Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

[jgk3]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

ON LIMITATIONS

We all go through a period in our lives
when the sky is the limit. But sooner or later
the painful realization sinks in:
we can't even reach the ceiling of our solitary confinement.

we are both sovereign as individuals, and completely dependent on each other for our survival.

Accept the sky, accept the solitary confinement, and they will not harm your spirit. Rest, but don't give up.

I've realized that it's fine for us to disagree, not fine to silence each other. Criticism is the only way to grow, and sweetness, is indeed a destructive monster in the long run.

The criticism you receive from the posters here are also necessary, I'm starting to see how it all works now. What would you write about if they didn't exist?

We all have different ideas, opinions, beliefs, none of which are right on their own. They are all part of the same whole truth. And dialogue is indeed a great approach to engaging in this whole truth.

In this sense, none of the posters here, including myself, are right about anything, unless we engage in dialogue.

[jgk3]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

working overtime today eh ara

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

BODY LANGUAGE

Ideas too have a body language -
the vocabulary they employ,
the choice of clichés or their avoidance,
their tempo and tonality...
in short: to a skilled reader
an idea can be as transparent
as the confession of a guilty butler in an English mystery.

*

MEAN WOMEN

A mean woman can teach a man
more about his vulnerabilities and limitations
than a thousand yataghan-wielding Turks.
If you survive such a specimen
you can survive anything!

*

PROBLEMS

A problem is like an illness.
The first step is to diagnose it correctly.
But if you pretend it doesn't exist,
you guarantee its deterioration from a minor nuisance
to a terminal disease.

*

SOCRATES

When asked where he came from,
Socrates is said to have replied:
"Not from Athens but from the world."
And yet, when he was condemned to death by the Athenians
and given an opportunity to escape,
he said he'd rather die in Athens than live anywhere else.

*

ON LIMITATIONS

We all go through a period in our lives
when the sky is the limit. But sooner or later
the painful realization sinks in:
we can't even reach the ceiling of our solitary confinement.

*

CRITICS

It makes no difference whether you are a failure or a success,
the number of critics will remain constant.
What may change is their caliber.
As a failure you will be trashed by trash.
As a success you will be trashed by a better class of trash.

*

SAROYAN AND MAILER

In one of his books Saroyan mentions
Norman Mailer ("Norman who?")
only to dismiss him as an upstart.
In his latest book, THE SPOOKY ART:
SOME THOUGHTS ON WRITING (2003)
Mailer discusses many minor and major American writers
but doesn't even mention Saroyan.
But in an isolated paragraph and
in reference to no one in particular, he writes:
"It's the guys who pen wonderfully sweet books,
who are the real monsters.
You know - they kick the wife,
cuff the kids, and have the dog shrinking in horror.
Then their books come out:
`X once again delights the reader with his sense of joy.'"

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

CONFESSIONS OF A FAILURE
**************************
When I went into this business I thought my readers would like to be analyzed. (After all, Hollywood stars sometimes spend countless hours and millions of dollars on shrinks.) I was wrong. I know now that what my readers want more than anything else is to be flattered and loved. That’s because they are not lovable and they know it. To them literature should be a feel-good enterprise and writers brown-nosers. First nation to accept Christianity. Yes im anoush Hayastani. The eternal snow of Mt. Ararat. The holy waters of Lake Sevan. Khachaturian, Saroyan, Mikoyan. And let’s not forget Krikor Ipekian,Yeghisapet Terzakian, and Hagop Palanjian (Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor, and Jack Palance). They can never have enough of these names. They are repeated over and over again like mantras. They represent success and everything else that is good in life. As a child I too was brought up to be proud of them. I was led to believe, if they can make it, so can I. Well, they were wrong and I was wrong too. I didn’t make it. I speak as a failure. You may now ignore everything I have said so far and go to bed with an easy conscience. Mamoulian, Aznavour, Cher.

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

a reader writes:
**************************
"go to Hayastan, everytime I go, I come back liking Turks more....
WHo would control "liberated" Hayvanstan? The Mercedes stealing, money hoarding idiots who run the current Hayvanstan?"

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

Culture and Barbarism
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A great deal of nonsense is spoken in the name of culture or cultural values. We forget that every culture at all times and everywhere has also produced those who have resisted or rejected these very same values. Roman values were rejected by Christians, bourgeois values by communists, and communist values by dissidents. Likewise, medieval values were rejected by humanists, totalitarian values by democracies, conservative values by liberals, and fundamentalist values by a wide assortment of other -isms. Culture is first and foremost a process of ferment, conflict, and dialogue. To suppress dialogue and dissent is not culture but barbarism. As for cultural values, let's make one thing clear: we have conflicting interests not conflicting ideas, ideologies, doctrines, or principles. We are dominated by shopkeepers not statesmen, ideologues, theologians, or philosophers. Because as far as I know there is not a single Armenian on earth who openly subscribes to an ideology, orthodoxy, or philosophy that remotely justifies the destruction of the nation.

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

BORDELLO ETIQUETTE
********************
Being an Armenian writer sometimes feels like being a cuckolded husband: everyone appears to know except him. Kibitzers who wouldn’t dare to tell a bus driver or garbage collector what to do, feel fully qualified to tell him what to think, feel, write, and sometimes even how to live. How many times I have been told to be positive; to speak of problems only if I can provide instant and painless solutions; to mention corruption only if I can produce evidence; to employ a politically correct vocabulary lest I offend someone’s sensibilities: and this in an environment where writers are ruthlessly silenced and starved. To these ladies and gentlemen (if you will forgive the outrageous overstatement) I say: A writer is first and foremost a human being who is not even remotely tempted to conform to anyone’s prefabricated image of him. He does not write to have your agreement, approval, or support. You may read or ignore him. You may accept or reject him. What you may not do is order him the way you order a pizza. He is not there to sell you anything. He speaks as a witness and recognizes only the people as his jury and history as his judge.

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

someone on this forum threatened to ignore me.
please do!

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

The Root of Our Problems
=======================================

We remain hopelessly divided and fragmented today because we behave not as a nation but as a collection of tribes. This has been said before, many times, but it bears repeating. Listen to Nikol Aghpalian (1873-1947), statesman, literary scholar, educator: "We Armenians are products of the tribal mentality of Turks and Kurds, and this tribal mentality remains stubbornly rooted even among our leaders and elites." But our tribalism is not a final verdict without appeal. There is a way out. Those who say otherwise have understood nothing of our history and care even less about us. We were victimized at the turn of the century in the Ottoman Empire not as tribes but as a nation. We may go on behaving as tribes but history and our enemies have singled us out and defined us as a nation. I say therefore, if we can suffer as a nation, we have earned the right to behave as a nation. This is the best argument against those who divide us by exploiting our tribalism. I will go further and state that, we will acquire national consciousness only on the day we understand that all those who have divided us and continue to divide us today in the name of this or that ill-defined orthodoxy, doctrine, ideology, or policy, are our gravediggers regardless of what they profess, preach, or speechify. Again according to Nikol Aghpalian: "When man does not submit himself to the rule of law, he will have to submit himself to the rule of man, that is to say, cliques and gangs.

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

Confessions of a former fascist
=======================================

Like most Armenians who had an Armenian education, I was brought up to be a patriotic little fascist bastard. Which is why I can recognize a fascist when I see one. All I have to do is recall myself when young and brainwashed. I know now that all nations produce their share of chauvinist fanatics because all nations have at their disposal vulnerable young minds whose critical faculties have not yet been awakened; and even when they grow up, most of these poor benighted souls remain so immersed in their own prejudices that they are incapable of recognizing reflections of themselves in the "enemy" camp. These fascists are so sure of the absolute validity of their beliefs that they are willing to kill and die for them. In that sense, an Armenian and a Turkish or Azeri fascist share more things in common with one another than with their own fellow countrymen who are convinced such things as national superiority and ethnocentrism are at the very root of wars and massacres, and to promote them in the name of this or that noble cause is the quintessence of charlatanism.