Erotapokriseis VI
EN:
Hello, my dear readers, Every time I receive your questions, I am reminded that writing is never really a monologue. It becomes more interesting when someone reads closely enough to ask back! I’ve answered most of your emails, but here are a few questions I wanted to answer publicly.
TR:
Merhaba sevgili okurlarım, Sizden gelen soruları her okuduğumda, yazmanın aslında hiçbir zaman tam anlamıyla tek taraflı olmadığını hatırlıyorum. E-postalarınızın çoğuna dönüş yaptım, ama bazı soruları burada da yanıtlamak istedim.
1) Q: In Special Relativity you say the deepest wound wasn’t time dilation but the relativity of simultaneity, that there is no fact of the matter about “now.” You’re someone who notices every passing minute. Did losing the universal “now” make your own sense of time feel more precious, or more like an illusion you can no longer trust?
A: More precious, not less. I expected the wound to make time feel fake; instead it made it feel mine. If there’s no universal “now,” then the now I’m in isn’t a clock everyone shares, it’s a thing only I am standing in. That doesn’t cheapen it. It makes it the one thing nobody else is having exactly the way I am.
This question came in Turkish.
2) Q: Special Relativity yazınızda “zaman kutsal değil; ‘şimdi’ dünyanın değil senin özelliğin” diyorsunuz. Ama bütün blogunuz anlara tutunuyor: bir kâğıt turna, bir kahve, bir mürekkep lekesi. Fizik size “şimdi diye bir şey yok” dedikten sonra, anlara hâlâ nasıl bu kadar inanabiliyorsunuz?
A: Çünkü “şimdi”nin dünyaya ait olmaması, bana ait olmadığı anlamına gelmiyor. Fizik onu evrenden aldı, bana geri verdi. Kâğıt turnaya, kahveye, mürekkep lekesine inanıyorum tam da bu yüzden: onlar evrensel değil, benim. Bazen yalnızca bana ait olana tutunmak, en sağlam tutunma biçimi gibi geliyor. Bilemiyorum. :)
3) Q: In Look Up you tell readers: don’t photograph the sky, don’t share it, just receive it. But you run a blog; your whole life is articulating what you see. Why is the sky the one thing you’d rather people stay silent in front of? What does it have that words would only spoil?
A: Because everything else I write about gets better when I put it into words, and the sky gets smaller. I’d rather hand someone the silence than a good paragraph that quietly replaces it. Some things you understand by describing them. The sky you understand by shutting up.
This question came in Turkish.
4) Q: Gökyüzünü Look Up yazınızda “ekranın son büyük panzehiri” diyorsunuz, simülasyonun kolonileştiremediği son gerçek. Post-Truth yazınızda da gerçekliğin çöküşünü anlatıyordunuz. Sizce Andromeda’dan gelen 2,5 milyon yıllık ışık, bir insana hâlâ “bu gerçek” dedirtmeye yetiyor mu, yoksa o da mı bir ekranın arkasında kayboluyor artık?
A: Yetiyor, hem de fazlasıyla. Post-truth gerçekliği tartışmalı kıldı, ama o ışık tartışmaya girmiyor ki; iznini istemeden gözüne çarpıyor. Ekran bize bir şey gösterir, gökyüzü bize çarpar. Farkı da bu: simülasyon bizi izleyici yapar, Andromeda ise şahit. 2,5 milyon yıl yol gelmiş bir foton karşısında insan numara yapamıyor. İyi ki de yapamıyor aslında.
5) Q: Are you in a relationship? I am curious about your love life.
A: I have to admit, I find this question a little funny and trivial! After all these posts, this is what you are curious about? :) I understand the curiosity, but I do not really like sharing my private life on social media, on my blog, or on the internet in general. Some parts of life should remain unlabeled, unposted, and unperformed.
So, respectfully, I will keep that to myself!
6) Q: What is something you simply cannot tolerate in life?
A: Cruelty disguised as intelligence. I cannot tolerate people who mistake being harsh for being honest, or being cynical for being intelligent. There is a particular kind of person who thinks kindness is naïve, humility is weakness, and sensitivity is something to be mocked. I find that unbearable. I also cannot tolerate vulgarity of character, not in the superficial sense but the deeper kind: people who humiliate others, who perform their status, who speak without grace, who turn every room into a stage for their ego. Life is already difficult enough. I do not want to be around people who make it uglier on purpose.
And one more thing, quieter but just as intolerable to me: evasion of honesty disguised as comfort. I cannot stand the kind of reassurance that softens a structural problem instead of naming it, the “it’s going fine” that withholds rather than reveals. When something is broken, I would rather be told plainly than be protected from the truth. I prefer analysis to reassurance, and I find it hard to trust warmth that comes at the cost of honesty. Being shielded from reality, even out of kindness, feels to me like a quiet form of disrespect, both to me and to the truth itself. If you care about someone, you tell them what is actually wrong. Comfort that requires omission is not comfort; it is avoidance wearing a gentler face.
7) Q: Is home a place for you, or more of a feeling?
A: This question looks like a cliché, but it really isn’t. Thank you for asking it. And I think I might be one of the most objective people you could come across in trying to answer it, because of where I’m standing. My answer is this. Home used to be a specific place for me. It was Urla, it was İzmir. Then I lost my grandmother, and now I’m in Dallas. While I’m far away, an illusion forms in me, maybe a defense mechanism: that she is still alive, still there in İzmir. But every time I actually go back to İzmir, it hurts so much. I feel such disappointment, because I see that she isn’t there anymore. So that place isn’t my home either. When I’m there, I can’t bring myself to miss Dallas, but the place I’m in now isn’t home the way it used to be either. I think home is definitely a feeling. Wherever the person you love, the person you love most, happens to be, that is where your home is. Once that person is gone, the place loses its old meaning. That’s just how it is…
8) Q: What do you think you have unusually good taste in?
A: People. I can tell within one conversation whether someone has a real inner life or is performing one, and I have never once been wrong about a person, never! :) And depth. I have very good taste in what is worth my time. I can sense the difference between something that looks profound and something that is, in a book, in a person, in a physics idea. It’s the same instinct every time.
9) Q: Çok popüler olup da sizin hiç sevemediğiniz bir şey var mı?
A: Offf, bir sürü.
(Bir Amerika’li okuyucumda çok benzer bir soru sormuş, O’na verdiğim cevap, siz okuduğunuzda kültür kodlarimizla resone edebilecek mi emin değilim ama Amerika’da en populer en sevemediğim şeyi bir sonraki soruda paylaşiyorum. )
10) Q: What is something very popular that you just cannot get into?
A: Yes. The performance of healing!
I do not dislike healing, of course. I dislike the way it has become an aesthetic, a vocabulary, almost a little costume people wear. Everyone is “protecting their peace,” “setting boundaries,” “choosing growth,” and somehow still being completely unkind. I find that very hard to take seriously.
11) Q: What is something people dismiss that you actually take seriously?
A: Small signs.
The way someone speaks to a waiter. The way their face changes when they are corrected. The little cruelty hidden inside a joke. The tiny hesitation before they congratulate someone else. People dismiss these things as insignificant, but I take them very seriously. Character rarely announces itself dramatically. Most of the time, it leaks out in small moments. :)
12) Q: What are you unapologetically basic about?
A: Coffee shops.
I know it is painfully basic, but I love sitting in a coffee shop with a book, a notebook, and a pen as if I am about to understand the entire human condition between two sips of coffee. Also long walks, bookstores, pretty stationery, and taking pictures of the sky. I refuse to be embarrassed by any of it.
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