Zekeriya Guser – Captivated conductor of my very own extraordinary journey.

I was a young boy at the age of 16. In the middle of adolescence trying to go through puberty at the verge of factitious depression to attract more attention as many have done at the same age at those years as I recall which none of us would like to remember.

Again while I am trying to go through one of those days I have had arrange to meet a dear friend for dinner. So I was waiting in front of the theater of the little city which is also very well known as the most common point to meet up. It was slowly drizzling as I only had a thin coat on me as always. I heard a single beep from my Nokia 3310 as there was an incoming message. I checked the message and it was a poem a part of it at least with the name of the poet at the end of it. And that was it…

Quiet a few months later I came across with the same poem from the same source. The first one I received as an sms was deleted after months of keeping it as I had to change my sim card. This time I came across with it again, written to one of my shirts at the last days of high school which were also mainly known as last days of adolescence but actually not… This time I had it with three dots at the beginning, three in the middle of it and three at the end but no poet this time.

So following semester I found myself at a university with a library which has a very extensive collection of literature. It was only about 4 years after Larry and Sergei founded Google.com at which today you can write 3 random words from what you are looking for and you can end up with the information you need and more. But those days all you could do to use the search box on the library computer for the right title of a book you might need which was way more fun…

So now all I needed was parts of a poem, name of the poet, a library computer and a huge thirst of knowledge. So there I was had all 4 right there.

Right here I might have to give you a little background info about myself so you can see more about the story… One of the biggest guilt about myself that I am not a great reader even though I admire people who do a lot, I mean a lot. And when it comes to reading poems, probably never read a book of poems in my life till this point in the story that I can remember.

So back to year 2002, I was searching the books for this particular poet and the library of my university happens to have a set of his books. A set of 11 with according to the title would contain all his poems. So I took the aisle and shelf numbers of this series of books and head there immediately. I saw I thing a few of them on the shelf and the rest were borrowed. So I checked their table of content with the hope that the title of this particular poem would have been containing one or more words from the verses I had in my hands. I had no luck so browse through the pages of the books I had there hoping I could just be lucky as there was no ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button anywhere as there is now just under the Google bar I am afraid.

Anyway now I had to wait till the other books came back so I could check them too. So I popped in every now and then to see the other books. Go through the table of contents and pages but nothing.

I did ran out of ideas, but as I had to after this point, I borrowed the first book of the series as I had no idea where to start from. Took it to my room and looked at it for a few days with the hope of a miracle but there weren’t one so I started to read. Few pages after a few more. So I got through the first one where the poem I was looking for one no where to be found. I took the book back and borrowed the second one. It was over and still no result. But as more books I read, I could less give up. So I carried on reading. But in the mean time as more books I read less the chances I was to find my poem.

8th book, 9th and 10th still no poem but on the other hand I enjoyed tens of hundreds of poems and also very good ones.

Finally I was at the eleventh, having no hope of finding the poem but just enjoying the ride as the saying goes. And the last book was finished there were only a few pages of ‘notes’ left. And I was at the -I remember vividly- 106th and very last page at which there it was. The poem I was looking for about 2 years and around 1.200 pages of great literature.

When I saw the whole poem I would have to say there were a tiny little disappointment as I was only to find out that addition to the four verses I had in my hands there were only two more at the complete poem. Which also meant that the three dots were used mistakenly for which I can also confess I was a little disappointed. But again saying that I couldn’t be mad as in the search of two verses I had the chance of reading well over a thousand poems. So I could as well consider it as a double win.

And then I did what any attention seeking adolescence who might even get an erection with such drama would do and write the whole poem -which I would also like to remind at this point as it was only 2 verses longer than when I started the search- to a tiny piece of paper, fold it and put in my wallet. Which I still have in my current one as I had it on the ones I owned since then, probably subconsciously hoping to present the whole of the poem one day.

Also it would be fair to say that the poem at that point in my life might as well represented who I was perfectly and it seems that I have been growing even more to the way ‘the’ poem have had expressed.

Good nights,