I Remember A Time When It Was

In A Normal Democracy, You Protect The Individual From The Excessive Power Of The State. In Turkey, Power Elites Try To Protect The State - As If This State Were Fragile And Needed Protection - When In Fact, It's Too Powerful Already.

We're Born Into A Certain Family, Nation, Class. But If We Have No Connection Whatsoever With The Worlds Beyond The One We Take For Granted, Then We Too Run The Risk Of Drying Up Inside. Our Imagination Might Shrink; Our Hearts Might Dwindle, And Our Humanness Might Wither If We Stay For Too Long Inside Our Cultural Cocoons. Our Friends, Neighbors, Colleagues, Family - If All The People In Our Inner Circle Resemble Us, It Means We Are Surrounded With Our Mirror Image.

Ways Of Loving From A Distance, Mating Without Even Touching-amor Platonicus! The Ladder Of Love One Is Expected To Climb Higher And Higher, Elating The Self And The Other. Plato Clearly Regards Any Actual Physical Contact As Corrupt And Ignoble Because He Thinks The True Goal Of Eros Is Beauty. Is There No Beauty In Sex? Not According To Plato. He Is After `more Sublime Pursuits.' But If You Ask Me, I Think Plato's Problem, Like Those Of Many Others, Was That He Never Got Splendidly Laid.

Perhaps This Is Why Lunatics Have A Harder Time Dating, Not Because They Are Off The Wall But Because It Is Hard To Find Soemone Who Is Willing To Date So Many People In One Person.

Stories Cannot Demolish Frontiers, But They Can Punch Holes In Our Mental Walls, And Through Those Holes We Can Get A Glimpse Of The Other And Sometimes Even Like What We See.