By Isik Ulgenalp

BULLSHIT

Hi, I’m Işık and I have a predicament. I’m obligated to write a certain amount of words. Now the problem one faces when one tries to write something that will be published online is that one can be very unsure what to write given that it’ll forever live on the internet. I mean asking somebody to put something on permanent record that truly stays permanent in our age, it’s a behemoth of a task to come up with something and contemplate how it might be perceived 170 years down the line, when one is continuing their existence in virtual reality. I mean let’s be honest, nobody wants their virtual Hurlingham Club membership to be cancelled over remarks made 170 years ago.

And this uncertainty increases massively from the fact that English is my third language and I have difficulty adjusting here. I seem to lack a fundamental ability that is crucial for success here. You see people ought to know what they think that they know. It’s rather important for one’s career that one knows what they think that they know. Maybe that’s rich coming from a species that can’t even work a fusion reactor, but who am I to judge? But in English people have dubbed knowing what they think that they know in a rather odd way: “Knowing your shit”

The English-speaking world people seem to have a very peculiar relationship with defecation for their relationship to their stools seem to signify how good they’re doing in general. For example, they’ve dubbed being in a good place in their lives: “Having your shit together” which is not the case with me honestly. I never intentionally try to organise my leftovers.

What does it mean anyway? One starts pondering the correlation between one’s relationship to their number 2 and their overall success in life here. Does it mean David Attenborough has very balanced, healthy bowel movements? If one drops one smooth elongated log that doesn’t even require wiping afterwards does it mean that they’ve somehow found inner peace? Can a person who is completely oblivious to the compounds of their faeces be considered happy?

These are the questions that keep me up at night. But the problem is that in my case, is that I know nothing about my offerings to the porcelain throne.

In fact, I can’t even begin to contemplate whether I know my excrement for you see there are different types of knowledge. Things that we know that we know, for example we know that manure has to be a brownish sort of colour, suddenly liquidating the assets in Klein blue, although an achievement, would be very worrisome and require medical attention. Then there are things that we know that we don’t know. For example, while evacuating your insides is a certainty and an inevitable fact of life, the timing of it is still a mystery only known to certain elders of ancient tribes. Emergency evacuations do happen.

And then there are things that we don’t know that we don’t know. Trips to bathrooms that we don’t even know that we can take. Things that make us go: “Wow, that’s possible?”

The unknown unknowns bother me the most. Because even after having been in this country for several years, I still don’t know the shit I need to take to have my shit together and know my shit for once. And knowing that, makes me feel a bit shit…