FAMILIARITY THE NEMESIS OF CHANGE

A list. A new year resolution. Resolutions.

I need to stop smoking.
I need to stop drinking.
I need to stop my compulsive lying.
I need to stop spending excessive money.
I need to stop wearing ugly underwear.
I need. I need. I need.

New years have become a ritualistic opportunity to welcome the new year by waving good-bye to the old. It embraces a new you by bidding adieu to the surrogate you and you in return hope that you can kick back old habits that you have accumulated of the years. This is what I call a superficial understanding to reality: the reality in which the world encompasses real love, real truth, real motive to understanding and above all real intention to change.

Needs are not concrete reasons for change, they are merely self-inflections, realizations of personal negatives that superficially stimulate you mind.

Beneath all of this, under the layers of our subconscious mind, change actually comes from the innate need to kick a familiarity. Once you realize the need to change what’s familiar to you, the metamorphosis unwinds itself. The real art is not the actual change, it’s the part when you realize that you need to branch away from your familiar. It’s the point where you voluntarily diverge paths from where you feel so much closer to home.

Change.
Happens.
Only when….

YOU UNLOCK THE DOORS TO THE SANCTUARY THAT YOU CONFINE IN.

Change is a friend, a good friend of mine: one that many haven’t spent much time with. Sometimes I see this friend as a reflection of myself and sometimes as a stranger invading my mind. Most of our friendship is built on transcending mental communication and pure understanding where a solid ground of respect lays between our "beingness". Don’t get me wrong this friendship is not peaches and cream. We have our profound subliminal differences that spiral downwards and erupt inside our minds. We mutually exhaust each other and I believe that we sometimes do this on purpose. To push ourselves further from the familiarity that we can so easily create. It’s easy to build a friendship on familiarity it’s difficult to create one on mutually exclusive differences that sometimes harmonize and suddenly clash. But it’s the clash that brings the excitement; it’s the loud collision that transforms into harmony that satisfies the soul.

Amongst the biggest of all changes is the change of a familiar person. Typically human nature that finds its sanctuary in familiarity hits a roadblock at this point. It’s the most definite one amongst all because most people not only don’t realize their resilience to the change but actually think they have taken it head on.

Human relations are phenomenal at fooling their ordinate humans. The ordinary dynamic reverses itself. If a functional person become familiar to another person over the coarse of time, when an alternate person comes to take over the first persons function (on all fair grounds a respective movement) the surrounding (the person in relation to the doer) pretends to accept the change. They accept because they realize the need for change, what they don’t realize is their need to distance themselves from familiarity.

The human, that should control his or her human relations becomes submissive and bows down. He or she begins to lose control over thoughts of change. The change happens, the acceptance of the change remains untouched and the person starts to look for the familiarity in the change.

In all this confusion the human mind merely sees this as a switch in the system. X gets switched for XX where XX carries traits of X, which is familiar to the surrounding.

So then…
Does the change really happen?
Absolutely not because the familiarity is not completely broken.

Until the sanctuary of familiarity is torn 'change' will remain in passive voice and 'real change' will be waiting for its a call.

Acceptance, Judgments bonafide mistress.

Often times us humans are caught in the limbo of judging or accepting. Our innate human character forces us to uncontrollably judge, our emotional human touch reprimands this raw behavior and dictates acceptance. The odd thing is that these paradoxical acts are trapped inside every single human being and are interchangeably used when needed.

So I ask myself is really a difference between judging and accepting? Does accepting solely determine that you no longer judge or is it simply ‘‘judgment’s bonafide mistress?’’

The alarm goes off at 6:15 AM. Fifteen minutes earlier than necessary, Lil Miss Mafs needs her playtime. She licks my eyes, my nose, my nostrils, my mouth, my ears. She trots over my empty stomach, I supine grunt comes out of my mouth. She jumps out of bed, prances to the living room and brings back her ball. The grunt gets louder, ‘‘no Mafs not now!’’ I roll over turn on the bedside lamp and check my blackberry. No pressing matters on the agenda right now, I reach over to my IPod dock turn on some music, crawl out of bed and head to the kitchen.

Alternate scenario:
Pressing matter…The grunt turns into a murmur ‘‘oh God what now?’’ I type away on the blackberry press send, reach over to my IPod dock turn on some music and crawl out of bed.

Flick. I turn on the kitchen light.
Creaking. I open the cupboard and feed Ms. Mafs.
Tuk. The orange light of the water boiler.
Puk. The boiler’s orange light is off, alerting me that the water is ready.

Füürrp. I make myself some coffee: instant coffee, lactose free milk with a pinch of cinnamon.
Stir, stir, stir, ting, ting ting. The spoon scraps against the mug.
Shuffling. I pack up my breakfast and stick it inside my meal sack.

Flick. I turn on the bathroom light.
Pee, brush my teeth, wash my face, apply my body cream, then my face cream finally my eye cream.
Pıssss. Deodorant.
Pıst. Pıst. Perfume

Flick. I turn on the bedroom light.
Creaking. I pick out my clothes.
Pufff. I sit on my down comforter to put my socks on.
Shuffling. I get dressed.
Zip. I open my make-up bag.
Swoosh. I apply eye shadow, mascara and blush.
Zip. I close my make-up bag.

Flick. I turn on the entrance light.
The grunt has turned into loving voice ‘come on Mafs lets go potty’.
Tık. I open the door.
Bam. The door slams behind me.

Cling cling. I enter my house again. Mafya wants a treat. ‘‘Good girl.’’
Panting. Mafya is way too excited.
Piieeewww. I turn off my iPod dock.
Flick, flick, flick, flick. I turn off all the lights.
Bam. The door slams behind me. I’m out.

I drive out of the neighborhood that I love. The neighborhood that has brought me the sense of unity. I say bye to the guards, the shop keeper on the side of the street, the obese taxi driver that waits in the very same corner everyday as though he’s waiting to wave goodbye. I drive over hills. I drive to a distant place that awaits me.

My iPod keeps jamming. I sing. I beat my hands over the steering wheel. I am, so to say, totally in my element.

The rising morning sun catches my eyes and pleasantly blinds me. The light wind that seeps through the window brushes against my cheek and floats within my hair. The roads are empty, tranquility has settled over the busy streets of Istanbul. I drive over the hills and reach the Bosphorus bridge. Struck by beauty, as I’m crossing over, I look left and right as if to check if everything is in place, whether or not the Bosphorus is still flowing. The sense of belonging is powerfully ignited.

Just after I cross the bridge I take the third exit.
I drive into a neighborhood that is so distant to me. A neighborhood that has brought me the sense of judgment. I say hi and wave good morning to its own people. I conquer its hills. The sense of belonging ceases to exist.

Swoosh. I weave in and out of a 7:45 am traffic jam.
Beep. A cab toots its horn.
Screech. Cars slam on their breaks.
Honk. A bus slams on its horn as it skims the back of the car in front.
Agggh. Men screaming profanity at one another. Men degrading women.

An orchestra of noise pollution. A symphony of chaos and destruction.
I notice all this in its grandeur and all the while I judge. The people that throw themselves onto raging traffic. The bus drivers that try to make a metal sheet out of my VW Jetta. The nonsense traffic that has occurred at 7:45 AM. The men that yell at me. The abusive language.

Most of all I judge myself. I judge myself because I do every single thing I have written uptil now every day. I judge myself because I have accepted my judgment and pretend to live like ‘my norm’.

So here is the answer to my own question: No there is no difference between judging and accepting. Acceptance is judgment’s passive voice. This passive voice is hidden within reality because we human beings see acceptance as a positive demeanor. How many times have told our parents ‘‘can’t you accept the way I am?’’ . Their acceptance would reflect in our eyes as a positive approval where in fact they are so far from approving. They are actually simply sugar coating their judgment and condemnation but you as the victim have not opened your eyes to it.

Open your eyes and realize.
Acceptance is merely judgment’s ''bonafide mistress'' that's prancing around like a little princess.

Acceptance, is a reflection of passive voice.

The tunnel of infatuation...

There is this man.

A Brit.

A juvenile convict.
Who stole cars and vandalized streets.
Known as a ‘‘real wild boy, with a chip on his shoulder’’.

A recovering heroin addict.
That flakes every now and then.
Who tries to drown his sorrows.

A strikingly polarizing character.
That survived four brushes with death.
Otherwise known as "The Cat,"

This man,
Dave Gahan.

For those of you who don’t recognize him by his name.
The lead singer of Depeche Mode.

This character never hid who he was, he flat out confronted his past and accepted his present. He answers questions liberally and show cases his life the way it is. No frills nor denials.

This Dave Gahan was an infatuation to me when I was 16 I am now 27 and have not lost one bit of my infatuation for him. His tattoos are still sexy, he hair is still fucking awesome, his retro suits continue to amaze me (although he has swaped his shoulder padded blazers for some slim fit replacements) and his smile is still infectious.

Yes, I realize that these are all physical attributes that can give me the ‘tinglies’ but Dave’s undeniably baritone and forceful voice is the real orgasm behind his character. The atmosphere Dave creates is as passionate and equally intruding as Colin Farell and Rosario Dawson in the movie Alexander. Dave’s voice is Collin: emotional and commanding attention, the audience is Rosario: judging and submissive.

Dave’s voice fucks, not has sex, not makes loves, flat out fucks his audience.
There are artists that make love to their instruments like Tori Amos and her piano (which I will have to leave for another session) but a voice that genuinely fucks its audience is a rare find. Dave’s voice coupled with his stage performance is, like I said before, the real orgasmic experience.

Dave Gahan.
Keep being that person far way from passive voice, with so many strikes against your name.

You own the stage.