notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, November 24, 2011
*****************************************
WOMEN
**************************************************
To how many women we could say:
I love you with all my heart
and I shall continue loving you to the end of my days,
but not you as you are,
but you as a figment of my own imagination.
*
ON VANITY
*********************
Charlie Chaplin asked Truman Capote
to read the manuscript of his memoirs
with the eyes of a professional writer.
When Capote did and reported back with a list of suggestions,
Chaplin said: "Get the hell out of my sight!"
*
ON ORIENTAL WISDOM
*********************************
To avoid grief, conflict, misery and suffering,
do nothing and be nobody. Or simply, imitate the dead.
That’s what most Oriental wisdom boils down to.
But since life is only an extremely tiny interval of light
in the darkness of non-being,
it should be as different from death as we can make it
even if in the process we experience confusion and misery.
#
Friday, November 25, 2011
*****************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*****************************
The official Kemalist classification of Armenians
as “Christian Turks” is patently absurd
in view of the fact that we are devoid
of both Christian charity and Turkish solidarity.
*
What motivates us to assess ourselves
as smart, progressive, compassionate, and God’s chosen
is the suspicion that we may be none of these things.
*
One of the worst things that can happen to a nation
is to believe in its own propaganda;
and one of the worst things that can happen to a leader
is to become a dupe of his own lies.
Speaking for myself,
I committed my worst blunders
after convincing myself that I knew better
and anyone who dared to contradict me
was a damn fool.
*
When it comes to women,
not only boys will be boys
but also men of all ages.
Hence the saying,
“The brain of a man is the body of a naked woman.”
#
WHAT’S YOUR RACKET?
*********************************
Even after 30 books and over a thousand articles,
stories, and essays in periodicals and newspapers
I hesitate to identify myself as a writer
because more often than not I am asked:
"How come I have never heard of you?"
to which I am tempted to reply:
"Next time you visit your public library
check and see how many names you recognize
besides Shakespeare’s and Hemingway’s?"
*
HIS RACKET
****************************
I can’t imagine Mozart at the age of thirty saying:
"I have composed enough. I am quitting."
I have no doubt whatever in my mind that
Mozart would have gone on composing
even at the age of 80, very much like Verdi.
Likewise, I can’t imagine God saying,
"I have created the universe and enough is enough!"
What if, even as I write these lines,
God is busy creating other universes
in other dimensions?
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, November 27, 2011
*****************************************
Q/A
********************
I cannot think of a single important decision or judgment
that I have made in the past
that did not contain a 99% margin of error.
Let that be a warning to all those with whom
I share my wisdom.
*
What do the Pope of Rome and Stalin have in common?
Infallibility.
*
When asked to name my favorite Armenian dish,
I identify myself as a vegetarian.
When told there are many delicious vegetarian dishes
in our cuisine,
I say I prefer to keep my answers to that subject short
because all talk of pilaf and shish-kebab bores me stiff.
*
And speaking of questions:
I don’t remember a single interview
with an African-American writer
in which mention was ever made of chicken and watermelon.
*
A question I have never been asked:
“On a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate our leadership?”
The obvious answer is minus one, of course!
#
Monday, November 28, 2011
*****************************************
Why is it that some very smart and learned Armenians
confuse anti-charlatanism with anti-Armenianism?
Why is it that some very cunning Armenians
in their defense of their own selfish, narrow interests
voice reasons worthy of an inbred moron?
*
When it comes to Genocide recognition
the American question is not whether it is true or false but
“What’s in it for us?”
Call that cynicism if you like.
They call it pragmatism.
*
Whenever I write for Armenians
I remind myself that I am breaking the commandment:
“Thou shalt not share your wisdom
with wiser men than yourself.”
*
Wisdom and serenity are mutually exclusive concepts.
You can’t be serene in a world of lunatics
who think you are the lunatic.
#
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
*****************************************
It is a universally shared human weakness
to prefer flattery to criticism,
but it is adangerous addiction
to prefer lies to truth.
*
On a radio program on children’s poetry this
morning, I overheard the following quotation:
“There is some xxxx / I will not eat!” That’s
what I call good poetry – rhythm, music, and
words that once heard are never forgotten.
*
Belief systems have nothing
to do with reality and everything to do with the
power to shape our perception of reality.
#
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
*****************************************
BOOK REVIEW
********************************************
TWILIGHT VISIONS.
By Vahan Vahanian (Jansezian).
Los Angeles. 2011. 255 pages.
(In Armenian)
**************************************************
“I am told I go to extremes in my assertions,
to which I say, What are words for?"
The labyrinth of Armenian life in Los Angeles
is Vahan Vahanian’s territory
and he has as many stories to relate as Scheherazade.
His style is brief, to the point,blunt.
He takes no prisoners.
“With the dollar, a man who signs his name with an X
is treated as a philosopher.
Without the dollar a genius is shunned as a lunatic…”
“That’s the way it is in America.
Novelties aplenty,
real-estate developments everywhere,
institutionalized larceny rampant,
refinement an absent factor.”
Vahanian is not afraid to step on toes or,
for that matter, to kick balls.
A man after my own heart.
As the editor/publisher of a newspaper
that is distributed freely,
neither is he afraid to alienate a fraction of his audience.
He speaks of a woman who tells him
her aim in life is to have more of everything –
“more fun, more money, more xxxelry and more sex with younger men…”
“In Los Angeles there is neither brotherhood nor friendship.”
Phony intellectuals, exhibitionists, megalomaniacs, and womanizers
are a dime a dozen.
Vahanian may speak of depressing things
but he does so with a friendly smile
and his smile is infectious.
“Every other Armenian you meet these days
has political ambitions.
If Raffi Hovannisian and Jirair Libaridian made it,
why can’t I?”
And there is the self-appointed genius with literary ambitions:
“Did you get my article?”
“When are you going to print it?”
“No editorial changes, please!”
“How much are you going to pay me?”
If to say what must be said were music,
Vahan Vahanian would be our Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.
(For more information, write to newarmenia ).
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, December 01, 2011
*****************************************
What can you possibly know about a country
if you have never tried to make a living there?
What can you possibly know about the human condition
if you have at no time been dependent
on the charity of swine?
For 25 years I had to produce pseudo-Saroyanesque trash
in order to make minimum wage.
The reason why I write as I do today is that
I have declared my financial independence
and, with it, to write as I please
without fear of retaliation.
I may not be a “good” Armenian
as defined by our Ottomanized, Sovietized, and Americanized
wheeler-dealers but I like to believe
I fully qualify as a born-again human being.
#
Friday, December 02, 2011
*****************************************
A lie is like a deadly virus.
Left unattended it will poison and kill its speaker
as well as his dupes,
families as well as communities,
tribes as well as nations,
empires as well as civilizations.
#
Saturday, December 03, 2011
*****************************************
After listening to the patriotic spiel
of a fellow passenger on a train,
Tolstoy is quoted as having said:
“As long as there are men like you
we will have wars and massacres.”
Likewise, as long as there are organized religions
we will have prejudice, intolerance,
and crimes against humanity.
*
The true enemies of God
are men who speak in His name.
*
Tolerance means not only to be open to new ideas,
including ideas that contradict our own,
but also to welcome and cherish them.
*
If we admit there is some truth in all belief systems,
we must also admit that truth is not in a single god
but in all gods; or, in Gandhi’s words:
“If God is Truth even atheists are believers
because they believe in God’s non-existence.”
*
God is either on no one’s side or on everybody’s side.
To say, like the Nazis, “God is with us,”
is not theology but pathology.
(For more on this subject,
see Toynbee’s STUDY OF HISTORY, volume x.)
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, December 04, 2011
*****************************************
CONTRADICTIONS
*******************************
Thomas Mann on creativity:
“By creation we understand
not making something out of nothing
but rather the kindling of spirit in matter.”
It must have been an extremely painful
and degrading experience for Mann
to realize that
a morally and intellectually inferior contemporary of his
could be superior to him in the business of kindling….”
*
Wars are fought in the name of certainties,
which may suggest that
(a) all certainties have contradictions, and
(b) all certainties may well be inventions of the devil.
*
Organized religions create an environment
in which voicing contradictions is called heresy,
and heresy is thought of as a capital offense
punishable by death or eternal hellfire.
*
What Marx said on politics applies to religions:
“Whatever class is in power
dictates the moral code which will support it
and keep it in existence.”
Some day when mankind awakens,
religions will be seen as collective nightmares.
#
Monday, December 05, 2011
*****************************************
POLITICS
*******************************
My morning paper informs me
Russians call their present rulers
“crooks and thieves.”
If our own rulers are also “crooks and thieves,”
I suspect they are a better class
of “crooks and thieves,”
and by better I don’t mean morally superior
but smarter – more greedy, ruthless and cunning.
I say this on the grounds that
as far as I know no one has ever dared
to accuse Armenians
of being dumber than Russians.
*
On the positive side:
I don’t know about you
but I am having a lot of fun
following the slow suicide of the Republican party
in the United States.
#
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
*****************************************
SHOP TALK
*******************************
On rereading the ten pages
that I wrote last night
in a burst of inspiration
I search in vain for the one or two lines
that may or may not be worth publishing.
*
When you preach to the converted
the temptation to believe in what you say
becomes irresistible.
*
Follow youR dream
until it turns into a nightmare –
as dreams have a tendency of doing.
*
Sometimes we get so involved
in defending ourselves that
we lose awareness of the damage
we inflict on our adversaries.
That’s one way to explain our genocide –
and please note,
to explain does not mean to justify.
#
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
*****************************************
NOTES AND COMMENTS
*******************************
We have had so much history rammed down our throats
that we haven't yet had a chance to digest it.
We are a nation suffering from chronic constipation.
*
My country right or wrong
and myself right or wrong
might as well be synonymous.
*
More often than not "I am right, you are wrong," means:
My self-interest or ego is more important than yours.
*
On the origin of the universe:
was it an accident?
was it by design?
was it designed to look like an accident?
Why?
Who benefits?
*
Armenians with their perennial demands
of Genocide recognition and territorial claims
are like sheep preaching vegetarianism
in a world run by wolves.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, December 08, 2011
*****************************************
NOTES AND COMMENTS
*******************************
A good line once read is never forgotten.
It is my ambition in life to produce such a line.
Call me a megalomaniac.
*
In our environment agreement means
sharing the same bias.
*
When a man sees the light
he assume everyone else is blind.
*
I once met a born again
who thought I was a dead man walking.
*
Because I did not worship his God
he thught I worshipped the Devil.
*
Whenever I see the photo of an Armenian writer
in the company of a boss or bishop,
I can't help thinking,
"There goes the neighborhood."
*
To those who say I repeat myself:
Only if you insist on reading me –
for which many thanks!
#
Friday, December 09, 2011
*****************************************
NOTES AND COMMENTS
*******************************
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
I am informed this morning on the radio,
is the most widely translated document in the world;
also (my guess) the most ignored.
Has it been translated into Armenian, I wonder.
I am not casting aspersions;
only sharing my ignorance and need for answers.
*
Bias is universal.
Resistance to bias
a slowly and painfully acquired asset.
*
All nationalists are brought up to believe
they are all white and their enemies all black.
When in fact they are not even gray but brown --
the color of @#$%.
*
Crude, you say.
So is life.
We have no choice but to deal with it
on its own terms.
*
My parents survived the Turks.
I am now busy trying to survive my fellow Armenians.
#
Saturday, December 10, 2011
*****************************************
WE ARE THE 50%
*******************************
What we need is a revolution
and I don’t believe in revolutions.
At best we may get reforms
but if the past is an index
we have no reason for optimism.
*
Subtract the brown-nosers, the yes-men,
the hirelings, the brainwashed, the dupes,
the alienated and assimilated,
we may be closer to the 50%
rather than the 99%.
*
We are no longer at the mercy of our enemies
but of a far more invincible and insidious adversary:
our own leadership.
Our Wall Street is in the convolutions of our cortex.
*
The only way to describe our situation is to say that
we are committing slow-motion suicide
by self-inflicted ten thousand cuts.
In that sense one could even say that
Turks were more merciful than
our own bosses, bishops, and benefactors.
*

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, December 15, 2011
*****************************************
NOTES / COMMENTS
*******************************
The only time what you say offends no one
is when you say nothing.
*
In our environment the fools speak, shout, sing,
speechify and sermonize
and the wise are silent.
*
This year too I made several new friends
and twice as many enemies.
*
Armenian friends are a sometime thing,
but Armenian enemies, like diamonds, are forever.
*
Scientists claim they are very close
to discovering the “god particle”
that will explain what has been incomprehensible so far.
We may be almost there but no cigar.
*
When I was young and ambitious
I wanted to write “literature.”
All I hope to do now is produce an honest line.
#
Friday, December 16, 2011
*****************************************
TOLSTOY
*******************************
Reading a new biography of Tolstoy
is like visiting an old friend.
After cross-examining theologians of the Orthodox Church,
Tolstoy notes in his diary:
“The Church, from the present day
all the way back to the third century,
is one long series of lies, cruelty and deception.”
See TOLSTOY: A RUSSIAN LIFE
by Rosamund Bartlett (New York, 2011, page 278).
*
THE STORY OF THE WEEPING CAMEL
********************************************
That’s the title of a Mongolian film.
I enjoy foreign films because
they tell much more than a story;
they also show how the other half lives.
*
CLASS-WARFARE
***************************
When the 99% assert their right,
they call it class-warfare.
When the 1% get richer
they call them “job creators.”
Which raises the question:
If they are job-creators
why is it that the unemployment rate
hasen't been going down?
*
POLITICS
************************
If you want to know more about a political party,
speak to its opposition,
because everything a partisan says
will be contaminated by partisan propaganda.
#
Saturday, December 17, 2011
*****************************************
OF GOD & MEN
*******************************
We should be careful not to contaminate God
with human attributes or
to create God in our own image.
God does not have to exist in order to rule.
That’s the true meaning of being Almighty.
*
Money is power,
and power means manipulating the law,
and manipulating the law means
getting away with murder.
When they don’tlegitimize slaughter by declaring war,
the 1% suck the blood of the innocent and the weak.
Remember the Ottoman Empire
or any empire for that matter.
Not that nations are morally superior.
*
Where there is power,
there will also be abuse of power
and it makes no difference whether the man at the top
is a sultan or an imam or a pope
acting in the name of a merciful and compassionate Allah.
#

[Pedro Xaramillo]

Re: elegy

Once upon a time, I read a story, which was a story in which things were told in story form.
In this story hitherto mentioned as story, a story took place.

There lived a man in a penthouse four stories high, this was not like the stories in the prior paragraph as this refers to stories as in buildings, not stories that are told to convey a story.

He got up, brushed his teeth, had coffee and a cigar.

This is the story.

As this is mainly a thread devoted to siloquy, I decided to add my own.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, December 18, 2011
*****************************************
STATUS REPORT
*******************************
One reason why I classify myself as
a 5th-class Armenian celebrity is that
4th-class celebrities sometimes ask for my help
in order to catapult themselves into 3rd-class status.
*
When I insulted our bishops,
I galvanized the Church against me.
When I insulted our bosses,
I galvanized our brainwashed dupes.
And when I insulted our benefactors,
I galvanized our brown-nosers.
And now that there is no one left
to insult and galvanize I feel disoriented.
If I knew how to pray,I would say,
“Give me somebody!”
Please note that I am now talking about our 1%
who may or may not be aware with my existence.
As for the 99%:
if you were to mention my name in their presence,
they would probably say, “Who the &@#$ is he?”
#
Monday, December 19, 2011
*****************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*******************************
To those who say, “To criticize is easy,” I say:
Don’t think of me as a critic
but as someone who is trying to keep alive
an old Armenian tradition that goes back
to the 5th-century AD – that of dissent.
*
North Korean leader Kim Jong II is dead.
Who is going to miss him?
Only brainwashed Koreans.
Next question:
Which one of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors
will be missed?
*
There is a natural tendency in all oppressed people
to resent not the oppressor
but his next-door neighbor.
All Armenians carry within them
the seeds of anti-Armenianism.
*
A Muslim scholar in Canada
has written a book critical of Islam
and now lives in fear of assassination.
*
OVERHEARD
"A single wolf is a dog,
a pack of wolves is a mafia."
*
"Suffering is a bad companion
but an excellent teacher."
*
#
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
*****************************************
AT THE BEGINNING
*******************************
Propaganda is conceived by second-raters,
recycled by third-raters,
and believed by fourth-raters.
*
I was taught humility by arrogant fools
whose true intent was to intimidate and moronize me
in the name of God and Country.
*
All nations and empires begin as a small tribe.
God did not create many Chinese or Turks
and only a handful of Armenians.
The different between them and us is that
throughout our history and especially
during the last fifteen centuries,
we have been systematically massacred, raped,
and coerced into assimilation by a variety of people,
including our fellow Armenians.
This is not something you will be taught by our historians who,
like all historians, have a tendency to cover up and ignore
the most important aspects of the past.
Whoever said “Nothing gets ignored as easily as the essential,”
knew what he was saying.
*
Our Toumanian is right when he said
“You must burn in order to enlighten.”
The Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi
did exactly that a year ago:
he set himself aflame providing the spark
that ignited the Arab Spring.
#
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
*****************************************
TWO COMMENTS
*******************************
The problem with ascribing all our
problems, defeats, tragedies and
catastrophes on outside agencies is that
this allows us to adopt a passive stance
and do nothing,
in other words:
to be dependent on the goodwill of others --
including those who may or may not be
favorably disposed towards us, which means
to surrender our destiny as a nation into
foreign hands, which,
according to an old Armenian saying,
"will harvest nothing but thorns."
The common sense of our peasants
contains more wisdom than the calculations
of our self-assessed cunning political leaders.
*
If present-day Greeks share anything in common
with their illustrious ancestors of ancient Greece,
it is not with the likes of Socrates, Plato and Diogenes,
but with those who persecuted them.
What about us?
What do we share with
Abovian, Baronian, Bakounts, Massikian and Zarian?
Nothing!
With those who betrayed and silenced them?
Everything!
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, December 22, 2011
*****************************************
ON LOVE AND HATE
*******************************
Love has inspired many songs
but we owe our wars, revolutions, and massacres
-- that is to say history – to hatred.
Hatred plays a much more important role in life than love
or any other factor you care to mention,
including indifference and boredom.
Boredom and indifference may be said to be ahistorical
only in the sense that they allow hatred to shape reality.
Boredom and indifference victimize no one,
they only allow victimizers a free hand.
*
A man of power believes history to be on his side.
But history does not takes sides.
Even a solitary, unarmed and anonymous street fruit-vendor
has the power to topple brutal regimes like dominoes.
It is all a matter of time,
and in cosmic terms, a fraction of a second.
Only Almighty God is secure in His place
and He doesn’t even have to exist in order to rule.
#
Friday, December 23, 2011
*****************************************
AS I SEE IT
*******************************
The average Armenian is an idiot
who has been brainwashed to believe he is smart.
If you can’t see this clearly
it may be because you have been systematically moronized.
And if you think I am different
I will be more than happy to quote Flaubert:
The average Armenian “c’est moi.”
*
I have collected so many grievances against my fellow men
that I am beginning to suspect Alzheimer’s may well be
a blessing in disguise.
*
If it weren’t for past grievances
not only Armenian would live in peace with Turk
but also with fellow Armenian.
Maybe that’s what mankind needs:
a drug that will kill bad memories
without damaging any other vital organ.
*
Armenia is the site of the Garden of Eden
with one difference:
in the original Garden humans outnumbered reptiles….
#
Saturday, December 24, 2011
*****************************************
THE ROOT OF INTOLERANCE
*******************************
Authority will never sanction anything
that may question its legitimacy.
One could even say authority and intolerance
might as well be one and the same.
To speak of the tolerance
of a boss, bishops, or benefactor is
like speaking of the shadow of a black hat
in a dark room.
*
ON LOVE
**********************
Cesare Pavese: “One does not kill oneself for love or a woman,
but because love – any love – reveals us
in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.”
It is to be noted that Pavese, an Italian novelist,
fell in love with an American actress,
was rejected, and killed himself.
*
ON IMPERIALISM
***************************
Imperialism may be justified on the grounds that
if we don’t do it to them they will do it to us;
and as everyone must know by now,
in politics and world affairs in general
it is not always the best man that wins.
History provides us with many examples
of this aberration,
beginning with Turks versus Armenians,
or for that matter, the rest of the world versus Armenians.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, December 25, 2011
*****************************************
IN BRIEF
*******************************
The victims of politicians
outnumber the victims of criminals.
*
There are two gods:
the god of priests and the other one.
We know a great deal about the first,
nothing about the other.
*
Turks are brainwashed to believe
they are noble specimens of humanity
to the same degree
that we are brainwashed to believe
we are smart.
Why should we be surprised
if the encounter of these two big lies
resulted in massacres?
*
I should like to read an interview
with a political or religious leader
that begins with the question:
“Let’s cut the crap, shall we?”
*
“What the hell happened to you?”
would be my first question
to one of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors.
*
Violence works but only at first.
Lies convince but only dupes.
#
Monday, December 26, 2011
*****************************************
AS I SEE IT
*******************************
Sometimes I am misunderstood
not because I am difficult to understand
but because the brainwashing has been
too systematic, thorough, and successful.
*
To speak of the “Red” Genocide
in order to cover up the “White” one,
or to speak of past violations of human rights
in order to cover up present ones:
what could be more horribly cynical?
Or rather: what could be
more quintessentially Armenian?
*
Animals defend their territory.
Men do too. But men also defend
their prestige, pride, vanity,
prejudices and ignorance.
*
Speaking with a forked tongue
comes naturally to most lawyers, politicians,
statesmen, religious leaders, businessmen, and so on.
And the higher their position in the hierarchy
the more transparent their double-talk.
#
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
*****************************************
ACTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES
*******************************
There are two kinds of actions:
planned and spontaneous.
The Tunisian fruit vendor’s self-immolation
was spontaneous;
the actions of our revoltuionaries
at the turn of the last century in the Ottoman Empire
were planned.
The first was a success beyond anyone’s imagination;
the second resulted in one of the greatest disasters
in the history of mankind.
*
History is unpredictable.
God laughs at man’s plans and calculations.
The selfless act has a much better chance to succeed,
and sometimes to succeed beyond anyone’s imagination,
than the cold-blooded, carefully planned and calculated act.
*
Marx thought he had discovered the way history works
and he created the nightmare of communist regimes.
When Jesus said “the kingdom of God is within you,”
he should have added,
“so is the empire of the Devil.”
*
“Existence is a vicious abstraction,”
Bertrand Russell tells us; which means
our actions will inevitably end
in an existential labyrinth of consequences
whose end result will be totally unpredictable.
*
Elsewhere Russell writes:
“Since men tend to value present pleasures
more than pleasures in the future,
the wise man will exercise prudence and self-restraint.”
He should have added, “by which time the wise man
may be too old to get it up.”
*
Moral: No matter what you decide to do,
you may regret it.
Bouazisi did not live long enough
to witness his final victory.
#
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
*****************************************
NOTES & COMMENTS
*******************************
Anyone who is committed to an ideology or religion
will have his own version of the past.
Believers are natural-born revisionists.
*
All political parties,
regardless of nationality and ideology,
have a tendency to promise more than they can deliver;
sometimes they even promise heaven and deliver hell.
*
It is only natural for those who are part of the problem
to pretend not to see the solution.
*
Never insult an Armenian writer:
being one is insult enough.
#