Latest from writer Ara Baliozian

[Guest arabaliozian]

My only preconceived notion is that I really don't have one.

if we conceive ideas from the original source as you suggest, let's say "SAMVEL" as one example; the message or the messages there, are plain and simple.

If a non-armenian had to read this book (to exclude any nationalistic bias) he would not find it strikingly different in concept from a historical novel of his land. In fact there are plenty of reviews on SAMVEL and Khent from russian readers. And in no way they make conclusions that many armenians do.

It is a paradox. We subject ourselves to a harsher critisism and self-doubting than we deserve and it is what we do the best.

No ukrainian starts thinking of his people as to be prone to trason after reading "Taras Bul'ba" in which father kills his son.

From three of my postings you have detected a "close- mindedness" of mine lack of knowledge and showed me to the books.

I wanted to keep in touch ,but apparently you don't.

it has been our destiny to be ruled and enslaved by brutal tyrannies.

our character has been perverted for that reason.

to refuse to see this is to deceive oneself.

i deceived myself for many years until i realized that "truth shall set me free."

and this truth is not mine but as i already said it belongs to all honest writers from khorenatsi to zarian who have said what must be said. the others engaged in propaganda -- and enemy propaganda at that.

[Guest arabaliozian]

Friday, November 28, 2003

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The worst kind of disagreements begin with the words:

"I agree with everything you say, but…."

*

I analyze our status quo.

My critics analyze me.

I analyze my critics.

Result: the status quo remains a dead end.

*

After dealing with Armenians for nearly a quarter of a century, after being dependent on them as a writer, after being at their mercy, so to speak, and after being exposed to their lies and insults, I have developed an emotional allergy for all varieties of Armenian nonsense and I am more than willing to concede that I am not a good candidate for Armenian heroism, martyrdom and sainthood.

*

Perhaps Nietzsche is right: The danger in dealing with fools is that one is liable to become a fool too.

*

To how many of my fellow Armenians I could say: "The only time I agree with you is when you are silent."

*

An angry reader once said to me: "Perhaps you should remind yourself once in a while that even the worst priest in the world never stops from being a man of God." And I was reminded of the bishop who once referred to another bishop as "that sriga (hooligan)!"

*

In great historians (Thucydides, Spengler, Toynbee) objectivity outweighs bias, which also means that being critical of one's own people and culture outweighs demonizing the enemy.

*

Why is it that honest men are seldom or never referred to as smart?

*

Armenianism should not be confused with Stalinism, fascism, fanaticism, and hooliganism.

*

The easiest thing in the world: to pretend to be better than you are. The hardest: to be successful in convincing others that you really are what you pretend to be.

I have seen so many fail in that respect that I find it much more sensible to portray myself as much worse than I am hoping thus not to stray too far from reality.

*

I have never been attacked by a pack of hungry wolves, but I can imagine what it must be like because most of my readers and critics are Armenians: the first nation to accept Christianity and practice cannibalism.

*

We live as though our problems were insoluble; but we argue as though all of us had a minimum of two solutions for every one of our problems.

*

Every nation re-writes history.

We are as much revisionists as the Turks.

Case in point: we are told again and again that,

since we were at the crossroads of empires,

we didn't have much of a chance for

peace, progress and prosperity.

What we are not told is that empires are not born but made,

and at the origin of every empire there were two tribes or warlords willing to negotiate, compromise and unite against a third.

So that, on the day one of our bosses or bishops says to the other: "I am willing to abdicate my position as number one

and help you to unite the community,"

we too may have a chance to become an empire

in a world of disintegrating empires.

But as long as our leaders place their titles, powers and privileges above the interests or even the survival of the community, we are destined to maintain our status as perennial losers forever at the mercy or at the crossroads

of bloodthirsty empires and savages

who have understood something we have refused to understand again and again: namely, there is strength in unity and a house divided against itself cannot stand.

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Saturday, November 29, 2003

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To readers who take it upon themselves to tell me what to write and how to write it, and sometimes even how to live, I say:

You may not be aware of the fact that for every writer today we have at least a hundred charlatans parading as commissars of culture. You are not my first, neither will you be my last. So much so that it has become part of my daily routine to deal with the likes of you. Allow me therefore to refresh your memory with some of the ground rules this game is played.

My function as a writer is to express my thoughts and feelings as honesty as I can.

Your function as a reader is to read and understand me. And since I am not a politician running for office, I don't really care if I have your support or agreement. Furthermore, I have no idea who you are, what you do for a living, and what it is exactly that motivates you to disagree with me; but I have every reason to suspect that if I were to appear in your workplace, office, or clinic (if you are doctor) and tell you how to run your business, you would not be favorably disposed towards me - even though we have no history of laymen persecuting plumbers, lawyers or doctors. But we do have a long history of commissars silencing and even murdering some of our ablest writers. You may now consider your place and role in the order of things and behave accordingly.

The very best we can do as Armenians is to prove to ourselves and the world at large that we are capable of behaving in a civilized manner and that Ottomanism and Stalinism are not the only things that we have learned from our Ottoman and Soviet experiences.

Finally, let us consider another scenario: If I were to change my mind with every reader who disagrees with me, I would end up projecting the image not of a human being with a unique perspective but that of a chameleon or a parrot. In other words, I would reduce myself to an object of ridicule with nothing to contribute but empty and redundant verbiage.

My final message to you and to all our crypto-commissars, neo-commissars and phony-commissars:

Thank you for reading me thus far and if this is the very last thing you ever read by me, thank you again and you may stay assured that I for one will not miss you and your words of wisdom.

[Guest arabaliozian]

Monday, December 01, 2003

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So far we have allowed others to determine our fate as a nation - the Turks in our Ottoman phase, the Russians in our Soviet phase. And now that we are our own masters - or rather, now that history has thrust on us the responsibility of determining our own fate -

are we doing a better job than our former masters?

During our Ottoman phase we produced Baronian, Odian, Zohrab, Zabel Yessayan and many others.

During our Soviet phase we produced Bakounts, Mahari, Aram Khachaturian, Levon Saryan, and so on.

As I survey our cultural scene today, I see nothing but a desert of mediocrity. I use the arts here as a symptom and a means rather an end in themselves. Great nations and great cultures produce great minds. But perhaps produce is the wrong word. Accommodate or allow the development of great minds would be more accurate.

But an environment dominated by mediocrities will view excellence as a threat and will do its utmost to obstruct its path.

*

Memo to a reader:

Either read me with an open mind or don't read me at all. And remember, the first victim of a closed mind is yourself.

*

If wrong, I can always rely on my readers to correct me.

I can even rely on them to correct me when I am right - especially when I am right.

*

Dupes eager to fall for self-flattering slogans have always outnumbered those who can think for themselves. It didn't take much to convince Germans into thinking they belonged to a superior race even as they behaved like swine. And consider the Islamic fascists at the turn of the century in the Ottoman Empire, and even today, massacring innocent civilians in the name of a "compassionate and merciful" Allah.

*

Ignorance, Socrates said and never tired of repeating, is the source of all evil, especially the kind of ignorance that parades as superior knowledge ("I know better!").

*

Preaching patriotism is a dishonest way out of an argument. Because if you have reason on your side, you will have no need of slogans, cliches, and mumbo jumbo.

*

The unspoken slogan of our commissars of culture: "Brown-nosers good! Dissenters, bad!"

There you have it: crypto-Stalinism by other means.

*

The only time it is safe to identify an Armenian as a writer or poet (as opposed to scribbler or versifier) is when he dies - preferably killed by a murderous regime. Which is why to escape the notice of our bureaucrats and hooligans (all of whom operate on the assumption that they know better) I prefer to identify myself as a scribbler.

*

In our environment there is more profit in kissing ass than in kicking ass. But even in kissing ass, the supply so outweighs the demand, and the competition is so stiff that, the chances are the average ass-kisser will have as much difficulty in making minimum wage as the average ass-kicker.

*

I have had many arguments with many Armenians but as far as I can remember I have lost all of them. Either because my arguments were not persuasive enough or my adversaries started the argument with the assumption that they knew better; and when an Armenian makes such an assumption, even the Irresistible Force cannot budge him.

*

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

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Perhaps I project my own inadequacies on the nation - or is it the other war around? By observing the inadequacies of the nation, I see my own.

Does it really matter?

What is the alternative?

To pretend I am better and our leaders are right even when wrong? Isn't that the central message of our propaganda? Isn't that what our charlatans do? Of what possible use would I be to anyone if I were to join their ranks?

*

To say we are the best in a nasty, ruthless, dishonest world is to hope that some day the world will see the light and be a more congenial place. Which also means to adopt a passive stance and do nothing.

If, on the other hand, we want to face facts and come to grips with reality, we have no choice but to admit that we are as bad as the rest of them and the only reason we have not fallen as low as the Turks, the Germans, or the Americans (in their treatment of the natives and slaves), is that history has not presented as with the opportunity.

*

I never ask myself what I can do for my homeland but what my homeland can do for me, not because I am a self-centered megalomaniac but because the function of the state is to serve the people.

Someone, some day will have to teach our leaders and their hirelings that the difference between fascism and democracy is this:

under fascism the people serve the state;

under democracy it's the other way around: the state serves the people, which is why, even the head of state is called a public servant.

*

If my critics were to ignore me I would sink into anonymity and oblivion without leaving a footprint in the sand. But as long as they read and contradict me, they allow me to penetrate their consciousness and disturb their inner balance.

*

Whenever the subject of prayer comes up I don't mind admitting that the last time I prayed was in 1949. But it occurs to me now that perhaps everything I write is also a prayer - if not in the sense of a direct appeal to the Good Lord (Who, if He exists, He must have His hands full with far more serious problems than our petty internecine squabbles) than to the common sense and decency of my fellow men (which cannot be said to be in contradiction with divine values and objectives).

*

A spirit of contradiction can be a valuable asset if it is directed against oneself. Directed against others it might as well be a sure symptom of a closed mind.

*

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

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At all times and everywhere philistines have been in the majority. My guess is, every prehistoric cave painting was interrupted again and again by philistines who said to the painter: "Make yourself useful. Go out and kill an animal. We can't have paintings for lunch."

When one of our eminent national benefactors said to one of our poets: "Poetry is of no use to us!" he was echoing the very same sentiments of prehistoric kibitzers whose spiritual and intellectual horizons never went beyond hunger and lunch.

I respect the benevolence of our benefactors but I loathe the values they legitimize: money is everything, ideas trash. Capitalists are princes, poets paupers.

*

When late in life Verdi made a recommendation to a conservatory and was ruled out, he wrote an angry letter

whose first line reads:

"If I had been born a TURK I might have got what I asked!"

*

I have been silenced by partisan editors,

corrected by uninformed ignoramuses,

and insulted by chauvinists because I refuse to recycle chauvinist crap:

I must be on the right path.

*

In a book published in 1836 and titled HINTS ON ETIQUETTE by that most prolific of all thinkers and sources of wisdom, Mr. Anon (short for Anonymous) we read the following: "Shopkeepers and retailers of various goods will do well to remember that people are respectable in their own sphere only and that when they attempt to step out of it they cease to be so."

[Guest arabaliozian]

Thursday, December 04, 2003

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In a recent interview, Freud's grand-daughter is reported to have said: "The 20th Century produced two major charlatans: Hitler and Freud."

My first thought: Her legal claim on the Freud estate and a fraction of his royalties must have been rejected by a court of law. (In this connection see also Aram Saroyan's memoir of his father, LAST RITES).

*

Was Freud a charlatan?

Was Columbus a charlatan when he thought he had discovered not America but a new way to reach India?

Was Aristotle a charlatan when he said women have fewer teeth than men?

Did Einstein expose Newton as a charlatan?

*

A headline in our local paper today reads: "BUSH PROVES TO MUSLIMS HE'S JUST AN UGLY AMERICAN." And I suppose, Muslims prove to Americans they are beautiful Arabs?

*

In a French dictionary I read a definition of tolerance which says, among other things:

"Tolerance is a proof of intelligence because it allows us to enrich ourselves by contact with beliefs and practices that are not our own. Its aim is to replace brute force with reason."

It follows: where there is intolerance there will also be ignorance and stupidity.

*

There are two kinds of terrorists:

the naïve dupes and the cold-blooded killers.

The first are as much victims as those they kill.

The second are no better than bloodthirsty fanatics in search of a cause that will legitimize their killer instincts.

*

I have been in and out of hospitals recently and I have discovered that young and pretty nurses are more considerate and cause less pain than old and ugly ones.

In nursing, it seems, as in so many other fields of human endeavor, disposition counts more than experience.

*

If we can be morally superior losers, why can't we be morally superior winners? - forgers of an empire that liberates rather than oppresses and exploits the natives. Not a military empire but a moral one whose strength lies not in brute force but in its dedication to such principles and ideals as justice for all and respect for fundamental human rights.

*

In his ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH,

Alexander Solzhenitsyn writes:

"Who is a Zek's worst enemy? Another Zek."

Zeks too, I thought.

*

If Gandhi is right, even the most dehumanized and cowardly liar and dupe retains within him a divine spark. To those who insult and reject me, I say: I don't write for you but for the human being buried within you. I write for that tiny divine spark that lies buried beneath layers of prejudices, illusions, and fears.

*

The aim of our political leadership and the genocide industry they support and promote is to reform the mindset of present-day Turkish leaders.

The aim of our intellectuals (from Abovian to Zarian) has been to reform the mindset of our leaders.

Without knowing it, both our leaders and intellectuals share a common aim: to battle Ottomanism with words and ideas.

Obviously, a lose/lose proposition.

*

On page 5 of THE ARMENIAN REPORTER (November 15) I read a long review of a book in Turkish written by a Turkish scholar which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Ottoman Empire was thoroughly corrupt.

In the same issue of the REPORTER on page 28, I read an article translated from the Russian and written by an Armenian that says present-day Armenia is thoroughly corrupt and that the very same bureaucrats assigned to fight corruption are themselves criminals busy amassing vast fortunes at the expense of the people.

At the end of the article, the translator has appended a comment in italics wherein it is stated that the corruption in Armenia must be blamed not on our criminals but on the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

There it is: our penchant to put the blame on others - if it's not the Turks than it must be the corrupt West.

My question is: In what way are we better than self-righteous Islamic fascists who view the infidel West as the source of all evil? What right do we have to gloat over the corruption in the Ottoman Empire (which collapsed a hundred years ago and has thus been assigned to the dustbin of history) and cover up, even explain and justify our own criminal conduct?

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Friday, December 05, 2003

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Where there is an Armenian community there is also a matrix or network of power within which bishops rule in the name of God, benefactors in the name of Gold, and political bosses in the name of heroes and martyrs that have acquired mythological status like characters in Homer. Such concepts as the will of the people, the rule of law, accountability, and respect for fundamental human rights are reduced to irrelevance. Gone are the days when our intellectuals fearlessly analyzed and exposed our leaders as cynical opportunists and charlatans.

*

Where intellectuals are marginalized to the point of irrelevance, there will be control freaks and bullies who will denigrate anyone who dares not to parrot their propaganda line. And I cannot help wondering why is it these self-appointed guardians of our identity and culture refuse to read our major writers and share their understanding with us, instead of wasting their precious time reading and denigrating minor scribblers like myself.

*

If we are smart but not smart enough to solve our problems it may be because the solution to our problems has nothing to do with smarts and everything to do with honesty. It follows: our problems are not difficult. What's difficult is for dishonest man to admit dishonesty.

*

Losers are not born but made and self-made losers will have no difficulty in convincing themselves to be morally superior winners.

*

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."

*

Chinese saying: "When in a hurry, slow down."

*

A reader who insults me condemns himself to read everything I write (to make sure he was right to insult me)

and to see cryptic references to himself in almost everything I say.

*

The best comment on traditional values I remember to have read is by Churchill while in conversation with an admiral:

"Don't talk to me about naval tradition!

It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash!"

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Saturday, December 06, 2003

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A dishonest leadership will support and promote dishonest advisers, scholars and pundits who will concentrate their efforts on dehumanizing and demonizing the enemy and on covering up their own dishonesty.

*

A conflict cannot be resolved without compromise and compromise will be seen as a failing in an environment that deals only in sham certainties.

*

In the U.S. you have the heroes of September 11

and you also have the bloodsuckers of Enron.

It is the same with us. With one difference.

Our bloodsuckers continue to be in charge of our destiny.

*

In her READING CHEKHOV (New York, 2001),

Janet Malcolm devotes several pages

to a short story titled "The Beauties,"

whose central character is a 16-year old Armenian girl

of such dazzling beauty that

the narrator has a near-death experience.

Writes Chekhov (as quoted by Janet Malcolm):

"Whether it was envy of her beauty,

or that I was regretting that the girl was not mine,

and never would be,

or that I was a stranger to her;

or whether I vaguely felt that her rare beauty

was accidental, unnecessary, and, like everything on earth,

of short duration; or whether, perhaps,

my sadness was that peculiar feeling

which is excited in man

by the contemplation of real beauty, God only knows."

*

In his SAVAGE CHIC (Los Angeles, 2001), Kardash Onnig

describes a similar experience in the presence

of a 14-year old Armenian girl by the name of Nora:

"Her eyelashes moved up and down like butterflies," he writes, "her eyebrows met like Frida Kahlo's

and she had a soft smile and a voice

that could melt even my heart….

She stood there in the middle of the room

with a proud smile…tears filled my eyes [and]

through my tears I saw an angel thanking me."

And I can't help thinking that

whenever a friend of mine returns

after a visit to the Homeland a born again patriot

eager to dedicate his life to the welfare of his people

he is moved neither by the landscape

nor the deplorable conditions of his fellow countrymen

but by an angelic apparition similar to those

seen by Chekhov and Kardash.

*

To those who say I repeat myself:

Only if you insist on reading me - for which many thanks!

*

We speak too much of genocide and not enough of genosuicide. Genocide is what happened to us at the turn of the century in the Ottoman Empire. Genosuicide is what's happening to us today.

*

About national identity: the two most penetrating observations that I remember to have read are by Kafka and Romain Gary.

To the question "What do you share in common with Jews?" Kafka replied: "I don't even share anything in common with myself."

And Romain Gary, when asked by a French journalist, in what way his Jewish identity had influenced him, replied: "It changed the way I shit."

[Guest arabaliozian]

Monday, December 08, 2003

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I once met a girl from Turkey who was fluent in Armenian but identified herself as a Turk probably because (I now guess) she thought among Armenians she would get more respect as a Turk than as a half-Armenian.

*

Honors, titles, popularity: I have none and I don't consider that fact a liability. I understand Sartre who rejected the Nobel Prize because he was afraid it would turn him into a pompous ass.

*

All tragedies begin with a happy ending.

*

We don't suffer from a scarcity of famous or wealthy or gifted men; we suffer from a scarcity of honest men.

Time can be a merciless critic. I'd rather have time on my side than a thousand yes-men, brown-nosers, flunkies, philistines, crackpots, and baloney artists.

*

When you hate you cannot reason; you can only destroy; and the first thing you destroy is your ability to reason.

*

Never brag about Armenian civilization,

but if you do, take care to do it in a civilized manner.

*

Never insult an Armenian writer:

being one is insult enough.

*

It is only natural for those who are part of the problem to pretend not to see the solution.

*

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.

*

Anyone who is committed to an ideology or religion will have his own version of the past.

Believers are natural-born revisionists.

*

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Tuesday, December 09, 2003

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An Armenian will contradict you not because he disagrees with you but to show off his erudition and brilliance as a debater. I call this the David Anhaght complex, after one of our greatest medieval philosophers who was called "Invincible" because he never lost an argument. Every Armenian has heard about him but I have never met an Armenian who was familiar with any one of his ideas.

*

I came across a new word today, "dittoheads" - said of people who cannot think for themselves and are therefore condemned to recycle someone else's propaganda or verbal crapola.

*

Jules Renard: "Cyrano's tongue is longer than his nose."

Of how many of us it could be said that we have the tongue of giants but the brains of midgets.

*

During an argument with a fellow Armenian I am always tempted to ask: "Are we exchanging views or settling scores? And if you are settling a score, are you sure you have the right victim?"

*

Our literature may be dead but our book industry is very much alive sustained as it is by the vanity of our pseudo-intellectuals and the profit margins of our printers.

*

What if Abel had murdered Cain?

What if Armenians had committed genocide against the Turks?

The identity of the victims would have changed but the history of mankind would have remained the same.

*

Tyrants neither explain nor reason. They lie and threaten. Even when they say nothing they lie. Even the blank spaces between their lines and words are menacing. Even their punctuation marks thirst for blood.

*

Like all men, Armenians too have their good and bad sides,

but they reserve the worst when dealing with their own kind.

*

I have readers who hate me but love reading me,

only in the sense that Jack the Ripper loved the company of women.

*

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Wednesday, December 10, 2003

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Every snowflake has a solid nucleus which may be a speck of dust from a distant volcano, a Siberian coalmine, or the dried up dung from the Arabian desert. Remember that next time you allow a snowflake to melt on your tongue. And remember too that yellow snow is not caramelized snow.

*

The lightest body in the world: the woman you love.

The heaviest: the same woman you no longer love.

*

What could be more morally repellent than to use someone else's heroism to justify your own cowardice,

or someone else's honesty to cover up your own dishonesty,

or, as Zaroukian once put it, to lament about someone else's crucifixion even as you nail another to the cross?

*

The hatred of an Armenian for a Turk is rivaled only

by the contempt of an Armenian for another Armenian.

*

When a man ceases to love a woman, he puts the blame on the woman, never on his own judgment.

*

"You are a writer," some of my readers inform me, after which they issue directives, something they would never dare to do with a bus driver, a plumber, or a garbage collector.

*

Kurdish proverb: "Those who don't go to war

roar like lions."

*

Hebrew proverb: "He is great whose faults can be numbered."

[Guest arabaliozian]

Thursday, December 11, 2003

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Armenian tourists in Yerevan are warned by their guide to be prepared to see some very strange things:

"…things that may disappoint you to the point of despair; and things that may astonish you to the point of exhilaration."

I am now quoting from Markar Sharabkhanian's recent book of travel impressions.

Here we also read the following lines from a local editorial:

"During the Soviet era the people were in a state of eternal slumber - they neither saw nor complained. Today, in a free and independent Armenia, they see as well as complain…but they continue to snooze -- this time around with eyes wide open. When will all this end? Will it ever?"

*

An apologist for the Establishment will tend to view all dissent and criticism as treason and betrayal. And vice versa. A critic will see in all apologists a collaborator with the forces of darkness -- be they Ottoman, Soviet or Armenian.

In the Ottoman and Soviet eras our establishment types collaborated with the enemy "to save the nation" -- or so they said to cover up the fact that their number one concern was number one. Today, their successors in Yerevan speechify and sermonize to cover up the same obvious fact. Plus ca change plus c'est la meme merde.

*

As for our pundits and academics who are fully aware of what's going on but prefer to deliver lectures on medievalism and massacrism: they do so because if they were to come to grips with today's reality their podiums may be yanked from under their feet and they may be cast into an abyss of anonymity. In other words: they'd rather be part of the same merde than relinquish even a tiny fraction of their privileges.

*

Our history has shaped our character (negarakir)

and our character has shaped our destiny (jagadakir).

Raffi was wrong when he said "Treason and betrayal are in our blood."

No such thing is in our blood or DNA -- if only because there is no DNA for treason and betrayal. Everything begins and ends in the convolutions of our brains. Which means we are free to change our character and destiny. Whether we will do so or not remains to be seen.

"When will all this end? Will it ever?"

*

But perhaps we shouldn't complain too much. After all, we live in a world where Christ was crucified, Socrates poisoned, Gandhi assassinated, and as recently as mere decades ago, millions of innocent civilians were murdered simply because they belonged to this or that tribe, nation or race. We should feel privileged indeed for being alive. Perhaps we should get used to the idea that the greatest privilege our fellow men can bestow on us is to allow us to die of natural causes.

*

Speaking of DNA:

I no longer think of Armenians and Turks as nations apart but as fractions of mankind that share in common 99% of their DNA. As for the balance of 1%: I ascribe it to Original Sin (present in all of us) exacerbated by propaganda (ditto). The Turks hated and massacred us because they were misled by their propaganda; and we hate them today because we refuse to see this obvious fact.

*

Why is it that all crimes against humanity are committed in the name of a noble idea: Allah, justice, patriotism….

*

Sister Mary de Lourdes: "Every bigot was once a child free of prejudice."

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Olaf Stapleton: "A nation is just a society for hating foreigners."

*

Tyrants are not afraid of writers,

only of being exposed as liars.

*

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Friday, December 12, 2003

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The main reason of Armenian alienation and assimilation in the Diaspora is not social and historical conditions beyond our control (as I was brought up to believe) but other Armenians, and more particularly, Armenians who lack political consciousness to such a degree that they are fascists and don't know it, very much like Moliere's character who spoke prose and didn't know it.

*

I am not even remotely tempted to use words that were not used by Homer, the Bible, Shakespeare and Chekhov - words like dichotomy and deconstruction for instance - and whenever I hear someone else using them, I lose interest in what follows.

*

More on our pundits and academics:

Their stated aim is to enlighten the masses; their unstated aim: to show off their erudition and intellectual superiority. Hence, the astonishing ease with which they reject or question all ideas that do not fit into their narrow range of sentiments and thoughts, which they assume to be the alpha and omega of human wisdom. I have heard relative nonentities without a single original idea in their heads reject Marx, Freud, Spengler, Toynbee, Sartre and Jung as if they were dealing with misguided dupes.

*

William James: "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."

*

What's the difference between a Turkish and an Armenian audience? I don't know what a Turkish audience is like because I never had one, but if you want to know what an Armenian audience is like, imagine a Turkish audience.

*

With every book I publish, I acquire a new friend and lose two old ones. Any day now the number of my readers will bear a negative sign.

*

I feel most alone when in the company of my fellow Armenians.

*

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Saturday, December 13, 2003

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The absence of God plays a more important role in the life of atheists than the existence of God in the life of most believers - judging by the way they live.

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Is it humanly possible to ignore or forget the truth after hearing it?

*

According to an old Chinese saying: "Those who make idols don't believe in them." The same applies to our sermonizers and speechifiers, who, very much like merchants, deal in certain commodities not because they believe in them but because there is a demand for them.

*

Jules Renard: "We are down here to laugh. We won't be able to in purgatory or in hell; and in heaven, it may not be considered good manners."

*

Lacordaire: "We talk plainly only to those we love."

*

We cannot experience all of reality, only a tiny fraction of it, so tiny in fact that it might as well be invisible to the naked eye. It is only by sharing our experiences and thoughts with others that we may acquire a better understanding of the world. And to say "my experience is pure gold but yours counterfeit" is the source of all ignorance, prejudice, intolerance, arrogance, and fanaticism.

*

My definition of bliss: The awareness that one is no longer dependent on the charity of swine and on the approval of dupes.

*

Giambattista Vico: "Crowded city life produces men who are unbelievers, who regard money as the measure of all things, and who lack moral qualities, particularly modesty…. Emancipated from ethics generally,

they live by mutual spying and deceit."

*

I don't look for enemies; they find me.

*

While reading Markar Sharabkhanian's deeply felt travel impressions of Armenia wherein there is a great deal of talk about homeland and dedication to patriotic principles and ideals, I am reminded of Goethe's dictum: "Homeland is where a man is allowed to work and provide for his family"; and what the Irish are fond of saying about Ireland: "It's a good place to die."

*

In our local paper today I read about a man who was found guilty of abducting, beating, raping and killing a five-year old girl. On hearing his sentence (25 years imprisonment), he is reported to have said: "I am a sick man, I should be sent to hospital not prison." I agree, provided he also agrees there is only one way for him to prove he has regained his sanity and that is by committing suicide. I can't imagine any sane man living in peace with that kind of crime on his conscience.

*

All neighborhoods are tough if you don't know the rules of their games.

*

There is something fundamentally wrong in an environment where those with fat bellies adopt a morally superior stance.

*

Jules Renard: "The sleep of the just? But who says the just can sleep?"

*

Turks hate us because they have been brainwashed to believe we are giaours with evil designs on their homeland.

Why does an Armenian hate another Armenian?

Who brainwashed him?

For what purpose?

Explain that and you will expose the roots of our tribalism.

*

To think, to really think, means to go beyond the boundaries of the already thought.

[Guest arabaliozian]

Sunday, December 14, 2003

**********************************

Sophia Loren to Vittorio de Sica in an American movie titled IT HAPPENED IN NAPLES: "You are not a lawyer, you are a pig!"

Vittorio de Sica (offended): "But a man can be a lawyer and a pig at the same time."

*

I don't write about Armenians even when I write about them. I write about human beings, subservience and liberation.

*

Feminists are right when they say there is a pig in all men. What about feminists themselves?

According to Camille Paglia, feminists are "desensualized, desexualized, neurotic women, who, displacing their personal problems with sex on to society, purvey an appalling diet of cant, drivel and malarkey."

*

The dialogue between men and women boils down to an exchange of grunts and malarkey. Hence, their inability to reach a consensus.

Where there is no dialogue or dialectic, there will be no synthesis.

*

You see, even when I write about pigs and malarkey, I write about us and our failure to liberate ourselves from the shackles of the past.

*

Most of us are satisfied by the tiny corner of reality we have experienced and when we contradict or reject another's testimony, what we mean to say is: "My reality is everything, your reality nothing!"

*

It is not only the West that speaks with a forked tongue but also our own institutions when they promote nationalism and practice tribalism. The same applies to religions and ideologies that preach tolerance and practice fanaticism thus legitimizing criminal conduct.

*

It never pays to go down into the gutter to prove you are right and your adversary wrong. If you are right, let the evidence speak for itself. If you are wrong, why compound the felony?

*

******************************

Monday, December 15, 2003

*******************************

The last book Tolstoy read ten days before he died was THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV.

*

If I were a rich man I would share my wealth.

I would be a benefactor. I would be popular. I would make headlines in our weeklies. I would count among my friends nine bishops, three archbishops, two patriarchs and at least one catholicos. I would sport medals identifying me as a Nakharar of Vaspourakan, a Sparabed of Avarair, a Prince of Cilicia, a King of Armenia and an Emperor of Transcaucasia. (Have you noticed that even people who hate reading fiction, love living in it!)

But these are things that are destined to remain beyond my wildest dreams. As an overworked and underpaid scribbler, all I have to share now is my misery .

*

A wise man is shaped by what he understands,

a fool by what he cannot understand.

*

Chauvinism overestimates a tribe, a nation, or let's say, a fraction of mankind and underestimates the rest and, in doing so, it misunderstands the world and everyone in it.

*

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.

*

When an Armenian writes about Turks, and vice versa - when a Turk writes about Armenians - they behave like sermonizers preaching to the converted.

*

There are two kinds of partisans: the idealists and the opportunists. The idealists join a party because they want to serve the people. The opportunists join a party because that's where the power is. And because opportunists are by definition unprincipled, cunning and ruthless, they will either eliminate the idealists or use them as front men

*

****************************

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

*******************************

All closed systems of thought - be they religions or ideologies - promote intolerance even when they preach fraternity, equality, love, compassion and mercy.

*

I am a stranger in a strange land even when I find myself in the company of my fellow Armenians. Even? Make it, especially!

*

The rich are greedy. They are not satisfied with the money they have. They want to be happy too.

*

Money and power might as well be interchangeable units. They will attract the greedy and the unprincipled as surely as excrement attracts flies.

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

*********************************

By tribalizing the nation, our political leadership has failed to nationalize it. If we see the future as an extension of the past or if we judge the future by past experience, we shall have to admit that optimism in our case is not a virtue but an aberration motivated by wishful thinking.

*

The problems with speechifiers is that even when they whisper they speechify; even when they reflect in silence and solitude they engage in thundertalk (borodakhosioutiun).

*

You cannot trust the solution to a problem to those who created the problem or to those who profit by the problem. The first will never admit the existence of the problem and the second will never do anything against their own interests.

*

A fanatic is one who thinks if he screams loud enough no one will notice the total absence of meaning in his words.

*

A partisan defending a fellow partisan is like a wolf defending another wolf to an audience of sheep.

*

An idealist who allows himself to be used by opportunists is either an honest dupe or a cynic.

*

To those who accuse me of being undiplomatic,

I say: No one is paying me to lie.

*

Where liars are in charge, honesty is seen as treason.

*

If you say something remotely intelligent,

you will be contradicted by imbeciles.

*

Vast distances are conveyed to my mind less by astronomical calculations in light years than by the distance that exists between what an Armenian thinks he is and what he really is.

[Guest arabaliozian]

Thursday, December 18, 2003

*********************************

Every tribe and nation has its share of heroes who, in the eyes of their enemies, are no better than serial killers.

*

A question about the sacred soil of our beloved Homeland: In what way is our mud different from Azeri, Georgian, or Turkish mud?

*

Armenian saying: "It is easy to lust for fame,

much harder to achieve greatness."

*

Another episode from Markar Sharabkhanian's

RETURN TO THE HOMELAND:

When on seeing a large reproduction of Stalin at a flea market, the author is unable to disguise his astonishment bordering on shock, he is told by the annoyed vendor: "This, my dear sir, is not meant for gentlemen tourists like yourself but for card-carrying members of the Communist Party."

The author comments:

"Unfortunately, these characters exist and continue to operate in Yerevan and elsewhere, and not always behind the scenes either. Driven by nostalgia, they like to reminisce endlessly about the good old days…."

Unfortunately, we have this type here too - I mean in the Diaspora, and I mean Stalinists of both the neo- and crypto- variants - gentlemen who accuse you of McCarthyism if you dare to say anything remotely critical of Bolshevism.

*

Elsewhere in Markar's book, when someone counts twelve guests around the dinner table, and says something to the effect that, all is now needed is a Jesus Christ, someone else comments: "It may not be so easy locating a Christ in Armenia."

And I could not help reflecting: "A Judas, on the other hand…."

*

It is widely known among citizens of a democracy

that politics is the second oldest profession

and that in many ways it resembles the first.

Fascists agree but they think this does not apply to fascism.

Which amounts to saying,

"Our bordello madams, unlike yours, are virgins."

*

No two leaves of grass, grains of sand, and flakes of snow are alike. Neither are two human beings. We, all of us, can contribute a different perspective and in doing so widen our horizons and develop our powers of perception.

Intolerance maims our humanity and narrows our horizons. It is a form of self-castration.

*

If we were to define good as anything that enhances the brotherhood of all men, and evil as anything that legitimizes the opposite disposition, we shall have to conclude that there is something evil in all forms of tribalism, nationalism, patriotism, chauvinism, racism and orthodoxy.

*

To recycle propaganda means to allow others to do your thinking for you; which also means to abdicate your responsibility as a human being and to repudiate one of the most precious gifts God or the forces of the universe have granted you: your brain.

*

The evil is not Turkish, German, Italian, or Russian fascism; but fascism, period! including Armenian fascism.

*

A reader writes that my writings give him a headache.

I could make a long list of Armenian writers who were starved, murdered, and committed suicide.

What's a little headache?

*

*********************************

Saturday, December 20, 2003

********************************

To a diehard partisan ideologue or man of faith, all political parties and religions, except his own, are based on deceit and their sole aim is to swindle the ignorant masses.

I call this "the mullah complex."

*

It's easy to have all the answers if you don't ask the right questions.

*

If you are weak, negotiate.

If you are desperate, terrorize.

*

The mightiest weapon against visible as well as invisible dragons is common sense.

*

Failure is nature's way of letting us know we may be on the wrong path.

*

A reader once accused me of dehumanizing my fellow Armenians. Whereas one of my most frequent reproaches to myself is that again and again I have attempted to humanize them by seeking to reason with them and again and again I have been disappointed, insulted, torn to shreds, and cannibalized.

*

The Diaspora is sometimes thought of as a destroyer of Armenianism. But as an Armenian born and raised in the Diaspora, I don't feel in any way threatened by odar values. I wish I could say the same about Armenian values - or values that parade under the label of Armenianism.

*

Nigoghos Sarafian: "Our history is a litany of lamentation, anxiety, horror, and massacre. Also deception and abysmal naivete mixed with the smoke of incense and the sound of sacred chants."

I should like to see one of our professors or vodanavorjis produce such a sentence!

*

When the eyes see but the brain does not register, the eyes might as well be blind.

*

******************************

Saturday, December 20, 2003

*******************************

It is only our degraded present condition

that allows us to brag about our glorious past.

*

Chauvinism: a false sense of superiority that is the surest symptom of real inferiority. It is by exposing and combating this inferiority that we may achieve the brotherhood of all men, be they Jews and Arabs, Armenians and Turks, Patagonians and Hottentots.

*

There are as many versions of the past

as there are nations, tribes, religions, ideologies, and historians.

Only God knows what happened and why,

but so far He has refused to share His version with us.

Even when two historians agree on the facts

they will disagree on their interpretations.

*

If two historians agreed on everything,

one of them would be redundant.

*

Mirabeau on Talleyrand: "He would sell his soul for money,

and he would be right, for he would be exchanging dung for gold."

*

Faith can remove only those mountains that were raised by our own fears, ignorance, and doubts.

*

May I confess that I don't always read my critics. It is painful in the extreme reading thoughts that I entertained as a child but rejected when I became an adult.

*

Great nations speak big lies;

small nations speak bigger lies.

*

Propaganda is a plant that needs the manure of rhetoric.

*

Jean Rostand: "There are great many people whom I should be tempted to ask before listening to them: Is it you who are about to speak, or are you planning to play me a propaganda record?"

*

One may predict the actions of an intelligent man but not those of a fool. That's because logic is predictable, lunacy is not.

*

A problem has only one correct solution but countless wrong ones.

*

If so far we have failed to apply the correct solution (honesty/solidarity) to our central problem (charlatanism/fragmentation) it's because we have allowed our lunatic fringe to take over the leadership of the nation.

*

No one is beyond redemption, granted; and it is possible for some fools to see the light; but not for fools who have assessed themselves as just about the smartest operators in the world.

*

To those of my readers who demand solutions, I ask:

Are you sure that's what you want?

What if what you really have in mind is only a verbal formula or incantation that will transform a self-satisfied jackass to a philosopher?

Because, if that's what you are after, my answer to you is: Sorry, my good friend, I am not in the abracadabra business.

*

If what you say makes sense,

let your words speak louder than your emotions.

[Guest arabaliozian]

Sunday, December 21, 2003

****************************

When it comes to murder, it's "cherchez la femme."

But when it comes to controversies in multicultural environments like Canada and the U.S., it's more likely to be "cherchez ethnic rivalries."

Cases in point:

Whenever a Turk says anything remotely kind about Turkey in our local paper, a Greek, Kurd or Armenian is sure to expose him as a liar in the next issue.

*

One reason Camille Paglia hates feminists is that she is Italian and most feminists in the U.S. are spoiled Jewish princesses.

*

As recently as three weeks ago, the German conductor of our orchestra was fired by the mainly Anglo-Saxon board of directors. The German community (about 40% of the population here) rose to the maestro's defense by writing dozens of angry letters to the editor. The board recanted and invited the maestro back from Berlin at its own expense. The maestro came, insulted the board, and was fired all over again.

One could says that World War I and World War II were fought all over again here and again the Allies prevailed.

*

I just finished Markar Sharabkhanian's RETURN TO THE HOMELAND, a compulsively readable travelogue with candid close-up views of many places and people - from opulent villas in suburbs to humble cottages in remote valleys; from presidents and bishops to beggars and floozies; and from first-rate intellectuals (marginalized in the Homeland and ignored in the Diaspora) to second rate vodanavorjis (versifiers) in important political positions in the capital.

*

A curious detail: Armenians, it seems, don't have a word for corruption, or, if they do, they don't use it. What they say is "corrooptsia," which sounds even more shady in its Russian variant. And corrooptsia, very much like Mark Twain's weather, is something everyone talks about but no one does a damn thing.

We too have corrooptsia here in the Diaspora, of course, but we also have a vociferous contingent of hirelings who rise to the defense of their sources of income whenever anyone dares to mention the word.

Why should things be different there?

*

*****************************

Monday, December 22, 2003

*******************************

While reading NAPOLEON'S EXPEDITION TO RUSSIA: THE MEMOIRS OF GENERAL DE SEGUR, I am reminded of a recent commentary by my good friend Ben Bagdikian pointing out parallels between Bush and Napoleon on the one hand, and on the other, Saddam's Iraq and Czar Alexander's Russia.

The parallels are there, no doubt, but the dissimilarities are even more glaring.

In his youth and inexperience, Bush is more like the Czar; and in his megalomania, Saddam is more like Napoleon - minus the Corsican's military genius, of course.

Napoleon was defeated by Russia's vast distances and severe winters - conditions that are absent in Iraq.

Even more to the point, the democratically elected and popular President of the mightiest military power in the world today invaded a relatively small, backward, and tribal country ruled by a ruthless dictator hated by the majority of his own people.

*

****************************

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

****************************

In his new biography of Glenn Gould, Kevin Bazzana writes that Gould revolutionized the Russian musical landscape by introducing not only J.S. Bach (ignored until then as a purely religious composer) but also Shoenberg, Berg, Webern and Krenek (condemned under Stalin as "formalists").

*

In NATASHA'S DANCE: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF RUSSIA, Orlando Figes writes that Tolstoy, a born-again Christian (long before the expression became fashionable in America) rejected the divinity of Christ, for which reason he was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church and received many death threats by the Russian lunatic fringe.

Further down we read that Nabokov's loathing of Communism was such that he even supported McCarthy and the war in Vietnam.

Nabokov also denigrated both Basternak and Solzhenitsyn probably because, Figes suggests, they were awarded the Nobel Prize and he wasn't. It should be noted, however, that Nabokov also belittled many others, not all of them Nobelists - among them, Dostoevsky, Freud, Mann, Rilke, Faulkner, and Hemingway.

*

The Talmud: "Silence is good for the wise,

how much more so for the foolish."

*

G.B. Shaw: "You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race."

[Guest arabaliozian]

Wednesday, December 24, 2003

*********************************************

If a flock of sheep are devoured by a pack of wolves,

who is to blame?

The wolves or the shepherds?

*

The aim of all nationalist historians is to un-ring a bell.

*

If an American Indian were to write a history of the United States, will it enjoy the imprimatur of the White House?

*

"The Armenians are our Indians," a Turkish diplomat is quoted as having stated during a visit to the White House, during which the question of the Armenian Genocide had been raised.

*

Pity the scumbag whose role models were white trash.

*

Mullahs disapprove of American movies because they show scantily dressed females. But they themselves promise their sexually famished teenagers 73 compliant virgins in heaven if they die while engaged in killing infidels.

Who is more guilty of sexploitation: Yankee producers or Arab imams?

*

I may react to an honest disagreement but not to an insult. How does one react to an insult without going down to the gutter where the other has the advantage?

*

Once in a while I am reminded that I am wasting my time because Armenian leaders (the perennial targets of my criticism) don't give a damn about what a writer thinks or says, Isn't that the same mistake that was committed by French kings and Russian czars?

*

It is to be noted that neither the French nor the Russian Revolution was a purely national episode. It was, if anything, a human manifestation.

I tremble to think what will happen to our leadership on the day Armenians shed their inbred subservience, recover their humanity and reach the realization that despotism is not an inevitable fact of life.

*

********************************

Thursday, December 25, 2003

*********************************

In defense of a politician, a reader writes: "It's easy for you to say: you are only a writer" - as if writers were in the habit of speaking lies and calling them promises.

*

Who is to say how much we owe to our blunders?

*

Glenn Gould counted among his fans Stravinsky, Samuel Beckett, Roland Barthes and Leonard Bernstein (who once said he had almost had an orgasm while listening to him play). But the greatest tribute to his genius as an interpreter of Bach came from Sviatoslav Richter, who, after hearing him play the Goldberg Variations in Moscow in 1957, decided then and there never to include that piece in his repertoire.

*

Zarian thought a writer could be truly creative only in his own homeland; and yet, his most productive years were spent in Istanbul, Paris, Venice, Milan, New York and Beirut, and his most arid years in Yerevan.

*

An Armenian poet once bragged to me that he had reached the age of fifty and was still alive, and that, among Armenian poets, that was no mean accomplishment. What he failed to add was that he had survived only in his own mind. Since Armenians as a whole remained unaware of his existence, he might as well be dead and buried. After all, there is more than one way to kill a poet and ignoring him can be as effective as a bullet in the neck.

*

One reason there are atheists is that

there are believers who behave like swine.

*

Where there are sermonizers and speechifiers there will be scapegoats; and where there are scapegoats there will be victimizers who consider themselves morally superior.

*

Armenians with full bellies preach hatred of the Turks; but hungry Armenians emigrate to Istanbul where they have a better chance to avoid starvation.

*

The trouble with superpatriotic Armenians is that they love only Armenians who agree with them. The rest, they dismiss as trash.

*

Fascists silence writers because they are fully aware of the fact that in the realm of ideas they are destined to lose. Censorship is an admission of defeat.

*

********************************

Friday, December 26, 2003

********************************

To test my loyalty as a Canadian citizen,

a loud-mouth coworker once demanded of me:

"If Canada were to declare war against Rumania…or is it Aramaea?"

"Armenia," I corrected him.

"Whatever….Would you be willing to fight?"

To which I remember to have replied:

"If I were to say, yes, I would be more than willing to invade my homeland and slaughter my fellow countrymen, I assume I would then qualify as a good Canadian in your eyes. But my question to you is, Would I also qualify as a decent human being?"

*

In an environment or medium like the internet that allows one to be anonymous and invisible, even the most cowardly may engage in daring verbal assaults. One could even say that, nothing comes more naturally to a faceless coward than to behave like a brazen bully and to use his inaccessibility as a license to kill - if not literally than metaphorically.

*

In a biographical sketch of Baruir Massikian (1914-1990) I read: "In 1946 he prepared a 320-page manuscript titled A STORY ABOUT GOOD AND EVIL, which he submitted to a literary contest. But because the award was given to a partisan hack, he tore the manuscript to shreds. Armenian literature thus lost a work that judging by his other published works could not have been without merit."

*

Matthew Arnold once defined poetry as "criticism of life." By that he meant that, when a poet speaks of life in poetic terms, his hidden message is: "This is the way life ought to be but isn't!"

*

******************************

Saturday, December 27, 2003

*******************************

One of the most frequently raised questions or counter-arguments against those who adopt a critical stance is: There are so many positive things about Armenia and Armenians: why concentrate on the negative?

I call this the "Red Sylva" argument because I first came across it in an article written by Sylva Gaboudikian (also KAPUTikian) in response to an Armenian-American tourist who had complained about the unbearable stench of Yerevan latrines. In her vitriolic retort, Red Sylva demanded to know: "How can anyone think of latrines after viewing the awesome grandeur of Mount Ararat?"

I wonder if anyone dared to ask Red Sylva: But what's so hard about maintaining sanitary washrooms? Is it conceivable that you find stench so edifying that you have no wish to abolish it?

*

I am reminded of Erasmus of Rotterdam who once remarked: "Everyone loves the stench of his own excrement." Please note that even Erasmus did not go as far as saying: Since I enjoy my own stench, you should too! And yet, this is exactly what the Red Sylva argument demands that we do.

*

Another widely used argument à la Red Sylva goes something like this: "Corruption is universal. Where there are human beings, there will be corruption. If you want to expose corruption and criticize corrupt officials, criticize the world and human nature and leave Armenians alone!"

Yes, yes! There is corruption everywhere. Corruption is universal. But what is even more universal is the desire to expose and combat it. If you are for corruption, say so and don't use human nature as a justification or extenuating circumstance. Murder and rape are universal too and as old as mankind. How would you feel if someone you love were raped or murdered and at the trial of the guilty party, his lawyer said: "My client pleads not guilty, your Honor, on the grounds that murder and rape are universal and as old as mankind"?

Nothing further.

*

The message of all dissidents of all ages

may be abridged thus:

The emperor has no duds,

no dick,

no balls,

and no brains.

*

Solzhenitsyn once said:

"No regime has ever loved great writers,

only minor ones."

He should have said:

No regime has ever loved literature,

only recycled crap.

Or even better:

No tyrant has ever loved honest men,

only brown-nosers.

*

The greatest enemy of patriotism

is not treason but objectivity.

*

If Armenians are smart,

why is it that there are a great many alienated and assimilated Armenians out there

(85% according to some estimates)

who don't think it's smart being Armenian?

*

I write for the toughest audience there is, namely, Armenians who hate to read and

Armenians who verbally massacre anyone who fails to parrot their sentiments and thoughts.

I refer to these gentlemen as Armenians but it would be more accurate to qualify them as

more royalist than the king,

more Catholic than the Pope,

more Bolshevik than Stalin,

and more magnificent than Suleiman.

[xes]

Dear Ara,

I wish You a Happy New Year

[Guest arabaliozian]

Sunday, December 28, 2003

********************************

The hardest people to convince are those who contradict because they want attention.

*

To recycle propaganda is not sharing your understanding but someone else's lies.

*

A Casanova may write about his conquests, an adventurer about his many exploits, and an explorer about the places he has seen, but a writer can write only about things he didn't understand before but he does now.

*

A man in love is an ass who will bray the same old cliches; but, a man who understands this, will see more wisdom in silence than in empty verbiage.

*

Vanity is the source of all assertions of superiority - be they Jews identifying themselves as the Chosen, or Germans claiming racial superiority. One important difference however: the Jews never went as far as saying they were chosen to exterminate Germans.

*

From Jesus to Freud: Jews have been in the business of casting out demons, and demons have been in the business of multiplying and organizing themselves.

*

Strindberg: "Ever since childhood, I have looked for God and found the devil."

*

Charles Issawi: "Where there are Muslims, there is oil."

Monday, December 29, 2003

*******************************

Failure may lead to wisdom; success, seldom.

Tolstoy was right when he said: "The higher I rise in the eyes of my fellow men, the lower I sink in the eyes of God."

*

Writing for Armenians is like composing music for a tone-deaf audience or selling vegetables to cannibals.

*

I repeat myself? If propaganda relies on repetition, can anti-propaganda do otherwise?

*

Our charlatans and I agree on one thing: we have charlatans among us. Our disagreement is on semantics. They define literature as dung and propaganda as gold.

*

One reason why I prefer to write more about Armenians than Turks is that Turks are beyond my reach. But I am beginning to realize that the more I write about Armenians the greater the distance that grows between us; and I can already see the day when that distance will be almost the same as that which exists between Turks and me.

*

In his NAKED LUNCH, William Burroughs quotes a doctor saying: "Baboons always attack the weakest party in an altercation. Quite right too. We must never forget our glorious simian heritage."

*

I am reminded of the words of a biologist acquaintance of mine: "You don't need psychology, philosophy, sociology or anthropology to understand and explain Armenians: all you need is zoology."

*

The Allah of Muslims and the God of our priests have nothing to do with the real God - assuming He exists, of course.

*

Wilson Mizner: "The worst-tempered people I have ever met were people who knew they were wrong."

*

Translating a writer may be an excellent way of self-discovery because translating means following someone else's line of thought and in doing so becoming aware of one's own.

*

Every Achilles has a heel, every Goliath a David, every Samson a Delilah, every Messiah his Judas, and every Armenian another Armenian.

*

Historians and philosophers disagree because when they speak, they generalize and emphasize. To generalize means to ignore the uniqueness of each phenomenon or occurrence, and to emphasize means to focus on one aspect of reality at the expense of another. Which is why Aristotle contradicted Plato, Schopenauer called Hegel a charlatan,

Freud was followed by Jung, and pro-Capital Keynes questioned Marxism. Which is also why when I focus on the negative, my critics demand that I emphasize the positive and to join them in covering up criminal conduct.

*

And speaking of philosophers: it is useful to remind ourselves once in a while that, after thousands of years of research, speculation and analysis, they have not yet found the answer to the question, why things exist.

*

Science may explain the laws of nature and the forces that move the planets, stars, and galaxies, but it cannot yet explain the existence of a single atom.

*

In life, nothing makes sense. In writing, everything must make sense. Even when I write "nothing makes sense," I introduce an order of meaning, namely, the absence of sense.

*

****************************

Tuesday, December 30, 2003

******************************

Gandhi defined God as Truth; but when he fell by an assassin's bullets, his last words were "Hai Rama!" that is, "O God!" which is closer to "O Father!" than "O Truth!"

*

Nothing comes more easily to a man than to think he is the center of the universe, and even if he were to spend the rest of his life combating this fallacy, he would fail to eradicate it completely.

*

The hardest thing in the world: to practice what you preach. The easiest, to say: "Do as I say, not as I do."

*

After making himself as hateful as he possibly could,

an Armenian once accused me of hating Armenians.

*

I have several patriotic readers

who operate on the assumption that

I am always wrong and they are always right,

but they continue to read me

for the simple pleasure of asserting their superiority.

*

All Armenians are my brothers -

but only in the sense that all men are my brothers -

but only in the sense that Cain too was someone's brother.

*

Raffi: "If you want to save your fellow men

you must be prepared to be crucified by them."

*

Djivani: "Solidarity can move mountains."

(But only those mountains that were erected by our divisiveness. )

*

After witnessing forty years of steady decline and degeneration, I find it extremely difficult to be optimistic. The best I can do is being a pessimist who has lost his faith in miracles, but not quite yet.

*

The danger of ignorance is in its unawareness.

If I know that I don't know,

I am harmless because I will concentrate my efforts

on educating myself - an activity that can harm no one.

But if I don't know that I don't know,

then I might as well be a blind man

negotiating a busy intersection.

*

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: "The Devil is most devilish when respectable."

*

[xes]

I am reminded of the words of a biologist acquaintance of mine: "You don't need psychology, philosophy, sociology or anthropology to understand and explain Armenians: all you need is zoology."

*

Your friend biologist you like to quote isn't unique in his assesment of a group of people in equating them to animals. Hitler and his cronies did the same (that is what jewish kids learn in school). You seem to be secretly in love with this character aren't you?

Who is your next quote?

[Guest arabaliozian]

Wednesday, December 31, 2003

**********************************

To those hungry for solutions, I say: If "the kingdom of God is within you," what makes you think the solutions you are seeking have a different address?

*

The eyes are the windows of the soul: which may explain why most people look better in dark glasses.

*

Man feels the need to assert moral superiority only when he behaves like swine.

*

Only men who cannot tell the difference between God and the Devil claim to have God on their side.

*

If an Armenian engages in verbal massacre only because the real thing is not an option, in what way is he morally superior to a Turk?

*

And if you were to tell me, when it comes to verbal massacre I am in no position to plead not guilty, I will say: If true, why accept me as your role model when you can choose far better specimens than myself?

*

There are those who share their understanding and then there are those who share their hatred. To the first belong Socrates and Gandhi; to the second their assassins and executioners.

*

When it comes to God and life after death, fear and wishful thinking combine to paralyze our powers of perception. Hence, the need of another faculty, namely faith. The contradiction in faith is that, on the one hand it allows us to identify God as our Father, and on the other, to look down on the overwhelming majority of mankind as misguided fools, infidels, dupes, and sometimes even as swine.

*

Krishnamurti: "The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth." And one could add: And if the one you follow claims to follow Truth, you are sure to follow a Big Lie.

*

***************************

Thursday, January 01, 2004

****************************

Why would anyone rise in defense of charlatans unless of course he is himself one of them?

*

A.H. Weiler: "Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself."

*

There are those who plunge the knife; there are also those who after plunging it, give it a twist.

*

If God created the cosmos, who created volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, vipers, cancer, fools, fanatics, and syphilis?

*

One reason I ignore all extremists is that sooner or later they will have to deal with not only with extremists in the opposite camp but also with moderates in their own.

*

Saul Bellow: "The arts of disguise are so well developed that you are sure to undercount the number of bastards you have known."

*

What if love, as it is generally understood, is nothing better than an epidermic imbalance?

*

*****************************

Friday, January 02, 2004

*******************************

If history makes one thing very clear, it is this: ideologies and religions, and in general all closed systems of thought, twist minds, pervert ideas, corrupt morality, undermine values, and legitimize criminal conduct. If they have done this in the past, what are the chances that they will not do so in the future?

*

To repeat that which is worthy of repetition is to remind, to reinforce, to underline, and to emphasize.

*

Why would anyone lower himself in order to lower his adversary? Unless of course he does not lower himself so much as display his true level.

*

As in Hollywood movies, there are good guys and bad guys in the history books of all nations; and a nation will never portray itself as a bad guy. This is a rule without exceptions.

*

When losers write their own history, they will invariably portray their enemies as wolves, and the wolves will portray themselves as shepherds. Toynbee writes somewhere that, in their Ottoman phase, the Turks portrayed themselves as shepherds and their subject nations and tribes as flocks of sheep in need of their guidance.

*

Single-minded or intense love makes an ass of a man, that's why there is an "ass" in passion.

*

Patriotism allows us to overestimate our good qualities and to underestimate those of our adversaries; it thus effectively perverts our ability to assess a situation objectively and accurately.

Result: at the root of all confrontations that end in defeat and tragedy you will find men who allowed their passion to make asses of themselves.

*

All arguments that prove one side morally superior to another will convince no one but the intellectually inferior.

*

Extremists come in all sizes and shapes; the most dangerous are the ones who consider themselves moderates.

*

How can religions and ideologies legitimize murder in the name of God or a noble cause? The only way to explain this is to say that the slide from good to evil is so gradual that it might as well be invisible to the naked eye.

Here are some stages of this descent:

(i) since truth is beyond our reach, let's settle for a half-truth; (ii) since the difference between a half-truth and a lie is small, we might as well settle for a profitable lie; (iii) if a big lie means big profits, then let us leave half-truths and small lies to the weaklings of this world.

*

To how many of my fellow Armenians I could say:

Just because you and I are Armenians, don't think we share anything else in common.

*

***************************

Saturday, January 03, 2004

********************************

If we think of hatred as a quintessentially unChristian or Turkish attribute, to what degree is an Armenian who hates like a Turk is less of an Armenian and more of a Turk?

*

There is a lunatic in all of us.

Most of us behave sanely most of the time not because we are 100% sane but because we are capable of suppressing our lunatic fraction.

*

All nations, societies and organizations generate their lunatic fringe or individuals who cannot suppress their lunatic fraction.

*

Intolerance, prejudice, hatred, wars and massacres are promoted and committed by the lunatic fringe.

*

To believe in a false god is worse than atheism;

and in a world where everyone claims his god is the only true god, all gods must be false.

*

Why are some Armenian patriots phonies?

Because if you disagree with them they turn into Turks.

*

To prepare them to kill and die for their country, every nation teaches its own version of history to its children, and this version of history is related to reality or world history as a sausage is related to a pig.

[Yesenya]

i know enough about my beloved homeland

and the manner in which it has treated its writers

to want to set foot there. / ara baliozian

He is sixty years old, and lives in seclusion and poverty in Ontario, Canada....

So I guess Canada is not treating you that well either... pitty...

[LeoMins]

He is sixty years old, and lives in seclusion and poverty in Ontario, Canada....

So I guess Canada is not treating you that well either... pitty...

Who???

How do you know that?

What poverty is?

[Guest arabaliozian]

Sunday, January 04, 2004

*****************************

In NATASHA'S DANCE: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF RUSSIA by Orlando Figes, I come across the following footnote on page 507: "Stalin's father had been murdered by an axe wrapped in a quilted jacket, and his likely killer, an Armenian criminal who had worked with Stalin for the Tsarist secret police in Tiflis in the 1900s, was killed on Stalin's orders, sixteen years later in 1922, when he was run over by a truck."

*

This may have been a contributing factor in Stalin's pro-Azeri stance on the Karabagh issue. But I suspect an even more important factor was the threat of pan-Turkism. He probably saw dividing Turks as a more real challenge than dividing Armenians -- if only because Armenians could always be relied on to divide themselves.

*

If an Armenian writer achieves popularity, he should ask himself: "What am I doing wrong?"

*

Even if you were to follow the same routine for twenty or thirty years, if you have an eye for detail, you will notice that something different or unexpected happens every day; which means that our brains can never grasp all the complex operations of reality.

*

If a partisan is a man of faith, he will assume to have God on his side.

*

A partisan may also be defined as someone who knows all about the crimes of the opposition and, by endlessly dwelling on them, he either ignores or covers up the blunders of his own party.

*

To killers who plead insanity (whose legal definition is an inability to tell right from wrong) we should ask: "When you are slitting your victim's throat or pulling the trigger after aiming at his heart, did you think you were doing the right thing?" Or: "Do you think murdering innocent people is right?"

*

If God exists, why would He be remotely interested in getting involved in the quarrels of bloodthirsty fanatics or damn fools?

*

If you are wise, you will be insulted by fools;

if you are honest, you will be hounded by crooks;

if you promote tolerance, you will be torn to shreds by bloodthirsty fanatics;

and if you are objective, you will be buried alive by chauvinists.

*

An honest man expresses his disagreement honestly. By contrast, a charlatan does so with passion. That's because it is not his views that he defends but something much more important: his self-esteem, his prestige and power, perhaps even his source of income. Yes, he has every reason to be furious in the name of God and Country. Give such a man a friendly regime and a machine gun and he will gladly terrorize and massacre to prove his loyalty to the Leader.

Am I talking about Turks and Germans?

No, my friends, I am talking about homo sapiens and I am saying we don't belong to a different species.

*

****************************

Monday, January 05, 2004

****************************

Socrates was wrong. Instead of saying "Know thyself," he should have said "Know thine enemy." And because he knew himself and not his enemies, he was condemned to death. Something very similar happened to us at the turn of the century in the Ottoman Empire.

*

To know our enemy and to know ourselves should not be seen as mutually exclusive or even incompatible concepts, especially if we define enemy as a brother towards whom we can afford being objective.

*

Misunderstanding or underestimating your enemy is the surest formula for defeat.

*

To involve God in human affairs is to blur the line that separates politics from theology.

*

Where there is a will there is a way.

Where there is no will there is endless palaver.

*

In an asylum where the inmates are in charge, the obvious, the logical, the undeniable and the self-evident will either be rejected or become sources of endless controversy.

*

Morality cannot be legislated, especially when the legislators are crooks.

*

Only someone who knows nothing (and I mean NOTHING) about Armenian literature will assume that if you come up with the right words or verbal formulas you will solve our problems and the nation will be grateful to you.

*

I criticize with words. The people are much tougher - they criticize with their feet. I can be contradicted - and I am, every day. But can anyone contradict the people or arrest the exodus from the Homeland or slow down the assimilation rate in the Diaspora?

*

[Guest arabaliozian]

Tuesday, January 06, 2004

*******************************

From Gostan Zarian's posthumously published notebooks and diaries: "In our environment, authentic literary works will elicit nothing but envy and hatred."

*

Alan L. Otten: "The length of a country's national anthem is inversely proportional to the importance of the country."

*

I see parallels between a prisoner and a man with a closed mind: the first is shut behind bars; the second wallows in his own verbal crap.

*

Zarian: "The biography of an Armenian writer is the story of a struggle against devils…and these devils come in a variety of shapes and sizes: mercenary priests, pusillanimous partisans and schoolmasters…ants, toads and sometimes slithering snakes…."

*

When both sides assume to have God on their side, the chances are it's the Devil.

*

The gradual disintegration of a fascist personality in a democratic environment:

what "a virgin subject pregnant with possibilities!"

*

******************************

Wednesday, January 07, 2004

******************************

Some of my anti-American readers demand that I criticize America for its many past and present abuses of power and blunders. To criticize for the sake of criticizing? To what purpose? If I can't reform or educate a single one of our charlatans and partisans, what chance do I have with an alien continent?

*

Why is it that some of my readers equate being a good Armenian with being a nasty human being?

*

The hidden message of an insult:

I have nothing to contribute to this dialogue

but verbal pollution.

*

The only way to explain my choice of career as an Armenian writer is to say that sometimes bad things happen to good people.

*

More from Zarian:

"We understand the world only in so far as we understand ourselves. There it is: the function of literature."

*

"By explaining a situation, we may change it."

*

"So far Armenians have not yet made Armenianism a subject for study. It would be even more accurate to say that Armenians are not yet in a position to study Armenianism."

*

****************************

Thursday, January 08, 2004

***************************

The ambition of every original sentence is to become a cliché.

*

Avedik Issahakian: "To be born an Armenian: what misery! To live as an Armenian: what heroism!"

*

In every Armenian disagreement there is an unsettled score.

*

Among my friends, I count a concert pianist who thinks the greatest patriotic service an Armenian can provide for his country is to achieve success in an odar environment thus allowing his fellow Armenians to brag about him. As for serving the interests of the nation: that thought never enters his head. To him, celebrity and the pride it inspires in his fellow Armenians (be they mediocrities, charlatans, and the kind of riffraff who brag about Gulbenkian and Mikoyan) is the noblest aim in life: not justice, brotherhood, peace, progress, mutual understanding, solidarity, and tolerance, but fame and fortune.

*

Karekin Nejdeh: "Before you qualify as an Armenian, you must qualify as a human being."

*

I don't expect to be loved or admired by those whose charlatanism I expose. The most I can hope to expect from them is to be read…and as long as they go on insulting me, I know they have been reading me, for which many thanks!

*

Charlatanism: how to disguise concern for number one

as concern for God and Country.

*

We initiate fresh feuds even as we discuss stale ones.

*

***************************

Friday, January 09, 2004

***************************

You can always find a lawyer or academic willing to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Barabbas was framed and Desdemona was a nymphomaniac; and if you control the media, you can even convince millions that a military defeat was in fact a moral victory.

*

Zarian on the ARF: "Singers of dead songs from a dead past."

*

Even a certified moron knows that one should not judge a political party by its propaganda. You may now assess the IQ of a partisans.

*

A line from Charents: "They are butchering us without a knife."

*

[Yesenya]

Who???

How do you know that?

What poverty is?

mi xarnvi irar, hents arajuts vor batsum es Arthur@ grel e ira masin, enteghits em vertsrel:)

Povertyn el nshanakum e aghqat e aprum.

[Guest arabaliozian]

Saturday, January 10, 2004

*******************************

In his RESURRECTION: THE STRUGGLE FOR A NEW RUSSIA, David Remnick writes that everyone in Moscow is interested in making money, no one gives a damn about literature. So much so that even a giant like Solzhenitsyn has become a figure of fun and derision. Things are not much different in Armenia, it seems, according to Markar Sharabkhanian in his recently published RETURN TO THE HOMELAND.

*

More from Remnick's book: In a section devoted to Zhirinovsky, who is identified as a half-Jew and a notorious anti-Semite, we read the following: "At one point Zhirinovsky walked over to Talman Gdlyan, a well-known prosecutor, and said to him: 'So when will you be appointed head of the Armenian army?' Gdlyan replied: 'When you are appointed head of the Jewish army.' With that Zhirinovsky bashed Gdlyan in the ear."

Further down: "In 1992 he [Zhirinovsky] went to Baghdad and embraced Saddam Hussein, saying, 'We have the same enemies as Iraq: America, Israel, and Turkey.'"

*

Napoleon didn't much care for music. "Music is the most expensive noise," he once remarked to a composer, who retorted: "Not as expensive as the noise of cannon."

*

To the question, "Are you faithful to your wife?" the well-known French actor and womaniser, Lucien Guitry, replied: "Yes…of course…frequently!"

*

A definition of hell: In our next life we will be those we hate.

*

I remember to have read somewhere: "What's the use of defeating a castle if you will be defeated by its termites?"

*

*************************

Sunday, January 11, 2004

***************************

We don't know our history and our literature: this point is made again and again by Gostan Zarian in his many interviews collected in TOWARDS ARARAT. One reason: our literature has been an orphan dependent on the charity of swine subservient to a veritable bordello of ideologies and orthodoxies all of them eager to prove that they have the best interest of the nation at heart and all of them at one another's throat. Someday if our literature acquires its own voice, we may be astonished to discover that it is not a flower but a volcano.

*

Where a part-time janitor makes more money than a

full-time writer, there will be an abundance of trashy

propaganda and a total absence of ideas.

*

An infallible man cannot learn from his mistakes and is thus condemned to repeat them.

*

When asked to explain why he bought himself a parrot, Nasreddin Khodja is said to have replied: "I was told a parrot lives to be two hundred years old. I wanted to make sure this is true."

*

We preach dialogue but practice monologue.

We preach brotherhood but practice Cainhood.

Our eleventh silent commandment: Preach sugar and honey, practice venom and vinegar.

*

The tragedy -- or is it farce? -- of most phonies is that they are convinced their dishonesty is a secret known only to themselves.

*

The flat-earth theory says: since we see the world as flat, it must be flat. Personal feelings and experiences matter,

but they are not the alpha and omega of human knowledge.

*

Man is a reasonable being - especially when it comes to explaining, justifying and rationalizing his own brand of insanity.

*

*****************************

Monday, January 12, 2004

****************************

Hooliganism is a mindset, not an identifiable title or uniform; and hooligans comes in all sizes and shapes: some are chief executive officers and heads of state, others are imams and bishops, still others emperors and popes.

*

Where there are men of faith there will be men who believe in nothing except power.

Where there are fools and dupes, there will be smart operators who will victimize them.

Where there are honest men, there will be crooks who will exploit them.

Where there are dedicated patriots, there will be cynical opportunists with a forked tongue.

The moral is: Don't drop your pants, and if you do, don't bend over.

*

***************************

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

***************************

If a writer cannot change our perception of reality, he might as well identify himself as an entertainer.

*

There are two kinds of Armenians: those who think and those who recycle propaganda. Those who recycle propaganda speak louder and they are never wrong; and armed with that conviction, they persecute and silence anyone who dares to think for himself. Examples from the past: writers from Abovian to Zarian.

*

It never fails: as soon as I run out of things to say, God sends me a hostile reader whose arrogance and stupidity stimulate me to keep buggering on.

*

Voltaire's, Rousseau's and Marx's criticism

(of the Church, the Monarchy and capitalism)

produced revolutions that changed the map of the world.

By contrast, our criticism has produced only hooligans

parading as commissars of culture.

*

******************************

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

*****************************

Some Armenians are so used to criticizing the world and everyone in it that they are shocked to discover that they themselves may not be beyond criticism and they find it extremely difficult to step down from their imaginary pedestals and join the ranks of ordinary human beings with their share of failings, prejudices, shortcomings and limitations.

*

It is not unusual to lose a friend; sometimes a friend may even become an enemy; but if he becomes a mortal enemy, he is sure to be an Armenian.

*

There is a natural tendency in all of us to overestimate the intelligence of those who agree with us.

*

For the Prince of Denmark, the question was: "To be or not to be." For us it is: "Where does Armenianism end and Ottomanism begin?"

*

Most ideas, as long as they remain ideas or verbal formulas, are good, sometimes even admirable. It is in their implementation that they reveal not so much their own shortcomings and contradictions but the greed, ignorance and arrogance of the men in charge.

Consider the idea of a free and independent homeland: who would dare to be against it? And yet, it cost us two million lives.

*

An example of a typical Ottoman(ized) Armenian tactic: You want to silence the opposition? Be rude! (or engage in verbal massacre).

*

Thursday, January 15, 2004

*******************************

When Shahnour decided to be objective

in his judgment of fellow Armenian writers,

he was assaulted, beaten, and almost lost an eye.

This may well be one reason why

there is a natural tendency in some of our scholars and pundits to confuse literary criticism with literary philanthropy.

*

In his POINTS FOR A COMPASS ROSE,

Evan S. Connell, Jr. writes:

"…one thing about the Incas sounds unpleasantly familiar:

they thought they were the Sun God's favorites.

It's been suggested that the Incas

might have been descendants of Armenians…."

This may come as a surprise to some but,

speaking for myself,

nothing surprises me any longer.

*

Being positive or nice has nothing to do with writing. Literature is not a prelude to seduction and fornication.

*

To brag is to be satisfied with oneself or the status quo;

to be satisfied means a dead end;

and a dead end means all past and no future.

*

How many of our nationalist historians have dared to suggest that, instead of terrorizing an empire at the turn of the century, all our revolutionaries had to do was stand by and watch it disintegrate from within, very much like another evil empire in our own days.

*

Armenian saying: "With fish he turns into water, and with a mouse, into a hole in the ground." Which raises the question: In an environment where survival is a priority, where does adaptability end and opportunism begin?

*

Sometimes, reading an Armenian book feels as though I were visiting my grandfather's farm in a distant village where time has stood still.

*

If I am ever asked "What's your real aim as a writer, and please, no double-talk, no rhetoric, and no artsy-fartsy abstractions!" I would reply: "To make minimum wage." And this may well be the main difference between my critics and myself: they are interested in ideas, art, literature; and all I am interested in is money.

*

The secret of success in any field is to say "Xxxx you!" to anyone who calls you a failure.

*

You begin to acquire wisdom on the day you realize you have been a damn fool all your life.

*

******************************

Friday, January 16, 2004

******************************

Again and again I am reminded of Freud's memorable observation that, most people, regardless of who or what they profess to be, are no better than riffraff.

*

From a 1914 commentary by Gostan Zarian: "Take a good look around you and tell me, do we have a national ideal? What is it that we want? Where are we heading? What is the central concern of our youth? What gods to they worship? Take a good look around you and tell me what you see! Mediocrity, fear, intellectually beggary, spiritual void - this indeed is the dismal panorama that unfolds before us. And whenever anyone dares to raise a whisper of protest against this scandal, our cunning wheeler-dealers react by making fun of him."

To which I can only add: So what else is new?

Zarian goes on: "May I therefore say, Gentlemen, you have no right to treat literature as if it were a source of amusement or flattery, to exploit it, to abuse it, to lower it to your own level of Asiatic vulgarity. Enough, I say. Enough!"

*

***************************

Saturday, January 17, 2004

***************************

Before they open their mouth, some people should wash it thoroughly with soap.

*

Armenian saying: "Some sorrows pierce, others glance by."

*

If you rewrite history you can even prove black is white and two plus two makes twenty-two.

*

The only smart career move for an Armenian writer is a premature death.

*

Another observation by Zarian: "So far our people have failed to understand that the physical survival of a writer is as important to the nation as that of an orphan."

*

And to those who enjoy reminding me

that my arguments have so far fallen on deaf ears, I say:

"It has never been my intention

to reform the lunatic fringe.

Remember, my friends, far better men than myself tried and failed.

Why should I let that bother me?"

*

To those who accuse me of not liking Armenians, I say:

"Let's you and I have a talk on that subject after we survive them."

*

The difference between a civilized Armenian and an Ottomanized hoodlum is that, the first says "I disagree with you," and the second calls you a jerk.

*

It was Kant who said that very often

ignorance is nothing but cowardice in the face of knowledge.

[Guest arabaliozian]

Thursday, January 22, 2004

*****************************

Sometimes a single experience can teach us more than a thousand books.

*

Very often, what is obvious in one culture is unthinkable in another.

*

There is nothing wrong in making yourself ridiculous, provided you have the last laugh.

*

The insults of an anonymous coward have as much effect on me as the venom of a cobra in India.

*

A conservative pundit will never agree with a liberal pundit, and he who reads the same pundit all the time will be convinced he is always right and his counterpart (unread and ignored) consistently and stubbornly wrong.

*

We are brought up to believe that a better education means a better job and a better job means a higher salary. Where money becomes an index, morality will be devalued. Such an environment will breed priests who are child molesters and chief executive officers who are no better than common thieves?

*

Sometimes a fraction of the truth can be worse than a big lie.

*

************************

Friday, January 23, 2004

************************

NEL PAESE DELLE PIETRE URLANTI: ARMENIA (In the Land of Roaring Stones: Armenia) is a diary kept during a stay in Armenia shortly after the earthquake. Its author, Pietro Kuciukian, is a dental surgeon from Milan, who went there with a delegation of Italian doctors. I have translated below some typical passages that allow us close-up glimpses of the Tragedy that tend to be overlooked and lost in newspaper headlines:

*

"A mother with two babies in her arms advanced through the waiting crowd that opens a path for her. One of the babies is amputated, the other paralyzed. I ask my routine question: 'Ov eh hivante?' [Who is the sick one?] It turns out not to have been a superfluous question. With a smile, the mother identifies herself as the one in need of care - she has varicose veins in her legs."

*

"We are suddenly assailed by an overpowering stench. Everyone is overcome with nausea. A woman has entered the clinic. After surveying her surroundings in complete silence, she takes off her shirt. Instead of a breast she exposes an ulcerated, dark-reddish wound. Immediately I direct her to the operating room. Later I am informed that she has been treated, disinfected, medicated, and on her way to full recovery."

*

A curious incident: When, at one point, Dr. Kuciukian runs out of little toys which he has been handing out to an unruly mob of kids, his vehicle is surrounded and he is insulted and threatened by the others. On the way back to his station he reflects that "democracy for them now means the right to receive everything free of charge."

*

Mother Teresa arrives and instead of toys she distributes "little aluminum medals which she kisses and says they are miraculous. When told by a rude old man that he does not believe in miracles, she promptly replies: 'The fact that someone like you is here today to see me is already a miracle.'"

*

"Anna is a girl of fifteen driven insane after spending twelve hours beneath the ruins of her dwelling in Spitak. Following a stay of several months in another city, she appeared to have recovered. But terrorized by an aftershock in the middle of the night, she had dug a hole in the ground and taken refuge there. She is now in the Italian hospital. She screams nonstop. She is sedated and the psychiatrist says she may recover."

*

*************************

Saturday, January 24, 2004

*************************

There is something perverse in a society where the old are liberal and the young conservative.

*

Good guys are amateurs who work part time; bad guys are pros who work overtime.

*

Sometimes old enemies call to apologize. Their generosity of spirit reminds me of the cornered mouse who says to the cat: "I forgive your past transgressions against my species and I offer my hand in friendship."

*

Nothing can be as misleading as the telephone voice of a woman. I once knew a woman with the voice of a canary and the body of someone who could have been the offspring of a wrestler and an anaconda.

*

Talleyrand was so smart that when he died it was rumored that he had had an ulterior motive.

*

One reason I can't take our pundits seriously is that during World War II in Greece we used newspapers as toilet paper.

*

To those eager to inform me that there is nothing new in what I have been saying, may I explain that I am not here to instruct but to remind, and nothing can be harder than reminding those who pretend not to remember.

*

And I am reminded of my algebra teacher in Venice whose favorite saying was by Socrates: "To know is to remember."

*

In a group photo the center of attention will be neither Plato nor Napoleon but a pair of nice legs in nylons.

*

Many years ago I became infatuated with a mini-skirted church organist. About a year later when we met in the street and she said hello I didn't recognize her. But i remembered her legs….

*

Hungarian proverb: "The believer is happy; the doubter is wise."

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Greek proverb: "An open enemy is better than a false friend."

*

After reading one of my things,

an old friend writes: "I am glad you continue to be a patriotic Armenian."

I don't have the heart to tell him that I loathe patriotism.

I love honest men and loathe charlatans regardless of nationality; and some of the worst charlatans I have met are Armenian patriots.

*

[Guest arabaliozian]

Sunday, January 25, 2004

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Conflicting interests produce conflicting lies, and eventually, by a process of contradiction and elimination if not the truth than a non-lie may emerge.

*

The prospect of being unpopular with the mob and its rulers is not something to be avoided. On the contrary!….

*

I have noticed that whenever a movie uses Bach's music as background, immediately I go into a state of semi-trance and can no longer concentrate on the dialogue, plot and action on the screen, perhaps because I find the dialogue, plot and action in Bach's more compelling.

*

There are two kinds of patriotism: that which divides and that which unites. Ours is of the dividing kind, and a patriotism that divides might as well be equivalent to treason. Because, by dividing us, our kind of patriotism makes us more vulnerable to the enemy - and isn't that what treason does too?

*

What I said above about conflicting interests applies to conflicting ideologies and religion as well, if only because they too create conflicting interests.

*

Nationalism teaches us to be proud even of those things that we should be ashamed of. Cases in point:

Greeks bragging about Socrates whom they treated as a common criminal guilty of a capital offense.

And consider our case and Arshile Gorky: I am told by people who knew him that none of his paintings was ever bought by an Armenian during his lifetimes. We should hang our heads in shame whenever his name is mentioned. But Greeks and Armenians are not the only ones guilty of this aberration. If, instead of bragging, people were taught to count their sins, they may even be forced to conclude that they are not the salt but the scum of the earth.

*

We are all replaceable, including those who are fond of this slogan because they are in a position to hire and fire. These gentlemen should be reminded once in a while that they too, like the rest of us, happen to be on death row.

*

Every critic defends something deep within him. I defend the child in me against those who tried and succeeded in manipulating, deceiving, exploiting and abusing me at a time when I was vulnerable, ignorant and helpless. And those who criticize me do so because they defend the child in themselves that has not yet acquired the distance and objectivity to understand what has been done to them, and they see in me an enemy because they prefer the bliss of unawareness and ignorance.

*

Hungarian proverb: "A flatterer is a secret enemy."

*

A biologist once said that homo sapiens is coded for error. History bears him out. Suspect any man or institution that asserts infallibility. Suspect them even more when they admit minor peccadilloes in order to cover up catastrophic blunders.

*

Capitalism is morally superior to Communism if only because greed for money creates lesser monsters than greed for power.

*

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Monday, January 26, 2004

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Rude people are masters of ephemeral persuasion. One is willing to agree with them, but only for the duration.

*

If people believed everything I said, I would stop writing. A silent warning should follow each sentence I write: "I could be wrong."

*

I could be wrong does not mean I am wrong. I could be wrong may also mean I could be right but I don't see that as sufficient reason to victimize or kill anyone.

*

A bishop and an imam may be free to believe what they want but when they get actively involved in brainwashing millions, creating political unrest, and legitimizing war, they should be treated like any other war criminal, arrested, tried, and fried.

*

To believe in a political party's assessment of its own performance is to be a dupe to its propaganda.

*

A man has public as well as private failings and the two are seldom the same.

*

A typical Armenian fallacy: to confuse Turkish venom with Armenian voki.

*

Since theologians have so far (after two millennia) failed to reach a consensus, it is safe to assume that only God is qualified to speak about God and any man who dares to speak in His name must be a charlatan.

*

A religion that emphasizes truth or dogma

at the expense of love and charity, is an invention of the Devil.

*

Anyone can say, "I speak in the name of God.

Therefore, I am authorized to tell you that if you disagree with me it's because you speak in the name of the Devil."

*

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Tuesday, January 27, 2004

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The subject of our genocide does not bring the best in us and anyone who dares to be remotely objective about it is immediately accused of pro-Ottomanism. As a result the only lesson to be learned from that nightmare experience is not a lesson but an old cliché, namely, Turks are a bunch of bloodthirsty savages, and anyone who goes along with them (the U.S. and Israel being two cases in point) are no better. It follows, we are morally superior to the Chosen People and more tolerant and democratic than the U.S. - and if you believe that, you will believe anything!

*

"You are my friend only if you agree with everything I say!" There you have it: the surest expression of the fascist mindset.

*

A bureaucrat is a bureaucrat regardless of ideology. Two bureaucrats serving two contradictory ideologies may be closer in outlook than Siamese twins. The same applies to partisans, soldiers, yes-men and brown-nosers in general.

*

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Wednesday, January 28, 2004

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In a confrontation, instead of both sides asserting they are right, they should ask the question: "What course of action will benefit both of us?" Where there is a disagreement, religion, ideology and all forms of dogmatism can be of no help; they may even escalate a minor difference into a major conflict that may claim many innocent lives.

*

Propaganda has been defined as part of the truth. Let me illustrate the tricks propaganda plays without resorting to lies:

Propaganda: "I was regularly."

Truth: "I wash regularly - once a year."

*

If so far we have failed to understand reality or to expose "the hidden mystery behind things" (Einstein) it's because our language is designed to deal only with appearances and not that which lies beyond them; and the only reason we have such words as God, gods, angels and devils is that once upon a time some individuals had visions or mystical experiences and thought they had seen things that were not there. Hence the many contradictions, confusions and disagreements between theologians and proponents of metaphysical systems.

*

[Guest arabaliozian]

Thursday, January 29, 2004

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In his book JUDGMENTS CONCERNING OUR ONE-HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD REVOLUTION (translated by Aris Sevag, 101 pages, Yerevan: Amaras, 2002) Sarkis Izmirlian gives several reasons why our political parties continue to enjoy some degree of popularity in the Diaspora, two of which are: “the Armenian people’s absolute ignorance of politics,” and “the deceitful propaganda of our leadership.” In two brief sentences this gentleman-scholar encapsulates that which I have been saying in several thousand essays and fifteen books. Elsewhere, an angry General Antranik is quoted as having said: “I’d rather live as a human being away from you than as God among you.” This indeed is the authentic voice of Antranik who once declared: “I am not a nationalist. I am on the side of the underdog regardless of nationality.”

*

A reader writes: “Our transgressions are human transgressions and you cannot change human nature.” Rape and murder too are human transgressions, it doesn’t follow we should adopt a passive stance and accept them as inevitable facts of life like death and taxes. On the contrary: at all times and everywhere we should raise our voices against all transgressions, including charlatanism, knowing full well that we may never succeed in eradicating them.

*

Again and again I am accused of negativism by readers who view propaganda as positive and a refusal to recycle it as negative.

*

Why do I write?

My reason tells me miracles don’t happen,

but something else tells me

the universe, the world in which we live,

existence itself is a miracle,

and the act of writing itself

has something of the miraculous in it.

Perhaps the word I am looking for is hope –

the hope of making a difference…

but as always, I have my doubts….

*

[Karmir]

Ghoghovurd jan,

глух чунем айс амены кардам ев таркманем, вор джокем те эс марды инч а асум ев инчу эк иран сенц крфум болоров.

Мекнумекыд карох э хамарот бацатри?

Шноракалутью нахорок

Edited January 29, 2004 by Karmir

[Guest arabaliozian]

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Friday, January 30, 2004

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He who admonished us not to cast the first stone, did not add "except when your target is the devil," perhaps because the devil too, like the Kingdom of God, is within us.

*

I'd rather be a failure who writes an honest line once or twice a year than a success whose every book is a best-seller.

*

To our partisans, literature is a branch of their propaganda. Everything else is verbal trash.

*

With executioners and mobs, Barabbas will always be more popular than Christ.

*

As victims of Ottoman massacres, we have become masters of verbal massacre.

*

Doctors and quacks,

statesmen and wheeler-dealers,

saints and theologians:

every line of work begets its own racket.

*

To those who speak of forgiving the Turks, I say:

"Let us begin by forgiving our fellow Armenians."

*

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Saturday, January 31, 2004

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All brainwashed people assume everyone else to be brainwashable and he who refuses to be brainwashed is either an enemy or a pervert. This indeed is the impression I get whenever I disagree with one of our partisans.

Another feature of the brainwashed: they are convinced they have a monopoly on patriotism.

*

Marriage: an institution designed to make all other women more desirable.

*

We survived the Turks and the Bolsheviks: we now confront a far more formidable adversary: us!

*

Advice to a young Armenian writer:

Don't write; but if you write, don't publish; but if you publish, be prepared to perish.

*

An Armenian may tolerate himself more readily if he thinks of himself as a man of principle who loves God and Country, rather than as a fanatic who uses his chauvinism as a license with which to hate anyone who dares to question his infallibility.

*

Men of reason may compromise and reach a consensus.

Reason has at no time played a central role in Armenian affairs.

*

Hungarian proverb: "A prudent man does not make the goat his gardener."

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Greek proverb: "All things good to know are difficult to learn."

*

Self-esteem is not a reliable index of worth, in the same way that dogmatism is not an index of certainty.

*

When our partisan editors stopped publishing me, a non-partisan editor said to me: "I always assumed they published you because they didn't understand you. I guess they do now…."

*

There is an idiot in all of us, including the most wise. Likewise, there is a killer in all of us, compliments of our reptilian ancestors. This may explain why sometimes intelligent men are deceived by fools, and decent men are misled by criminal psychopaths; and here, I could make a long list of illustrious names who supported Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.

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