Meltem Arikan

This is time on my own.  This is an adventure.  I’m living in another world, In the world of nature… Success or failure means nothing  I’m living without any demands on me, I’ve got all my skills, I’ve got all my energy, I’m relaxed, It doesn’t matter whether I win or lose... Able to live without critical voices... 

I’m alone… My new home… In nature…

Everybody left but I didn’t feel sad. I’m alone... I don’t have to do anything… Without “have to” or “should do” I don’t know how I'll live… After everybody had gone, I cleaned and tidied up the house. I’m alone…  I listened to the radio but after one hour even the radio was too much for me. I turned it off.… I made a cup of tea… It was very unusual for me because I don’t like coffee or tea but I really wanted to drink a cup of tea while listening to the voice of the wood burner. I felt fantastic. I was free to be confused and be no one...

I was enchanted. I’m alone… I adore my new cottage, of course, but here was something entirely different, w…

I’m ok... You are ok... Love me, look at me, value me, attend to me, On being boss, on having power, on winning the race I don’t feed myself on that… If I feed myself on others... If I am nourishing material.. I know I’ve lost my soul…
I haven’t lost any of my excitement while I’m living in Elan Valley. Everything is so new but at the same time, everything reminds me of my childhood. The smell of burning wood, the cold bathroom, buckets in the bathroom, the ‘voices’ coming from the wood burner. Silence and the sound of the radio which we bought had a couple of days ago…

I was born in a house with a wood burner but after three years we moved into a flat which had central heating and a shower. But my dad, uncle, and their aunt lived in Keçiöğren when I was a child.
Keçiören was a village far from the city centre. People there live in a cottage or in small apartment buildings with a maximum of three floors. They have big gardens with different fruit trees, vegetables, chicken, geese… L…