notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, July 17, 2005
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Some readers tell me to be more diplomatic. They may be said to belong to the more honey and less vinegar school of thought. Others accuse me of going soft on them - they may be said to be partisans of less vinegar and more arsenic. Hard to please everyone. Impossible to please all Armenians. Not that it matters one way or another. In our environment a scribbler, even a thousand scribblers, are as nothing. Can a drop of rain, or a thousand drops, raise the level of the ocean? And if things ever change it will not be a result of what I or far better men than myself have said, but because subservience has its limits. There will come a time when it will erupt into riots and revolution. This final assertion is not mine but that of history. If after 600 years Armenians can rise against the wounded dragon of the Ottoman Empire, what will stop them from doing the same against our own jackals and jackasses?
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I don't see why I should even make the slightest effort to understand or sympathize with someone who parrots views that were mine twenty or thirty years ago. To do so would mean that I wasted a good fraction of my life learning nothing.
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What we think of ourselves never coincides with what others think of us. This is where philosophy begins - to understand the incomprehensible or that which is comprehensible to others but not to us.
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In a totalitarian or fascist environment commissars have the upper hand. In a democratic environment they try and they never give up trying but they don't always succeed.
#
Monday, July 18, 2005
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PATRIOTISM: A MISCONCEPTION
There are those who think if a blunder is committed in the name of patriotism it is no longer a blunder because patriotism is a noble sentiment beyond criticism.
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DECEIVERS AND DUPES
I cannot reform deceivers but I can try to enlighten dupes, except dupes whose ambition in life is to join the deceivers.
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AN UNSPOKEN ARMENIAN MOTTO
If I can't kill my enemy I will insult my brother.
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AN ARMENIAN PRAYER
Dear God, as a poor sinner I may not deserve to have you on my side. But tell me, in what way is my enemy better than I am?
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ON KARL MARX
Was Marx right or wrong? An irrelevant question. Marx was one of those thinkers who changed the political map of the world. He cannot be rejected, only understood. Because not to understand him means not to understand the world in which we live.
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READERS AND WRITERS
As a reader, I hate reading a writer who is infallible, especially if he is in the business of exposing my prejudices and misconceptions; in the same way that as a writer I hate reading infallible critics who trash my work.
#
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
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National pride is an extension of propaganda. Self-esteem on the other hand is on firmer ground. We have pride but not self-esteem.
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Whenever an Armenian decides he is more patriotic than I am, he automatically assumes my status to be that of an enemy.
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I define a mortal sin as a lapse of moral judgment whose consequences you suffer to the end of your days. Confession, atonement, and closure are nothing but synthetic and transparent efforts to make the transgressor feel better about himself thus making him a more productive member of the community.
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In his STUDY OF HISTORY Toynbee calls the Armenian Church "a fossil," that is to say, brain-dead. He says nothing about Armenian political thinking, which, in my view, is derivative, cliché-ridden and slogan-infected, in short, worse than brain-dead.
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Disagreement is not and cannot be a permanent condition, except in our environment, of course. It has happened to me more than once that readers, who have disagreed with me consistently for months and sometimes-even years, have apologized privately and after a brief hiatus have reverted to their old positions and ways driven not by conviction but by the spirit of contradiction.
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A dishonest man cannot criticize an honest one; he can only express resentment, contempt, venom and rage.
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Albert Einstein: "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
#
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
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Ever since I read in Toynbee something to the effect that nations and civilizations are not killed, they commit suicide, I have been exposing and analyzing our suicidal tendencies. Hence, my doubts about our image as survivors.
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What if we were meant to be a nation of 70 million instead of 7 million? What if we are in fact 70 million but most of us do not care to identify themselves as Armenians?
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Propaganda is a lie because its aim is to compensate reality even if it means contradicting it. When Germans decided to behave like swine, they declared themselves to be a superior race. And because we have been dying the death of a thousand cuts (self-inflicted) we brag about our survival.
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There are two theories about Khachatur Abovian's disappearance: the first says as an ardent nationalist he was probably assassinated by the czar's secret agents; the second says he committed suicide. What if he was pushed into committing suicide by our hidebound and cowardly religious leadership at whose mercy he operated?
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What if Gomidas went mad only after grasping the role of our leadership in the massacres? Armenians had been massacred before without disturbing his inner balance.
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Was Avedik Issahakian wrong when he ascribed our misfortunes to our geography, cannibalistic neighbors, and inept leadership?
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Was Gostan Zarian wrong when he said we survive by cannibalizing one another?
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I am willing to concede that what I write may be wrong. But what if what you think may also be wrong? One thing is certain: if we both admit fallibility we may learn to be less intolerant, and I see absolutely nothing wrong in that. But if we both assert infallibility, we succeed only in making fools of ourselves in public.
#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, July 21, 2005
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DIRTY LINEN
At a wedding reception a few years ago I met a member of an Armenian cultural organization who told me I should apply for a grant because I was the kind of candidate they were looking for. When I applied, I did not receive a reply. About a year later this very same organization offered me a job. In my reply I informed them that I did not need a job because I already had one. But I suspect it had never occurred to them that writing for Armenians qualified as a job. That's the way it is with philistines and peddlers.
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I have received two checks that bounced and both were from Armenians. It is not my intention to embarrass all Armenians here, only those who have something to be embarrassed about.
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SENILITY
Whenever I meet old friends, they tell me the same stories, and only after telling them the same stories too I begin to suspect that I have done the same thing.
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WISDOM
Amadou Hampate Ba (African writer): "The death of an old man is equivalent to the destruction of a library by fire."
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A SCIENTIST SPEAKS
Christian de Duve (b. 1917), Belgian biochemist and winner of the Nobel Prize in a recent interview: "Mother Nature is blind. She lavishes as much care on a poet as on a scorpion."
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On two of the most incomprehensible problems in science: "The fact that our brain cells and their electric impulses produce a mechanism we call conscience, which exists nowhere else in nature; and the fact that things exist."
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When asked if the only way to explain these problems would be by introducing the idea of god: "Once upon a time man ascribed lightning and thunder to a god. We can now explain both scientifically. There may come a time when science will explain everything."
#
Friday, July 22, 2005
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We share this in common with our enemies and the rest of the world: since childhood we have been exposed to our own version of history and we view all other versions as false. What we call massacres, the Turks call victory; and what we call victory over the Azeris they call ethnic cleansing. Who is right? We think we are, of course, and they think they are.
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We tend to confuse our perception of reality with reality. When we look at a table, a chair, or a glass of water, we think we are seeing a table, a chair, and a glass of water. But scientists tell us they are billions of dancing atoms and electrons.
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My critics accuse me of having a distorted view of my fellow Armenians based on some unfortunate personal experiences. To which I can only say, think of me as that proverbial starving dog by the gate of the palace. Some see only an underfed canine; others see a kingdom in deep trouble.
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If by reading what I write about myself you learn nothing about yourself, then we are both wasting our time.
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The trouble with philistines is that they are convinced they fully qualify as authentic human beings.
#
Saturday, July 23, 2005
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Armenians are a suspicious bunch, especially of one another. I have been accused of everything from abc to xyz - from being an agent of the Mossad and the CIA to being a half Turk and a capitalist. As far as I know, no Armenian writer has ever lived above the poverty line, unless of course he was also a competent lawyer, like Zohrab and Massikian, or the right-hand man of a national benefactor. I am neither a lawyer nor a brown-noser. As for being an agent: my only ambition in life is to be a carcinogenic agent to our charlatans and gravediggers.
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More Armenians have died fighting for the sultans, Stalin, and Hitler, than in defense of the Homeland. To most Armenians homeland means their village. When Hagop Oshagan spoke of "our world" he meant Istanbul. In his memoirs, Yervant Odian writes that some exiled Armenians returned to Istanbul even when they knew they were wanted men there. They preferred to be in prison in Istanbul than free anywhere else.
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Camille de Casabianca (French actress and author): when asked to name the main source of inspiration for her latest book titled THE ENCHANTED RABBIT: "Bugs Bunny and my cousin Vincent."
On her ideal reader: "God, if he exists."
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When an odar says "Armenians are smart," not only we believe him but we also expect the whole world to believe him, and in doing so we expose ourselves as abysmally insecure beings who are dependent on flattery even when the flattery is a bare-faced lie or it applies only to a small and non-representative fraction of Levantines.
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Baudelaire: "Genius is childhood rediscovered."
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Leonardo: "Not to foresee is already to grieve."
#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, July 24, 2005
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NICE GUYS
*********************
If I were to single out my greatest blunder, it would have be the fact that I trusted my judgment into the hands of people who did not deserve my trust. But is this not also the quintessential Armenian blunder and the blunder of all underdogs and slaves in general?
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I feel bad whenever readers insult me, but I feel better when I think that even hoodlums find me compulsively readable. This may not be as good as the Nobel Prize but it may well qualify as a step in the right direction.
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Once upon a time when I said and repeated Turks were nasty folk and Armenians nice guys, I was allowed regular space in a dozen publications in Canada, the United States, the Middle East, and sometimes even Australia and South America. Perhaps because flattery is like money, it speaks many languages and it has universal appeal. But when I decided to call a hoodlum a hoodlum, regardless of creed, rank, ideology, and financial status, I was given the kind of treatment reserved only for a skunk at a garden party.
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I have said this before and it bears repeating, Armenians are hard to please. They will criticize you even when you flatter them. They will criticize you if only because you did not flatter them enough. After you call them nice guys, they will expect you to call them smart and generous as well.
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Smart? How smart can a nation be whose best and brightest spent seven centuries kowtowing and brown-nosing sultans, pashas, padishas, and commissars - the very same hoodlums who deflowered their daughters and coerced their sons to fight and die for them?
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Generous? Even when I worked for multimillionaires, or rather their flunkeys, I was never paid more than minimum wage, and if you were to subtract my expenses, I had to survive on a negative income.
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Whenever I mention money in my writings, I am told an artist should be above such petty considerations. "Think of Beethoven," I was reminded once. "Can you imagine him thinking about money while composing his divinely inspired sonatas, concertos, and symphonies?"
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As a matter of fact, it is because I think of Beethoven that I write as I do. Most of his published letters deal with crooked publishers, royalties, and money. His contempt for the aristocracy (his potential patrons) knew no bounds. Once, during a walk in the park, he even rebuked Goethe for taking his hat off and bowing to a prince.
#
Monday, July 25, 2005
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On the radio this morning (abridged and paraphrased): "The madrassahs in which poor Muslim boys are taught to hate infidels were until recently subsidized by rich Muslims. But now that poor Muslims are slaughtering rich Muslims, rich Muslims have declared jihad on jihadists."
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Title of a novel: "The Last Two Armenians," or "The Abelcainian Brothers."
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Whenever a reader insults me anonymously, I reflect that he is transferring his animus against Turks onto a more accessible and less threatening target.
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More often than not I am criticized for writing about my own experiences as opposed to the experiences of my critics, the implication being that my experiences are counterfeit and theirs pure gold.
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And then there are critics who believe the failings of other nations justify and legitimize our own. It follows, our failings are not failings but inevitable facts of the human condition. If they are inevitable, they should be covered up and ignored. This is the kind of reasoning not of smart people (which we claim to be) but of moral morons (which we accuse others of being).
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I see our high rate of alienation and assimilation as an extension of the old Armenian adage, "Mart bidi ch'ellank!" (We shall never acquire the status of human beings.)
#
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
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A reader demands to know if I am for or against assimilation. My answer: I am for anything that will make one a better human being regardless of race, color, and creed.
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The art of writing consists in being readable not only by readers who are for you but also those who are against you. Judging by the number of readers who are against me, I must be on the right path.
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It has been observed that rubles play a central role in Dostoevsky's fiction. One could say the same about the role of benefactors in our collective existence.
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The trouble with being a proud Armenian is that every other Armenian you meet will be a source of embarrassment.
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If you want to see an Armenian as he really is, pretend to be dependent on his goodwill. As a writer, I don't have to pretend…
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If you are a brown-noser, as I was once, there will come a time when you will wonder if it was worth it. I assure you, it never is. If you have any doubts, consider our 600 years of subservience: what did it get us?
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Suppose you say the sun rises in the east and you are contradicted. What do you say? You say nothing because you realize you are dealing with someone with missing parts. Which may suggest that we argue only when we are in doubt, and we argue not to convince others but ourselves.
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Wednesday, July 27, 2005
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We tend to assert infallibility based not on our own ideas but on those of a schoolteacher or parish priest, which may suggest that we were taught many things except how to think for ourselves.
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Theo Van Gogh's killer stated that he did what he did driven by his faith. He should have said, driven by what he was taught by an imam who was himself taught many things except how to think for himself.
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We were as much victims of Turkish barbarism as our own miscalculations. We misunderstand the Genocide if we emphasize the first and cover up the second.
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Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), English novelist and essayist: "It takes two to make a murder."
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Franz Kafka (1883-1924), Czech author: "My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted."
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Don King, the American boxing promoter once explained that he is a survivor because he has "wit, grit and bullxxxx." It's astonishing how many manage to survive with only the third item on the menu.
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My most dogmatic critics are those who pretend to understand me but who don't even understand themselves.
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Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), English novelist: "Failure makes people cruel and bitter."
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If you are a failure and you consider yourself a success, you condemn yourself to remain a failure.
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Two kinds of people cannot take criticism gracefully, the very insecure and the very arrogant.
#

[arabaliozian]

Friday, July 29, 2005
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Writing consists in trying to make sense of the senseless to the brain dead.
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I can give you reasons, I can’t give you the ability to understand them. That would be like trying to improve on god’s work.
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Propaganda is a carefully planned and organized effort to prevent you from thinking for yourself.
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Man has created ten thousand gods except a god of common sense and decency.
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You cannot decapitate a man and expect him to sing an aria from “The Barber of Seville.”
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The question we should ask every day: If we are smart, why do we allow ourselves to be led by donkeys?
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Our partisans are brought up to believe we are sheep and they are our shepherds. What they don’t tell us is that as shepherds it is their duty to lead us to the slaughterhouse.
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Turning the other cheek becomes a meaningless gesture if you are going to hate the man who slaps you.
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In the bibliography of THE BLACK SEA: A HISTORY by Charles King (270 pages, Oxford University Press, 2004) I read the following line: “There is a great deal of poor-quality work on the Armenian genocide…”
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An infallible man can do nothing right.
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[arabaliozian]

as i see it

Thursday, July 28, 2005
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TWO SCANDALS
A headline in one of our weeklies reads: "2000 Armenian Prostitutes Operate in United Arab Emirates." My guess is we have a corresponding number of writers prostituting themselves by saying what others want them to say rather than what must be said.
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WHAT MUST BE SAID
Why is it that so many women engage in prostitution? What is being done about it? If something is being done, why wasn't it done before? And if nothing is being done, who should be held accountable?
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It is understood that a corresponding list of questions could be asked about our writers - be they academics, journalists, and pundits. As a reader I should like to have answers to these questions as opposed to more commentaries, editorials, press releases, and articles on Turks, kefs, hantesses, food festivals, graduations, scholarships, exhibitions, and anniversary celebrations.
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ZOHRAB SPEAKS
Speaking on prostitution and related topics, Krikor Zohrab had this to say a hundred years ago: "We all of us condemn prostitution; yet, how many of us engage in that line of work! Lawyers who perjure themselves for a few pieces of silver; journalists who sell their conscience to vested interests; doctors who prolong a useless treatment; young men who marry wealth. In what way are these individuals different from common prostitutes?"
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Even more to the point: "A newspaper is not a chameleon. It should not change its colors to please readers. It is bound to make enemies. I would measure the moral success of a newspaper by its willingness to make enemies."
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Zohrab was assassinated by orders of Talaat in 1915. Armenian writers are no longer assassinated by foreign tyrants, only silenced and forced into prostitution by our "betters."
#
#
Saturday, July 30, 2005
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It is now time that we think of lamentation and hatred as experiments that failed and try another approach.
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The problem with hatred is that it is no solution. Rather it is a problem that creates other problems. An Armenian who hates Turks will also hate a fellow Armenian who does not share his hatred.
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Some values are anti-values and some values are worthless.
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Saroyan once said that he felt sorry for the Turks. Simenon went further when he said it is the victim who creates his victimizer.
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Writing for Armenians has been a learning experience. I have learned more about human nature than Freud learned by analyzing neurotics.
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The spirit of contradiction in some Armenians is so highly developed that if you were to agree with them they would disagree with you.
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By calling our military defeats moral victories we alter our status from perennial losers to perennial winners and can go to bed with the certainty that god is on our side and we never had it so good.
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One way to define freedom of speech is by saying even the ablest statesman is not qualified to tell even the worst scribbler what to write and how to write it.
#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, July 31, 2005
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Whenever a writer is not admired by his readers, he feels misunderstood. With me, it's the other way around. Whenever I am vilified and silenced I feel understood because I am perceived as a threat to those of my readers who have not yet learned to tell the difference between Armenianism and Ottomanism.
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If I am not a popular writer it may be because I do not think of literature as a popularity contest. I have no political ambitions and I can truly state, if nominated I shall not run, and if elected I shall not serve.
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It is a mistake to think that a writer ought to know more than his readers do. It is not a writer's function or duty to know more. He may even know less, but that which he knows may be different, and as such, worthy of reflection, not condemnation or censorship.
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Why label our intolerance as Ottomanism or Stalinism? Why can't we recognize it as garden-variety intolerance, which happens to be a universal phenomenon? Simply because our brand of intolerance was legitimized, promoted, evolved, matured, and refined under the sultans and Stalin.
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How to recognize an Ottomanized Armenian? As a writer I define an Ottomanized Armenian as one who violates my fundamental human right of free speech and pretends to do this in the name of patriotism, which has nothing to do with patriotism and everything to do with Ottomanism and Stalinism.
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Some Armenians don't like reading me for the same reason that some Turks don't like reading Turkish writers who refuse to recycle the party line.
#
Monday, August 01, 2005
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There are two kinds of readers: those who read to have their prejudices exposed, their fallacies corrected, and their ideas challenged, and those who read to be reassured that they already know and understand everything they need to know and understand. In short, some read to learn, and some read to remain infatuated with their own ignorance.
*
Some people are smart. I am not one of them. When I see something wrong, I don't start wondering if it will be to my advantage to speak up or to behave like the three proverbial monkeys. I do not think emulating monkeys is smart. I do not calculate the pros and cons of a situation and decide to do what's in my own best interest. Call me a fool who has taught himself to think against himself and to act against his own interests.
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I am resigned to the fact that I will never know as much about our history and culture as a partisan who has been thoroughly brainwashed to recycle the party line.
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Those whose lies I expose have every reason to overestimate the power of words and the influence a writer exercises on his readers. But anyone who knows anything about the history of our literature will also know that even our ablest writers have been solitary voices in the wilderness whose warnings have been ignored. Result? Centuries of subservience to tyrants, oppression, massacre, purges, dispersion, fragmentation, alienation, assimilation…
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Every morning on waking up I remind myself that the sun does not rise to hear my crowing.
#
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
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There is a type of writer (and I used to be one) who makes an a priori decision to be positive. Even before reading his first line you know he will say nothing to disturb you. Which also means he will not be objective and honest because his aim is not to expose contradictions (see below) but to flatter egos.
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He who says Armenians are nice folk lies. Not all Armenians are nice, beginning with our dividers who divide in the name of a religion or an ideology whose aim is to unite.
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Ask any one of our dividers and he will tell you his ultimate aim is to unite the nation. Ask him how successful he has been so far in achieving his goal and he will play the blame-game, which happens to be our national sport.
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I remember as a child, whenever someone accused me of anything, I would deny it even when I was as guilty as hell. Politicians have a name for this tactic: they call it deniability.
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Armenians are brave, Armenians are fearless, Armenians are warlike, especially when they confront harmless solitary scribblers whose sole aim in life is to understand and explain our situation.
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It is not that I no longer believe in what politicians say, I question the sanity of those who do.
#
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
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Some of our patriots should be reminded once in a while that patriotism and civility are not mutually exclusive concepts.
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To speak the truth means to be vulnerable to a minimum of one Big Lie, a hundred small lies, and a thousand liars.
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Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), political philosopher: "Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think."
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Kingsley Amis (1922-1995), English novelist: "If you can't annoy somebody with what you write, I think there's little point in writing."
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What is censorship if not fear of being exposed as a fool, a dupe, and a liar?
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Truth opens the doors of perception. Propaganda kicks the messenger in the butt and bangs all doors shut.
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At the root of all intolerance there will be a Big Lie.
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People don't kill in the name of truth. Christ killed no one. The same could not be said of Christians.
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I don't believe in reincarnation, but if I did I would have to assume I must have been a serial killer in a previous life and I am now being punished by writing for Armenians.
#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, August 04, 2005
************************************
"I am in love and I want to marry him," my daughter tells me.
"Who is the unlucky fellow?" I ask.
"He is a writer, like you," she replies.
"An Armenian writer?"
"That's right."
"Are you out of your mind?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, are you crazy, demented, insane, in need of a shrink?"
"Daddy, he is a good writer, some people have called him a genius."
"Some people? Who, for instance - if I may be so bold as to inquire?"
"Literary critics."
"Armenian literary critics?"
"That's right."
"We don't have them."
"What have you got against writers anyway?"
"We are not talking about writers here. We are talking about Armenian writers, an entirely different kettle of fish."
"Please, daddy, don't be like that."
"I am trying to help you here."
"Help I don't need. Support, I do."
"Support for what? Your funeral?" I ask.
"How can you say that? You don't even know him," she says with tears in her eyes.
"An Armenian writer as my son in law? No way! And cut out the water works. My decision is final!"
"What's wrong with being an Armenian writer, anyway?"
"What's right?"
"I love him, daddy, and that's good enough for me."
"You want to marry a loser, go ahead. But don't ask for my blessing. I want nothing to do with it. And I want nothing to do with you and him either."
"You are not going to disown me, are you?"
"Watch me."
"But I am your only daughter."
"You are nothing of the kind."
"Then who am I?"
"A figment of my imagination."
*
Perhaps the wisest thing I have done as an Armenian writer is to remain a bachelor.
*
With the diplomatic finesse that Armenians exercise when dealing with fellow Armenians, one of my gentle readers once demanded to know: "Why aren't you married? Are you a homosexual?"
#
Friday, August 05, 2005
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AXIOMS
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Judging by the number of religious wars and massacres, man is not made better or wiser by faith.
*
One should judge a religion not by its theology but by its history, which also means, by its crimes against humanity.
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"Crime against humanity" is not a religious but a political concept. To a man of faith, a heretic or an infidel does not qualify as a member of the human race.
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Judging a religion by its theology is the same as judging a political party by its propaganda or a nation by its own version of history.
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In theory, religion is meant to civilize; but in practice what it does is legitimize barbarism.
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To acquire a faith is not the same as to see the light.
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All religions should come with the warning: "Faith can be a hazard to your moral health."
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What I said about religions applies to ideologies. It follows all sermonizers and speechifiers speak with a forked tongue when they emphasize theology at the expense of history.
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The aim of all religions and ideologies is to make you say "Yes, sir!"
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There is an old Chinese saying: "Makers of idols do not believe in them." There is also an Italian saying: "Even the Pope doubts his faith seven times every day." Which may suggest that not all sermonizers and speechifiers believe in their own speeches and sermons.
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Where there are religions and ideologies, there will also be victims and victimizers, that is to say, crimes against humanity.
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There are just and unjust wars. But according to nationalist historians, their nation has never been guilty of declaring an unjust war. It follows, either all wars are just or all nationalist historians are liars.
#
Saturday, August 06, 2005
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Some of my gentle readers keep reminding me that I am a bad Armenian and a worse writer. And yet, I continue to be read by good Armenians with mighty intellects. Figure that one out if you can.
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To those who know better, I wish they would share their knowledge with dunces like me instead of saying and repeating ad nauseam how bad Turks are and how good we are.
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If we are survivors, why is it that millions of us did not survive? I should like to read a book by our genocide scholars that emphasizes our failings. We study history to learn, not to lament and blame.
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There is only one way to learn, and that's by analyzing our deficiencies. He who brags (hubris) is punished by wallowing in his own self-pity and ignorance (nemesis).
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If I have learned anything from life is that no one get away with anything. If your enemy doesn't get you, your conscience will.
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We have two options: 20/20 hindsight or the blind leading the blind.
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Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist: "Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art."
#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, August 07, 2005
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BEFORE AND AFTER
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Because by the age of fourteen I had read the 19th-century Russians, I thought I knew all I needed to know about human nature. I thought, like all Armenians, I was smart, sensitive, good, tolerant, blameless, and so on. Whenever evidence to the contrary presented itself, I thought I should make allowances for a people that have experienced an extensive array of misfortunes imposed on them by conditions, circumstances, and forces beyond their control.
*
My initial intentions might as well have been utopian. I was going to be kind with the uncivil and reasonable with the preposterous. I was not going to make any enemies. I went further: I propagandized with the propagandists, and I kissed posteriors with the brown-nosers. I compromised, or so I thought, in the hope that eventually common sense and decency would prevail.
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I ignored the lessons of history because I operated in a dream world. I confused wishful thinking with hope, betrayal with concession, reality with Hollywood movies.
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Disagreement and criticism I understand, insults and threats I don't. One must be deaf, dumb, and asinine not to see that by insulting and threatening anonymously one exposes oneself as a coward and a bully.
*
I am not an elitist. I don't feel the need to be for underdogs simply because I have always been one of them. As the offspring of Ottoman refugees I was born and raised in a Greek ghetto that looked like a gypsy encampment. Greeks used to call us "Turkish gypsies." Southern rednecks would have called us white trash.
*
My prose is not academic or scholarly. It makes no demands on the average reader. And yet, some smart (self-assessed, of course) readers pretend to misunderstand me perhaps because they understand me too well but are too craven to see themselves as they really are.
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Monday, August 08, 2005
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Whenever as a boy I would make outrageous assertions, adults would smile at me, and I would think they were smiling at my brilliance. I know now that their smile had nothing to do with admiration and everything to do with sarcasm tinged with pity. "No use explaining things to him," it said. "Obviously he is not open to reason."
*
The question I ask myself today is "Who taught and encouraged me to make wild assertions thinking they were brilliant?" The only answer is: I must have been emulating my elders - schoolteachers, parish priests, partisans, panchoonies, charlatans…all of whom dealt in certainties and considered doubt as unpatriotic or unchristian.
*
There are positive and negative role models. With one or two exceptions mine have been negative.
*
The Romans were wrong when they fed Christians to lions, but they were right when they punished the parents for the misdeeds of the child.
*
Bolsheviks under Stalin, Fascists under Mussolini, Nazis under Hitler, Americans under McCarthy: sometimes entire nations experience insanity as surely as individuals.
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Tuesday, August 09, 2005
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If you believe in the evidence of your own eyes and use your common sense, you shall have to conclude that the earth is flat, and the sun and the moon are about the same size. It is this type of "logic" that leads some Armenians to believe that the West is corrupt, the Turks Asiatic barbarians and bloodthirsty savages, and Armenians the only truly civilized, smart, progressive, and Christian people.
*
To understand only one side of a story that may have more than one side is to misunderstand it.
*
Some of my readers have been generous in sharing their Ottoman venom. I look forward to the day when they will be equally generous in sharing their Armenian wisdom - assuming of course they can tell the difference between one and the other, which is assuming a great deal.
*
Civics is not a subject we like to talk about. I had an Armenian education and I don't remember anyone mentioning it. I was taught all about authority and obedience but not about fundamental human rights. I was taught about power but not about abuses of power. I was taught to sing songs about freedom but I was told nothing about free speech.
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Wednesday, August 10, 2005
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ENVY
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Whenever as a boy I heard rumors to the effect that xxxs support xxxs but Armenians do not always support Armenians, I dismissed them as exaggerations made by disgruntled failures. I know better now.
*
An Armenian-American composer once told me: "I no longer expect Armenian support. I will be grateful if I don't get Armenian hostility."
*
Nothing comes more naturally to an Armenian than to say, "If he is Armenian, he is bound to be a mediocrity."
*
Speaking of Arshile Gorky, one of our elder statesmen once told me: "When he was alive, no Armenian every bought a single painting of his."
*
In his ISLAND AND A MAN, Zarian ascribes this Armenian peculiarity to envy. And true enough, most of his contemporaries either ignored or denigrated him.
*
Did Sultan Abdulhamid II's mother (who was Armenian) say anything in support of her fellow Armenians to him? Or was she the type who rationalized her silence by saying she did not want to get involved in politics?
*
"I don't want to get involved in politics," one of our eminent editors (may the good Lord have mercy on his soul) once told me when I raised questions central to our ethos and survival as a nation. He preferred to publish stories about grandmothers and Armenian celebrities who had made it in the odar world - Armenians like Arshile Gorky, Michael Arlen Sr. (who warned his son to stay away from Armenians) and Michael Arlen Jr. (who concludes his PASSAGE TO ARARAT by saying there is no such thing as Armenian culture).
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[arabaliozian]

Thursday, August 11, 2005
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In some cultures military defeat is worse than death; in others it is moral victory.
*
The only time some Armenians think they are discharging their patriotic duty is when they are at each other's throat.
*
There is a type of tourist who goes to Florence for the pizza.
*
I have observed that anonymous critics tend to be more aggressive.
*
Success is as difficult to handle as failure.
*
I analyze myself to understand others; and I analyze others to understand myself.
*
An honest man is a charlatan's worst nightmare.
*
To how many of my fellow Armenians I could say:
Recover your humanity, you have nothing to lose but your Ottomanism.
*
It's not easy dealing with Armenians, but it helps if you are deaf to their insults and blind to their defects.
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Friday, August 12, 2005
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An in-depth study of contemporary Armenian literature in the Diaspora would be the shortest book in the world and it would say: Armenians in the Diaspora spend more money on pilaf and shish kebab than on books.
*
Authoritarian environments offer no incentive for growth because questioning and doubting dogmatic assertions are not allowed.
*
Take away Turks and the ego of some of our self-assessed, self-appointed, and self-satisfied pundits will collapse like a perforated balloon.
*
Like Armenians, Turks too come in all sizes and shapes and some Turks have been so thoroughly brainwashed that only the ghost of Ataturk can reach them.
*
A dogmatist is one who has been conditioned never to disagree with himself.
*
Unlike fools, the smart know their limitations.
*
The surest index of the future is not the promises of politicians or the rhetoric of charlatans but reality as assessed by objective historians.
*
Dealing with filth is an inevitable part of life and it makes no difference what you do for a living. Understand this and many incomprehensible things about the human condition became less unbearable.
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Saturday, August 13, 2005
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Like most Armenians I was raised with a forest of prejudices. Which is why I am not surprised when teenage readers hurl insults at me as if I were a pro-Turkish traitor.
*
Armenians of the Diaspora like to say that it will take two or even three generations for Armenians in the Homeland to be thoroughly de-Sovietized as if they themselves were in no need of being de-Ottomanized.
*
We divide foreign historians into Armenophiles and Turcophiles. We don't have a category for objective historians because we assume Armenophiles to be more objective than Turcophiles. No doubt Turks make a similar assumption about Turcophiles.
*
A Turkish reader writes: "We will never apologize!" Thus implying that even if they do they will not mean it. Which amounts to saying that they will never accept the so-called values of the so-called civilized West, which has been the source of more evil than all the other continents combined. The irony here is that Armenians and Turks agree on viewing the West as thoroughly corrupt and hypocritical.
*
The German government may have apologized to the xxxs but many Germans as well as anti-Semites of all nations and tribes, including, alas, Armenians, think the Holocaust is a gigantic hoax.
#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, August 14, 2005
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I repeat myself? For two thousand years our sermonizers have been repeating and recycling the very same message from the very same book to the point that it would come as a shock if they did not repeat themselves.
*
My ambition is to expose the absurd by means of clichés and platitudes so that no one can accuse me of muddying my waters in order to appear deep.
*
The enemies of reason don't reason, they denigrate, ridicule, and insult.
*
Politicians are cunning deceivers. Sometimes they will even use the truth to mislead the people.
*
When asked how it felt to have so many enemies, Richelieu is said to have replied: "I don't have enemies. France has enemies." I too could say that I don't have critics. Armenians have critics and some of their most vicious critics are fellow Armenians.
*
You can learn a great many things from books but not everything, and especially not the most important things.
*
Some of my critics behave on the assumption that if they are right they don't have to be civil; they can even behave like barbarians. If you think about it, is not the Genocide an extension of this same principle?
*
We are failures in so far as we have failed to civilize the barbarians; and the barbarians are successes in so far as they have been successful in dragging us down to their level.
*
Two thousand years of the same message from the same book: the question is, do they understand the message, and having understood it, do they practice it?
What about me?
Do I practice what I preach?
If only I could.
Life is like playing a musical instrument. I am a lousy pianist because I practice only half an hour every day, instead of five or more hours. But I can recognize a good pianist when I hear one. A musical critic does not have to know how to play all the instruments of an orchestra in order to review the performance of a symphony.
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Monday, August 15, 2005
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Life is like a nut that you must crack if you want to see its contents. Some go about it with a nutcracker one at a time; I use a sledgehammer, or so I am told by some of my delicate readers, some of whose tongues are sharper than a Turk's yataghan.
*
When an Armenian shares his wealth, he is called a benefactor; when he shares his ideas, he is called a malefactor.
*
It is not my ambition to be a thousand miles ahead of you, only an inch.
*
The reason why we have so many problems and no solutions is that we don't like solutions that may expose us as incompetent dupes, fools, crooks, or charlatans.
*
We resent those who reveal our secret thoughts to us if only because we did not have the courage to do so ourselves.
*
To speak of the moral values of capitalists is like speaking of the altruism of bloodsuckers.
*
In an environment where capitalists assign to writers the role of flunkeys, hirelings, and brown-nosers, there is only one recourse: to see things as they are, to face facts squarely, to assess the situation objectively, and whenever possible to have a good laugh.
*
A reader once sent me a xerox copy of a page from a Turkish-English dictionary where he had underlined the words "balioz-sledgehammer."
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Tuesday, August 16, 2005
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I too had nothing against hypocrisy when I was a hypocrite. As for double-talk or propaganda: I thought if everybody engages in it, why shouldn't we?
*
I know the answer to that question now: because it hasn't been working for us. Propaganda seems to favor winners; for losers it is more akin to consolation and cover up, and you cannot solve problems by covering them up. Problems must be exposed, faced, and dealt with in the open air beneath the rays of the sun.
*
Our favorite way of solving problems is to pretend they don't exist, or if they do, to justify them by saying all nations have them, why shouldn't we?
*
Writing for Armenians is not a pleasant or profitable line of work. One writes not with ink but with sweat and tears - tears of shame and rage.
*
Only people who can't earn respect, demand respect.
*
Ideas are either useful or useless. It makes no sense to be afraid of them or to get angry at them. If useful, use them. If useless, discard them.
*
I reject the notion that only a dupe and a fascist may qualify as an authentic Armenian.
*
The Ten Commandments are inadmissible because based on hearsay.
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Wednesday, August 17, 2005
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"Fear, anger and an aroused patriotism can undermine sound judgment" leading to over-reaction, the suppression of individual liberties and the "mutilation of public discourse." I am quoting and paraphrasing from PERILOUS TIMES: FREE SPEECH IN WARTIME, by Geoffrey R. Stone (Norton, 730 pages, 2005). Stone goes on to explain that cynical politicians tend to exploit fear and hatred "to serve their partisan ends" and to consolidate their own power by tarring their opponents as disloyal.
*
The question that I ask myself again and again is: Why is it that we have so many scholars, pundits, partisans and propagandists pushing the Genocide issue, but as far as I know, not a single voice or even a whisper defending free speech?
*
Political blunders are the most expensive luxuries in the world that not even the wealthiest nations can afford.
*
If I can't say it as I see it, who am I? What am I? No better than a politician's echo, or a charlatan's shadow, or a parrot without a beak.
*
If you haven't read the writers who were silenced by Talaat and Stalin, on whose side are you?
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