A new year, a new route?

Dear Friend,

I am writing to you on my way to Rome. And let me tell you that not all roads lead to Rome. Having been around the world a few times already, this is my first visit to the city of majesty and intrigue. I am going to be speaking at the Independent Publishers’ Festival so probably there will be no time for sightseeing. It is only from a car window that I see the cities when going from one event to another nowadays. Looking has become hasty sneaks squeezed in between the items on a to-do list. I should slow down.

The Letters from Now Team is putting the bits I picked from your letters on our Instagram account and now on our Twitter & Facebook account, so go on and check those texts using the translate button to see how you can perfect your survival skills in maddening times. I wanted to create those accounts for you to see that there are beautiful people around. A piece of information that we need most when the world is constantly telling us the opposite.

I have some good news. Together: A Manifesto Against the Heartless World is coming out in Turkish, finally. After two days you receive this letter, the book will be in the bookshops. I’ve written it in English and so far, it has been translated into four languages. But being translated to Turkish, to my mother tongue is a unique and, to tell the truth, excruciating experience. One feels devastatingly alienated from one’s language, even if the translation is perfect. That is why in fact, I wrote to you two weeks ago that my journey with my Kon-Tiki might not have any arrival. Once you leave the shore of your mother tongue there is nowhere to arrive. Anyways.

So, I have new plans for us that you’ll hopefully find exciting. Since the Turkish members of letters from now will have the opportunity to have a look at the book, I thought of doing something new starting from January. A new year, a new expedition, so to speak. Until now we didn’t have a route to follow. We enjoyed the experience of writing to each other and what I understand from your letters, this gave a nice structure to your Saturdays. But now we will have more than that. I propose that we follow the ten big words I’ve discussed in Together to deeply think, write and talk about them, one word per month. The first word is faith in humankind. Let’s stop seeking hope and have faith in our kind so we create the hope from there on.

I am hoping that this route will provide us with the opportunity to reflect on the main challenges of our age. And more importantly, I feel like I have a lot to learn from you. Thinking after all is a matter of togetherness and thinking alone is the biggest tragedy for us, the humans. So, what do you think about this one-year plan?

This winter will be damn hard. Again. And this is the first time after more than a year I feel like I cannot take it anymore. I guess somehow behind my head I gave a certain amount of time for the pandemic to be over. I am great at enduring, that might be my best survival skill. However, apparently, the amount of time that I unknowingly calculated is up and now I am for the first time scared. To be honest I wasn’t really taking it seriously when people talked about the new normality. But obviously, there will be new normality and the most horrible thing about it is the unpredictability.

I was supposed to go to Barcelona for the Atlas of Future Festival to be on stage with Brian Eno and a minute ago I learned that it is postponed to next autumn. Here you go. As a woman coming from Turkey I have developed the perfect flexibility but this level of blurriness is too much even for me. Anyways, what I meant to say is that that is also the reason I wanted to follow a structure in our correspondence. At least one thing can be solid, I thought in these excruciatingly fluid times.

Yours,

Ece