A Little Love Letter to "How"

Before some big changes, life does this funny thing - where anything possible can seem like it will fall apart, and not only fall apart, for that would be a gentle crash, no. I mean, everything is burning and every little possibility is magnified in the terrors of the mind, and all the organs are bloating up or maybe shrinking, until the individual creature is non existent, or too afraid to live for any consequence of any kind.

Yeah, you heard that right.

How is it that change in itself is something Spirit yearns for, yet human is so afraid of? Isn’t it funny that both exist inside the form of the human?

I guess this whole year has been a whirlwind of a neverending tale, that continually says it’s all “falling apart”. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go.

Does it just all begin and end inside the bed under covers, always with cold feet but a warm chest?

Worrying Blob

I am sat at a cafe. A Turkish cafe in London. So far everyone inside are Turkish. Maybe I should say Anatolian, as I find this description more suiting for beings of that land. Anyway back to the being sat.

My mind is racing faster than any speed car and any actual races for anything related to speed. Connecting from the previous writing about love, and the love of the Self, now we are here, unable to surrender to the mysteries of life, and instead, worrying.

I am often very saddened by how much we need to do only for survival itself. Life is at a pace so uncontrollable that is never decided by us, and we can only submit to the requirements, or we just, disappear? What happens to us?

Life in London to some seems glamorous because of what the city offers with art, but let me assure you, when you are not on stage or immersing yourself with culture and art, the day to day can be quite rough. Not only that life as we know it is not the same as before, and for everything we do, I am talking your average human creature, things require resources. Lack of money is making everyone live so far away from themselves, that even to get to a point they can be themselves, they don’t know when, and they don’t even know if. If that is possible. Is this acceptable to live a life without getting to really live a life?

Love

I guess it is time isn’t it?

The very thing, whatever this thing is, in its infinite explanations or meanings, this very thing, that has been the stirrer of my heart since birth, the very cause of why I am how I am today.

Yeah we are diving into love. You guessed it. Or at least attempting to. Is this even possible, really?

Love is the very force that somehow manages to hold us amidst this chaos we face in the world and in the nature of humanity. We fall and we come back up with love. We hate then we soften with love. Losing every bit of our composure and control, to surrender to its own chaos, within the chaos of Life. How come love brings us together, yet through love we end up facing all the violent parts of ourselves?

A tornado. A rose. Drinking water from the spring. Watching a sunset. Feeling sick. Timelessness. Absolute worry. There is a reason why I call this chapter 1, you didn’t really think I could write about love in one go did you?

What I want to share about this little painting is, I saw these lovers on my kitchen table as a stain back then in 2016, and I wanted to immortalise them before I would forget, with the tree of life that I saw at the back.

A Cosmic Mother, A Cosmic Child

I feel you my little one.

I want to welcome you to the Earth, to this magnificent duality of what we called, Life. It is such a strange land. You know at one point, I realised what the roads meant. The road that is built on top of the soil. A land above a land. A land that has forgotten what its land actually is. So complicated. So messy. So broken. So forgetful.

I see a lot of eyes and feel a lot of beating hearts every day. If only you knew how much we fear our own selves. How much we hide.

Forgetfulness becomes vengeful. It makes me so sad. No one wants to cry. Held tears turn into battlefields. Held tears turn into strangers who cannot share the Earth with one another. Swallowed pain turns into blood. Forgotten memory becomes. Well. Destruction of everything we really ever loved.

Entering Folk

So… Folk huh? Oh God Berfin. What a topic you just chose. Good luck.

Well, a very important step into this realm of folk is for me to begin with sharing, that I cannot ever tell you anything that is a scientific, factual explanation. Although I can, I mean, there is Google. It just won’t ever be in my own words. So here, in my realm, try not to take anything in their legitimacy, but more so, the meanings through the lens of my own experience.

Folk is what I secretly grew up with my entire life. It was hidden in plain sight all along. All. Along. Fairytales, music, the kind of art which drew me in, the storytelling of the human tongue, passing down generations beyond our comprehension, myths, Greek Gods, a way of travelling without necessarily travelling, ancient in present moment, somewhere all parts of the Earth can merge.

I am lost in my dream of the Bridge.

The Bridge which binds us all, a bridge where we can all meet.

This is not to say the usual “we are all one” thing. We know deep down that we are. This is more, “we are all so different, but there is a place we can all meet, and we shall, if we let our feet guide the way, the feet which touch upon the Earth and listen to the heartbeat in every single macro and micro organism. So we shall meet in the place where we can all walk to.” And that, is the Bridge. Bridge which is human made, but a bridge nonetheless that cannot be in existence without the Earth. What an incredibly powerful thing this is.

Now, I tie that to the bridge, that is, music.

Visibility

“My heart aches at the thought of their pain. I feel so helpless for what I wish I could do for them but knowing I am in a mortal body, like they are. I cannot be the saviour for all, when I also suffer from what I receive. Do you recognise the duality here? To be aware of another’s pain, and to be aware of one’s own. This is not an easy thing to grasp, or to accept. But this is our life. We are always learning about grace, holding the front line all the while keeping the heart open.”

Introductions introductions

I always wondered,

How would I begin expressing my world to you, my reader, my curious wanderer.

Firstly, I think I want to thank you for being curious. I am curious too. 

When I start being without hesitating, when I am shamelessly me,

then where do I go?

and as importantly, 

where do I take you with me?

Burnt Eucalyptus

I felt the flames as I walked through the mountain nature of Goís, all after the wildfires in August, 2018. There was this melancholic beauty in the way they stood, each one fallen star, bent yet remaining. They reminded me of the painting Monet did, of one serene tree, bent against the wind, yet ever so protected, ever so unwilling to fall. I guess I related to them, still breathing, slightly broken, burnt up. Do not fear the broken, as they carry the ageless phoenix; in times of need, shed a tear.