from: Dumrul
title: What does an unforgettable look remind?
form: e-mail letter

Uh oh! Your want of mirrors will cost us to take another and an extra trip to the past. While we attempt to hold a mirror to you, we shall hold it to ourselves, however unintentionally.
As far as I know you, I believe you have not planned it in a mischievous way. I believe you’ve developed the idea in a theoretical way, with good faith. Only.
What I remember first of you is my very first impression of you: “A good family boy, acting with good faith, and is talented. But he is likeable.”
Then the conversations we had at Karşıyaka ferryboat. I liked them.
At that time you had something that didn’t fit the role you wrote for yourself, something that made the way you played that role likeable and respectful... Something left over, something excessive...
But what was it??? The unasked question of our first meeting....
Then came the September 12 coup d’etat, everybody ran away, forgetting...
Years later, a man called me by my name at a concert... He has long hair and beard, looking stranger, but I know those eyes.
I can’t have forgotten such a look knowing me. I should not have. That unforgettable look which I somehow managed to forget... That look which will be forgotten nevermore in your mirror I keep. Well, why did I forget it then?
Weren’t you looking that way when we first met?
You were, I think, otherwise my encounter with that look would not have been a reminiscence.
Or perhaps...you were not looking this way so much at that time.
Perhaps I didn’t know how to look and see at that time...
Whatever. That ‘excess’ look which I did not name before the September 12 coup d’etat exploded.
Just like those blue things exploding in video clips now...
Unasked question of our second meeting: Given that I forgot you, and that it never occurred to me to search and find you, why it was so exciting and happy to meet you again?
It was about 12 – 15 years ago, and now, the question I ask with the opportunity of this mirror thing:
Every time I meet you
–even if I still do not call you–
why do I feel something ‘beyond’ the uniform pleasure of meeting an old acquaintance? God knows you would utter some words like the ‘ambition to create’ right at this point and drive me mad.
Your affection for creation has not much changed since the days of the Karşıyaka ferryboat, has it?
You are an incurable TYPE*!!!
As proven with the fact that you can even make me create!!!
However, what always draws my attention in you is that ‘excess’ look you always carry, shining in your eyes every now and then.
It is not a compliment going like “You have a plenty of something, boy”.
That ‘excess’ you were imprisoned to, you confined in, you didn’t confide in, which you asked to the mirrors, whose marks you chased.
In your own words, the thing ‘that makes creation genuine”.
The thing that will be completed-full nevermore.
A belief in the possible existence of another world, an unrealistic belief –as contrary to what we thought in the past– giving pain and pleasure.
“Another world is possible”.
If the theory cannot bear that belief anymore, the marks will remain.
A look carrying that ‘excess’, a mark, a reflection...
a witness of what cannot be a speech.
I kiss your eyes.

*The word TİP in the original text, meaning "type" in Turkish, also stands for Türkiye İşçi Partisi / Labour Party of Turkey which was closed after the 12th September 1980 coup.