︎︎︎
REGIONINGS, REASONINGS AND OTHER AGREEMENTS
I am a body stuck between the beloved so-called east and west. I carry a mind contaminated with the shameful and guilty politics of mistrust and distress. Over the years, my ears have been listening to the same sore melodies, which by now have become lullabies that put me to my night’s sleep.
In the middle of all my imaginary self - regionings (1), of those rich intersections between personal politics, the big games that pretend to shelter weak bodies and vast geographies, I only wonder and think during my solitary playtime sessions counted by hours and minutes.
To cope, I often reach from my cupboard of masks for the one that brings as much wisdom as one can possess, or perhaps I mimic a newborn baby growing into this nuanced world of a mess. For I am as lost as the next person, I trawl my share of tasteful fish in the vast sea of good enough reasonings.
Things forever daunting: memories, realities and longings.
I could never decide if my share of pain is enough to tell my tales. ‘You’ve made me numb, I want to scream, to the depths of my own stories’. I helplessly nodded my head to all your methods, and carried my entire being, my meaning-making to every structure, every institution to fill my pockets. Don’t be mistaken, it was precisely out of the dull emptiness I found my answers and learned my lessons. It was through what you couldn’t give me that I came to my own conclusions. It was out of the gaps that I have created the fillers.
Escapism, anticipation and nostalgia; confrontation, disappointment and contemplation; collaboration, patience and reflection-
Rebirth.
and not single but numerous.
A small selection from the feelings of my personal politics. I unlearn and relearn as I shrug off my century-long fatigue. I tell others more often to myself: no more complaining.
“If the structure does not permit the dialogue the structure must be changed.”(2)
Still, it appears to me all the more that the dialogue indeed can not only change but create new structures out of our precious rage.
I’ve had numerous catharses, each within their own locality, temporality and necessities. I wrote my antitheses to the theses I’ve swallowed, only to see that perhaps there exists no one, final synthesis. I’ve been lied to all these years, for what I saw I was the biggest of hypocrites. I’ve put my premature signature under almost all of your agreements. Beware, it is the constant fight that confuses the darkness.
So I light the light and I surrender, not with a capital P but to my personal politics. I trust the process and the hidden meanings of a timeless, homeless evening breeze. I use the tools you’ve given me to carve my way out of your misleads. And now, I even like this game we are playing.
I can let you feed me but I can’t promise to give anything back. I first have to mend and understand what I’ve borrowed and what I lack.
(it is east I’m headed towards, dressed in all the dirty colors, and chanting my own verses, come join me.)
(1) refers to Irit Rogoff’s “Regional Imaginings” in Unleashed: Contemporary Art from Turkey (2010) and to the borrowed notion of “(self) regioning” from Heidegger which is an attempt to produce a set of relationships that locate one in the world, instead of trying to figure out one’s identity as a given.
(2) quote by Brazilian educator, philosopher and critical pedagogy advocate Paulo Freire.