I am very happy to share with you today another installment of student writing from my Koç nonfiction class: “The Deep,” a photo essay by sophomore literature major Simay Yaylalı, complete with original emoticons.

THE DEEP

This photograph brings back memory for me because my first yacht master sailing experience started with that photo. I am half Greek and half Turkish, which means I grew up with the culture of the sea. Mediterranean and Aegean cultures surrounded me. I can’t live without the sea. Whenever I feel miserable, I go to the seaside and it makes me relax.

First I took a laser course. A laser is a sailboat about 4m long, with only one sail. One has to weigh 45 or 60kg. I weighed 52 kg. I learned how to sail a laser in Marmaris. I still smile when I remember my course periods. I had bruising on my legs and arms. It wasn’t a proper sport for delicate girls. I knew this, but nevertheless I adored it. My trainer had chosen me to be part of a sailing team. However my dad didn’t let me join. He thought that if I attended sailing races in the winter, I would get sick and in the future I could be infertile. When he told me this, my world was destroyed. I cried for days. But I didn’t give up. I made a search of international sailing courses where I could take a certificate, so I could sail through my whole life. I finally found a course. The trainer was my schoolmate’s dad, Cumhur Gökova. He had sailed two times around the world. He was my role model.

The course lasted one week. You stayed in a boat one week and sailed the bays. My first day at the course was so interesting. I had never slept in a boat before. We signed a contract that if anything happened to us in the course, we were responsible for ourselves. All the other students in the course were older than me. They were like 28, 35, and 38. I was just 19. My trainer liked me a lot. He treated me as a daughter. He was 57. He had a Russian girlfriend who was 35. It seemed strange to me. The women and girls were always chasing him. I still haven’t figured it out. What makes him so special?

Every day we woke up at 7 AM, did yoga, went hiking, and had breakfast. Later we had a theoretical class in the open air. The course language was English. We learned about boat terminology, the weather, and sailing positions.

Afterwards we sailed till dark and then boarded to port. We had lunch on the boat or in restaurants. My trainer drank red wine every day and went to sleep at 10 PM every night. He kept a strict routine but he adored that life. One day at dinner, a student named Dimitri was staring at me. I knew where this would end. Finally he asked me whether I knew what love meant to me. Even though I knew what love meant to me, I said “no.” He was drunk and got really upset by my negative answer. The night was fabulous because the sky was covered in stars. There were thousands of stars. We had nothing else, only stars. In the bays there were barely any lights.

Every day the sailboat’s captain was selected. The captain had to clean the boat and prepare breakfast. The last day of the course, I was selected. I cleaned the boat and prepared breakfast. In that boat I learned many things about life. I learned how to struggle against difficulties, not only against strong winds and waves, but also with living conditions. It was just a 12-meter sailboat. There was one toilet, and it wasn’t that luxurious, compared to the toilets at our homes or in restaurants. We had to use water sparingly, because we were eight people sharing the same water. While washing the dishes also we had to be careful because water was scarce. There wasn’t any shower to take when we were sailing. Our bodies got salty, and even though I adore the sea, I hate sea salt. I was a meticulous girl and I really wanted to take a shower, but I overcame my weakness and learned to wait until we boarded to land.

One day, when my instructor was using the toilet, I mistakenly opened the door on him. I didn’t knew what to do, so I just shut the door and went to my cabin and waited there silently. When I told this story to my course mates, they laughed and said to act as if nothing had happened. I did this, but the moment I saw my instructor again was so strange and at the same time funny. I still laugh when this event comes to my mind.

Finally:

1. I received my international yacht master flotilla skipper certificate.

2. I made my dreams come true.

3. Sailing is always in my life now.

4. During college I attended some races secretly (from my family).

5. I finally told my parents the truth. They now want me to sail and to race.

6. I proved to my family how much sailing and the sea mean to me.

7. My close friends and relatives know that my future husband has to love the sea, or at least has to sail.

***** BECAUSE IN THE FUTURE I WANT TO SAIL AROUND THE WORLD*****

In other news, I’ve been meaning for a while to share some writing from the nonfiction writing class I  taught last term at Koç University. I’m so proud of my students (all of whom are native Turkish speakers writing in English)! Today I have for you “The Calendar of the Old Button Collector,” by Naz Cuguoğlu, a senior majoring in psychology.

The assignment was to write about an old photo, in the style of Geoff Dyer’s “On the Roof” (from Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, which I was really happy to announce the other night as a 2011 NBCC Finalist!). Here are Naz’s photo and essay.

THE CALENDAR OF THE OLD BUTTON COLLECTOR

- Yellow moustache (Cigarettes)

- Coughing (Asthma)

- Sugar candy obsession

- Using old tins for shaving, blood on his face

- Half a little finger missing (Factory accident)

- “Saka” (the bird)

- Button collection

- Tearing off the pages of the old religious calendar

- The stuffed grape leaves my mom cooked

“Hey, so, how’s it going?”

I am jumping on my seat. I have no idea whose voice that is. It is coming from the future. “Another imaginary friend, I have” I am thinking. I am not more than 5 years old. I can feel the old couch. I both love and hate to scratch my nails against its texture. When I move my hand really fast, its sound makes huge waves in my stomach. Intolerable but unavoidable.

There are hundreds of colorful buttons all around me. Oh, I love to touch them. They are beautiful. My cousin is standing and staring at me while I touch each of their bumpy surfaces. Wait, I know that look on his face. A little scream is coming out of my lips. He knows. He puts his index finger on his lips. The universal gesture for children’s secrets. I know. The old calendar! He is joining me in our button paradise. We are tearing off the pages of the old calendar one by one. Something “he” doesn’t do any more. The meaning of which I will understand in the future. The future in which the previous voice will also be meaningful.

But now we are in a paradise without a future. My cousin is jumping from the couch. Dust from the couch is filling the room. Oh, we love that smell. It is like a yellow gas filling our bodies and lungs. He is running to the door. Saka is singing his song in his cage as usual. I can see his red head if I stand on my tiptoes on the couch. But I don’t want to. Knowing that I can do it if I want is amazing. I can do whatever I want. I can make the clouds purple and the see green. But instead, I am just running after my cousin. The door is open as usual. I am the beautiful young lady receiving letters from her lover while my cousin is pushing the old calendar pages through the mail hole on the door. We are singing the postman song in Turkish. “Look, the postman is coming, greeting; everyone is looking at him, getting curious.” I can feel the sun on my face at that moment. It is warm and safe.

“Babe?”

I know. They are different: not knowing where I currently am and/or not wanting to come back from that sunny house. I know the first one is abnormal behavior whereas the second one is just Freudian denial. I know I am sometimes too normal to be abnormal anyways.

“It is fine, daddy… Just… You know… I feel like my life is getting faster and faster every year. I am just 22. I can’t imagine how it will be at the age of 60. I guess every year will be just like the wind. Will it, daddy?”

I am looking out of the window. Raindrops are ice-skating on the window. I am following them one by one with my eyes. They are too fast for my eyes. My eyes are filling with tears. Too fast. It is all gray in that scene, other than the red beret I am holding tightly with my fingers. I move my eyes to the traffic.

“They say that Istanbul is ranked first in the world for the number of marriages per year”

Besides this sentence I mumble, we stay silent until we get home. At home, without even taking my clothes off I rush to the “drawer.” Instead of asking normal questions like “for what? why? or what the fuck?”, my father just sits with me on the floor in front of the “drawer.” I know exactly what I am looking for. And I can say that my father has no idea what he is doing in front of that drawer with his clothes on at midnight. I am in a hurry; I don’t want to lose time. I need to find “it” now and immediately. My father is slow like he doesn’t want to tear off the pages of an old calendar.

Our house has multiple drawers with different functions. A drawer for winter clothes. Another one for old letters. One for cups. One for the abandoned toys… And one for family photos: black&white and colorful, old and new.

It is becoming more and more fun for me as I go from one photo to another. So much fun that I forget my aim.

“Daddy, look how small I am! Wait, who is this? Oh my god! Is this my aunt! She used to be beautiful, then!”

Then, I find “it”. In the form, exactly, how I wanted it to be. It is as gray as the weather outside. So gray that my eyes can fill with tears again. But they don’t. And I don’t think I can make them. I am at an age in which I don’t think I can make clouds purple any more. Really, too fast. His hands are in the air. His beauty spot under his left eye. His watch. His half missing little finger on the right. 2 moles on the right eye. How could I have forgotten them? Memories. That sunny house. The owner of my button paradise. That smile. Tears. Some hope for the green sea.

My father knows. I know he knows. He knows I know he knows.

“Dede [grandfather] was your first word.”

We continue our little game with my father. The game of silence. We don’t need words. Photos say a lot. One young man, one young woman. With hopes for the future in their eyes. With his two close friends, he is dancing in the photos. They are at the mountain. They are at a picnic. Here and there. Then, his face becomes tired. He loses hair. His clothing gets more and more careless. His hair becomes white. I suddenly realize, my father is getting old.

“Two of them died, only one is alive” he says and shows me another picture of “him”. I no longer like either the game or the picture. “He” is old and sick in this one. It takes me to a cold house this time.

I am not more than 7. I am watching cartoons. I can hear them. Then my mom rushes in. We are going upstairs, she says. We leave “him” alone. When we come back… I don’t remember. After that, it is only the blood coming from his mouth. And my mom cries. And we sleep that night with the lights on. And my mom tells me he couldn’t even eat the stuffed grape leaves she cooked for him. And I cannot give him sugar candies any more. Saka is already dead.

Years later, my mom told me my grandfather used to speak Greek when he got drunk. He was a “sirtaki” dancer. He migrated from Crete during the immigration years after the First World War. He fell in love with my beautiful grandmother, the Arabian.

I look at the list of the things I remember about my grandfather. It is really too fast, I think. I put a Greek song on the CD player, smoke a cigarette and cough. All that will be remembered is a button collection and a half finger any ways, I think. That’s what life is.

Speaking of criticism, my former grad school classmate, Enrique Lima, has just started a pop music blog which I warmly recommend to all my world-weary readers. I will quote only the opening line from the brilliant post on the use of sampling by Flo Rida, Jay Z, and Kanye West: “Jameson is right: we live in an age that has forgotten how to think historically.”

CRITICISM BESIDE ITSELF

Slashing through the third beaming little face, I had a terrible flashback to a moment from my own youth, when an English teacher told me not to use so many exclamation points, because vigorous writing generates energy through language and not punctuation.

I didn’t listen to this teacher. Today I use exclamation points all the time! I don’t think they’re a crutch, so much as another tool in the box. Now I begin to wonder: is that how the next generation will view emoticons? Is one generation’s crutch the next generation’s useful, crutch-shaped mallet?? Have I become an obstruction in the path of literary progress??? Am I now the monster????

From Discourse 16 (”On Providence”)

…You eagerly travel to Olympia to see the work of Phidias, and all of you account it a shame to die never having seen the sight. [24] But when there is no need even to travel, when you are already there because Zeus is present everywhere in his works, don’t you want to look at and try to understand them? [25] Will you never come to a realization of who you are, what you have been born for and the purpose for which the gift of vision was made in our case?

[26] ‘But difficult and disagreeable things happen in life.’ Well, aren’t difficulties found at Olympia? Don’t you get hot? And crowded? Isn’t bathing a problem? Don’t you get soaked through in your seats when it rains? Don’t you finally get sick of the noise, the shouting and the other irritations? [27] I can only suppose that you weigh all those negatives against the worth of the show, and choose, in the end, to be patient and put up with it all. [28] Furthermore, you have inner strengths that enable you to bear up with difficulties of every kind. You have been given fortitude, courage and patience. [29] Why should I worry about what happens if I am armed with the virtue of fortitude? Nothing can trouble or upset me, or even seem annoying. Instead of meeting misfortune with groans and tears, I will call upon the faculty especially provided to deal with it.

[30] ‘But my nose is running!’ What do you have hands for, idiot, if not to wipe it? [31] ‘But how is it right that there be running noses in the first place?’ [32] Instead of thinking up protests, wouldn’t it be easier just to wipe your nose?

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Master of the art of happiness

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Happy 2012 to my equanimous readers!