Friday, August 29, 2025

DANGERS OF NEED ACHIEVEMENT

 


PUNISHMENT OF ACHIEVEMENT


not everyone

can

or should

escape mediocrity

just lay back

and feel the breeze

on your face

and 

let it carry your words

away

as far away

as possible


The only incentive in any political idological system depends on the recognition of loopholes and the ability to utilize them for furthering one’s power and/or wealth. However, one needs to stay in the background and not flaunt any achievements, if possible, frequently discarding aces and kings with a vacant, shamed face.

As far as my almost eighty years of experience tells, there is no system that rewards intelligence, ability and hard work after a certain point in a political, academic, legal or business hierarchy. In fact, it becomes a requirement that you have to use your intelligence, ability, hard work and expertise to hang on to what you have achieved instead of attempting for new achievements.

This is true in communism, capitalism, theocracy, idiocracy, tribalism and even home economics.


too many 

chiefs

and

spouses

made the mistake

to never be heard again

in great edifices

or tiny igloos


ahmet cafer celebiler

August 29, 2025



Monday, August 25, 2025

FAMILIES COMMUNITIES TRIBES

 


GROUPS CLASSES GATHERINGS


social sciences 

all imagined

pictured

sent 

to 

soft matter

covered by layer upon layer

of other matter

and bones 

and 

multiple networks


also 

hair

to protect

surfaces

despite

endangered holes

and ramparts 

breachable

and

contents

not esoteric


just

a receptacle

for

 data 

trickled through sieves 

nets

slabs

atmospheric oddities


stirred

shuffled

by events

feelings 

and thoughts

alien

to the species

sporadic

mistaken

misshaped

and

wishing

they were surreal


super beings

with no evidence

or rationale

to leave 

accompanying

fireflies

and weevils


and

dust

and sand

and

stars

so 

far away

yet close


ahmet cafer celebiler

August 25, 2025


Sunday, August 24, 2025

MY FIRST BATTLESHIP

 



USS MISSOURI (BB-63) arrived in Istanbul 5-9 April, 1946

Gunboat Diplomacy: Turkey, USA and the Advent of the Cold War 


This visit was not to welcome me to the world. It was almost two years after my arrival. 

But, it was the beginning of political and military activity which dominated the first  thirty years of my educational and social life. 


ahmet celebiler

August 24, 2025





Sunday, August 17, 2025

TYPHOONS HURRICANES AND TUFANS (TAI FUNG)

 


FOLLOW THE REVERSED HIEROPHANT


odes 

written

to the

west wind

and stories

of

the bona fide

and all other

tufans

whirl

in

succession

and

unapprehended aspiration

carrying furies

to torment

a prometheus

ancient and modern

and others

bound by visible

and unvisible

life lines 

to rocks

and to each other

some

under jupiters throne

others 

trodden 

under his feet


and


other appendages

twisted 

with whirlwinds

arthritic

sent to bind humanity

to rocks 

to beliefs

to authority


the demigorgon

paying  a long

uninterrupted

visit

to the surface

since the advent of the primordial black hole


ahmet cafer celebiler

August 17, 2025

references :  "Prometheus Unbound" , "Ode to the West Wind





Friday, August 8, 2025

AN ADMISSION

 


GUILTY UNTIL A MAJORITY OF READERS FIND ME INNOCENT


i have been plagiarizing from my other blog, "www.otherchelebistravels.blogspot.com", but founf out that access has been denied to it, for some reason. yet other international readers have been accessing it.

In any case, some of these trips are also on my Fodor's trip reports which my children and grandchildren would never find interesting because reading and those subjects are not popular in their world.

I hope that you find this occasional divergence from my regular topics fun and/or esoteric. And if you do or do not, please let me know so I can believe that you are not an AI active in all those countries.


Ahmet celebiler

otherchelebi

August 8, 2025

PEDANTIC ADVICE

 


NO SAGE OR GURU

BUT BITING TONGUE

AND WRITING HAND

WHILE THROWING KERNELS

TO THE HUNGRY



It means that you have spent time thinking of your ambitions, capabilities, quirks of character and all and more similar stuff like these for yourself andall people you interact with including fictional characters, family, friends, politicians, the rich and the famous and the poor and destitute.

You also consider other creatures as lives worthy of evaluation, and nature and art and beauty, wit and quirkiness you can discover as worthy of more thought and feeling.

The above , and more will give you a multitude of view points. You do not pick a single one or just a few as your very own. Accept them all as part of your life and that of all else, recognize them without making value judgements.

Pick some or most to use to write to talk, to utilize in your relationships, careers, hobbies, without ignoring, detesting, fighting, ridiculing any others.

If you have passed this on before you die, you should have a happy, satisfied departure from life.


ahmet cafer celebiler

August 8, 2025

Thursday, August 7, 2025

SOME MORE UNFINISHED BUSINESS

 

BLACK SEA TRIP CONTINUED 2



Western black Sea Part II Pinarbasi

A full stomach and the use of the facilities after a few compulsory/complementary cups of tea, prepared us for the short drive towards Pinarbasi, where we had reserved by phone, after discovering a quaint village mansion on the net for 30TL each B&B.

Ulus small town was a nice surprise. I guess all the places we visit are nice surprises, but this time we hit the market day. We took photos of women walking one way with empty bags, but forgot to photograph others coming back with full ones. Trying to park the car, we discovered a very nice modern building and found out that it was the public library. Went in, introduced ourselves to the director and his wife, both with degrees in librarianship, chatted for half hour or so, met the kindergarten and elementary school kids using the reading rooms, and were disappointed that there were no youth or adults.

The roads so far and from Ulus to Pinarbasi were fine. Eser’s carpal tunnel and tennis elbow which she has nurtured since we started driving in the countryside from clutching the armrests and door handles of the car with fear did not get a boost. Neither was she given a chance to fall asleep because of the curves.

We knew we were either in or skirting the Kure National Park. She wanted to take some side roads towards a few hills which I refused to call mountains. I argued that the hills were too insignificant to belong in a Nature Park. And, I was the driver at the time.

Came to Pinarbasi, another nice small town, parked in the town square to find a spare charger for my mobile phone which Eser had forgotten to pack J. And we met the Mayor’s cousin who sort of half ran, half rolled towards us, asking if he could help and telling us that he had a barbers shop if we needed a hair cut. He took us to a shop which he said would have the charger for sure. Fortunately the shopkeeper could give us directions for the only other shop of the type at the other end of the square.

However, the mayor’s cousin was good for a topic of conversation on later days, when we wanted to get away from stronger feelings between husband and wife. He also gave us the correct directions to Pasa Konagi, our B&B, “Straight down that road for 300 meters).


This is where I paste my Pasa Konagi Review:



Pasa Konagi is a quaint 100-200 year old wooden village mansion renovated to operate as an eight room hotel, in the small town of Pinarbasi, in Kastamonu province. The rooms are upstairs, around a large central space which can be used for meetings. Downstairs, there is again a large central room and also large kitchen and dining room. As in traditional Anatolian homes, you have to remove your shoes before you can go up to the second floor. (And as in traditional Anatolian living, we left our shoes there and always found them as they were, in the morning, possibly because ours were the worst looking ones.)

There is a nice garden on the back with a small waterfall on its borders, and picnic seating and children’s playground.. I believe that they serve the breakfast outside when weather permits. When we were there in April, we had to keep the wood-burning stove going in our bedroom all night long. It was fun in a way, but either because of inexperience, or because it’s the way of these stoves, every time I added logs, it would get very hot, I would take most of my clothes off, my wife would look at me suspiciously, and after an hour, I would wake up feeling cold and put some clothes on. At that stage, my wife would also wake up, look at me in a different way and curl up under double blankets, with another sigh. A further hour down, the freeze would start setting, and I would have to get up to rekindle the stove and put more logs in, and my wife would wake up again and seeing me with the logs, start eyeing the door. (She never told me what went on in her mind that night. I think we will go back again just so that I can find out.)

The price was 30TL per person including a sumptuous breakfast. Ahmet Bey, the manager, was also the cook, and would give us dinner alternatives and prepare what was requested.
The salad, the rice, and the Turkish pot dishes would be in bowls and pots and you would go and get as much as you liked, and he would toast bread and barbecue sucuk (Turkish pepperoni like spicy sausages), etc.

The major sights of Ilica waterfalls/Horla Canyon, the Valla Canyon and the three caves are not very close. So it is possible that he would prepare a picnic lunch for those who requested it.

Another quaint feature of the rooms is that the bathroom and tiny showers are in closets. (Maybe that is why the acronym WC was coined.). As if that was not enough, in some of the rooms, the only way you can access the facilities is by climbing a divan and stepping down again after opening the small door. Unfortunately the shower has no curtain and is in a tight space together with the toilet or the sink.

In spite of the stove and the bathroom facilities we enjoyed ourselves tremendously. We made friends with the large extended family (who almost thought that this was the family long house) and a young couple.
. The young husband was a psychiatrist and tried to prescribe certain medicines to me and to my wife, after I mistakenly mentioned the troubled sleep of the previous night.

NOT DUE TO SENILITY BUT TO COMPLETE SOME UNFINISHED BUSINESS

 

BLACK SEA TRIP CONTINUED 1


The kid on the slide is my wife Eser. She has the ability to be any age at any time she wishes, thus making her the perfect team member on travels for sharing everything you see, experience and feel.

The location is 'Saklibahce Restaurant' about 15 kilometers out of Bartin, on the way to Ulus and Kastamonu. One of the best kebaps we had anywhere.



Below:


This shop window in Bartin gave us the idea of finding similar shops at all the small towns we visited on this trip to compose a portfolio to send to our daughter in Chicago, for her upcoming wedding in Fall 2009.

 Knowing us well, she was not upset when she discovered what we were doing, although she had some difficulty explaining to her fiancee, why we were doing this, and why it was funny. Now that he knows us better, he laughs also at jokes like this. Whether he actually appreciates them is another point.





 


Monday, August 4, 2025

CRITICISMS ARE BLATANT ACCUSATIONS

 



    J'ACCUSE


it is instinctual

to find fault

to find inadequate


and 


to deny

to find an excuse

or three

for powerless 

children

students

employees

citizens

spouses

immigrants

legal or not

political

contractual

even nuptial

servants 

all slaves 

voluntary

and involuntary


the powerless 

real 

and misperceived

have a personal lawyer

sitting on one shoulder

whispering

never admit

never accept  blame

or  criticism

no matter the subject

or object

and


lo

a new thesaurus

becomes available

of endless excuses

rational or irrational

related or disparate

till the critic bows

in shame and defeat

of sorts

to avoid a kerfuffle


time lines change

history becomes confusion

memory fragments get lost

tastes and views reposition

tradition is traded

learning is unlearned

not replaced

but

misplaced

a sign

of senescenc

for one

and 

idiocracy for the culture

and all its subcultures


ahmet cafer celebiler

August 5. 2025


Sunday, August 3, 2025

REGRETS, FORGETS AND MINISCULE EXPECTATIONS

 



ENTRENCHED VERSES VERSUS FLEETING GESTURES


restlessness of unsaturated love

a phrase

meaningless 

except to a twenty year old

concocted 

in 1963

carried to now

to sell

self

and other

unquotable thoughts

and

emotions


for acceptance

of intellect

and achievements

unfamiliar

not at all attractive

as sign of ability

not worthy of surpise


some resentment value

discardable 

overused instinctual 

faded glamour

an expression 

on a third century statue

from a long deserted

necropolis


So shall one become

at a later age

not statuesque 

no smile

 a grimace

as evidence

of 

 later ages

when possible


ahmet cafer celebiler

August 3, 2025