İnsanlık Hâlİ

For the past two weeks I have been staying in a writer’s house called Baltic Center for Writers and Translators on the Swedish island of Gotland. I heard about this place last summer from a Greek writer friend of mine. He described his life in the writer’s house to me

“I spent two weeks on an empty, cold and dark island three hours away from Stockholm, and I just wrote.”

This image haunted me for days, weeks and months. It haunted me like a ghost. Finally, when my 50th birthday present was being discussed in the family, I put this image on the table. How did I want to celebrate my fiftieth birthday? Just like this. Two weeks of solitude on a cold and dark island.

Today my 11th day on the island of Gotland is over. I’m leaving in two days. It will be hard to leave. I had gotten into the Nordic rhythm, and the novel had settled into a rhythm. So let’s make a note of this: next time you will come here for at least 28 days.

My daily routine here was very simple and straightforward. In fact, it was seemingly no different from the routine in the yoga programs I attend every year (sometimes several times). I say seemingly, because during the yoga courses where I go to study with my teachers, my inner space is so turbulent that I feel like I have spent two weeks in a stormy sea. This place is not like that. Maybe I was a bit anxious at the begining. Will I be able to write? Is there a new novel inside me?

I have a story that I have been plotting and taking notes on since August, but I can’t find the “voice”. You may have met the characters of a novel, you may know more or less the plot, but if you haven’t found the “voice” you basically have nothing. For the “voice” you need to enter the water fearlessly, to try, to listen. And this requires a lot of time. Hours woven in a row, paragraphs read aloud… Let’s give it a try from here, let’s tell it from there, from the past, from the future, from the present, from me, from you, from him… the options are endless, but there is only one “voice” that will open the cryptic safe. Sometimes it speaks in your ear. Mr. Periklis from my previous novel “the Circle” made himself known to me after a short search for a “voice”. Sometimes the writer is lucky. Other times not so much.

I know theoretically and I have experienced it many times that anxiety is relieved by movement – and only by movement – and even if it is not relieved, it evolves into something else. Anxiety (will I be able to write?) is not an emotion that can dissolve when you find the answer. There are friends who complain about everything. They are skilled at refuting any remedy or alternative you offer them. I liken the anxiety that haunts my inner world to them. No matter what I say, it won’t go away, it won’t melt. Only with movement. Will there be another novel from me? Or have I run out of stories to tell? You can’t know unless you sit in front of your notebook or computer every day and construct sentences, string them one after the other. Fortunately, it is not unique to me to fall into a void with each new novel, as if you have never written anything before. I’ve read enough books by the authors to know that.

The daily routine then. Get up, coffee, book, knit, write. Get up, yoga, sit, write. Get up, shopping, lunch, walk, coffee, back to the room, write, knit, read, write.

Ursula K. Le Guin accompanied me during the knit-read part of this routine. Space Crone (2023 Edition)which I bought at the English Bookshop I visited during my two days in Stockholm, the Wave in the Mind, No time to Spare and a short novel, The Word for world is Forest, which I borrowed from the public library in Gotland. Some of these are available as audiobooks too. I knitted while listening to them. Listening to books is harder than reading. It requires a more serious focus, that’s for sure. I can’t start listening to fiction books if I haven’t read them before, but I’ve come a long way in listening to non-fiction. (Knitting also sharpens attention.) Perhaps one of the reasons I never felt lonely here was that I had Ursula’s voice in my ear all the time.

It got light early and the sun set at a reasonable hour. There was no darkness as I had imagined. But the cold, yes, there was that. A dry, sharp, sparkling cold every time I went out. In the mornings I wandered among the colorful houses of Gotland, like something out of a fairy tale. I caught beautiful sunny days when you could be outside for up to an hour.

Ursula LeGuin’s No Time to Spare (one of the books I listened to) is a compilation of her blogs. The phone’s screen, instagram’s word limitation and photo requirement (because everything is a caption on instagram, “your caption is too long”) have been frustrating me for years. Are you guys still here? It’s been fifteen years since I opened this place… I don’t know if there is a new generation on the other end of the internet cables. But when I want to share something or when I need to examine an idea through writing, I will come here. Keep it in mind.

Defne.

9-3-2024 Visby, Gotland.