I created this cocoon of reality to legitimize my decision to leave home. I am trying to hunt down a deer before it is too late to bring home -fucked up ‘exile state of mind’ that created my famous cocoon. Anyway, what Şeyma Sarıbekiroğlu wrote in her letter made me think about the relationship between the cocoons and reality.
“… we want to take the truth in to see how it feels; the other option is to manage the distance between us and reality, yes. But communicating through these letters is also a reality. It creates a feeling of closeness, being seen, heard, understood, and together. I guess these letters wouldn’t exist if I had to distance myself from the realities of loneliness and atomization.”
Having read her words, I may have created this larger and more crowded cocoon for all of us so that I am no more alone in mine. But then cocoons, when they are populated enough, can also become a powerful reality. No? Must reality encompass everything and everyone?
I guess what Milan Vukašinović wrote, made me think about the size of the cocoons. In his letter, he opposed the idea of fascism and revolution beginning between two people and said it is impossible to cure the world through personal relations. And after enumerating all the horrifying mundane realities, he asks me a question.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I get insomnia and anxiety and start googling at 4 am for a local organization I can join in fighting at least some of these issues. On the other side of the screen, tiny Uppsala is sleeping, in every sense of the word. How do you do it, Ece? How do you say, “Ok, today I’ve done something for the planet and the society”? And what do you do when you can’t know that?”
So, I am redirecting the question to you: When do you say, “Ok, today I’ve done something for the planet and the society?”
Here’s another question: are all the cocoons a nonchalant escape from reality? I guess not. I wouldn’t be brave enough to say this had Katharine Orton not written the below story in her letter.
“I watched a documentary that a friend recommended to me about the rescue of the young soccer team in Thailand from the flooded cave system that happened not so long ago. It focused a lot on the small group of cavers who’d become seasoned experts by doing it for years as a weekend hobby and who was instrumental in rescuing the soccer team and their coach. When the cavers spoke about their childhoods, however, it was to say that they’d been somewhat unhappy - they were awkward, teased by their peers, or ‘didn’t play well with others, and their caving hobbies became an escape. But then, I wondered - were they ever really retreating from reality in their cave cocoons? Or accidentally moving closer to it? Do we ever truly escape? It was fascinating how, in the end, their desire to move away from reality (and humanity) brought them closer to both in a truly remarkable way when they helped save those boys.”
A cave, a cocoon for that matter, might be our connection to a broader reality. And we might not even know that.
Our correspondence is a reality that feels like a cocoon I snuggle in.
Yours,
Ece
