notes

[Guest arabaliozian]

Thursday, December 05, 2002********************************It’s easy writing about events, much more difficult establishing their causes. Which is why the past is one but every historian has his own version of it.*One should not deliver a lecture against exhibitionism with a bare ass.*"Do not reason with a fool, an ass or a wall." I am almost sure I first came across this piece of valuable advice in the Old Testament somewhere…or perhaps in a dream.*Even when I write about myself some readers accuse me of writing about them. Once upon a time I too believed everything I was told and insulted far better men than myself when they dared to contradict me. Even when I write against charlatans, dupes and riffraff I write against myself.*One reaches truth only after rejecting many errors. To be born with the truth in one’s soul is a privilege only of prophets and messiahs.*I am not superstitious, neither am I a mouse, but I hate it when a black cat crosses my path.*An honest skeptic is worth a thousand believers.*When an Armenian flatters me, I think of the French saying, "He who can kiss can bite," and I am seldom disappointed.*An Armenian poetess once told me: "When Armenian villagers saw the Turks approaching, they ran away but to make their escape good, they left their daughters behind." Since she was too young to have witnessed this herself, I assume her source had been either a mother or a grandmother with a score to settle against men and their cowardice.Friday, December 06, 2002*****************************Can we say anything against the West that is not a quotation or a paraphrase of a Western critic?*A loser will become a perennial loser if he convinced himself to be a winner or a morally superior being.*If an explanation flatters your ego, discard it.*Fools will conspire to call one another wise and being fools they will believe it.*If you explain things to a dupe who was taken in by another dupe, his first instinct will be to defend his schoolteacher, parish priest, daddy or even grandmother as if you were remotely interested in questioning the integrity of these ladies and gentlemen.*Why is it that we like to explain and justify our shortcomings by mentioning the shortcomings of others? Imagine if you can a murderer or thief pleading not guilty in a court of law on grounds that there are millions of other murderers and thieves in the world.*Sometimes staying the same requires more effort than adapting and changing; that’s because staying the same in the face of changing conditions amounts to struggling against the very forces that shape history and reality.*As long as I am contradicted and rejected I am on the right path.Saturday, December 07, 2002*******************************When General Antranik called some Armenians "gravediggers" he didn't have the victims in mind; and when Zarian called Armenians "cannibals" he didn't have the alienated and assimilated in mind. You may now guess who qualifies as gravedigger or cannibal. May I make a suggestion?…*All scumbags share this in common: they feel the need to assert moral superiority. Not to achieve it but to assert it.*We are all products of different environments, conditions and experiences. So that, the chances are, where there is agreement there will also be some degree of misunderstanding and distortion.*"God preserve me from the man I trust. From the one I mistrust I can defend myself."*"There is no spectacle more agreeable than to observe an old friend fall from a rooftop."*It must be reassuring to find the truth in a single book, pundit or leader – make it führer!*"Thou shalt not kill." Is it conceivable that there was a time when men were such bloodthirsty barbarians that they had to be told this?*The tendency of the mediocre to seek an audience of fools.*He is such an incurable dupe that he is impressed even by his own erudition and brilliance.*An Armenian criticizing the West reminds me of a bag lady delivering a lecture on fashion at the House of Dior in Paris. Before we criticize anyone, let us take a closer look at our own Ottomanized and Sovietized institutions.*There are some men so consistently wrong that when they agree with you you seriously consider revising your thinking.*"Love is blind but marriage restores the sight."*Those who pretend not to know the past will also pretend they are not repeating it.