notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
******************************************
If I were to name our greatest failing
it would have to be self-deception.
Centuries of subservience and degradation
followed by massacres and deportations
have taught us to live by lying to ourselves
because the truth would be unbearable.
*
Among Armenians, writers are figures of fun
unless of course they are dead,
in which case they are treated
with the respect due to all cadavers.
*
I once heard one of our senior academics
refer to one of our benefactors
as” Baron,” (Baron Jack S. Avanakian)
and to Gostan Zarian as “degha” (boy).
I may have mentioned this before
but some things bear repeating.
*
Rabindranath Tagore: “And because I love this life,
I know I shall love death as well.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

LABELS
*******************
Next time you ask yourself the question,
“How can one Armenian do this to another Armenian?”
consider the fact that, like all nations
with a long history of subservience to brutal foreign regimes,
we have been so thoroughly bastardized that
the chances are our 1% is more odar than Armenian,
and, in the words of one of our elder statesmen,
some of them may even be: “Turks
who speak Armenian fluently.”
*
If an Armenian is half-Kurdish
(the Kurdoghlanians come to mind),
Azeri, or Turkish and if he has political ambitions,
it goes without saying that
he will do his utmost to cover-up that fact.
He may even trace his ancestry
all the way back to the Mamigonians and Bagratunis,
who, according to our own historians,
were not Armenian.
*
I am not implying here that all pure-blooded Armenians
(assuming such beings exist) are gentlemen.
What I am saying is that “Armenian,”
very much like “American,” “Canadian,” and” Australian,”
is a meaningless label especially when used
in reference to honesty and personal integrity.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

ON A NUMBER OF THINGS
****************************************
ON WINE
******************
My tastes are simple – too simple,
according to some friends
who are no longer friends.
My favorite brand of wine is the cheapest.
I remember once, after a sip,
a friend had this to say about its bouquet:
“It has an aftertaste of gasoline.”
*
ON BREAD
*******************
A friendly reader once remarked
that I was the best thing that happened to Armenians
since the invention of sliced bread.
He had no way of knowing that
sliced bread is the first thing I tasted in Canada
and I hated it so much
that I almost puked.
*
ON TOURISM
************************
Who would have imagined that
there would come a time when
our greatest tourist attraction
would be a Turkish mountain.
You say Ararat is quintessentially Armenian?
I say, yes I agree provided you also agree
that America is an Indian continent.
*
ON ARMENIANS
***************************
Contrary to rumors,
I am not anti-Armenian.
I believe there are good Armenians.
I have met one or two of them myself.
*
ON BEING POSITIVE
******************************
You don’t like what I say?
You want more positive assessments?
I can do that but it may cost you.
This is America where everything has a price.
It will cost you and it may well be
above your income bracket.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

HAIKU
*****************************
The word “original” has two contradictory meanings:
something new and something so old
that it goes back to the origins.
In that sense there is nothing new
in what I have been saying
because there is nothing new
in greed, arrogance, stupidity, and criminal conduct.
*
First they preside over the depopulation of the land,
and then they promote tourism.
Our situation may be summed up in a haiku:
“Kopeks we have,
dollars we need – Citizens,
you can have ‘em!”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

ON ACADEMICS
******************************
The trouble with academics is that
they don’t say what must be said,
and when on those very rare occasions they do,
they bury it beneath a mountain of verbiage.
*
And speaking of mountains:
Propaganda is not an argument but a gut reaction
immune to reason and common sense.
After all, who would dare to argue against Mt. Ararat?
*
The greatest discovery our academics have made in America is that
there is money in massacres.
*
We are not idiots but we have been systematically moronized.
Don’t ask me to explain the difference
because I don’t have easy answers.
The best i can do is to say that
we value education but our system is rotten.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

SCUMBAGS
*********************************
The greatest achievement of our 1% so far: replacing the “red” genocide with its “white” variant and brainwashing our children to repeat the phony mantra: “We don’t need critics, we need solutions.”
*
On more than one occasion I have come face to face with the unspeakable contempt with which our 1% treats the people, including our academics that pretend their spittle is rain.
*
The moral of our millennial history: “If you insist on behaving like an idiot, don’t be surprised if even your own brother treats you like xxxx.”
*
I repeat myself? I have a solution to that problem: Stop reading me.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
**************************************
Einstein: “Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
And consider Gandhi who borrowed all his ideas
from Hindu scriptures, Tolstoy. Thoreau and Ruskin,
among others.
*
On the day a childhood friend became a fund-raiser
and a member of the Party he became my enemy,
or rather, I became his.
Once upon a time we were both slum-dwellers.
He is now as prosperous as a rug merchant.
*
Never underestimate the cunning of fools, dupes, and idiots
who say we need solutions, not critics,
because they know no one will ever dare
to go up to a boss, bishop, or benefactor and say
“You and your kind are at the root of all our problems.”
*
Success and Armenian literature are mutually excluysive concepts.
If you want to live longer as a writer,
identify yourself as a failure,
come to terms with that reality,
and you may be allowed to reach middle age.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

READING TOYNBEE
************************************************** **
On racial superiority:
“The xxxs, the Japanese, the British 'sahibs', the Nazis...all seem to me to have been chosen by no one except themselves.”
*
On critics:
“Whenever a reviewer is tempted to treat an author as a dart-board he should remember that the missile which his hand is itching to lance is not a dart but a boomerang.”
*
On chauvinism:
“Self-idolization is most flagrantly in evidence, not as a self-adjudicated reward for success, but as a self-exculpating compensation for failure.” (I think of these lines whenever I hear one of our charlatans bragging about our celebrities and achievements.)
*
“The egocentric illusion has always beset every living organism in which an ego has ever asserted itself.”
*
On pessimism and optimism:
“The truth is that Valéry's pessimism and Gibbon's optimism are, both alike, rationalizing of feelings that are irrationally subjective.”
#________________________________________

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

ENJOY
*************************
Silvio Berlusconi at a press conference:
“I will now take questions from the men;
from the girls, phone numbers.”
*
MY FIRST FAN
*********************
My first fan was a Bulgarian poetess
who needed a translator
and thought I knew Bulgarian.
*
LOVE
****************
True love makes you ask:
“How did I manage to live without you?”
*
The world would be a better place
if everyone heard someone say
“I love you” at least once a day.
*
STATUS QUO
*******************
The only way to be positive about us is by recycling the propaganda of our 1%.
*
WOMEN
*************
We need women in politics
if only because they will never say
“mine is bigger than yours.”
*
OLIGARCHY
************************
Long before oligarchy in the Homeland,
we had oligarchy in the Diaspora.
*
A RULE WITHOUT EXCEPTIONS
**********************************************
Where there is a high unemployment rate,
there will also be a high rate
of poverty, emigration, and prostitution.
One could even say
poverty, emigration and prostitution
are our most important exports.
*
Have a nice day!
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Q/A
*************************
Q: What do women and intellectuals have in common?
A: They have a better chance to survive as concubines.
*
Q: What did Sultan Abdulhamid II
and Gulbenkian have in common?
A: An unlimited number of concubines.
*
It is to be noted that at the beginning of his career,
Gulbenkian worked for the Sultan --
his role model.
#