MY LIFE AND THOUGHTS

Another photo essay from last term’s nonfiction class at Koc… this one is an ironic commentary on the form! The author is Jasmin Baruh, a senior majoring in Business Administration.

THE GREATEST NIGHT

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Dear readers, hello! I am back in Istanbul, as a direct result of having spent several hours 30,000 feet in the air seated next to a grown man who watched the ENTIRE SMURF MOVIE from beginning to end. And when I got back to Koç, there was a dead bird on my doorstep! Truly, there is no place like home.

I am very happy to share with you today another installment of student writing from my Koç nonfiction class: “The Deep,” a photo essay by sophomore literature major Simay Yaylalı, complete with original emoticons.

THE DEEP

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Big thanks to everyone who came out to the panel at the Center for Fiction last Friday! It was wonderful to attach so many cute faces to colorful names. I learned so very much from my fabulous co-panelists, particularly the amazing and lovely Rivka Galchen, that I now watch the video every night before I go to sleep.

In other news, I’ve been meaning for a while to share some writing from the nonfiction writing class I  taught last term at Koç University. I’m so proud of my students (all of whom are native Turkish speakers writing in English)! Today I have for you “The Calendar of the Old Button Collector,” by Naz Cuguoğlu, a senior majoring in psychology.

The assignment was to write about an old photo, in the style of Geoff Dyer’s “On the Roof” (from Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, which I was really happy to announce the other night as a 2011 NBCC Finalist!). Here are Naz’s photo and essay.

THE CALENDAR OF THE OLD BUTTON COLLECTOR

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Tonight, reading the final papers from my nonfiction class, I was saddened to discover that one student had not abandoned the habit, which I had critiqued in the past, of using smiley faces in her work. I crossed them out, explaining (again) that powerful writing should generate emotion without emoticons.

Slashing through the third beaming little face, I had a terrible flashback to a moment from my own youth, when an English teacher told me not to use so many exclamation points, because vigorous writing generates energy through language and not punctuation.

I didn’t listen to this teacher. Today I use exclamation points all the time! I don’t think they’re a crutch, so much as another tool in the box. Now I begin to wonder: is that how the next generation will view emoticons? Is one generation’s crutch the next generation’s useful, crutch-shaped mallet?? Have I become an obstruction in the path of literary progress??? Am I now the monster????

In honor of New Year’s and its resolutions, and also in honor of flu season, I’d like to share with you an inspirational/ berating extract from the Discourses and Selected Writings of Epictetus, who is truly the Vince Lombardi of Hellenistic philosophy.

From Discourse 16 (”On Providence”)

…You eagerly travel to Olympia to see the work of Phidias, and all of you account it a shame to die never having seen the sight. [24] But when there is no need even to travel, when you are already there because Zeus is present everywhere in his works, don’t you want to look at and try to understand them? [25] Will you never come to a realization of who you are, what you have been born for and the purpose for which the gift of vision was made in our case?

[26] ‘But difficult and disagreeable things happen in life.’ Well, aren’t difficulties found at Olympia? Don’t you get hot? And crowded? Isn’t bathing a problem? Don’t you get soaked through in your seats when it rains? Don’t you finally get sick of the noise, the shouting and the other irritations? [27] I can only suppose that you weigh all those negatives against the worth of the show, and choose, in the end, to be patient and put up with it all. [28] Furthermore, you have inner strengths that enable you to bear up with difficulties of every kind. You have been given fortitude, courage and patience. [29] Why should I worry about what happens if I am armed with the virtue of fortitude? Nothing can trouble or upset me, or even seem annoying. Instead of meeting misfortune with groans and tears, I will call upon the faculty especially provided to deal with it.

[30] ‘But my nose is running!’ What do you have hands for, idiot, if not to wipe it? [31] ‘But how is it right that there be running noses in the first place?’ [32] Instead of thinking up protests, wouldn’t it be easier just to wipe your nose?

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Master of the art of happiness

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Happy 2012 to my equanimous readers!