Tag: Orhan Pamuk

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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Happiness is getting up and going downstairs in the morning, opening all the doors and petting the dogs, walking around the garden and along the wooden pier in the cool morning air and listening to the crows and the chirping of all the other birds as you wait for the water for your tea to boil in the kitchen.

— Orhan Pamuk, “Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022.” Translated by Ekin Oklap. (Knopf, November 26, 2024)

Notes:

  • Amazon: “For many years, Orhan Pamuk kept a record of his daily thoughts and observations, entering them in small notebooks and illustrating them with his own paintings. This book combines those notebooks into one volume. He writes about his travels around the world, his family, his writing process, and his complex relationship with his home country of Turkey. He charts the seeds of his novels and the things that inspired his characters and the plots of his stories. Intertwined in his writings are the vibrant paintings of the landscapes that surround and inspire him.“
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

Sometimes my hand would start drawing of its own accord. There was a page for each day.

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I should really write about the pleasures of inscribing words over paintings. So here I am, writing: Between the ages of 7 and 22, I thought I was going to be a painter. At 22, I killed the painter inside of me and began writing novels. In 2008, I walked into a stationery shop, bought two big bags of pencils, paints, and brushes, and began joyfully and timidly filling little sketchbooks with drawings and colors. The painter inside of me hadn’t died after all. But he was full of fears and terribly shy. I made all my drawings inside notebooks so that nobody would see them. I even felt a little guilty: surely this must mean I secretly deemed words insufficient. So why did I bother to write? None of these inhibitions slowed me down. I was eager to keep drawing, and drew wherever I could.

I started writing in this notebook in 2009. I didn’t just write about my day and my thoughts. Sometimes my hand would start drawing of its own accord. There was a page for each day. I would try to keep the writing and drawings small so that they would fit. But some days a single page wasn’t enough to contain all the incidents, words, and images I wished to record. From 2012 onward, I began to write and draw even more, filling two notebooks every year.

— Orhan Pamuk, opening pages in his new book titled “Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022.” Translated by Ekin Oklap. (Knopf, November 26, 2024)

Riding Metro-North. Pre-Game.

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city-lights-dreamy

3:45 am, Tuesday morning.
I’m up.
Should be tired.
Not tired.
Body is saying “Go!”
Zeke stirs at my feet, and leans in.

Mental flotsam. But there it is again.

I jump in the shower.
I close my eyes, and linger in the sauna.

How do you know it isn’t?

I walk down the hall.
Behind door 1, Eric sleeps after a night out with friends.
Behind door 2, Rachel is wrapped under two comforters. She’s well into the final act of her dream.
Children.

You could be squarely in the middle of it, right now.

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