as i see it - Pt. IV

[Armenak]

Why do you repond to the kaka that he spews?

Why do you even read his kaka?

I have no idea what he had said above. I don't read him, and I could care less what he has to say. I only survey when a better of our unsuspecting forumers may have been enticed to respod to him for whatever reason and whatever sh*t he may have spread.

Մէկը պէտք է որ իրեն «ղաֆան» «պալիոզ»ով զարնէ:

[ara baliozian]

Monday, December 18, 2006

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ALL IS VANITY

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When I first read ECCLESIASTES, I immediately assumed all that talk of vanity referred to others, not to me. I wonder how many readers of the Good Book make the same mistake. To read and understand simple sentences is one thing; to apply what you read to ourselves is something entirely different, perhaps because it takes a different set of faculties, among them the ability to perceive the many strategies we adopt to deceive ourselves into thinking we are better than we really are.

*

Nothing comes more naturally to an Armenian than to hate Turks and to criticize fellow Armenians; and when I say to criticize what I really mean is to engage in verbal slaughter.

*

I have heard Armenians, who treat minor disagreements with fellow Armenians as provocations to engage in verbal slaughter, say that they don’t hate Turks, they only love justice.

*

Why is it that we are outraged when we realize others may be as bad as we are?

*

Far better men than myself have dedicated their lives to writing hoping what they say will make a difference. It hasn’t! Why do I go one? The only plausible answer must be, self-deception. If only deceiving others were as easy as deceiving ourselves.

*

Self-deception is such a common aberration that it is not at all unusual to meet a self-assessed and civilized man who speaks like a barbarian.

*

People who don’t understand themselves and the consequences and implications of their actions and thoughts expect to be understood in a favorable light. Speaking for myself: I never felt so misunderstood as when I was understood.

#

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

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Everything that is negative in our collective existence is based on fact; everything positive is based on hope.

*

If there is a constant in our political leadership is its mediocrity. If you hear someone say leader A is better than leader B, remember the old Muslim saying: “If you hear a mountain has moved, believe it. If you hear a man has changed, believe it not.”

*

Is there a single Armenian boss or bishop in whose hands you would be willing to trust the future of your child? And yet, when it comes to the destiny of the nation, we repeat the mantra “It will take two or three generations...”

*

One reason baby Tarzan survived in the jungle is that he had apes as parents and role models.

*

If an Armenian hasn’t hated you, you don’t know what hatred is. An Armenian hates with the accumulated venom of six centuries – seven, if you count the Soviet era – of brutal oppression. Compared to Armenian hatred, all other forms of hatred might as well be expressions of affection.

*

Armenians and Turks share the same illusion: trust in the official version of the past. Perhaps because their past is so unbearable that it would shatter their self-esteem if it were presented to them objectively. Turks see themselves not as victimizers but as heroes, and Armenians see themselves less as victims and more as martyrs.

*

Concerned friends tell me it’s a waste of time writing for Armenians. They may be right. But if I were to write for odars I would use only my brain. When I write for Armenians, I use my brains as well as gut.

*

To encourage others to give generously, fund-raisers publish periodic press releases with headlines announcing the amount of dollars collected. What they don’t tell you is how much of it ended in the wrong pockets.

#

[ara baliozian]

PRESS RELEASE / NEW BOOK

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Moscow. THE HORRIBLE SILENCE by Ara Baliozian,

has just come out in a Russian translation by

Ara Hakopian and Tigran Zakoyan. It is an

autobiographical novella wherein we read about

the author’s daily existence in a distant

Canadian town: his encounters and conversations

with friends, relatives, neighbors, and members

of his family, about his life in Greece, Italy,

and about Armenians and the Armenian Diaspora.

 

In addition to the novella, the reader will find

here a comparative fictional study of the life

and achievements of two Armenian personalities

titled BILL AND BASIL, Bill being William

Saroyan, and Basil, the founder of the mightiest

imperial dynasty in Byzantium. The book also

contains selected passages from another book by

Ara Baliozian titled PAGES FROM MY DIARY.

 

Ara Baliozian was born in Athens, Greece, and

educated in Venice, Italy. Widely published in

English and Armenian, he has been awarded many

prizes and grants for his literary work. He is a

regular contributor to many publications in the

United States, Canada, Europe, and the Middle East.

 

His books include THE GREEK POETESS AND

OTHER WRITINGS, ARMENIA OBSERVED: AN ANTHOLOGY,

FRAGMENTED DREAMS: ARMENIANS IN DIASPORA, and the

best-selling study, THE ARMENIANS: THEIR HISTORY

AND CULTURE. His translations of such Armenian

classics as Grigor Zohrab, Zabel Yessayan, and

Kostan Zarian have been described as

“valuable,” “eloquent,” and

“brilliant”

contributions to world literature. He has himself

been translated into French, German, Greek,

Spanish, and Armenian.

 

“I read everything Ara Baliozian writes with

fascination and gratitude,” William Saroyan has

said.

 

The book can be purchased at

http://www.armeniaonline.ru/product.php/1730

or directly from Ara Hakopian,

, ( price $10.00, postage

included).

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

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

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Body language is to the spoken word what style is to writing. Words may lie but style does not. I have yet to read a single decent line written by a hoodlum.

*

We all make mistakes, yes, certainly. But what if we are not equipped to do the right thing, and our worst mistakes are made when we think god is one our side?

*

Whenever I think of making a reference to myself in my writings, the first thought that crosses my mind is: Why should anyone give a damn about what a nobody who lives in the middle of nowhere thinks? After which I switch my focus on reality.

*

If you must speak of yourself, speak of your weaknesses. Let others speak of your strengths, assuming you have any.

*

I write to confess my megalomania and the doubletalk of sermonizers and speechifiers.

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, December 21, 2006

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HO, HO, HUMBUG!

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A gentle reader insults me on an open Internet discussion forum. Being human I am not always successful in ignoring such abuse: I return the compliment. No harm done. A minor scribbler in the middle of nowhere and a faceless anonymous denizen of an unidentified suburban gutter somewhere call each other names. Not the end of the world. So what if we both lose? As for Armenian image: what image? No one gives a damn about our image except perhaps our phony superpatriotic propagandists and pundits whose empty verbiage impresses no one but themselves. What about Armenian honor? No such thing. There are only good men and bad men. Why shouldn’t we, like the rest of mankind, have our share of bastards?

*

Another one of my gentle readers once remarked that I deserve to be insulted because everything I write is an insult to the Armenian nation. A statement worthy of a commissar of culture who views literature as a collective effort on the part of writers to kowtow and say “Yes, sir!” to our semi-sultans, mini-Stalins, and dealers of verbal manure like himself, who operate on the assumption that all it takes to be a concerned citizen is to assess oneself as one. Zarian is right: we do with words what the Turks did with yataghans, except that we use our tongues, which happen to be sharper and cut deeper. There you have it, the Armenian identity. Even as we die the death of a thousand self-inflicted cuts we speechify, sermonize, and editorialize about justice and patriotism, God and Country, martyrdom and survival. God help us, if there is a god and we deserve his help.

[ara baliozian]

Friday, December 22, 2006

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PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

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We like to say that Germans are more civilized than Turks because they admitted and apologized for the Holocaust. We forget that, unlike Turks, Germans lost. Had they won, there would have been neither admission nor apology.

*

Even when you do the right thing you may be penalized because of someone else’s blunders, as when you are hit by a drunk driver or massacred in time of war.

*

I don’t mind testifying against myself. Some may call this low self-esteem. But what if the alternative is to sound like a self-satisfied pompous ass?

*

The past is as incomprehensible as the future is unpredictable if only because once upon a time the past was also the future, and whenever in our narrative we make the past predictable, we ignore the fact that at any moment in real life things can go wrong in a million directions.

*

When I think of all the wrong turns I could have taken, I feel as though I were the luckiest man on earth simply because I am alive.

*

Whatever wisdom I have acquired I owe to my enemies. Ever since I have gained that realization I have been wondering why is it that we Armenians collectively have become one of the dumbest nations on earth instead of one of the wisest.

*

Mistakes make us humble, unless they are of such colossal magnitude that admitting them would mean committing political suicide.

#

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, December 23, 2006

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PAVLOV’S DOGS

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It took me many years to admit that which seems obvious to me today, namely, that I was a product of systematic indoctrination and all my convictions and actions were not mine but someone else’s. In short, the fact that I was more of a robot and less of a human being. And when faceless readers insult me anonymously on the Internet today, they do so in the name of a belief system that is not theirs but someone else’s, a belief system moreover that they will reject if and when they discover its nature and origin.

*

When Saroyan said he felt sorry for the Turks he was not only rejecting our collective and instinctive hatred of them, he was also saying, to think that the only solution to a political problem is the wholesale massacre of innocent civilians is to react not as human beings but as animals, Pavlovian dogs that salivate on hearing a bell.

*

It is interesting to note that the commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” is translated into Armenian, as “Thou shalt not behave like a dog.”

*

In his sympathy for killers Saroyan was not being a good Christian by turning the other cheek; he was simply asserting his own humanity by rejecting the kind of indoctrination that legitimizes and promotes instinctive reactions, that is to say, the introduction of the law of the jungle in human affairs. He understood that the worst thing your enemy can do to you is not to kill you but to lower you to his own level. Is this not what our religion teaches us too? – not to hate our enemy but to love him, to ignore the animal in him but to recognize the fact that his convictions and actions are not his but products of an evil belief system that has been rammed down his throat at a time when he was powerless to resist it. And in that sense, is he not a brother?

*

A brother: this is what Thomas Mann called Hitler (who had tried to have him assassinated). And this is how he described Hitler as speechifier: “It is oratory unspeakably inferior in kind, but magnetic in its effect on the masses: a weapon of definitely histrionic even hysterical power, which he thrusts into the nation’s wound and turns it round.” Isn’t this what our own Turcocentric pundits and speechifiers do too?

*

Here is more of Thomas Mann on Hitler: “A brother – a rather unpleasant and mortifying brother. He makes me nervous, the relationship is painful to a degree. But I will not disclaim it. For I repeat: better, more productive, more honest, more constructive than hatred is recognition, acceptance, the readiness to make oneself one with what is deserving of our hate…” And: “Thanks to his own baseness, he has indeed succeeded in exposing much of our own.”

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, December 24, 2006

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PERSPECTIVES

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If you think the destiny of the planet is dependent on people like Alexander the Great, Napoleon, or even the outline of Cleopatra’s nose, Mark Kurlansky’s COD: A BIOGRAPHY OF THE FISH THAT CHANGED THE WORLD is bound to change your perspective. And now, imagine if you can, a book about men written by a cod.

*

The best things in life are not always free. Understanding comes at a price. If you see yourself as your enemy sees you, you may not like what you see but you may enhance your understanding not only of yourself and your enemy, but also – which is more important – of the world.

*

When we say, “I am sure,” are we really sure or just trying to suppress doubts?

*

When both sides are guilty, they will exaggerate the guilt of the opposition and cover up their own. I don’t have any specific groups in mind, only human nature.

*

Only the very insecure make periodic lists of their positives and cover up their negatives, and in fooling themselves they hope to fool others, and they resent it when others refuse to be fooled, and they refuse to be fooled not because they are smarter but because they prefer to be fooled by a propaganda line that emphasizes their positives and covers up their negatives. Present company suspected.

*

Think of Internet discussion forums as therapy groups in which participants unburden themselves of complexes that masquerade as certainties, slogans, and clichés.

#

[ara baliozian]

Monday, December 25, 2006

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FOUR FILMS

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Four of my favorite films of all time are included in the lavishly illustrated 1001 MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE, edited by Steven Jay Schneider (New York, 2003, 960 pages): George Stevens’s SHANE (1953) with Alan Ladd, Fred Zinemann’s FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953) with Montgomery Clift, John Sturges’s BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (1955) with Spencer Tracy, and John Boorman’s POINT BLANK (1967) with Lee Marvin. I note that all four central characters of these films are solitary survivors who against their will and inclination are thrust into a conflict with a formidable set of well-organized adversaries bent on their destruction. I have not seen these films recently and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are dated.

*

About FEOM HERE TO ETERNITY: one reason I enjoyed the book by James Jones more than the film is that it was there that I first “met” Mahatma Gandhi, another solitary being who confronted an empire bent on his dehumanization and death.

*

I remember to have read somewhere that Gandhi refused to visit America because he didn’t think he would be understood there. He saw America as a distant and alien continent that cared much more about material possessions than spiritual attainments. Gandhi was a shrewd judge of character but as a profoundly human being he could also be hugely wrong, as when he failed to foresee the genocidal slaughter of Hindus and Muslims immediately following the partition of India during which millions perished. Had he suspected the possibility of such a tragedy, I suspect he would have retired from politics permanently or committed suicide by starvation.

*

As for Richard Attenborough’s GANDHI (1982), I have only one word for it: disappointing.

#

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

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“PIGS NEVER SEE THE STARS”

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My first book about Armenians came out in 1975, which means I have been writing steadily about them for over thirty years. So I am not surprised when some of my gentle and not so gentle readers inform me that I have become predictable, boring, and repetitive. They demand variety, as if I were running an ice cream parlor or pizzeria. To them I suggest they visit the nearest public library. And to the hoodlums who tell me it is now time that I give up writing “all that crap,” I say, “Be careful, my friend, because you may tempt me to agree with you that, if writing about Armenians like you is crap, it may be because I for one refuse to speak of crap as if it were rose jam.”

*

To write about Armenians also means to write about human nature, and more precisely, what happens to it after long centuries of brutal oppression. For, to be oppressed means to be offended, insulted, and dehumanized; hence, the need to retaliate. There is an Armenian proverb that says, “A coward takes revenge by slicing up a watermelon.” Insulting someone anonymously and from a safe distance is, I suppose, another way of getting even. There are two other Armenian proverbs that are worth quoting at this point: “The toothless dog barks from a distance,” and “A bald man has no use for a gold comb,” – or an imbecile for understanding.

#

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

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PRESENT COMPANY SUSPECTED

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Human affairs have so many contexts, implications, consequences, layers of meaning, and interpretations that for every great thinker who says one thing there will be another who says the exact opposite. Is lying moral? As always, there are two schools of thought.

*

There is no belief system that at one time or another I have not swallowed hook, line, and sinker, except perhaps astrology. When I speak of dupes, I speak of myself. Madame Bovary c’est moi. So is Monsieur Bovary.

*

Trust someone who paints a flattering self-portrait, as you would trust the honesty of a compulsive liar or the wisdom of an ignoramus.

*

As a child I identified myself with our leaders because I was told to do so. But the moment I started thinking for myself I saw them as megalomaniacal mediocrities and enemies of freedom, common sense and decency.

*

Am I wrong? Probably. Unlike those who brainwashed me I have at no time asserted infallibility.

*

When they cannot convince, they brainwash, and they brainwash because they need unthinking fanatics willing to die for the “Cause” – that is to say, their power and prestige.

*

All children are brainwashed for their own good. And what’s even worse, they are brainwashed by individuals who were themselves brainwashed. This may explain why the world is in such a mess today.

#

[ara baliozian]

QUOTATIONS FROM KAREKIN NEJDEH (1886-1957)

 

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Selected and translated by Ara Baliozian

 

 

 

The morally depraved can also voice noble principles.

 

Life is constant and endless renewal. Only the morally irresponsible refuse to understand this.

 

 

Without renewal, a nation dies every hour, every minute. Our political parties either don't understand this or they have no

desire to understand it.

 

 

 

A nation that fails to do what it can and must do has no right to expect foreign assistance.

 

 

 

Nations that are unwilling to defend their own interests condemn themselves to death.

 

 

 

When dealing with foreign powers and issues, our press adopts a permissive, forgiving, and subservient tone. With our own internal problems, however, it becomes arrogant, vindictive, vicious.

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, December 28, 2006

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BUSHWHACKED

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The pen is mightier than the sword? What unspeakable nonsense! Not even PRAVDA and IZVESTIA under Stalin would dare to print such an absurd assertion. How many lives have the Holy Scriptures saved? Or rather, how many wars have been fought in their name?

*

Contradictions are inherent in politics, religions, and human affairs in general. Wars are conducted in the name of peace, and innocent civilians are murdered in the name of a merciful Allah. Why should we be surprised if our dividers and destroyers portray themselves as our saviors?

*

Speaking of our destroyers: I dedicated the following quotation to my brainwashed gentle readers who would like to see anyone who refuses to recycle their favorite propaganda line silenced permanently: “I call on you not to hate because hate does not leave space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking.” Thus spake Saddam Hussein. Gandhi is right: No man is beyond salvation…except perhaps mankind.

*

To brag is to lie. Two recent examples: “I am not a crook,” and “Mission accomplished.” I wonder why American comedians and pundits don’t use the word “bushwhacked” more often these days.

*

The dwindling number of polar bears is now making headlines not only in newspapers written, edited, and published by polar bears but also those of an entirely alien species. What about the dwindling number of Armenians? I remember to have read somewhere that once upon a time we numbered as many as thirty million. Today it’s more like three million. And yet, I don’t see any panic in our streets.

#

[ara baliozian]

Friday, December 29, 2006

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TWO DAYS TO GO

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Two days to go for the New Year. What does that mean? Nothing much. Years may come and go but some things never change; or, if they do, “the more they change the more they stay the same.”

*

A headline in our paper today reads: “Bush closer to new strategy.” New, meaning here, more of the same. What else?

*

Why do smart people make dumb mistakes? Because even the smartest man on earth cannot fathom the cunning of reality.

*

Our paper has printed a long list of all the famous men and women who died in 2006, among them the “gritty, satiric, and erotic” Canadian poet, Irving Layton, the only one I have met. I will never forget his piercing blue eyes and his comment to someone who dared to quote the words of one of his critics: “Some people think,” he replied, “just because they have an asshole they must also have an opinion.” Crude! – my style.

#

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, December 30, 2006

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ON A REMARK BY BEETHOVEN

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Getting emotionally involved in music was wrong, Beethoven once said, because that way you miss the craft, the design, the architecture, all of which are results of expertise, hard work, dedication, and cold-blooded calculation. As a composer Beethoven knew that to master that aspect of music was much more difficult that to arouse emotion, which any modulation from a major to a minor key can do. Something similar could be said of understanding history or the workings of reality. Hence the importance of objectivity, which also means, the systematic elimination of all emotional involvement.

*

In rejecting the emotional aspect of musical composition, Beethoven was also saying that an artist (be he a poet, painter, or composer) should not rely on inspiration alone at the expense of technique. Inspiration is not enough. If the emotional commitment, or the irrational element in human activity (and it makes no difference if you call it faith, ideology, or mysticism) is not modified by reason or cold-blooded calculation, it is bound to lead to sterility and the commission of colossal blunders like wars, massacres, and genocides.

*

And speaking of crimes against humanity: Saddam’s greatest blunder was not the crime for which he was tried, found guilty, and hanged, (the revenge killing of 148 Shiite Muslims after a 1982 assassination attempt) but the war against Iran, during which millions perished. He was not tried for that offense because war making is not seen as a crime. If it were, how many political leaders today would be able to sleep at night?

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, December 31, 2006

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FRAGMENTS FROM A LIFE

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On the day I see the light I will give up writing because I will be too busy expiating my sins, one of them being the time I wasted writing all the nonsense (or “crap,” as several of my gentle readers put it) of use to no one.

*

A Jewish friend of mine once told me one reason why he acquired a university degree was to avoid the alternative -- working in a used car lot, which he equated with “selling crap to shit.” The difference between selling used cars and writing for Armenians is that cars may take you from point A to point B.

*

At the age of thirteen when I first heard one of the Mildonian sisters in Venice (there were three of them: piano, cello, and harp) play Khachaturian’s Toccata and Chopin’s C-minor Etude (the “Revolutionnaire”) on a concert grand in the Hall of Mirrors of the Moorat-Raphael College, formerly Palazzo Zenobio, I decided to be a pianist. Never made it. Only one recital – a Chopin waltz, a Debussy Prelude, a Grieg Wedding March, and Beethoven’s 5th Symphony for four hands played on the same grand and in the same Hall of Mirrors with my temperamental piano teacher, Giarda (also Mildonian’s teacher) who loved to brag about his encounter with Puccini.

*

Many years later in Canada, at an organ recital in an Anglican church, when I heard Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in G-minor, I switched my loyalty to the organ and eventually became the organist of a neighborhood Catholic church. It was a large congregation numbering over two thousand members. Though I can’t say I enjoyed playing at weddings and funerals (sometimes several a week) nothing gave me more pleasure than the long hours I spent alone wrestling with the complete works of Bach. That’s when I discovered the introspective and mystical Bach of the Chorale Preludes where he speaks of his longing for death.

*

I remember my cousin Esmerian who idolized Mozart telling me that after listening to a Mozart Piano Concerto he became so unhinged that he was tempted to commit suicide. He was a chain smoker and died of cancer at an early age.

*

There is a Somerset Maugham short story, adapted to a movie titled QUARTET, in which the central character, a failed pianist like myself, shoots himself after listening to a concert pianist play Schubert’s E-flat Impromptu.

#

[ara baliozian]

Monday, January 01, 2007

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HAPPY NEW YEAR?

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Will the new one be an improvement over the old? I have no reason to think so; neither do I have any desire to engage in wishful thinking, which happens to be a perennial source of disappointment to individuals and of ruin to nations.

*

If our political parties survive it will be because they can always rely on a new generation of dupes, and wheeler-dealers willing to say and do anything for an empty title and minimum wages. Political parties, ideologies, and belief systems should be judged not by their longevity but by the mediocrity of their performance and the magnitude of their lies. If we were to judge a belief system by its longevity, we would have to admit that astrology is the most universal, reliable, and flawless system.

*

Perhaps my least popular and most anti-political idea is trying to close the gap between victim and victimizer by refusing to dehumanize the enemy. We have wasted so much verbiage in our efforts to prove that losers are winners on a higher plane; and they (our enemies) have done the same in their efforts to prove that victory may be achieved without victimizing anyone.

*

It is easy to hate. I want to understand the enemy not because I want to love him but for a far more selfish reason: namely, to enhance my understanding of the “other” in my fellow men, including myself.

*

I cannot in all good conscience look down on readers whose judgment exceeds their understanding. Once upon a time I too dehumanized those I neither understood nor wanted to understand.

*

To impose a belief system on life is the surest way of misunderstanding reality. Reality cannot be shaped like dough, it can only be understood on its own terms; and since only god can understand everything, we can only hope to understand it with the minimum degree of distortion or misinterpretation.

#

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

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MONEY TALKS

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The headline of a front-page story in our paper today reads, “Top earners widen ‘stunning’ wage gap,” where we read that some chief executives make more money in an hour than the average working stiff in a year. I suspect one of our bishops today makes more money in a year than all our writers combined in their lifetime. I once heard of an Armenian writer who survives by pimping his wife. Others may earn minimum wage by pimping their integrity. To those who say, they can’t be good writers, I say, “Name a good one.” And if you were to ask me to define a good writer, I would say, “one who can afford to stand on his own two feet and speak his mind.” “I cannot afford to speak my mind now,” the hireling of one of our national benefactors once told me. “But on the day I retire and start collecting my pension, I will expose these bastards for what they are.” That was thirty years ago when he was in his fifties.

*

The things that we remember are not always things that we would like to remember. And when we remind things to others, we usually remind them of things that they may not care to remember. When Proust wrote REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST he was producing literature. Had he been under psychiatric care, his analyst would have been in a position to publish an entirely different book. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if, even as I write these lines, an ambitious novelist is working on a book about Proust titled REJECTED MEMORIES.

#

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

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FROM THE DIARY OF AN IDIOT

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For many years I suspected the world was populated by semi-idiots, and then, early one morning, to my shock and outrage, I woke up with the certainty that I was the idiot.

*

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

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Once upon a time a man ventured into a jungle and as he was being torn to shreds by wild beasts, he said: “I didn’t know there were wild beasts in the jungle.” Our revolutionaries.

*

ON THE ART OF WRITING

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After writing a line, write another that contradicts it and if you see even a quasi-invisible particle of truth in it, rewrite the first line.

*

MEMO

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Remember, if you identify yourself as infallible, no one will believe you.

*

MONEY TALKS

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Sometimes I am criticized for my rudeness. But even at my worst I am not as rude as the benevolent benefactor who once said to a writer: “I hire and fire people like you every day.”

*

CONFESSION

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How can anybody be so consistently wrong on so many things for such a long time? This is a question I ask myself again and again, and the only answer I can come up with is that a man’s capacity for believing the unbelievable is infinite.

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, January 04, 2007

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GOOD OLD DAYS

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Saddam was no doubt a bad man and fully deserved his fate. But whether or not his executioners are any better remains to be seen. In movies, good guys prevail; but in life even when bad guys perish the chances are other bad guys will replace them. For centuries we dreamed of a free and independent homeland, and now what we have it, there are those who miss the good old days under Stalin, and I for one cannot blame them. And is there a writer today who does not miss the freedom our writers enjoyed in Istanbul under Sultan Abdulhamid II?

*

CRITICIZING CRITICS

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When they say we need constructive or positive critics whose intent is to solve our problems, what they are really saying is that our literature so far has failed to produce a single writer who meets these criteria, and that all our critics have been anti-Armenian degenerates whose sole aim in life was to degrade the nation and to insult its leadership.

*

ON RULES

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Study rules carefully in order to know when and how to break them.

*

ON A SERIOUS ABNORMALITY

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One of the most serious abnormalities inflicted on human beings is considering oneself normal and all others if not abnormal than slight deviations.

#

[ara baliozian]

Friday, January 05, 2007

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OUR ACADEMICS

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“What kind of Armenians are these?” I would ask myself whenever I thought of our academics (over a thousand of them in the U.S. alone) that produce a plethora of learned texts in which Armenians are not even mentioned. Now finally I have an answer: “Smart Armenians.”

*

CULTURE AND SOCIETY

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The headline of a commentary in this morning’s paper reads: “Culture a force for stagnation or change.” When things go from bad to worse, as they tend to do sometimes, culture becomes a force for decline and degeneration. That’s when the best and the brightest quit and search for challenges in alien environments. Some may call this betrayal. I call it reading the writing on the wall.

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ON HISTORIOGRAPHY

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Facts don’t disagree – they can’t. Propaganda does – that’s their raison d’etre.

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GOOD QUESTION

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How can anyone be so abysmally wrong and think he is right? This is a question I ask myself again and again when I think of my past.

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UNDERSTANDING TURKS

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I make an effort to understand Turks because any child or fanatic can hate. As for understanding Armenians: I don’t even try because at one time or another I have been all of them in all their stages of disintegration, megalomania, self-righteousness, obstinacy, and that unique combination of naiveté and cunning which is peculiar to all underdogs from Jews to Gypsies.

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BEARDED MEAT

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Unfamiliar idiomatic expressions sometimes read like riddles. Case in point: “Unless the penis dies young, it will surely eat bearded meat.” (From Chinua Achebe’s ARROW OF GOD.)

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ON ORIGINALITY

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Sometimes originality is nothing but undetectable plagiarism, very much like great wealth, which more often than not is nothing but covered-up grand larceny.

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VALUES

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Let others speak of family values. Let us learn to speak of national values, which stand in direct opposition to partisan or tribal values.

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[gmd]

Friday, January 05, 2007

 

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VALUES

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Let others speak of family values. Let us learn to speak of national values, which stand in direct opposition to partisan or tribal values.

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Is there such a thing especially for Armenians? Even on these forums we seem to have a variety of "values" depending more on where we really are from and not on how Armenian any of us claim to be.

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, January 06, 2007

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PHOBIA

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THE ARMENIAN REPORTER has published a long illustrated article in which one of our self-appointed dime-a-dozen pundits sets out to prove that Armenians are great because they have produced many great men, among them Raymond Damadian, Michael Arlen, William Saroyan, Alan Hovhannes, Ivan Galamian, and Aram Khachatourian. Mercifully Gregory Peck (Krikor Ipekian), Jack Palance (Hagop Palanjian), and Elizabeth Taylor (Yeghisapet Tertsakian) are not included. What seems to have escaped this chauvinist pundit’s attention is that all these great gentlemen lived and worked in alien environments. As a result the most important and relevant question remains neither asked nor answered: namely, what is it about Armenian environments that are incapable of producing or even tolerating greatness? The answer must be: in an environment dominated by dishonest mediocrities, honesty and excellence will be seen as undesirable goals, not to say threatening attributes. A mediocrity that has assessed himself as a first-class intellect will feel threatened by anyone who may be better than he. And when dishonest men get together and go about their filthy business behind closed doors, the last thing they want is an honest man who may shatter their image of themselves. Without realizing this so-called patriotic pundit, in his effort to brag about our greatness, has instead succeeded only in exposing the root of our decline and degeneration – envy and fear of honesty and excellence.

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P.S. This much said, I am willing to concede that there are at least two fields of human endeavor in which we excel in our environments: fund-raising and charlatanism.

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[Yervant1]

Saturday, January 06, 2007

A mediocrity that has assessed himself as a first-class intellect will feel threatened by anyone who may be better than he.

So true!!!!!!!!!