notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
***************************************
To know others and oneself
begins and ends in guesswork.
*
Four words that describe our leadership in the Homeland
and Diaspora: “Irretrievably corrupt and disgustingly incompetent.”
*
Charles Peguy: “Only those who are not sure of their daily bread
can live a Christian life.”
*
LOUIS XIV SPEAKS
*******************************
“Ah, if I were not king,
I should lose my temper.”
*
“Has God forgotten
what I have done for him?”
*
“I very nearly had to wait.”
*
“Every time I fill a vacant office
I make ten malcontents and one ingrate.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

SUMMING UP
******************************
To understand many things
but not the most important thing
is worse than to understand nothing.
*
Oshagan said:
“No one understands Turks as well as we do.”
My question:
What did we do with that understanding?
*
Oshagan said:
“We lost because we were tiny islands
in a Turkish sea.”
My question:
Did we have to die by the million
in order to reach that earth-shaking conclusion?
*
There are two kinds of people:
those who fight to the bitter end
and win (Vietnamese),
and those who give up and
forever after recycle the propaganda line:
“Ours was a military defeat but a moral victory.”
*
You want to be popular?
Write more like Oshagan
and less like Zarian who said:
“Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”
So much for moral victory!
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

SITUATION / xxxxUATION
***************************************
If we are a small nation with big problems,
why is it that so far no one has resigned
on grounds of inadequacy?
*
Has anyone ever admitted to being a divider
or the dupe of one?
*
Those who speak in the name of God and Country
will call their critics defeatists and atheists.
I know what I am saying,
I have been there.
*
Those whose ultimate aim is success
will at no time admit failure.
Before he committed suicide,
Hitler blamed his defeat on the German people,
the very same people he had duped into believing
they belong to a superior race,
*
Some day a historian may sum up our present situation
with the words: “The operation is a success
but the death of the patient by suicide is imminent.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

HUNGRY ARMENIANS
***************************
After defeating Greeks,
Romans called them “hungry little Greeks,”
who thus acquired the status
of second-class citizens, slaves, servants,
and at best, private tutors.
*
Two thousand years later
something similar happened to us
when we were identified as “hungry Armenians.”
I mention this fact to explain why
not just Turks but also Yanks refuse to identify
what was done to us as genocide.
In their eyes we are “natives,”
that is to say, second-class citizens, losers,
and who has ever heard the terms “human rights”
applied to subhumans?
*
Most human conflicts –
the most important ones at any rate –
are not between two sets of ideas
but between two propaganda lines;
not between lies and the truth
but between two sets of lies.
*
We are “subhuman”
not only in the eyes of Turks and Yanks
but also in the eyes of our own brothers and sisters.
Until very recently Diasporan Armenians
were identified as “aghber” (trash) in the Homeland;
and i have myself been identified
as “a piece of xxxx who doesn’t have Ararat in his heart.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

OF CENTAURS
*********************************
At a party in New York,
when Zarian is approached by a woman,
the following exchange takes place:
“Tell me, are there any centaurs in your country?”
“Once upon a time, maybe.”
“Not any more?”
“There are but they have been separated…
horses are horses and men, men.”
“Like anywhere else then.”
“Alas, yes.”
“Such a pity!”
*
DISAPPOINTMENT
********************************
My critics are disappointed when I tell them
there is nothing new in what I have been saying
and that all I do is recycle the counter-propaganda
of far better men than myself.”
*
CONFRONTATION
*************************************
I am fully aware of the fact that
in a confrontation with our oligarchs
in the Homeland, and bosses, bishops, and benefactors
in the Diaspora, I am bound to be the loser.
But then, victory is not my aim.
All I want to do is make their victory less enjoyable.
Call me a skunk at their garden party.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

HUMBUG!
*******************************
Muslims, xxxs and Christians share the same God.
But as they say, the Devil is in the details.
God may rule the heavens, but down below
we are all at the mercy of the Other One.
*
And speaking of the Devil:
Hitler learned nothing from Napoleon’s defeat in Russia.
What have Yanks learned from their experience in Vietnam?
Is Obama more cunning than Napoleon?
Was Bush – make it, were the Bushes…?
Closer to home:
What about our own oligarchs in the Homeland
and bosses, bishops, and benefactors in the Diaspora:
what have they learned?
Even more to the point:
Are they capable of learning?
*
No one can lie as profusely and idiotically
as an Armenian when he speaks
of his fellow Armenians.
*
Contrary to the historic evidence,
to be Armenian and to be blind
are not synonymous statements.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

HUMBUG (II)
***********************************
When asked for advice on writing,
Rilke is quoted as having said:
“I can’t tell you how to live.”
*
Thoreau said something similar when he wrote:
“Before you sit down to write stand up and live!”
What was his conception of life?
Taking long walks, keeping a diary,
and refusing to pay his taxes
(for which transgression he spent a day in jail)?
*
All his life Socrates tried to reason with idiots
who ultimately condemned him to death.
He said (and I paraphrase):
“The purpose of life (or is it philosophy?)
is to learn how to die.”
*
Whenever I mention Socrates I think of Jesus.
In a way they had parallel lives.
He too tried to reason with his fellow men
who expressed their gratitude...
“Let me not think on it.”
*
One speaks the truth
not because one loves the truth
but because one hates lies driven by fear.
*
Speaking the truth is thought of as a capital offence
by the overwhelming majority of mankind
who prefer to survive by feeding
on recycled propaganda.
*
Have a nice day!
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

AS I SEE IT
**************************
Mankind may be divided into megalomaniacs and dupes.
Dupes are more dangerous because they come
by the thousand and the million.
*
Jean Genet: “What I like about the English is that
they are such liars.”
And everybody else speaks the truth?
*
It has been said that all of world literature is plagiarism
except the first which has been lost.
But I suspect it continues to live in myths, legends,
proverbial sayings, metaphors, and happy turns of phrase.
*
According to statistical studies,
the overwhelming majority of criminals are never caught.
This may explain why so many apparently law-abiding citizens
(among them politicians, CEOs, lawyers, accountants,
even priests) are in fact career criminals.
*
Tolstoy: “The truth is that the state is a conspiracy
designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

A GOOD PLACE TO DIE
******************************
Others make history;
we only experience it.
*
In their own eyes
our oligarchs are success stories.
*
No one ever thought of Kafka as a humorist,
except Kafka.
*
Armenia is a good place to die.
Think of the exodus as bloodless purges.
*
If others don’t kill us, we do it ourselves –
with greater efficiency.
*
Think of the exodus
as Stalinism by other means.
*
Rebecca West: “There are two kinds of imperialists –
imperialists and bloody imperialists.”
(I think she was thinking of England.)
*
Writing a great deal is ok
provided you delete even more.
99% of what I write I discard.
In case you thought I see only the positive in myself.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*****************************************
When I was a brown-noser
I never thought of myself as one.
All brown-nosers are denialists.
*
Armenia is not the greatest country on earth
except for our 1%.
*
Technologically speaking
the human brain is a miracle of design and execution.
We are all born geniuses,
but somewhere along the line,
like Dante in midlife,
we lose our path and become mediocrities.
*
A dictionary of quotations
is the best proof of the fact that
some very smart men
have said some very dumb things.
*
There are some Armenian situations
that only the Turkish language can do justice.
#