Erotapokriseis VII
EN:
My dear readers, Thank you for your emails, your questions, your disagreements, and your generous attention! I have replied to many of you already, but some questions kept lingering in my mind after I answered them. Those are the ones I wanted to share here. :)
TR:
Sevgili okurlarım, E-postalarınız, sorularınız, itirazlarınız ve cömert dikkatiniz için çok teşekkür ederim. Çoğunuza zaten dönüş yaptım, fakat bazı sorular cevapladıktan sonra bile zihnimde kalmaya devam etti. Burada paylaşmak istedim bazılarını, çok çok teşekkürler!
1) Q: In Gogol’s Overcoat you say you can’t get through November without thinking about Akaki, and that when people call the story merely funny, something in you closes. That is almost exactly the reaction you describe in My Biggest Red Flag, the withdrawal when someone stays on the surface. Is Gogol a test you quietly give people?
A: Not on purpose, but yes. I don’t hand it to people and watch. It’s just that if you laughed all the way through and felt nothing at “I am your brother,” I learn something I didn’t ask to learn. Akaki isn’t a quiz. He’s a tuning fork. People ring or they don’t.
2) Q: In The Crisis in Fundamental Physics you describe a field that has waited forty years for the anomaly that will crack it open, and you’re entering it anyway. Is that courage, stubbornness, or faith? What do you tell yourself on the days the desert looks endless?
A: Stubbornness wearing faith’s coat, probably. On the days when the desert looks endless, I don’t tell myself a breakthrough is coming. I have no idea if it is. I just tell myself the desert still needs to be mapped, and I’d rather be lost in the right wilderness than comfortable in the wrong one. Most days, that is enough to open the laptop.
This question came in Turkish.
3) Q: Gogol’s Overcoat yazınızda Akaki’nin içtiği değil, içmediği çayları düşündüğünüzü yazmışsınız: kendini küçülterek bir paltonun var olmasına izin veren adam. Sizi en çok yaralayanın onun düşüşü değil, “düşecek bir yeri olmaması” olduğunu söylüyorsunuz. Hiç kendinizi, sadece görülmek için bir “palto” biriktirirken yakaladınız mı?
A: Ah, evet. Utanarak söylüyorum ama evet! Akaki’yi bu yüzden bu kadar yakından tanıyorum; bazen ben de görülmek için bir palto diktim. Tek farkımız şu: benim düşecek bir yerim vardı, onun yoktu. Asıl mesele de bu zaten. Bazılarımız palto kaybedince üşür, bazılarımız yok olur.
This question came in Turkish.
4) Q: The Crisis in Fundamental Physics yazınızda “asıl kriz yanlış teorilere sahip olmamız değil; doğru soruları henüz bulamamış olmamız” diyorsunuz. Bir araştırmacı olarak sizi daha çok ne korkutuyor: yanlış cevabı vermek mi, yoksa hayatınızı yanlış soruya adadığınızı çok geç fark etmek mi?
A: Yanlış cevap beni hiç korkutmuyor; o zaten işin yarısı, bir gün biri düzeltir. Beni korkutan ikincisi: ömrümü güzel ama yanlış bir soruya adayıp bunu en sonda fark etmek. SUSY’ye bütün kariyerini verenler vardı. O yüzden cevaplarıma değil, sorularıma dikkat ediyorum. Yanlış tepeye tırmanmak, yavaş tırmanmaktan beterdir. Bence :)
5) Q: What did you feel the first time you encountered quantum physics?
A: This is such a beautiful question. Thank you for asking it. I’m usually very cautious about scientific hype, so I didn’t come to quantum physics with immediate enthusiasm. I started almost defensively, as if I’d promised myself not to be seduced too easily. I remember thinking, Filiz, what you’re about to learn might betray a lot of the things you thought you understood. And in a way, it did. I think I felt both betrayed and invited. :) It felt aesthetically beautiful to me from the beginning. The mathematics was different, almost strange, but deeply elegant. Looking back, I think the part that stayed with me most is this: quantum physics tells you that the world is not obliged to satisfy human intuition! I still find that incredibly beautiful. Cheers!
This question came in Turkish.
6) Q: Anneanneniz size en çok ne öğretti?
A: Merhameti. ( Daha çok şey yazmak istiyorum ama gözlerim doluyor ve ben şu an kafedeyim ve buradaki tanışlarımın/arkadaşlarımın endişelenmesini istemiyorum.) Çok sevgiler!
7) Q: How is your summer break Filiz?
A: It’s wonderful. The days are beautifully slow. I spend most of my time near the beach with one of my closest friends. I invited you to the Aegean, but you chose to stay in the desert heat of Dallas, so enjoy roasting there. I just submitted a proposal to NASA, and now I am finally chilling a little. :)
8) Q: What quality do you value most in people?
A: Hard question. Can I flip it around and tell you which people I don’t want around me, the ones I won’t keep in my life? Let’s go with that for now :)) I can never love an ungrateful person, and I won’t keep one in my life. If someone is ungrateful, I’ll cut them out, even if they’re the apple of my eye.
Edit August 4, 2025 : Loyalty, honestly. Not the loud kind, just people who remember what you did for them and don’t disappear when it stops being convenient. I can forgive almost anything except ingratitude. Everything else I value probably comes back to that.
9) Q: If I’m ever in Dallas, can I take you out?
A: What makes you think I’m available?
10) Q: I’ve been reading your work since your Medium days. Why did you stop posting there? I still go back and read some of your old pieces sometimes. You had so many readers there. Where did you go?
A: Thanks so much! Ever since Medium became more tied to paid reading, I no longer felt very comfortable writing there. I could never ask people to pay just to read my thoughts. That would not feel very Filiz of me. My purpose in writing has always been to share. There is a Turkish saying: tebdili mekânda ferahlık vardır. I wish I could translate it properly for you, but it means something like, “a change of place brings relief.” So perhaps I did not disappear. I just changed places. With love. :)
And thank you so much for following my journey on different platforms! That means a lot.
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