Feryal Önal -- a beautiful soul

Feryal lives in Istanbul. Feryal is hard to pin down inside my brain. She is expansive and eccentric -- like a mysterious morning fog rising off the Bosporus.

She strikes me as a thoughtful, sensitive person. A person who has an immense curiosity about life and the world. I thought I had an immense curiosity, but she has me beat. And Feryal is spiritually, intellectually nimble: she can juggle a whole range of conceptions and possibilities. They say the mark of a substantial, flexible, and even ethical mind is one in which contraries can be entertained simultaneously. I think that not only means being able to see another's point of view but also an approach to life that is open-hearted.

I think Feryal is aware of reality's obtuse angles, of its irrational shadows, and of its amorphous shapes.

On Facebook, she posts all kinds of wild stuff -- interesting stuff. From black holes, to quantum pulses, to poetic epiphanies, to romantic perturbations, to ethical imperatives, to political articles, to...well...a whole lot of neat stuff. And she usually does a thematic series of posts. This is cool. It provides a range of complementary angles from which to consider a given topic.

Once I did something very stupid. I realize that's hard to believe. She had posted something to which I left a very goofy comment. I then decided I must have shattered the serious intent of her post. That I had dishonored that thread. So I removed myself from her friends list as an act of self-mortification. Doing so was the kind of thing that should have banished me to the far zones of ridiculousness. But Feryal is amazing. She probably only smiled slightly before saying, in effect: "Hey...it's not like you blew up the solar system. Come on back, sit by the fire. I'll bring you some wine and tell you a folk tale that will bear on your crazy condition."

I think Feryal is planning on moving to Tel Aviv, if she hasn't already. That will be cool. I have some friends living there. From what I gather, it's a place of many dimensions. Not really spooky mathematical dimensions. I mean, rather, that it is an environment of high culture, intelligence, soul, and imagination. I think Feryal would fit in there and like it very much. I think Tel Aviv would like her very much.