“What is essential is to avoid lying, not to say that we have seen something when we’ve kept our eyes closed, not to believe that something has been explained to us when it has only been named. Thus, each one of us describes our parabola around the truth. No two orbits are alike. And this is why the explicators endanger our revolution… No one has a relationship to truth if he is not in his own orbit.”
-Jacques Ranciere, The Ignorant Schoolmaster

“The nucleus remains at the atom’s center, but electrons don’t orbit the nucleus. Rather, each electron resides in one of a finite set of discrete/quantized energy levels, and atoms only emit photons when their electrons ‘jump’ from one level to another… Particles are given to fits, to paroxysms, to spasmodic bouts of e-motion or activity. According to classical physics, mechanical forces alone move particles, or so it has been said… What strange agency do we have here? What is this talk of fits, passions, and paroxysms of inanimate entities? Passion-at-a-distance no less?”
-Barad, “Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come”

“See the twisting puppets twirled
In and out that changeless light.
As if they act beyond their world
They turn around the stage in fright.

All these puppets are the Lord,
Their tangled loins, his only rod.
Their mouths are bloodied with the Word.
Every eye is blind with God.”
-Allen Ginsberg, letter to Jack Kerouac, December 1948 (Letters, p. 58)

“The essence of marionette control, more than for any other three-dimensional puppet, is to let the puppet do the work: use the natural movements, and the momentum of these movements, to assist you. Therefore you should design your controls to achieve the required movements or effects as simply as possible… You may remember having been given, as children, marionettes that were frustratingly difficult to manipulate, despite the simple controls… They were not only simple but in a sense they were inefficient because they did not do the work for you; mostly they supported the puppet and you had to operate individual strings to make something happen. A good control may appear more complicated but it will be much easier to operate the marionette with less direct string pulling… Marionettes can be as simple or as complex as you wish but their apparent complexity and remoteness from their operator distinguish them from other forms of puppet. Unlike a hand or rod-puppet, which you position just where you want it, the marionette, which is controlled via strings, has more independence of movement so it has even more of a life of its own.”
-Currell, Making and Manipulating Marionettes

“A control is not a discipline. In making freeways for example you don’t enclose people, but instead multiply the means of control. I’m not saying that this is the freeway’s exclusive purpose, but that people can drive infinitely and freely without being at all confined but while still being controlled. This is our future.”
-Deleuze, “What is the Creative Act?”

“What does it mean to follow a ghost? And what if this came down to being followed by it, always, persecuted perhaps by the very chase we are leading? Here again what seems to be out in front, the future, comes back in advance from the past, from the back.”
-Derrida, in Barad

“We have to establish a constitution, and we will not get back to that constitution by reestablishing the laws of old, but thanks to something resembling a revolution—a revolution in the sense of a transition from night to day, from the lowest point to the highest point. From Boulainvilliers onward, it is the linking together of the two notions of constitution and revolution that makes this possible… Once ‘constitution’ no longer meant a juridical armature or a set of laws, but a relationship of force, it was quite obvious that such a relationship of force could not be reestablished on the basis of nothing; it would be reestablished only when there existed something resembling a cyclical historical pattern, or at least something that allowed history to revolve around itself and brought it back to its starting point… Empires, says Boulainvilliers, rise and fall into decadence depending on how the light of the sun shines upon their territory. The revolution of the sun, and the revolution of history…”
-Foucault, “Society Must be Defended”

“Her yer taksim, her yer direnis.”
“Everywhere is taksim, everywhere is resistance.”
-chant from Gezi park occupation

“It may happen that a man wakes up one day and finds himself transformed into a vermin. Exile—his own exile—has gained control over him.”
-Walter Benjamin, Illuminations

“If we had been in doubt, the manner of our reception and the mode of our interview would have quickly convinced us of the emotional economy of Ilich. His quick perception of its supply in others and his skill in making the utmost use of it for his purpose were extraordinary. No less amazing was his glee over anything he considered funny in himself or his visitors. Especially if he could put one at a disadvantage, the great Lenin would shake with laughter so as to compel one to laugh with him.”
-Emma Goldman, Living My Life, p. 432

“‘Caught in a trap, caught in a trap.’ That was all he could say in the days before he died.”
-Emma Goldman

“I was beset by the terrible apprehension that we also might reach the same state and become as spinelessly acquiescent as these people. Anything else would be preferable to that. Prison, exile, even death. Or escape! Escape front the horrible revolutionary sham and pretense… I would take even that step rather than become a cog in the machinery, an inanimate thing to be manipulated at will.”
-Emma Goldman, Living My Life, p. 506

“An actor acts, but a puppet is.”
-Currell, Making and Manipulating Marionettes

“…sedition has been divided in the ribs
and young people are free to not know the meaning of being…”
-Egyptian black bloc post during Morsi dictatorship

“I didn’t break any billboards, but a few days ago I saw a billboard destroying itself. First it broke itself into pieces then it burned itself. While it was burning it screamed the following: ‘Better to be destroyed than being a billboard in this system.”
–Keşke yalnız bunun için kırsaydım seni / I wish I would break you just because of this

“Your eagerness
is the task.”
-Rimbaud
“Your healing
is the wound.”
-Dr. B
“Your fierceness
is the battle.”
-Aleth

“punks are sufis/drunks are sufis”
-Aleth

“the barbarians at the gate/let us know the hour’s getting late/slaves turn masters into slaves/sun setting on empires that became/revolutions every one/stars burn out in circles round the sun/constellations get undone/a bright new day of darkness has begun
refrain:
and we all go in circles/ we all go in circles”
-Aleth

August 26th, 2013
what starts as apology turns into defense. power is creation of parallax view¹ (by ability or habit), precious stone that looks different from whatever angle and wants you to position yourself everywhere (God) and/or nowhere (saint) in order to reflect (on?) its horror without participating. Emma Goldman: Lenin’s a laughter that compelled one to laugh with him. The paralysis this parallax gap could engender—becoming reconciled to laughing at an absurd trick played on oneself.
only with another laughter can you blow up the machine. you can try to stop it by going on strike (too obvious) or unravel its lies with your tongue but those who speak often wind up getting their tongues tied or cut off or severed from hearts

Erdogan’s parallax turns Lenin’s ruby inside out, pious clown takes sacred trickster seriously. The double (+) entendres are simultaneously so offensive self-deprecating self-aggrandizing that you wonder if he could possibly have intended them: “I am the best Allevi.” Did he really just say that? What did he mean? Tolerance? Diminution? Tayyip, are you trying to trick us? We rushed to build a bridge no one needed and took down an ancient forest, and whoops, it’s in the wrong place, no big deal!
Tayyip is the image of Kurt Cobain on store-window T-shirts on Istiklal, the idol THEY wanted us to worship—aloof, angsty—authoritarian-victim supreme.²

If you wake up one day and find yourself turned into vermin crawling on an advertisement for Erdogan in the Taksim funicular (his world revolves around you, you never get to see ours), the thing is to get rid of yourself³—not as victim, as laughing time bomb that shatters the pane⁴ at the same time it recouples tongue and heart, without the risk inherent in speaking (not wrong just unwise, and maybe wrong as well). Otherwise you get brushed off caught in the gears become exoskeleton smashed into the cable fluctuate eternally-inertly between/under piety and sin, two worlds you never get to see for yourself, gain a view on power from everywhere and nowhere but never explode it. ‘so this is eternity, this is the time experience of sun and moon’—blessed are the free of mind for they alone shall turn from universe and world toward earth⁵ toward each other in an ever-imperfect circle of infinite gift, so rare it almost seems cruel not like a withheld commodity is cruel like seeing prisons everywhere is cruel like a note between notes is cruel like something that is not on the scale of commodities at all is cruel to the you that would buy or sell it, sacrificial you the sheikh says to bismillah (chickpea to cook? leap objective interval like electron? or bridge carefully the gut interval between nomads on the same plane? necessary cruelty conducted by space or by sheikh?)

Rumi’s religion the alchemy of turning one view (above/below, everywhere/nowhere, peak of mountain/slaves’ shantytown at its base) into the other and back again, a stultifying circle with unworldly greed/transcendent grace as its enclosure and gift as its foreclosure—a common, a garden, a friendship, a love, a riot, shared space policed, zone no longer defended, turned into empty fetish—presence turned into absence and absence turned into the Presence and also meaning’s presence (as Friend reterritorializes friend) as religion as institution rather than as constellation illuminating narrowing way forward, that is: not up, not down, not back, not around, with aggressive drivers continually threatening your walking equipment. After revolutions dervishes bow with the austerity of Klee’s image⁶ but none of the ashamed playfulness of awkwardly whirling round one another (vertically, dizzyingly, defying gravity), trying to figure out who’s higher until bodily boundaries blur and both/neither is. Generous circle inverted, reflected endlessly. Barricades abandoned. Defense turned into apology.

August 28th, 2013
Went to see O at Galata tower again. He didn’t show. When I got there yesterday he seemed uncharacteristically vexed—he apologized, explaining that a group of men he assumed to be AKP thugs or undercover cops had dropped by a few minutes before making vague threats. He didn’t want to be deterred, but he also didn’t want to read without his usual generosity of spirit. “It’s worse than if they’d just wear a uniform and make you leave or arrest you or beat you up. They force you to think at least twice, about who they are and what you’re doing,” he said.

Waited an hour, pacing around the Meydan, dreading the worst. As I was about to leave, I threw out my Starbucks cup in a trash bin next to the Istiklal tramvay and barely noticed O’s Persian rug with the text “Thinking Change/Freedom Thinking” embroidered, carelessly crumpled and disposed of alongside plastic bags with dyslexic English advertising Nirvana albums and whirling dervish performances, artifacts of the transmutation neoliberal theocracy has performed on Galatasaray. Pulled out the rug and 5 marble notebooks fell to the ground as it unfurled. Threw them in my bag and walked down Istiklal briskly, in case any thugs remained. On the way back to Taksim, I recognized a man I had interviewed during the previous Saturday’s riot just before running in opposite directions from a Polis truck. I was about to say hello, but as he approached I noticed that he had bruises all over his face and arms and legs. He was looking straight ahead as if desperately trying to locate the horizon line where the Galatasaray and Tarlabasi sides of Istiklal Cadessi met. He didn’t make eye contact with me or anyone else, and I didn’t feel like forcing him to.

Sat in Taksim Meydan for an hour without taking the journals out of my bag. One had fallen out of the rug open and I left it that way in my rush. When I unzipped my bag to think about what to do with the journals, I succumbed to temptation and read the last page with writing on it—transcribed it later—more material to integrate in finding my own voice: 

was rude to Akht again [I get this translated by Iranian backpackers staying at the hostel—it means “pest”—close to Akhtar—which means “star”].⁷ he showed up melancholic. and when I offered to lend an ear had the gall to mention heartbreak and surveillance in the same sentence. was ostentatiously reticent about his mood, his meaning, his jewishness (couldn’t tell if he believed I was from Beirut or was playing along), his masochistic pseudo-poetry he granted me the privilege of hearing. self-lacerating lachrymator on a page—what I remember:

“a shopkeeper that hard-sells you days-old meat, rotting because his hustle scares off already scant customers
not complicity with the subjection of souls to this economic logic
not bourgeois indignation at rotting meat
not tourist Bloom,⁸ framing every instance of Life in an iPhoto album entitled ‘exotic torture techniques’ still brilliant mathematician carrying ‘out of order’ sign, pacing the outdoor squat in Exarcheia, who started playing auto-chess in his head years ago and now screams in terror as his opponent, strategically outmaneuvered, physically attacks him
not comrades who talk tolerance but flaunt sanity even in their generosity to this endless decimals-answer to division equation of fateful proportion

ecstatico-maniacal laughter which explodes dramaturgy of american pop music blasting from chic surrounding pubs and run-down gas stations in collapsing european economies, smiling okayness of coca-cola ad faces abiding beneath troubled exterior of this mass suicidal pseudo-poetry”

couldn’t resist temptation to troll the poor guy into reading/visiting pamuk’s museum of innocence. hope he doesn’t tell people about it, embarrass himself. felt terrible about it after, during—my own distraction

undercovers presence doubly so you can only half appear. fuck fascination with fascist pests. A will come to despise Heidegger I think

Zack described this text as: “The first installment of a fictional, pseudonymous, anarchic travelogue, to be published as images of a handwritten journal, linking to a facebook profile. Protagonist (Aleth) investigates power and anti-State movements in countries he visits while touring with a highly unorthodox, interactive puppet troupe. The first installment could take the form of three journal entries from the beginning, middle, and end of Aleth’s travels—future installments would fill out the ‘timeline.’ Readers would be invited to interact with Aleth on facebook.” Aleth’s three journal entries are printed below, after the many epigraphs Zack included.

[Note: all footnotes on this page are from Zack’s original text.]

Zack did an informal reading of a section of this text (Aleth’s August 26, 2013 journal entry), with guitar accompaniment by himself and Gabriel Gall. The music comes from his song, “Arctor,” which he sang after reading the text. The recording can be found in the Odds & Ends section or here.