December 9, 2025, Tuesday.
Wapato, Washington.

We are laughing with the young members of the public who have long digested their oppression while sipping our beverages.

The cost of parking here is 10 dollars. However, if you shop for 25 dollars from the market, then you don’t have to pay a price for parking until morning.

I bought a sandwich, a croissant, peanuts, tea, but I just couldn’t round it up to 25 dollars. A different kind of beverage caught my eye. I asked the kid at the register about it. He said it was a good thing, “I drank it, I like it,” he said. I bought one for him, and one for myself.

I remember, the waiter in Pattaya rejoiced the most when I bought him a beverage. The earnings of the poor workers were so little that they couldn’t bring themselves to spend money on Coke or Fanta.

I came all the way here listening to the snowy high mountains from the sorrowful voice of Barış Manço. I brought meat from Kentucky to Oregon. I will take apples from Washington to California.

The sneaky shopkeepers of the small town loaded the apples with extra weight, just to make a little more money. I got on the scale and I had a weight above the legal limit. I went back. The warehouse is closed but I will wait for tomorrow morning. They will reduce that load a bit. And I will rest tonight.

If my mom also passes away soon after my dad, that is when I will actually take a break from working. Maybe I will start living. I will breathe. I will live. Maybe for a few days, maybe for a few years, maybe for a long while.

The most beautiful thing I’ve done in this life was not having children.

New children are born and I always see the wretches of the future. I don’t remember ever looking at any child and saying, “Okay, this one will be very happy one day.” A thousand times the agony of every baby’s innocent smile is waiting right there, a mere twenty years later.

They will experience disasters one after another. The taste of disasters is hidden in their coming one after another.

It is not up to every mind to accept disappearing.

Whereas this is an arcade. We stopped by for a short time. Some of us don’t want to leave. Some of us have already started getting bored.

Ultimately, there is a supreme justice. We are very equal. There is a sleep that treats the smartest and the dumbest, the richest and the poorest all the same.

I enjoy feeling my fingers. While writing in the old notebook, while fingering young women.

My tongue still tastes. I can see the color blue. What if I had passed away without listening to Barış Manço.

The most beautiful place is the place where you are. Just as there are places you haven’t seen, there are those who haven’t seen your place. Stop always feeling like you’re missing out. Realize that you are always lucky.

As long as they don’t catch your gaze, loving eyes don’t matter. If voices are coming from the unseen, what is it to you whether I hear them or not. Look to your amusement. Whatever makes you happy, that is what’s right.

Find nature tremendous and miraculous. Love life. Live to the fullest. Find life meaningless and unnecessary. Don’t care. Don’t leave with your eyes looking back when you die.

The number of people you know is equal to the number of people you are disgusted by. If you haven’t been disgusted yet, it’s because you haven’t gotten to know them yet.

Barış Manço talks about young men falling in love with fifteen-year-old girls in his songs. Fifteen is the peak age of girls’ beauty.

I remember, I fell in love with fifteen-year-old girls the most when I started getting older. The poor girls’ experiences were so little that they couldn’t be sure whether to love or to swear.

Then my grandmother got married at fifteen. One day my mom fell in love at fifteen. They told me so themselves. However, those who fell in love and got married were unhappy.

The second most beautiful thing I’ve done in this life was not falling in love and getting married.

Fall in love but don’t marry. Let them marry someone smarter and richer.

Marry but don’t fall in love. Make sure to marry a citizen of a country with a stronger passport so you can fly and land wherever you want, whenever you want.

I did just that. She lived a more fitting life. I attained a life I dreamed of more. What remained is the memory of the beautiful smile and innocent tears of a small, cute, and beautiful high schooler I met when I was fifteen.

We are good.

I grew up in the bosoms of women who had to do sex work (love work), some because they were left orphaned and alone, some because they couldn’t pay their debts, and some because they were trying to single-handedly raise their tiny children abandoned by their fathers.

They raised themselves, their children, and me. I am a bit their child too. They have a lot of rights over me.

How easy it is to judge others without being tested with the same troubles.

“Those high mountains yonder Are snowy, oh they are snowy

Even if ‘carefree’, Barış Is sorrowful, oh he is sorrowful”

I love it!