My dear,
Last night, with friends from high school, we had a small reunion by the Bosphorus. It was a dinner in honor of one of our good friends who lives in the US. She came to visit Türkiye and was only here to see us before she transferred to the summer house where her husband and kids had already flown.
There, one of the girls mentioned how missing is said differently in French.
Tu me manques.
The fact that the person you miss is the subject of the sentence, and not you, is a sweet spot. Not I miss you. But you are missed. You are missing from my life.
Similarly, mi manchi in Italian.
You lack in me.
How vulnerable and tender it feels.
When I watched your short video with Ulysée, I realized how much I missed your voice.
And although I don’t understand a word of French, I felt your joy and pride, as well as his, in the water, splashing its way. It will sound pretty strange, I know, but a part of me even wished you and your family would relocate somewhere in France. I felt as if every vowel and syllable needed to be truly home again. Pretty weird of me to say this, I know, but this is truly how I felt, and by now we’re getting comfortable with our weirdness, right?
I’m sorry about the job market, dear. I hope that as the summer ends, new opportunities arrive quickly and that you get what you deserve. I am positive good days will come.
Simple pleasures: the first swim, a jar of ice cream, a good book. Maybe I can add a good cup of tea or coffee. Even thinking of these simple pleasures makes me smile.
As for Cristiano’s book, well, he surprised me a lot too. Although I couldn’t read it full, I really fell in love with the creativity there. I was pretty shocked when I saw an AI-generated version of Nazım Hikmet’s poetry and it made a lot of sense. I remember reading Nazim when I was a teenager but, unfortunately, during those years he was still “banned” from the curriculum. We had a bulletin board in class, which each of us was responsible for filling with literature we liked. I had chosen a poem by Nazım and the Turkish teacher had called me over and kindly asked me to remove it from the board. That memory is still vivid in my head.
I’m not a big fan of 15th- and 16th-century art, but I like the Primitives’ design a lot. Well done my dear. I decided that I should check out the museum list when I travel in Europe. I actually got interested in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and checked it out on Google Maps only to notice that it’s temporarily closed. Also, if I’m not mistaken, I’ve been to a Bruegel exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It was a very special event. Do you have specific plans for the marketing campaign? Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.
Closing this letter with a summary of my short vacation in Bodrum, I spent three days there with a friend. I’ll send a short video of those days to your Instagram. My daily routine was to walk to the beach at 8:00-8:30 a.m. and stay until 10:30-11:30 a.m. under the umbrella, listening to music or just looking around, listening to the sound of the small waves hitting the shore. I made peace with a lot of things during that time. Then I went back to the apartment I shared with my friend. We had breakfast on the balcony and, in the afternoon, she walked down to the beach while I stayed inside, lay down, read a book, had a peach, or chewed on a kernel aimlessly on the balcony. This was all I had for vacation this time. I couldn’t organize a trip even to my parents’ summer house this year, but hopefully, I will do better next year.
I was out all day yesterday, so my plan for today is to stay in, read, write, and watch a movie, maybe Project Hail Mary, which I saw on Prime today. This is all from me for now.
Sending you lots of hugs, ciao!
P.S. I’m sharing with you the two songs I listened to first thing this morning: Ô toi la vie by Charles Aznavour and Mistral gagnant by Cœur de Pirate.
