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| Every ingredient grown or raised within a hundred metres of the table |
Autumn Leaves
Have a happy New Year, and Mutlu Yillar .. A few final
thoughts through this Blogging medium, accompanied by some photos from the past
year, including Phaselis and Saklikent, New Year’s Eve and birthdays,
Cappadocia and Antalya, Konya and Dalayan, Lycian cliff carvings, the beach,
the mountains, old towns and modern cities, autumn evenings and summer nights,
spring days and winter mornings .. thanks to those who shared them with me ..
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| The first autumnal leaves |
Thanks for having followed this journey .. having now
completed the additional teaching qualifications I’ve been working on another
prospect has suggested itself – whether I move on or stay put is yet to be
decided, however with time so short I really don’t know when I’ll pass this way
again, though expect me anytime .. so, meanwhile, enjoy life and sprinkle
some sunshine on your route so that others might follow the light you leave
behind ..
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| Can you see the above photo in the distance? |
Don’t demand that others change to receive your affection, release your anger and regret, open your
heart to possibility, free your mind from obstacles to love, for no one knows
which way the roads lead when we arrive at a crossroads .. and one day,
perhaps, if it’s meant to be ..
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| Early morning balloons over the fairy mountains |
A new year; a new day, a new
place, renewed hope, news travels. Seasons change with the weather, minds
change decisions, passions change relations, hearts exchange love, yet while
autumn leaves reluctantly in a defiant show of colour, winter seeps in through
cracks of time to chill us with memories of the past as the fire in our spirit
warms us with anticipation for the opportunities of the future.
And here comes the festival
of winter blurring truth in its snow-blind promotion of the acquisition of
contemporary commodities. As the Santa of capital gains slides down dirty
chimneys a few brave souls can be caught staring into the flurrying snow to
seek the secret of design within every flake that glistens like an angel on its
journey to earth.
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| The 200 km wide mountain wall between Fethiye and Antalya |
As I embark on a new phase
of life, challenging and altering my perspective with travel and different
people to work with, I continue to question my need to transform and improve my
own existence in light of the over-simplification of a complicated world by
those who inform us of reality; a world where snow is a hazard to business
rather than a joyful celebration of earth’s makeover in frozen splendour.
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| While the band played |
The reconfiguration of the
world in the image of global trade as means to develop social relations and the
inevitable complicity in environmental and social harm has altered the paradigm
of our time; we now live in a world truly self-absorbed in its vision of
successful living – the mirror reflecting an image of a photograph of a
painting of a bowl of wax fruit.
Networking to
promote individual career steps passes as honest friendship, conversations that
are open to public interpretation take place 'in real time',
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| Jo doubling up |
while
records of every move we make are gathered through phone and computer signals
to direct advertising and facilitate government accounting. Every day, on social network
sites and blogs, in newspapers and on television, I read and hear people asking
so many questions about religion and patriotism, about war and the principles
of ethics, about peace and honesty, the meaning of capitalism for the future
and the lack of help for the starving. So many people lost in confusion and
searching for answers in this chaotic world and it seems that few have learned
from the experiences of the old days when they were new years.
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| I know that look |
History and learned wisdom,
in the contemporary collective conscious as presented in the forums of the
media pageant, has become a passé reference to the obsolete,
as if each
generation simply created anew the world about them from the blank slate of
personal experience; yet they look around in bewilderment at each passing day
and the tragedies that accompany the rising sun and the morning papers, or
rather after a glance at the soundbites of internet and television, and wonder
what’s wrong.
The answers have always been
available to those who seek, and there are many who trod this path before us;
the questions haven’t changed, the obstacles haven’t changed simply because
we’ve shifted from analogue to digital, they’ve only become more obfuscated by
the messages that compete for our attention.
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| As Rumi said .. |
Yet, those in the vanguard
of political leadership show little vision or strength of opinion to make the
real changes that could guide the world from economic and environmental crisis
to contentment and peace.
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| A present washes up on the beach |
This is a time of great upheaval
in the world, from the so-called Arab Spring uprising to the continual
bombardment of innocents in places with unusual names, from the consolidation
of unimaginable amounts of wealth by a shadowy minority to the incredible
overuse of chemicals in the food purveyed by our local supermarket chain.
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| Lycian cliff dwellings - very old! |
The cult of celebrity is a
bizarre phenomenon that insinuates its way into every aspect of modern life.
These people, many of whom have never created anything other than an image of
themselves never mind contributed to culture or society, clutter our media
outlets with their latest acquisitions, be they clothes, cars, houses, husbands
or fatherless children.
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| Dalayan and the Lycian cliff dwellings |
Somehow these celebrity
names and faces bring comfort in the security of constant change to those with little
fanfare in their own sheltered lives: do you really need to know or even care
who which reality show contestant married which basketball player this week?
Will another year of the ever-quickening media chase bring to us anything that
means something to our collective human character?
Renowned for drunken bashes
and inane twitter comments the ‘darlings of the media’ have become an integral
part of the kaleidoscopic community that serves up and feeds on artificially
exaggerated controversy designed to instil confusion into an already ethically
polluted public sphere. You know the names: reality shows winners, silver spoon
princesses, former athletes, pop stars and fashion icons, kissing and telling
in cheap supermarket tabloids which act as pimps for these minor figures in the
grand parade of history.
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| A night out with the boys |
Every day we turn on the
news to be faced with alleged acts of terror and a continued tightening of
legislation on personal freedom in the name of security or the interests of
regulation against corporate infringement. What future is a world
managed by competing committees of executives for whom the idea of pleasure is
acquiring property and resources at the expense of those who can offer no
resistance to the megalomaniacs and their limitless power?
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| Cody chillin' with the turtles |
To fool the public with the
usual bread and circus events these high-ranking citizens offer tokens of
participation to the world through the media outlets they own and the sporting
clubs and entertainment franchises they control. They offer up ‘stars’ in
designer clothes claiming to use organic drinks or eat pork to stay slim and
glowing with health.
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| At the pub |
Vast amounts of money are
paid to produce spy thrillers that expose the dark underbelly of modern
government or make animated films whose underlying message is to treat the
earth with care without mentioning the resources used to create these wonders
of artistic expression.
Hundreds of millions of
people dine on meat flown in daily from an ever-decreasing rain forest turned
cattle yard and use materials created from minerals stripped from South
American mines by hungry peasants whose only appearance on the big screen will
be in the film about their suffocating death below the Andean surface, but how
else will we feed the world and still have silicon chips for our modern
wizardry?
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| A view too stunning to pass by |
Earth Day is an example of
the insanity of collusion these people offer. For one hour on a certain day
once a year an international conglomerate in a sprawling and wealthy Middle
Eastern nation will turn off the lights on the fountain in a public square to
show solidarity with the environmental movement. Wow! An impressive gesture
that does absolutely nothing to affect the problems associated with the
drainage of their oil fields or their sewage tanks into the blue Gulf water.
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| Gabriel visits the valley of mushrooms that inspired St Basil's in Moscow |
A huge city in the Far East
will shut down the external coloured spotlights on a famous building for one
hour to show unity of purpose with those who seek a reduction in energy usage,
while a hundred thousand office buildings continue to direct a neon blaze into
the night sky obliterating the stars from sight. Again, wow!
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| Ataturk watches over Antalya |
A rich Western nation whose
people tremble in their loafers at the idea of paying an extra dollar for a
tank of gasoline is going to ask business to put their computers on stand-by for
an hour at night to lessen the impact of global warming. Wow! The Earth thanks
you for the inconvenience.
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| River Duden below the falls |
Hypocrisy is the name of the
game in global business and no more so than in the headquarters of the
conglomerates that control the international market. While making grand
gestures through worldwide conferences with overt references to renewing
commitment to preserving the natural resources of this beautiful planet these
multinational corporations strip away all life-sustaining organisms to create
ever-higher profits for the few with the blessing of those invested with the
trust of ordinary people to investigate this continued crime against nature.
[no comma in sight, just read 3 or 4 words at a time]
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| We even made the papers |
I sit watching the BBC World
News channel, a ‘public trust’ corporation paid for by the license fees of
taxpayers in the UK, and every 10 minutes I’m being bombarded by advertisements
for bio-technological agricultural seed manufacturers, petrochemical refinery
corporations, first-class airlines and computer-based business investment
banks. Yet, we are led to believe by the government and the board members of
this global organisation in the independence and integrity of their news
administration.
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| Another birthday |
Yes, we are being led
through the abundant fertile garden of earthly delights into the history-barren
wasteland of an ever changing tomorrow and will deserve the future we arrive at
in our gas-guzzling corporate cars. Unfortunately, we will all pay eventually
for our own greed and complacency in the face of this acceptance of a world
managed by those whose vision is limited by the prophets of consumption and the
latest tweeted trend as if these disposable communications held genuine
profundity.
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| A walk in the forest of Olympus |
Or possibly, people are just
tired of significance and sense and simply want to escape the dystopian
depression presented by the new world order wherein we have found ourselves
lost in an overabundance of culture and communication.
Perhaps, if hope survives
the present, we’ll meet again in a better tomorrow, a space where the need to
achieve success will be measured by the hearts we touch with love rather than
the toys we gather around us.
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| Love that white raw silk jacket |
Perhaps in the future there
will be a great nothing, void of memory and vision, or, if enough people reach
out in optimism, from heart to mind, we’ll touch thoughts across the universe
between to realise the dream of union in a confident spirit with a green and
pleasant tomorrow on this tiny spinning blue planet with its new year of
revolution around our silent sun.
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| A friend's daughter made a home for Froggie |
So, enjoy life and sprinkle some sunshine on your route so
that others might follow the light you leave behind .. don’t demand that others
change to receive your friendship, open your heart to possibility, free your
mind from obstacles to love, for no one knows which way the roads lead when we
arrive at the crossroads .. and one day, perhaps, if it’s meant to be .. SEE YA
.. Görüşürüz .. {;o)
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