The Banshees of Inisherin & Midnights

 

Friday evening, lying on the couch struck by my period cramps, I ended up watching Directors on Directors: Taylor Swift & Martin McDonagh. My initial plan was to watch Martin McDonagh’s short film Six Shooter, which was recommended by a friend the night before while we were discussing Martin McDonagh’s work. My YouTube search for Six Shooter also brought me the Directors on Directors episode with Taylor Swift and Martin McDonagh.

At a first glance, it looked like an odd pairing: a 53-year-old playwright turned into a filmmaker known for his tragicomedies and a 33-year-old ex-teenage-country-singer turned into an incomparable popular artist. Plus, neither makes me think of a “director” first, since the former’s writer identity and the latter’s popstar identity are more prominent.

Upon a deeper glance, I was completely on board for this pairing: the writer/director of the movie that I have revisited the most and the artist of the album that I have listened the most so far in 2023.

 

I must admit that Martin McDonagh was not a filmmaker in my radar before I watched The Banshees of Inisherin earlier this year. I missed In Bruges when it came out, put it in my “to-watch” list, but it fell through the cracks. I watched Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri on a plane, thought it was one of the more interesting movies of that season, but didn’t think much about it afterward.

I was on the road till mid-January this year. When I came back to Copenhagen, The Banshees of Inisherin (will call it The Banshees for short from now on) was one of the films widely shown in cinemas. I found the trailer interesting. Sister in Movies wasn’t so interested in watching it at the time, so I made plans to watch it by myself after the first lecture of the new semester. Despite the big audience that day for the film, I was somehow the only one in the last row of Grand Teatret’s big room. After the film ended, I left Grand thinking “I am glad I lived to see this gem.”

I love watching things that are very funny and very sad at the same time, e.g., Nanette, Fleabag, Russian Doll ... It is very hard to strike a balance in that tone, but when it is done well, the end product gives you a lot to reflect on if you wish to. If you don’t, you can just take in the funny parts and run away with them or you can complain about how sad and depressing what you just watched was. The Banshees masters this tone in my opinion.

The film also has multiple stories well-juxtaposed. There is the personal story as we watch the interactions of the town people, the historical story with Irish civil war going on in the background, and the fable story with the several animals having almost three-dimensional characters and the banshee figure. You can take all the stories in or just follow one based on what you prefer. Either way, the film’s value doesn’t diminish.

When it comes to the personal layer, it is also rare to be able to relate to multiple characters in a film even while watching it for the first time. In the case of The Banshees, without major spoilers, I could feel Colm’s despair and self-destructiveness, Pádraic’s grief over being dumped by his best friend in a drastic manner, Siobhán’s need to leave, and whatever Dominic feels when he says, “there goes that dream.”

I finally watched In Bruges three days after I watched The Banshees and loved it as well. People are keen on comparing the two since both has the same main actors and are written and directed by the same person. The consensus among the people who are old-time fans of In Bruges seems to be that The Banshees isn’t as good as In Bruges. I disagree, but I also think that the comparison is unnecessary. I am glad that I didn’t have to bring any In Bruges baggage to my viewing of The Banshees.

 

I must also admit that I have never been a Swiftie.

Shortly after I moved to Bay Area in 2015, I volunteered to visit a primary school together with my then manager Guy Lohmann to promote Computer Science among the students. At that time, Guy was at IBM for 30 years, and I was there for 3 months. We were our own odd pairing. In my presentation to the students, I had a picture of my one-year-old self in front of a computer with a date on top of the picture. One of the male students in the classroom reacted to this picture by saying “Wow! You are the same age as Taylor Swift.” Technically, I am one year older than her, but this is not the point of this story. That was the first time I had to acknowledge the real-world impact of Taylor Swift.

Since then, I didn’t keep up with Taylor Swift much beyond the occasional songs I got exposed to by the popular culture, until Fall 2021. Taylor Swift was the musical guest in a Saturday Night Live (SNL) episode around mid-November 2021. She played All Too Well for 10mins, which was unusual for SNL. It was the first time I heard that song. I thought it was a very beautiful breakup song and form of storytelling. Then, I got into the wormhole of the internet to read about what she has been up to. I learned that she started directing her own videos (“Respect!”) and re-recorded her old albums to assert ownership of her own work over her old record company (“You go girl!”).

In those days, I had my own struggle with asserting ownership for my work and funding resources. My struggle ended with me losing part of my work and resources. I felt devastated by it, since I still don’t feel that I am at a stage in my career where I can spare any resources or work. I blamed myself for not asserting things earlier with a higher level of self-confidence.

While I found Taylor Swift’s battle inspiring, I am also old enough to know that some battles aren’t worth it. If I had entered a battle, and that would have been more natural for my overall stubborn self, I could have lost it all. I needed my energy to maintain the remaining parts of my work and resources in the long run.

Nevertheless, I decided to follow Taylor Swift’s work beyond just random exposures. She released a new album, Midnights, last fall. I gave it a proper listen at the end of this January. Then, I couldn’t let it go. I tried her previous albums as well, but none of them stuck except for a few songs here and there. I wrote to Academic Sister, whom I usually go to punk concerts with, how much I loved listening to Midnights and questioned “maybe something is wrong with me.” She replied “No, you are just open to mainstream music.”

Midnights is an album that highlights becoming more self-aware, which to me is the best part of getting older. I think that is why I love listening to it so much.

 

I had a lovely Friday evening watching the conversation between Taylor Swift and Martin McDonagh. It was a genuine, constructive, and inspiring conversation between two accomplished people whom most people wouldn’t imagine in the same room. Whoever thought of this pairing, I appreciate it.

  

Rejections

I have recently received two paper rejections within a 10-day period.

Academics are among the people who face frequent rejections in their lives. We also reject other people’s work quite often. Thus, one might say, it is karma.

I wish I could tell my students things like “You will get used to having your work rejected by others”, “It gets better over time as you get more and more rejections.” But that would make me a hypocrite, so I instead tell them a version of “It comes with the job.”

In fact, since I became a professor, rejections became harder to face. When I was a PhD student or at IBM Research, they didn’t upset me much.

During the first year of my PhD, I had to change advisors twice [1]. When I joined Natassa’s group, my main anxiety was about possibly getting fired again [2]. After a while, it became clear to me that Natassa had no intention to fire me, and my lab-mates valued having me around. Whenever I received a paper rejection, it wasn’t a big deal. At the end of the day, it wasn’t as big of a rejection as getting fired. I still had my nice job, could pay my rent, and could keep my residence permit. Those were the important things. At IBM, this attitude just persisted.

So why now, as a tenured professor, as privileged as one can get about job security in this world, I feel the impact of a paper rejection more? Did I get spoiled?

 

The main reason I love being an academic is the interaction with the students. That interaction isn’t always perfect and has its ups and downs just like any other human interaction in life. But it is a good enough reason for me to wake up in the morning and want to go to work.

The most fulfilling and impactful interaction you have with a student is when you are that student’s PhD advisor. In Denmark, it is uncommon for a professor to have dedicated PhD funding from the university funds. Therefore, you depend on external funding for PhD students. It took me roughly three years, and several grant rejections, to get such funding. I started noticing signs of me getting bitter as I was approaching that third year, which scared me. I never want to become bitter. I understand that that possibility comes with being human as well, but hopefully for only short periods of time, not long-term.

Now I have two PhD students and am expecting to hire a third one this year. PhD students are a must-have in my research field and are wonderful to have. They erase all the bitterness. They help you do independent research. They keep you in an actively-learning state. They force you to evolve and mature. Plus, you can take them to amusement parks.

My primary anxiety now is going back to the days where I had no PhD students as a professor. To prevent that I need my future grant applications to be accepted, which very likely depends on me maintaining a good publication record.

My secondary anxiety is, even if I am tenured, I would like to have options. Even though I am happy where I am now, I may want to switch to a different university or move to a different country again either for professional or personal reasons. Without a good publication record, I won’t have options.

 

In computer systems research, it takes time to create a decent conference paper submission, because of the time it takes to implement systems, run non-trivial experiments, and interpret the experimental results thoroughly. With each paper rejection, you are likely asked to do more experiments, which lengthens the time further. The PhD duration in Denmark being only three years doesn’t help with that.

Furthermore, I ended up slightly changing my field of research. From my perspective, things haven’t changed drastically. I still work on data-intensive systems on modern hardware. However, from the perspective of my research community, I am somewhat an exile now since the data-intensive systems I focus on these days are machine learning systems and not database systems. The kind of papers I write aren’t considered a good fit for the database community, which is the community I feel belonging to. Even though I love the systems community and have always been adjacent to it, I am not as familiar with submitting papers to their venues and being part of their conferences.

These two challenges combined with my work anxieties make me now more worried than I used to be when I receive paper rejections.

 

Which brings me to dealing with work-related rejections.

I know these challenges and anxieties sound like first-world problems in a world where many people don’t have the basic job security and horrible things happen every day, but I am trying to ensure the best life I can for myself, just like everyone else.

Last Sunday, around early evening, I first received some back-to-back bad news about two close family members, who have been battling with cancer the past year. In short, their conditions weren’t getting better. About an hour later, I received the email for the second paper rejection, the second of the two rejections I mentioned at the beginning of this post. The paper rejection of course wasn’t important in contrast to the news about my family members. However, it still felt like the final blow of the day given the state I was in.

In Greta Gerwig’s Ladybird, there is a scene, where the character Kyle belittles Ladybird’s sadness by comparing it to the Iraq War. In return, Ladybird yells “SHUT UP. SHUT UP. Different things can be sad. It's not all war.”

A paper or grant rejection, even though relatively unimportant compared to many other sources of sadness and grief in life, can be a source of sadness. There is significant amount of time and hard work put into any piece of rejected work, which comes as a result of many compromises in life. In addition, for a researcher, this work is very likely something you are passionate and opinionated about, so someone not finding the work as exciting and important as you do naturally hurts as well.

The easiest way to get over any rejection is to let yourself feel the emotions that comes with it without feeling shame for them and belittling them, but also realizing that those emotions are not here to stay. They will go away, because there is a relatively easy solution for a paper/grant rejection, unlike a solution to cancer, war, earthquakes, etc.  Just pick the next venue/call to resubmit to and list the changes to be done till then based on the parts of the reviewers’ feedback that you find constructive. Also, remember that statistically speaking (which means nothing coming out of my mouth, since I don’t know statistics well), it is normal to get more rejections than acceptances, since once something gets accepted, the counting ends for that thing.

What you do to feel and get over the emotions stirred up by the rejection is up to you, as long as you don’t act on them in a way that harms another person. Everyone is different. People used to tell me to go out and drink after a rejection, but I don’t find that useful for myself. My happy places are cinemas and the beach. I try to hit at least one of them. When I got the email for my second big grant rejection, I wrote the people at work that I wouldn’t come to work the next day. I went to the cinema that evening (the movie was X-Men: Dark Phoenix). After the movie, I ran into two colleagues, one of whom also had a grant rejection email that day. Their approach was to hang out and drink together to acknowledge the rejection. I joined them for one beer before going back home. The next day, I went to the beach. It was June and warm enough to swim for me [3]. This was time very well spent overall. After the beach, I was ready for my resubmission plan. Following last Sunday, this Monday, I took a walk to the beach and spent some time there, this time no swimming due to cold weather. The picture at the top is from that walk. Fingers crossed for the resubmissions.

 

 

[1] PhD Defense – Part 2: The Public One – Or from Amazonian Queen to Idiot to Humility and Fierceness

[2] Back then, when I talked about this experience, some people very opinionatedly objected to me saying “You weren’t fired. You were just on a trial period at that lab, and you simply weren’t accepted into the lab after the trial period. It is wrong of you to use the word ‘fired’.” Some others, including one from the corresponding lab, used the word ‘fired’. For me it was like being fired. Whatever you wish to call it, it was a big form of rejection either way.

To be clear, it was the right decision both for me and for the lab. I wasn’t a good fit there and that lab wasn’t a good fit for me. I have a lot of respect for my advisor and several of my lab mates from that time. I can neither deny the technical skills I learned there and the positive long-term impact of that “firing/unacceptance” decision in my career, since that is how I ended up with Natassa, nor undermine the damage of having such a big rejection that early in my career and that early in a foreign land on me in addition to certain unconstructive attitudes I received in that environment. This topic is not black & white. This is why, it comes up in several blog posts from different angles and in my conversations with people about the PhD experience.

[3] In Denmark, some people swim all year long, but I prefer some calm time at the beach after swimming.

 

Earthquake

 

I know many people have already written about this on various forums, but there is need for tremendous help in the regions impacted by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. This has been the most awful natural disaster in Turkey at least in my lifetime. The death toll is nearing 20000, and the people who survived the earthquake in the region have to face the aftermath under terrible weather conditions, the worst/coldest part of winter in a year. If you wish to help, here are some of the places you can donate to.

AFAD is the official disaster and emergency management office in Turkey. They have information about the accounts where you can donate in TRY, EUR, USD on their website.

AKUT is a voluntary organization that assists search and rescue missions. They are also transparent about how they spend the donations. The info for the accounts where you can donate in TRY, EUR, USD is on their website. They also allow donations using credit card, which could be more convenient for people living abroad.

AHBAP is another trustworthy voluntary organization that has been very active in the regions impacted by the earthquake. Similar to AKUT, they have account numbers where you can do a bank transfer in TRY, EUR, and USD in addition to the option of donating using a credit card.

 

 

When I woke up on Monday morning, after I wrote my usual “good morning” message on the WhatsApp group chat I share with my parents, I noticed another message from a friend in Denmark asking “Hey, is your family alright?” Since my parents replied to my “good morning” message, I at least was certain that they were alive. I continued my morning routine and arrived at work. I wrote to my parents again.

Me: Has there been another explosion in Istanbul?

Dad: No.

Me: Has there been a bad impact due to the heavy snowfall?

Dad: No.

Me: A friend asked if you are alright. Did something happen?

Dad: There has been an earthquake. There is a lot of damage.

Mom: Many people died.

I decided to check the news. I normally avoid checking the news at work to prevent distractions. I sometimes check Danish news while taking a break because they tend to be so boring that they make me want to get back to work. For Turkish news, I wait till I get back home from work, since they tend to make me either sad or angry or both.

When I checked the news, I realized the gravity of the situation. I froze in front of my monitor for a moment and then started crying. I wrote to my parents again. My mom informed us of some of the losses of close family friends. I wrote to a bunch of friends to see if their loved ones are doing alright. I received some more messages from people asking if my loved ones are doing alright.

 

Turkey is an earthquake region. My hometown in Turkey, Zonguldak, isn’t harshly impacted by the earthquakes. But I witnessed mild earthquakes in the past, and I am, like any Turkish person, unfortunately used to hearing earthquake news and losses.

The previous earthquake that was closest to the scale of this one in Turkey was the one on August 17, 1999. I was in primary school back then, still living in my hometown. It was at night. I suddenly woke up. I saw a white light fill the sky followed by complete darkness. I got scared. Something was not right. I don’t remember the feeling of being shaken, but maybe that is why I woke up in the first place. The darkness was due to all the lights being gone as a result of the earthquake. I sat in my bed for a bit. Then, I got up and walked toward my parents’ bedroom trying to see if they were up. They were sleeping. I walked a bit more in the house still scared eventually waking up my parents to my noise. My dad asked, “what’s up?”. I told him “I need to pee, but something is wrong, it is too dark.” He said, "Turn the lights on." I said, "There is NO lights, neither at home nor outside." Then, my parents told me not to worry. I wasn’t a kid with smooth sleeping behavior, so for them me being awake at night wasn’t that alarming. I eventually went back to bed but couldn’t sleep. After a while, we heard a knock on our door. It was one of the neighbors. He informed us of the earthquake news. He was very nervous while delivering the news, because he knew my mom’s family lived in Istanbul and Istanbul was one of the cities with the most damage. We tried reaching out to my grandparents and my mom’s siblings. We couldn’t for a long time. The phone lines were down. We eventually learned that everyone in the family was ok, but overall Turkey wasn’t ok.

The year following this earthquake, we witnessed several milder ones. I remember one on a day I was hanging out at my mom’s office after school. She was having a phone call with someone. The guy said, “We are having an earthquake.” Mom said “Again!?” A few seconds later mom’s office started shaking. It stopped after a while, we weren’t hurt. I remember another one when we were at the movies. The screen started shaking. Everyone got outside. After a while, we got back in and finished the movie. I don’t remember what the movie was, but it definitely wasn't worth going back to a movie theater after an earthquake. But for me, movie theaters have always been my safe place, so it made sense to go back. 

 

I am well-aware that I am writing this post from a place of privilege when it comes to earthquakes. This doesn’t mean that it has been an easy week to go through, this has been the biggest natural disaster in my home country in my lifetime. But my challenges in facing this disaster from afar are nothing compared to the ones of the people who are in southeast Turkey and Syria right now. I appreciate everyone who reached out to ask how I am doing. I send my condolences to everyone who got impacted. I am grateful to all the volunteers working in the region. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, there is a lot of work to be done and help needed to reduce the awful impact of this disaster. If you wish to help, please consider donating.

 

Take care all!

My Grandmother / Ananem

 

On December 23, 2022, I lost my last remaining grandparent, my mom’s mom. It was what my mom refers to as “death by the natural order.” My grandmother was almost 90. She lived a full life with all its beauties and terrors. While she lost her usual strength especially in her last year, she was still receptive to her surroundings and senses. She died of natural causes. In a world that we will all die eventually, her kind of death is the kind that I wish for everyone. It is still a loss. There is still grief. But this grief isn’t wrapped up in anger.

 

I wrote about my grandmother before in Girls’ Education in Turkey: Three Generations. In short, the post was about how my grandmother never got to have an education but fought to make sure my mom had one. I felt conflicted about it afterward, because while I want to be true to my family’s story, stories like that tend to cause the western world to romanticize our challenges.

In one of the Danish class reading materials, I remember one-page snippets about immigrants from different origins in Denmark such as Polish, Turkish, etc. In the one about the Turkish, toward the end, there was a sentence that reflected on two different generations of Turkish women in Denmark that said, “The mothers were homemakers, but their daughters work in equal footing to men.” The text talked about a mother, the first-generation immigrant in Denmark, who was a homemaker and her daughter, the second generation, who had great education and achieved economic independence. In a way, it had parallels to my grandmother and mother’s story, and probably to many other women’s stories across similar generations. While I liked the story, I felt uneasy with that ending reflection. It felt like the stereotypical top-down look from Europe to the region that I come from.

When I wrote that blog post back then, my goal was to instead pay respect to my grandmother and her rebellious spirit. I have never viewed my grandmother as someone whose status I should improve upon. In my eyes, she was a Black Sea Amazonian Queen. I admired her generosity when it came to sharing her home with others. I admired her fierceness and stubbornness even when it gave all of us a hard time. I wanted those qualities for myself when I grow up. Maybe my view is also romanticizing, but of a very different kind.

 

For the remainder of this blog post, in no particular order, and hopefully with no romanticization, I want to list some of the joyful things that I will remember my grandmother by.

 

As part of an online questionnaire that I did during college in order to procrastinate on some homework, there was the question “Who would you take with you to a bar fight?” The first person that appeared in my head was my grandmother. My grandmother knew how to defend herself physically and how to use weapons, unlike me, thanks to her upbringing at the east rural Black Sea region, where the houses are far away from each other leaving you on your own if you actually need to defend yourself against an intruder.

 

Everyone in the family was afraid to buy her bread because she found them under-baked most of the time. Every baker in close vicinity to her Istanbul apartment were also afraid to sell her bread for the same reason.

 

I loved to watch her cut up a pumpkin, not for Halloween, but to make pumpkin dessert. Especially when the pumpkin was quite stubborn, the variety of knives she skillfully used to deal with it amazed me.

 

She told everyone that I was a very well-behaved child, except for one instance, where I put her vacuum cleaner into the water puddle I was playing with in the bathroom causing it to suck water.

 

She gave me my potty training. After my parents had been unsuccessfully trying to free me of diapers, one week, they left me with my grandmother, while they were off to a work trip. When they came back, I was a changed toddler no longer in need of diapers thanks to the training of my grandmother. I of course have no memory of this but love the story.

 

Once I offered to cook for her. I was in college and didn’t have high goals in terms of cooking. All I wanted to prepare was a very basic pasta. Still throughout my cooking process, she stood near me in the kitchen to make sure I wouldn’t screw up the pasta and gave me instructions at each step. She did this to everyone who entered her kitchen, so I wasn’t offended. But the next time I wanted to cook for her, I didn’t let her know in advance, and I made sure she was sleeping while I was cooking.

 

During a Skype-call with her and my aunt back when I lived in Lausanne, Twin Sister was sitting next to me. It was the first time my grandmother saw Twin Sister, and before I had a chance to introduce them, my grandmother turned to my aunt, pointed at Twin Sister, and said “Look! What a sweet girl!”

 

One day, I was watching a Jean-Claude Van Damme film on Turkish TV at her house to pass the time, and at one of his heroic scenes, she said “What a good man!”

 

One day, I was watching The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring for the Nth time at home, and my grandmother was sitting next to me. At the scene where Aragorn’s horse saves Aragorn’s life, she said “My mom used to say, ‘I wish I had a horse instead of 9 children.’ How right she was.”

 

She talked to her plants while watering them in loving tones but also let the plants know if she was frustrated with their over-/under-growth.

 

She kept feeding the pigeons that came to her balcony even though she constantly cursed them for pooping in her balcony.

 

I called her every Sunday since I moved abroad, regardless of which continent I was at, unless I mixed up the time due to time zone differences or I was on a flight on Sunday.

 

Today is Sunday. It feels like the right day to post this. 

********************************* 

 

23 Aralık 2022'de ananemi kaybettik, annemin "sıralı ölüm" diye tabir ettiği şekilde. Ananem neredeyse 90 yaşındaydı. Tüm güzellikleri ve üzüntüleriyle dolu dolu bir hayat yaşadı. Özellikle son yılında eski gücünden eser kalmamış olmasına rağmen, çoğu zaman hala çevresine ve duyularına hakimdi. Ölümü doğal ölümdü. Eninde sonunda hepimizin öleceği bir dünyada, onun ölümü herkes için dilediğim türden bir ölüm. Bu kayıbımızı ya da kederimizi azaltmıyor, ama öfkeye ya da isyana yer yok bu kederde.

 

Daha önce Türkiye'de Kız Çocukları Eğitimi: Üç Kuşak'ta ananem hakkında yazmıştım. Yazının konusu, ananemin nasıl hiç eğitim alamadığı, ancak annemin bir eğitim alması için nasıl mücadele ettiği hakkındaydı. Daha sonra bu yazıyla ilgili çelişkide hissettim, çünkü ailemin hikayesine karşı dürüst olmak istesem de, bunun gibi hikayeler batı dünyasının bizim zorluklarımızı romantikleştirmesine neden olabiliyor.

Danca dil kursu okuma materyallerinden birinde, Danimarka'daki farklı kökenlerden gelen göçmenlerle ilgili bir sayfalık kısa yazılar vardı. Türklerle ilgili olan yazının sonlarına doğru şöyle bir ifade vardı: "Anneler ev hanımıydı ama kızları da erkeklerle eşit şartlarda çalışıyordu." Metin, Danimarka'da birinci nesil göçmen olan ev hanımı bir anne ile iyi bir eğitim almış ve ekonomik bağımsızlığa kavuşmuş ikinci nesil kızından bahsediyordu. Bir bakıma, metinde, ananem ve annemin hikayesiyle ve muhtemelen benzer nesillerdeki diğer birçok kadının hikayesiyle paralellikler vardı. Metni sevsem de, bu cümleyi garipsedim. Stereotipik tepeden bakan Avrupalı yorumu gibi geldi.

O zamanlar bloğuma o yazıyı yazdığımda, amacım ananemin asi ruhuna olan saygımı dile getirmekti. Ben hiçbir zaman ananemi statüsünün üzerine çıkmam gereken biri olarak görmedim. Benim gözümde o bir Karadenizli Amazon kraliçesiydi. Evini başkalarına açmak konusundaki cömertliğine hayrandım. Bütün aileye kök söktürmesine rağmen güçlülüğüne ve inatçılığına da hayrandım. Büyüdüğümde ondaki bu niteliklere sahip olmak istedim hep. Belki bu da bir romantikleştirme ama bambaşka bir bakış açısıyla.

 

Bu blog yazısının geri kalanında, belirli bir sıralamaya tabi olmaksızın, ve umarım romantikleştirme olmadan, ananemi hatırlayacağım bazı neşeli anıları listelemek istiyorum.

 

Üniversitede ödevlerden kaytarırken zaman öldürmek için yaptığım bir ankette şöyle bir soru vardı: "Bir bar kavgasına yanında kimi götürürdün?" Aklımda beliren ilk kişi ananemdi. Ananem, doğu Karadeniz'de kırsal bir bölgede büyüdüğü için fiziksel olarak kendini nasıl savunacağını ve silah kullanmayı bilen bir kadındı. Evlerin birbirinden baya uzakta olduğu öyle bölgelerde insanın kendini nasıl savunacağını bilmesi önemliydi.

 

Alınan ekmeklerin çoğunu pişkin olmamakla suçladığından, ailedeki herkes ananeme ekmek almaya çekinirdi. Ananemin İstanbul'daki dairesine yakın her fırıncı da aynı sebepten ananeme ekmek satmaktan çekinirdi.

 

Ananemin kabak tatlısı yapmak için balkabaklarını oyuşunu izlemeyi çok severdim küçükken. Özellikle balkabağı sertse, ustaca kullandığı bıçakların çeşitliliği beni büyülerdi izlerken.

 

Herkese önce benim çok uslu bir çocuk olduğumu söylerdi. Sonra “ama tek bir yaramazlığını hatırlıyorum” diye eklerdi ve nasıl bir gün elektrikli süpürgesini banyodaki leğende oynadığım suyun içine sokup süpürgenin su emmesine neden olduğumu anlatırdı.

 

Bana lazımlık eğitimimi ananem verdi. Annemle babam, beni bebek bezinden kurtarmaya çabalayıp pek yol katedemedikleri dönemde, bir iş gezisine gidecekleri bir hafta beni ananeme bırakmışlar. Geri döndüklerinde, artık çocuk bezine ihtiyaç duymayan bir çocuk bulmuşlar. Elbette bu olaylarla ilgili hiçbir şey hatırlamıyorum ama bu hikayeyi çok seviyorum.

 

Bir keresinde ananeme onun için yemek yapmayı teklif ettim. Üniversitedeydim ve yemek pişirme konusunda yüksek hedeflerim yoktu. Tek yapmak istediğim çok basit bir makarnaydı. Buna rağmen makarnayı batırmayacağımdan emin olmak için mutfakta yanımda durdu bütün pişirme süreci boyunca ve her adımda bana talimat verdi. Bunu mutfağına giren herkese yaptığından, alınmadım. Ama bir dahaki sefere ona yemek yapmak istediğimde, ona önceden söylemedim ve yemeği yapmaya başlamadan önce öğle uykusuna yatmasını bekledim.

 

Ben hala Lozan'da yaşarken bir gün teyzemle ananemi Skype’tan aradım. Doktoradaki bir numarali yoldaşım sevgili Duygucuk yanımda oturuyordu. Ananem Duygu’yu ilk kez görüyordu. Benim onları tanıştırmamı beklemeden, ananem teyzeme dönerek Duygu’yu gösterdi ve “Sevim bak! Ne kadar da tatlı bir kız!” dedi.

 

Bir gün ananemin evinde vakit geçirmek için televizyonda bir Jean-Claude Van Damme filmi izlerken, Jean-Claude Van Damme’ın oynadığı karakter için “Ne kadar iyi adam!” dedi.

 

Bir gün evde, bilmiyorum kaçıncı kez, Yüzüklerin Efendisi: Yüzük Kardeşliği'ni izlerken, Aragorn'un atının Aragorn'un hayatını kurtardığı sahnede ananem “Annem eskiden derdi ki, '9 çocuğum olacağına keşke bir atım olsaydı.' Ne kadar da doğru bir söz.” dedi.

 

Bitkilerini sularken onlarla sevgi dolu bir tonda konuşurdu ama aynı zamanda bitkilerin büyümesinde hoşnut olmadığı bir durum varsa bitkilere bunu da iletirdi.

 

Balkonuna kaka yaptıkları için sürekli onlara küfür etmesine rağmen balkona gelen güvercinleri beslemeyi hiç bırakmadı.

 

Yurt dışına taşındığımdan beri, hangi kıtada olursam olayım, saat dilimi farklılıklarından dolayı saati karıştırmadığım veya Pazar günü uçakta olmadığım sürece, her Pazar onu aradım.

 

Bugün günlerden Pazar. Bu yazıyı paylaşmak için güzel bir gün.

  

Danish Classes: Part 1

Part 0 of this could be Jeg beundrer Tori Amos. Part 2 is what I started to write back in October, but it has been a challenge to wrap it up, so I am making this detour instead. It was inspired by the recent discussions I had about Danish classes with one of my PhD students and some of my new colleagues at ITU.

 

I completed all the Danish class modules one should ideally go through before taking the mandatory Danish language test to apply for Danish citizenship (for all) or permanent residence (for non-Schengen-folk) back in summer 2020. I also passed the mandatory test around the same time.  Of course, when all was done, it was very rewarding. But the process of going through these modules and preparing for the exam was sometimes rewarding but mostly frustrating.

 

Let’s start with the rewards.

I met the person who became my #1 partner-in-crime in Denmark during Module 1 of the Danish class. I called her, temporarily, partner-in-crime-in-Denmark in Sore Throat post, but I finally have an official blog nickname for her: Sister in Movies, which she also approved. During the many round-of-introductions you perform during such language class modules, I learned that she was from Argentina and her university education was on films. Plus, she activated my feminist radar. I told myself “You should try to be friends with that person.” So, I did what every normal person would do. I asked her if she would be interested in seeing two bad movies with me at Husets Biograf. (The movies were The Room and The Apple if anyone is interested.) She thankfully said “yes.”

I learned how to be more compassionate and patient toward my own students as a professor thanks to being a sub-optimal student in most of the Danish classes. Up until Module 5 (which is the last module of Danish classes before the mandatory Danish exam), I seldomly did my homework because I was too exhausted as a junior academic and the homework wasn’t fun. Module 5 was the first module where I had the luxury of giving a class for the second time at the university, which helped carving the time to do my Danish homework more properly. My pronunciation of Danish words was also terrible up until Module 5. My Module 5 teacher, Anna Gerd Mc Nair, fixed that, and I am grateful to her for it even though I didn’t enjoy the process.

I was able to follow movie subtitles in Danish roughly one year after I moved to Denmark, which helped me enjoy my life in Copenhagen more. If you aren’t a passionate movie-goer, you may not understand why this is so important, but to me it is crucial not to be stuck with English-speaking movies when I am living in a foreign country. Pedro Almodóvar released two excellent films since I moved to Denmark, which I watched together with Sister in Movies as soon as they hit the movie theaters in Copenhagen. Life is more beautiful when there is an Almodóvar film to look forward to.

I discovered gems like Borgen, Rita, Skam (Norwegian not Danish, but an acceptable distraction on the path), ToveDitlevsen … while trying to learn Danish.

In September, I managed to cancel movie tickets over the phone in Danish. Negligible step for humankind, extremely big step for me.

In October, I visited Norway for the first time. While I couldn’t follow spoken Norwegian, I was able to understand written Norwegian signs and instructions on the streets.

In December, for the first time, I managed to schedule a doctor’s appointment in Danish and went through the first half of my appointment in Danish as well. The second half required knee-vocabulary, which I don’t have in any language, so I switched to English.

Since 2019, I have been able to follow Danish politics enough to have my own opinions and frustrations about it.

I like being able to hear the differences between Danish and other Scandinavian languages when people around me or in movies speak these languages. They used to sound like the same noise.

 

Now the frustrations.

My social life had to be way more restricted during the time I followed Danish classes. For example, I refrained from signing myself up for a hobby course or even gym because going to the Danish class twice a week was already too much in addition to my job. I didn’t want more commitments during the week even if they would be for fun. The most I could commit to during most weeks was going to the cinema with Sister in Movies. Shortly before reaching Module 5, I decided to switch to once-a-week Danish class as opposed to twice-a-week ones. Some may think that this is sub-optimal since it isn’t as frequent exposure to Danish during the week, but it made my life better. I gained an extra evening where I either went to the gym or was able to plan more social activities, which in turn improved my mental wellbeing.

I missed the wedding of Sister in Movies because it was during early days of COVID and very close to my mandatory Danish exam date. Some may think this is an extreme overthinking on my part. Maybe it was. But if I got unlucky and got COVID during the wedding, that meant not being able to attend the exam and waiting for another six months to take it. I didn’t have the nerves for such a wait at that time. I wanted to be done with Danish classes and become free of the exam stress. Sister in Movies didn’t mind, but I am upset that I missed her wedding.

Most foreigners around me told me that they learned to speak Danish fluently from their Danish spouses and the classes aren't enough for that. This made me feel like I was a lost cause in this battle. 

I was often frustrated with our written assignments. There were several reasons for it.

First, the advice you give as an academic supervisor in Computer Science to your students on writing and the advice you get from your Danish teachers on writing are at odds many times. The more complicated sentences you manage to form or the more pronouns you use, the better grades you get in Danish. I understand this from the point of showing how well you can use the complexities of the language. However, as an academic, we both receive and give the advice of “keep your sentences simple and don’t rely too much on the pronouns” while writing. It is more important that a broader range of audience understands what you write.

Second, what you write, or your ideas don't really matter. The key to a successful Danish class/exam essay is keeping it to one page: four-five paragraphs (one intro, one ending, 2-3 argument paragraphs). There is no room for you to get into the nuances of the topic. Even if there was room, your Danish isn’t good enough to get into the nuances of the topic. In any case, you aren’t judged for your ideas. You are judged on your Danish language writing skills. It is much better to stick with straightforward ideas and generalizations. This drove me crazy on topics that I actually had a lot of opinions about. Over time, I somewhat learned to detach my emotions from my Danish homework, and when given the option between two topics, I picked the one that I cared less about. On the other hand, the Part 2 mentioned above is about the Danish writing assignment that I struggled the most with. Coincidentally, it is giving me a hard time for this blog as well. Spoilers: It will be about Dansk Frisind and alcohol.

Third, the writing and in-class discussion topics are often picked based on what Danes and Danish politicians have been discussing recently, because Danish classes aren’t just for learning the Danish language, but also for your integration to Denmark. I can write a separate blog post about the topic of integration and how much it triggers in me, but let’s put that on hold at the moment. Here are some of the topics I either had to write about or discuss in Danish class or both: lifestyle diseases, alcohol over-consumption among teens in Denmark, pros/cons of immigrants, plastic accumulation in human body, impact on climate change on crops, the negative impact of longer human life expectancy on accumulated taxes … I find it ironic that a country that exports the concept of hygge abroad forces you to discuss week after week a set of topics that would even be strong enough to get Pollyanna depressed. The only topic I enjoyed discussing in class was when I chose “history of abortion rights in Denmark” as my presentation topic in one of the weeks.

 

Overall, Danish classes were like a medication that I had to take for my own good but was super grumpy for having to take due to their undesirable side-effects. In the end, I was glad that they were over and made my life healthier in Denmark.

 

In Defense of Sleeping Beauty and All the Others

A few years ago, I received an International Women’s Day message that said something like this: “Happy International Women’s Day to all the women who actively fight for what they want rather than waiting for a prince to wake them up from sleep.” The message was sent via WhatsApp printed on a picture in Turkish. I unfortunately no longer have the picture, because I tend to delete such over-shared WhatsApp picture messages, so this may not be the exact quote, but the theme was along the same lines.

 

I have identified as a feminist as long as I can remember. It is probably one of my pre-existing conditions. I am a feminist who believes in sisterhood, and I am grateful for the sisterhood I get to be a part of in my life. I love International Women's Day mainly because it is a day to celebrate this sisterhood. I receive and send more messages on International Women's Day than my birthday.

I also love Sleeping Beauty and many other heroines of the fairy tales. This message was clearly a stab at them, which I had an issue with.

 

I didn’t pay much attention to fairy tales back when I was a kid. My mom preferred making up her own stories to tell me instead, the one I remember most vividly had a worm who lived in an apple. My dad was more interested in stories rooted in Anatolian and Greek mythologies. And Disney’s influence wasn’t as strong back then where I grew up. I knew the famous fairy tales like Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, etc. from the books I was gifted. I read them, but they didn’t make me think much, I was just practicing reading.

 

From my teenage years till the start of my 30s, my attitude toward the fairy tales was similar to the attitude of the International Women’s Day message that I received. I remembered (or rather misremembered) them being only about ladies saved by men and ended up with a prince/king. Hence, relating to those stories were difficult. I have neither dreamed of being a princess (unless you count Xena: Warrior Princess) nor getting married to live happily ever after (unless maybe to Frodo at some point). Being the queen would be nice, but not a princess, even though one is a very likely precondition for the other unless you marry a king as a non-princess, which does not necessarily sound like the better deal. Anyway, most of my royal family info comes from Game of Thrones universe, not sure if I am right here.

 

Then, roughly one month before my 30^th birthday I moved to Denmark, and shortly after, while my dreams didn’t change much, the way I consumed fairy tales did.

My first year in Denmark was the most isolating time in my life, even the first COVID lockdown wasn’t that isolating. Sure, some of the friends I made that year later became additions to the pillars of my support system, but the feeling of safety and comfort near them was something that has evolved over time and wasn’t yet fully formed back then. Maybe I write about that year in more detail one day, but I won’t get into more details here.

During those isolated days, one of our adopted family members, I will call her Sister Blue, which is close to her nickname in my phone book, recommended me a podcast about storytelling. The podcast host was a French lady called Judith Liberman, who was a storyteller and lived in Turkey. She spoke Turkish well and she interviewed people about folk tales and told a folk tale herself in most episodes.

As I followed the tales told in her podcast, I started thinking more deeply about them and the popular fairy tales with princesses without the cynicism of my teenage years and 20s. Since I was for the most part isolated, I had plenty of time to spend in my own head. According to Sister Blue, as an introvert, I am more naturally gifted when it comes to self-analyze reasons for my actions in my own head. The folk tales started to become a catalyst for such self-analysis and stream of consciousness writing inspired by the tales. In turn, this created a form of therapy for me, which was both cost- and drug-free. It reduced the feeling of isolation without me having to fake being a social butterfly. It reduced my self-doubts about my actions and inactions since I could trace their roots easier. It made it easier to make peace with my failures and weaknesses as well. I can’t claim it worked perfectly all the time, but so doesn’t regular therapy. All I know is I needed help, and this was the type of help my inner stubborn bitch welcomed without resistance.

In the early days of following the podcast, as far as the popular fairy tales go, I thought about Sleeping Beauty the most, because I could relate to her sleeping state.

First, let’s make something clear. Sleeping Beauty wakes up because the curse is over not because the prince kisses her. This is one of the things some people mis-remember from the tale. Second, the big accusation against Sleeping Beauty is her passivity. This is why the picture-messages like the one I received on International Women's Day exist and some people think fairy tales are actually bad influences on children, especially girls.

Well, have you never been in a state in your life where it was even too difficult to get out bed day after day? Danish winter alone can cause some people to enter that state. Have you never been depressed? Have you never grieved? Have you never focused on one part of your life too much causing it to overtake all the other parts creating a sleep-state for those neglected parts in you? Have you never needed time to recover and therefore shut out the external world?

When Sleeping Beauty finally wakes up, she is once again open to experience the world. Her sleep wasn’t for vain. She isn’t the child she used to be. She is still herself, but a different person at the same time. She has grown.

You can say that “well, how is a kid supposed to relate to that.” That is fair. I didn’t relate to this when I was a kid either. It took me to reach my 30s to relate to it. But let’s think about a different perspective around the same theme. Have you never experienced something good after patiently waiting for a long time? Not everything in life requires aggressive action all the time. Everyone who observes the changes across seasons in a year should be able to relate to that. Or what about bears? They sleep in winter, and no one thinks they are passive.

Maybe what a child can get from this tale isn’t a princess being saved by a prince, but the value of waiting and taking time for yourself. You can emphasize this when telling or reading the story to the child. You don’t have to give all the control to Disney when it comes to these stories.

 

Let’s also briefly address Snow White, since the picture-message I received may also be referring to her instead of Sleeping Beauty. I haven’t thought too much about Snow White myself yet. But regarding whether she is passive or not, I can give an alternative narration based on one of Judith Liberman’s interviews. Snow White is a child who experiences parental abuse because of the way she looks. She somehow escapes that abuse by either convincing the hunter to let go of her or hunter’s tenderness depending on the Snow White version you listen to. She manages to survive in a forest on her own and finds a hut. After all that trauma and despite being someone who was raised in a castle, she learns to live together in harmony with seven random dudes (or the forty thieves depending on the version) without any issues. None of this is really passive. It requires a lot of strength. It is the type of strength we tend to under-value over physical strength in this world. Therefore, we under-value Snow White.

 

Originally none of these tales were for children. There were tales for the folk in general. We are the folk who tells the tales, and these tales have variations across regions based on the folk who tell them. None of these will badly influence children or include anti-feminist messages as long as we take control of how we tell them.

I would rather include the ladies of the folk tales in my sisterhood. Princesses, queens, witches … are all welcome.

 

P.S. I am well-aware that there are many books that psychoanalyze folk tales creating archetypes and viewing all characters in the context of a single person. I love reading those books. I prefer having my own less-scholarly analysis first, though, when I can, so that I am not too influenced by others.

Sunday, October 9, 2022 - Sore Throat

I have sore throat. I stay still in bed for a while making a list in my head of things I have to sort out as a result of waking up with a throat that gives you pain upon swallowing.

These are the mornings I wish I lived in a place with family nearby. I start to feel melancholy rising in me and want to call my parents. But that item isn’t on the list yet.

 

Let’s start with the first item.

It feels like the soreness I had when I had COVID earlier this year. That was the week Denmark lifted all its COVID restrictions. I was there to celebrate it at home with my COVID just five days after I got my third COVID shot.

I have to find a test to make sure. I have none at home. I took all of them to my parents in Turkey during summer holidays. I feel guilty to go out to buy some test-kits in case I have COVID. Should I call someone to get some for me? The closest person I can call for this is still a bit far and is probably sleeping at this hour. I put a mask on and go out. I decide to try supermarkets instead of pharmacies hoping that would prevent close interactions with people in case I have COVID. I find self-test kits at the second supermarket I try.

I come back home and do the test. It is negative. I feel some relief. Though, I know this isn’t a definitive answer. Will do another test tomorrow.

 

Moving to the next list item.

I need to feed myself. I prepare breakfast and eat watching the latest episode of Rings of Power. It makes me forget my sore throat for a while. But since I am more melancholic than usual, I end up crying several times during the episode.

 

Third item.

I have things to put in order at work. I know there are different degrees to sore throats. Some you can recover from in a day, some will need slightly longer time but wouldn’t prevent you from drinking coffee, and some will not only need longer time but also make your best friend coffee temporarily your enemy. What I have right now is the last kind, and I know I cannot and should not make it to the university tomorrow. I email my PhD student and postdoc for my class so that they take it over. I am glad that at least I have this luxury now, which I didn’t have up until two years ago when I was without funding to hire people. I also email the people I had meetings with and cancel them asking to synchronize over email or Teams chat.

 

Fourth item.

I still have to finish preparing the second class-project. I assigned the preparation of the first and third projects to my two PhD students, but I took over the second one. I am almost done with it but need to write up its description before the class. I finish it while baking in parallel, because soon I will be hungry again.

 

So fifth item done concurrently with fourth.

 

Six.

I signed up for an online writing class for this weekend during summer. It is time for that. I am glad for the class since it allows me to sit down and relax a bit at least. It is where I write the first draft of this text during a 10minute writing exercise with a pen and notebook. My PhD advisor once told me “it is a good thing you have a computer”, my handwriting is terrible.

I feed myself again while following the last hour of the class and take a paracetamol for the fever.

 

Seven.

I have to inform my partner-in-crime-in-Denmark (I know I need a better nickname for her, working on it) who I planned to hang out with on Tuesday about the possibility of canceling our meeting since I don’t want to give her germs.

I also inform my visitor coming next Saturday from USA. I really hope that I will be well by then. We have been planning this trip since beginning of COVID. I am looking forward to it.

 

Eight.

Call parents and listen to your mom telling you to prepare mouthwash with carbonate and buy vitamins.

 

Nine.

Call your grandma because it is Sunday and try to sound not-ill.

 

I think I am done. I am hungry again.

 

I dread being ill. It is really tiring. It leads to further piled-up work. It makes me feel weak. It amplifies my melancholy. I end up questioning my life choices and over-analyzing the cost I pay for my belief in independence, which was the main life goal I had since I was four (I don’t remember before the age of four). I know I will firmly believe in my life choices again once the fever goes away and my throat recovers to a state where I can drink coffee happily again. This is not the first time I am ill and won’t be the last one, but each one is a strange emotional rollercoaster. Maybe all this is just caffeine withdrawal.

There used to be a time where being ill was actually fun. I was a dependent child back then. Being ill meant skipping school, being taken care of by the adults in my life (parents, cousins of parents, family friends …) and playing games with them at home, occupying the big couch in our living room getting unlimited TV time or watching E.T. over and over on the VHS tape my dad recorded during one the times it was on Turkish TV. Later in life, I apologized to my parents for subjecting them to certain kids shows (e.g., Blue's Clues), but I will never apologize for subjecting anyone to E.T.

Now being ill comes with complications I have to take care of, and I avoid watching E.T. because I know it will make me cry too much at this state and that isn’t good for my coffee-repellent sore throat and creeping fever.

In retrospect, me being ill when I was a child probably created even worse complications for my parents even discounting the worry they felt (and still feel) for it. What I remember as fun memories wasn’t really fun for them. And being ill now isn’t that bad, because I will get to enjoy a longer breakfast tomorrow (minus the coffee, unfortunately) and take a long walk during the day while the Danish sun is still out there with all its intensity. What a luxury that is to have as an independent adult on a weekday.