles of writing, we drink different cocktails and we have different purposes in our lives. There is only one thing which brings us together: We all want to be a published-writer as soon as possible!
I mentioned them the new story I am planning to write, the one inspired by the Russian chess-maniac murderer. A man who is obsessed with filling the chessboard with a particular organ of his victims is giving himself up to the police because he realizes that they will never be able to catch him and he will die soon before his fame shakes the world. All the murders will be wasted then! He has to be consistent with his plans. Which organ? Perhaps, the nose which is shared by both sexes would be a good idea. It is not irritating to talk about noses like some other organs. Sixty three noses, all different sizes and colors, smelling each other on a chessboard, looking at different directions as if they were the soon-to-be-king pawns but not knowing where to go and how, like a football player who forgot which goal he has to score. Then he will wait for the police to come and take him to the last square of the board so that the nose of the game master will complete the run!
When I finish narrating the outline of the soon-to-be-written story, some looked at me as if I am the murderer. “Hopefully I am not!” I said with a witty smile. Then the conversation turned to Bala’s novel, a story of a murder which was actually committed by the author himself. I left that cluster of laughter and found myself a corner to think more about being a writer. It shouldn’t be easy to adapt the lifestyle of being read by others whom you don’t know but in reverse they will know you. I will be naked, walking on the streets among others, irritated by the prying glances but having lost the right to complain because I asked them to look at me. Once it is published, secrets are no more secrets! Living in a glass house where the light can pass from outside to inside through the glass walls but not the other way around! No matter how many years pass, a book will always be somewhere on this earth. Maybe in the dusty shelves of a forgotten library or in the big smelly boxes, waiting to see sunlight one more time. Maybe I don’t want to be a published-writer because I am not brave enough. I can still write silly stories and share them with a few friends who have enough sense of humor to understand that writing is not a serious job and only those who enjoy doing it can earn from it. This way I will close the path to humiliation of being in a team of mountaineers but not being a mountaineer. I can be a gray character: a soon-to-be-writer who will never be a real one.
That is why I left the drinking session after having one glass of mojita. Perhaps I made myself believe that I am not good enough to be a writer but somehow I like to be among them. I told them that I am not used to follow irregular evening schedules, drinking heavily till no more drinking is possible or errand emotional breakdowns which can inspire some dark and gothic stories. But actually what I have told them was a lie. Maybe not to them since they don’t care what kind of excuse I have made up to leave the place but I definitely lied to myself. I noticed it when I got home…
Mojita was responsible for my early leave… Sour and sweet drink I had at the bar lifted me up from the chair I was sitting and sent me home with enormous speed. It was the name “Mojita” who drop into my mind like a cube of ice, exuded from my body and slowly rolling down on my back, causing me to tremble. In fact, with the help of other soon-to-be-writers I have realized that I was pronouncing the word “Mojita” wrong. It must be pronounced as “Mohita” like saying “Haime” for the name “Jaime”. But how could I know? I don’t speak Spanish. I never drank mojita in my life before tonight and I never talked to her either online or face to face! I only saw her name in e-mails and I did not talk to anyone about her. Maybe she was a dream I have created in my mind with a name of “Mona Mojita” as a sender of e-mails. I don’t even know how she looks like since I refused her when she told me that she could send her photo if I wanted. I did not want to know her face because I was afraid that it will lead us to closer relationship. She was a friend of mine or I presumed so! She came out of nowhere to help a soon-to-be-writer who was struggling to find things to write about. Maybe I was also helping her to find some ideas to scratch on the canvas. Then one day she disappeared like she never existed before, like the characters in Murakami’s novels. Maybe now she is sitting and contemplating at the bottom of a dry water well or she disappeared in a remote Greek island where no one has disappeared in the entire history!
We did not name our relationship because we were both afraid of misnaming it. She was married to a man who has a good job, good salary and good career options for the future. I have a wife and a daughter in a country where all of us are strangers. That is why we were naturally scared of misfiring our attempts of definitions. We were friends in need of each other, colleagues who need professional assistance for the creative works or online acquaintances who have some common points to share. We did not go beyond these words and took our steps with extreme care so that it won’t cause any misinterpretation. But is it possible not to expect more once you start?
When I arrived home, in spite of the slight nausea I felt in my stomach I wanted to write my original idea of the chess-maniac murderer but somehow I could not concentrate on it. The word “mojita” was filling the entire room with a hairy, hard-to-pronounce “h” sound which I have just learnt. It was the thick air, emitted through the walls holding my both hands to prevent me pursuing any further writing. I was handcuffed by her guardian eyes and her sharp tongue she used in her letters. “I am reading Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’ these days and I remembered you” she wrote in her last e-mail after a long silence. I did not reply it because I knew that it will not work to any further point. At the end, we will again reach to the point where we speak different demands in different languages. I knew that even if I answer her last e-mail she will stay silent for very long time without giving me any valid reason. I did not reply then she disappeared as if she was actually waiting for my passive standing. What did she blame me for? I did not write to her as frequent as she desired! Or because I did not care about her emotional fluctuations as much as she needed! Then of course, I was selfish, egocentric, egoist and also psychopathic! Or because I was suffering from writer’s block –a term she used to describe me but I never admitted-.
According to her, writing was the only thing I worried about in this world. She believed I cut myself from the others and isolated! Like a man who lost in a desert where there is no justification in going any direction. I was totally lost in myself and looking for a rescue hand whose owner I did not care about! She was right but not always! Like all writers, I needed to get lost to write, I needed to isolate myself so that I won’t hurt anyone. The only problem was controlling myself in these lonely but brave journeys! As a soon-to-be-writer I did not have enough confidence in my adventures. I needed to go deeper but sometimes I was forgetting the sunlight and the life it gives to people. The ones at the mouth of the cave cannot understand the meaning of being at the bottom of the cave. That is why it did not work. She was waiting at the entrance, I was digging for the diamond without knowing how far more I have to go. One of us did not have enough patience! Either she is guilty because she left the cave without me or I am guilty because I cheated her with the pleasure of dreaming precious diamonds. In both ways, it is over!
I was a soon-to-be-writer and she was a soon-to-be-painter. In fact, she was not a sort of a painter like Fernando Botero or Van Gogh who enjoys eating and digesting colors so that she could produce new forms of realities by the tip of her brush. No, she was only in black and white portraits, trying to figure out infinite number of tones in the spectrum ranged from white to black. We were at the end both pencil-lovers. I write my stories in pencil before I type them into computer. She uses her pencil to make the portraits before she scans and uploads them into her virtual exhibition site. I can still clearly remember a few of the portraits she made: the face expression of a tired insurance salesperson, a wet-haired beggar who took shelter in the phone booth during the rain, an old woman smoking marihuana and holding her grandson on her bosom, dirty garbage collectors wondering the owner of the uncovered bin and a square-faced depressed writer who has been chained to his desk, looking out the window to catch some inspiration from gray clouds. In fact, this last picture of hopeless writer encouraged me contact her and start our short-term, almost reticent relationship. At that time we were both desperate in finding ideas to create new things and I guess we hoped that the instant communication will benefit both of us providing that we keep the physical distance.
My stomach gets worse now! It feels like something I ate or drank destroyed the fine balance of my inner organs and I need to remove it no matter how. But maybe this is a psychological effect of remembering a lost friend who kept saying that she wanted only care but nothing else from me. Perhaps what we expected from each other was a blow of cold wind which can precipitate the finest raindrops so that the famine will never take over the surface of the earth. But it did not work! It did not work because neither of us were patient enough to understand the guilt which results from being sterile. She wanted to see faces, as many as possible so that she can create her own art by mixing them up. I was looking for some strong words and pictures which I cannot get in the hollow rooms of my isolated life. The idea was to get rid of the sterility which was dangling over our heads like dark rainless clouds. However, the short-term relationship ended like a Monsoon rain. Abrupt, without warning! It ended because the heights we were aiming were different. She was climbing to Mount Everest while I was trying to dive into Mariana Trench. I needed sorrow and pain to keep writing! She needed to be happy to get rid of the sick feeling of her portraits.
To understand why it did not work, I connected to internet and found all the e-mails we sent to each other. I copied them all and put them in a chronicle order to see what we really missed in the letters and what actually we were supposed to write. It was an easy task to complete all the e-mails but reading them again and again like a historian looking for some clues to support his revolutionary theory was tough. It was tough because I felt as if I am living the letters one more time and answering them in a different way –in a way I should have done at the first time.- She always accused me of not understanding her truly and not answering her letters in a way she expected. But her letters too were not replies to my paragraphs. When my e-mail talks about blind-folded chess players, her answer was mentioning the children at the amusement park. When she wrote me about her favorite writers, I answered her about how it feels when I disconnected from internet for three days in row. Apparently we were not communicating to each other. We were two distant people who are both obsessed in their own works, writing their diaries and showing to each other for satisfaction. When the things to be shared are exhausted, we were out of the game. Finally what happened is she was the first one using the words like “selfish, “egocentric” etc… It is the world where who has the loudest voice wins. So I was defeated!
I lost the fight but obviously I did not lose her. At least until tonight, I was not aware that she was somewhere in my mind, hidden behind fresh thoughts, waiting for her exit to get out and take revenge. A simple drink made everything more visible and somehow made me more vulnerable. But I cannot keep her with me! I have to get rid of her so that her memoirs will not enslave me again like she did tonight. She prevented me from writing my story and I guess she will do intervene again.
The nausea in my stomach becomes intense. I open the balcony door with the hope that the fresh air might make me feel better! Here I am in the balcony, looking at the motorbike drivers whose colorful raincoats become almost invisible with the cloudy mist of the rain. The city is becoming more and more labyrinth-like once the drivers turn left at the junction and dives into the colorless streets. Here it seems like the beginning and shallow! Then it gets deeper, darker and colder. The raindrops hit my hand and I pull it back. I look at the traffic which gets more chaotic with the introduction of the water. The traffic lights are ignored during the rain because those who are in the danger of getting wet always have the priority of moving through others. The rules are forgotten or suspended for a while! I wish it could be possible for all the rules and all the laws, including the natural ones. Supposing that during the rain, earth’s gravity reduces to one tenth of its original value! Then I would survive the jumping from the seventh floor. I turn my back to the streets, looking at one of the dead flowers in the pot and trying to smell it.
The smell of the soil turns my stomach upside down… I run to the bathroom and threw up the mojita together with my dinner. The brown-red liquid fills the floor of the bathroom while I was thinking about the black-white picture of the writers in chain. The more my stomach spasms, the more the writer inside me becomes free of his chains. It is the freedom comes with price. It is Mojita I am throwing up. But how do I know that was mojita made me sick? What else can it be? I knew that it will make me sick when I touched the glass and smelled the sharp odor of vodka, mint and lime juice. I knew it when I took the first gulp through my throat and feeling the firing squad in front of me, ready to pull the triggers towards my heart, digging the bullets into my flesh to rip my heart off from me. I knew that when I heard the name of the drink and my mind traveled back in my personal history. I knew that all but I could not stop myself!
Written on 4 Nov 2007 Edited on 17 November 2007
Just after the rain started, I arrive at the seminar where I plan to meet some soon-to-be-writers. It is all my hope that I will find some people who can listen to my eccentric stories and we can laugh at them together. Being among soon-to-be-writers is not so different from being locked in a room where everyone speaks a different language. A dozen of cats, full of desires to be heard by others are walking around with their soon-to-be-written crumbs of new ideas in their heads. They are meowing loudly and rubbing their furs to each other’s legs to know more and to be known by more. We read different authors, we like different styles of writing, we drink different cocktails and we have different purposes in our lives. There is only one thing which brings us together: We all want to be a published-writer as soon as possible!
I mentioned them the new story I am planning to write, the one inspired by the Russian chess-maniac murderer. A man who is obsessed with filling the chessboard with a particular organ of his victims is giving himself up to the police because he realizes that they will never be able to catch him and he will die soon before his fame shakes the world. All the murders will be wasted then! He has to be consistent with his plans. Which organ? Perhaps, the nose which is shared by both sexes would be a good idea. It is not irritating to talk about noses like some other organs. Sixty three noses, all different sizes and colors, smelling each other on a chessboard, looking at different directions as if they were the soon-to-be-king pawns but not knowing where to go and how, like a football player who forgot which goal he has to score. Then he will wait for the police to come and take him to the last square of the board so that the nose of the game master will complete the run!
When I finish narrating the outline of the soon-to-be-written story, some looked at me as if I am the murderer. “Hopefully I am not!” I said with a witty smile. Then the conversation turned to Bala’s novel, a story of a murder which was actually committed by the author himself. I left that cluster of laughter and found myself a corner to think more about being a writer. It shouldn’t be easy to adapt the lifestyle of being read by others whom you don’t know but in reverse they will know you. I will be naked, walking on the streets among others, irritated by the prying glances but having lost the right to complain because I asked them to look at me. Once it is published, secrets are no more secrets! Living in a glass house where the light can pass from outside to inside through the glass walls but not the other way around! No matter how many years pass, a book will always be somewhere on this earth. Maybe in the dusty shelves of a forgotten library or in the big smelly boxes, waiting to see sunlight one more time. Maybe I don’t want to be a published-writer because I am not brave enough. I can still write silly stories and share them with a few friends who have enough sense of humor to understand that writing is not a serious job and only those who enjoy doing it can earn from it. This way I will close the path to humiliation of being in a team of mountaineers but not being a mountaineer. I can be a gray character: a soon-to-be-writer who will never be a real one.
That is why I left the drinking session after having one glass of mojita. Perhaps I made myself believe that I am not good enough to be a writer but somehow I like to be among them. I told them that I am not used to follow irregular evening schedules, drinking heavily till no more drinking is possible or errand emotional breakdowns which can inspire some dark and gothic stories. But actually what I have told them was a lie. Maybe not to them since they don’t care what kind of excuse I have made up to leave the place but I definitely lied to myself. I noticed it when I got home…
Mojita was responsible for my early leave… Sour and sweet drink I had at the bar lifted me up from the chair I was sitting and sent me home with enormous speed. It was the name “Mojita” who drop into my mind like a cube of ice, exuded from my body and slowly rolling down on my back, causing me to tremble. In fact, with the help of other soon-to-be-writers I have realized that I was pronouncing the word “Mojita” wrong. It must be pronounced as “Mohita” like saying “Haime” for the name “Jaime”. But how could I know? I don’t speak Spanish. I never drank mojita in my life before tonight and I never talked to her either online or face to face! I only saw her name in e-mails and I did not talk to anyone about her. Maybe she was a dream I have created in my mind with a name of “Mona Mojita” as a sender of e-mails. I don’t even know how she looks like since I refused her when she told me that she could send her photo if I wanted. I did not want to know her face because I was afraid that it will lead us to closer relationship. She was a friend of mine or I presumed so! She came out of nowhere to help a soon-to-be-writer who was struggling to find things to write about. Maybe I was also helping her to find some ideas to scratch on the canvas. Then one day she disappeared like she never existed before, like the characters in Murakami’s novels. Maybe now she is sitting and contemplating at the bottom of a dry water well or she disappeared in a remote Greek island where no one has disappeared in the entire history!
We did not name our relationship because we were both afraid of misnaming it. She was married to a man who has a good job, good salary and good career options for the future. I have a wife and a daughter in a country where all of us are strangers. That is why we were naturally scared of misfiring our attempts of definitions. We were friends in need of each other, colleagues who need professional assistance for the creative works or online acquaintances who have some common points to share. We did not go beyond these words and took our steps with extreme care so that it won’t cause any misinterpretation. But is it possible not to expect more once you start?
When I arrived home, in spite of the slight nausea I felt in my stomach I wanted to write my original idea of the chess-maniac murderer but somehow I could not concentrate on it. The word “mojita” was filling the entire room with a hairy, hard-to-pronounce “h” sound which I have just learnt. It was the thick air, emitted through the walls holding my both hands to prevent me pursuing any further writing. I was handcuffed by her guardian eyes and her sharp tongue she used in her letters. “I am reading Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’ these days and I remembered you” she wrote in her last e-mail after a long silence. I did not reply it because I knew that it will not work to any further point. At the end, we will again reach to the point where we speak different demands in different languages. I knew that even if I answer her last e-mail she will stay silent for very long time without giving me any valid reason. I did not reply then she disappeared as if she was actually waiting for my passive standing. What did she blame me for? I did not write to her as frequent as she desired! Or because I did not care about her emotional fluctuations as much as she needed! Then of course, I was selfish, egocentric, egoist and also psychopathic! Or because I was suffering from writer’s block –a term she used to describe me but I never admitted-.
According to her, writing was the only thing I worried about in this world. She believed I cut myself from the others and isolated! Like a man who lost in a desert where there is no justification in going any direction. I was totally lost in myself and looking for a rescue hand whose owner I did not care about! She was right but not always! Like all writers, I needed to get lost to write, I needed to isolate myself so that I won’t hurt anyone. The only problem was controlling myself in these lonely but brave journeys! As a soon-to-be-writer I did not have enough confidence in my adventures. I needed to go deeper but sometimes I was forgetting the sunlight and the life it gives to people. The ones at the mouth of the cave cannot understand the meaning of being at the bottom of the cave. That is why it did not work. She was waiting at the entrance, I was digging for the diamond without knowing how far more I have to go. One of us did not have enough patience! Either she is guilty because she left the cave without me or I am guilty because I cheated her with the pleasure of dreaming precious diamonds. In both ways, it is over!
I was a soon-to-be-writer and she was a soon-to-be-painter. In fact, she was not a sort of a painter like Fernando Botero or Van Gogh who enjoys eating and digesting colors so that she could produce new forms of realities by the tip of her brush. No, she was only in black and white portraits, trying to figure out infinite number of tones in the spectrum ranged from white to black. We were at the end both pencil-lovers. I write my stories in pencil before I type them into computer. She uses her pencil to make the portraits before she scans and uploads them into her virtual exhibition site. I can still clearly remember a few of the portraits she made: the face expression of a tired insurance salesperson, a wet-haired beggar who took shelter in the phone booth during the rain, an old woman smoking marihuana and holding her grandson on her bosom, dirty garbage collectors wondering the owner of the uncovered bin and a square-faced depressed writer who has been chained to his desk, looking out the window to catch some inspiration from gray clouds. In fact, this last picture of hopeless writer encouraged me contact her and start our short-term, almost reticent relationship. At that time we were both desperate in finding ideas to create new things and I guess we hoped that the instant communication will benefit both of us providing that we keep the physical distance.
My stomach gets worse now! It feels like something I ate or drank destroyed the fine balance of my inner organs and I need to remove it no matter how. But maybe this is a psychological effect of remembering a lost friend who kept saying that she wanted only care but nothing else from me. Perhaps what we expected from each other was a blow of cold wind which can precipitate the finest raindrops so that the famine will never take over the surface of the earth. But it did not work! It did not work because neither of us were patient enough to understand the guilt which results from being sterile. She wanted to see faces, as many as possible so that she can create her own art by mixing them up. I was looking for some strong words and pictures which I cannot get in the hollow rooms of my isolated life. The idea was to get rid of the sterility which was dangling over our heads like dark rainless clouds. However, the short-term relationship ended like a Monsoon rain. Abrupt, without warning! It ended because the heights we were aiming were different. She was climbing to Mount Everest while I was trying to dive into Mariana Trench. I needed sorrow and pain to keep writing! She needed to be happy to get rid of the sick feeling of her portraits.
To understand why it did not work, I connected to internet and found all the e-mails we sent to each other. I copied them all and put them in a chronicle order to see what we really missed in the letters and what actually we were supposed to write. It was an easy task to complete all the e-mails but reading them again and again like a historian looking for some clues to support his revolutionary theory was tough. It was tough because I felt as if I am living the letters one more time and answering them in a different way –in a way I should have done at the first time.- She always accused me of not understanding her truly and not answering her letters in a way she expected. But her letters too were not replies to my paragraphs. When my e-mail talks about blind-folded chess players, her answer was mentioning the children at the amusement park. When she wrote me about her favorite writers, I answered her about how it feels when I disconnected from internet for three days in row. Apparently we were not communicating to each other. We were two distant people who are both obsessed in their own works, writing their diaries and showing to each other for satisfaction. When the things to be shared are exhausted, we were out of the game. Finally what happened is she was the first one using the words like “selfish, “egocentric” etc… It is the world where who has the loudest voice wins. So I was defeated!
I lost the fight but obviously I did not lose her. At least until tonight, I was not aware that she was somewhere in my mind, hidden behind fresh thoughts, waiting for her exit to get out and take revenge. A simple drink made everything more visible and somehow made me more vulnerable. But I cannot keep her with me! I have to get rid of her so that her memoirs will not enslave me again like she did tonight. She prevented me from writing my story and I guess she will do intervene again.
The nausea in my stomach becomes intense. I open the balcony door with the hope that the fresh air might make me feel better! Here I am in the balcony, looking at the motorbike drivers whose colorful raincoats become almost invisible with the cloudy mist of the rain. The city is becoming more and more labyrinth-like once the drivers turn left at the junction and dives into the colorless streets. Here it seems like the beginning and shallow! Then it gets deeper, darker and colder. The raindrops hit my hand and I pull it back. I look at the traffic which gets more chaotic with the introduction of the water. The traffic lights are ignored during the rain because those who are in the danger of getting wet always have the priority of moving through others. The rules are forgotten or suspended for a while! I wish it could be possible for all the rules and all the laws, including the natural ones. Supposing that during the rain, earth’s gravity reduces to one tenth of its original value! Then I would survive the jumping from the seventh floor. I turn my back to the streets, looking at one of the dead flowers in the pot and trying to smell it.
The smell of the soil turns my stomach upside down… I run to the bathroom and threw up the mojita together with my dinner. The brown-red liquid fills the floor of the bathroom while I was thinking about the black-white picture of the writers in chain. The more my stomach spasms, the more the writer inside me becomes free of his chains. It is the freedom comes with price. It is Mojita I am throwing up. But how do I know that was mojita made me sick? What else can it be? I knew that it will make me sick when I touched the glass and smelled the sharp odor of vodka, mint and lime juice. I knew it when I took the first gulp through my throat and feeling the firing squad in front of me, ready to pull the triggers towards my heart, digging the bullets into my flesh to rip my heart off from me. I knew that when I heard the name of the drink and my mind traveled back in my personal history. I knew that all but I could not stop myself!
Written on 4 Nov 2007 Edited on 17 November 2007
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder