MMM YYYRRR EEA DDD I ININN GGGPPLPLA CCC EESESS EAA LAA A Response to ‘Reading Places’ by the Danish poet Martin Glaz Serup
by Fat ma Z e y neb Onsip er
First encounter: An afternoon Light coming in strips between the blind, painting the room into a nostalgic orange-brown, almost sepia Slightly reminds me of the boring summer afternoons I spent as a kid watching the outside from a window, and gives me restlessness A spontaneous symphony of sounds leak from the open window, calling me outside to join the celebration of a much surprising sunny day, adding to my restlessness I struggle with the huge gray couch to sit upright, believing that if I can then my mind will settle in the very moment, to the text standing in front of me. Having an assignment as a base for my encounter with the text, I begin with an objective; to decode a recipe of writing for the ‘reading places’. Questions of ‘how’ circle around my mind as I open the text in the waytoo-small phone screen. I think there is something that makes reading from such a screen very condensed. It feels as if the dwarf letters and paragraphs require a greater attention, and the compressed lines don’t leave much space or time for one’s own thoughts to dilute the text. All of which creating a sense of intensity. Refusing this, I begin to skim/read the text jumping from one passage to another. Yet I cannot help but get drawn into each, despite the swiftness of my gaze. Slowly, the text unfolds layers of half imagined half described places and situations, and I slip into the faint memories of my previous reading places. My mind somehow keeps coming back to a particular book I have read, Silence by Erling Kagge. The questions of ‘how’ quickly give way to ‘why, when and where’, as everything takes a semi personal turn. Personal - because my mind starts to project scenes of me reading in my bedroom in Ankara, and I catch myself homesick within the sepia atmosphere of this living room in London. Semi – because all these scenes begin to overlap with Serup’s scenes and emotions, creating almost a physical palimpsest. My restlessness turns into an inevitable curiosity. I wonder if this reading is already turning into a piece of writing in my mind.
Second encounter: After midnight Silence, a feeling of almost complete stillness, which is only interrupted by the stubborn ticking of the clock Same couch, yet it feels more friendly and soft as my body surrenders to a wave of fatigue. This time it is impossible to sit therefore I lay, carving myself a comfortable yet lonely space. It has been a long day. Believing that I deserve a bigger screen and it will help me concentrate better, I open the text from my laptop. The blank whiteness of the screen washes my face, creating a temporary bubble of light, perhaps adding to my isolation from the world around me. There is an anonymous familiarity. Almost as if I resume a one-to-one conversation with a friend. I can feel the intimacy of this second encounter with the text. I don’t know if this is particularly due to stillness of the night or my solitude on the couch. But, it gets stronger with Serup’s openness and I can’t help but feel as if I am entering the depths of his mind and memory with each passage, like Alice following the rabbit through the hole. This time, it takes me through a journey where I am keener to discover the ‘other’, the author, rather than chasing down my own reflections. Still, I end up finding echoes of my own existence at that exact moment on the couch as I read through the last words of the author; as I am too ‘…sitting there alone being moved by the world’.