old age

Sunday, February 1, 2009
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IT TAKES ALL KINDS
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My friends may forget me, but my enemies never will. That is why I never lose an opportunity of making one. Most of my enemies however are not enemies because I offended them in any way, but because I failed to flatter their colossal egos, which, in their eyes, might as well be a crime against humanity comparable to a massacre of civilians.
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Ignorance is not a crime, neither is credulity. But some of the worst crimes against humanity were committed by fools and dupes – and, of course, leaders who knew how to organize and use them.
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A dupe may also be a man of cunning who is infatuated with his own brain power, judgment, and perception of reality.
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Even after Stalin's crimes were exposed, there were many Armenian-American academics, poets, writers, and merchants who were pro-Soviet (I called them chic Bolsheviks). I know this because I would receive angry letters and telephone calls whenever I published a commentary critical of the regime.
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Even dupes with a negative IQ are smart enough to believe only in things that are clearly to their advantage. The reason there were so many chic Bolsheviks in America is that the regime treated them as celebrities whenever they visited the Homeland. I will never forget the archbishop who once said to me: “If you ever decide to establish yourself in the Homeland, they will take good care of you.”
Moral: Be aware of charlatans offering unsolicited advice that may sound flattering to your vanity.
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Monday, February 2, 2009
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THE ABYSS
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If I write about our dark side it's because no one else does. If our Turcocentric ghazetajis and their role models, our nationalist historians, are to be believed, Turks are our only dark side. But when writers like Raffi, Baronian, Odian, and Zohrab wrote, they stressed our failings, not those of other nations. And then there is Naregatsi, a saint: our greatest and least read writer whose sole subject was the abyss within. Next time you feel like bragging about your Armenian identity, read Naregatsi. Whenever I run into an Armenian who brags about our celebrities, multi-millionaires, our Mikoyans and Mamoulians, our Arlens and Saroyans, and above all about our survival as a nation, I begin to see more merit in a dignified death. To those who brag about Armenia being the first nation to convert to Christianity, may I ask how successful have they been in loving not only their enemies but also their fellow Armenians?
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I had the following exchange with one of our editors last week:
“We need poetry and fiction,” said he.
“What about essays?” I asked.
“You can do your preaching elsewhere,” was his reply.
My guess is this editor would have rejected Naregatsi on the grounds that his writings did not qualify as vodanavors and massals.
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Speaking of massals and grandmother stories: Once when I asked another one of our editors why he published so many grandmother stories, he explained: “Because grandmothers have played an important role in our lives.”
Have they? That was news to me. Has any one of our nationalist historians included a chapter on grandmothers in his texts?
Speaking of my own grandmothers: I never knew one of them because she died long before I was born. The other one lived in another town and I saw her once or twice a year. She never told me a single story.
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Tuesday, February 3, 2009
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POLITICIANS AND WRITERS
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The difference between politicians and writers is that politicians understand people and writers want to be understood. Politicians understand people in the sense that they know all about their need for flattery and big lies, such as “chosen people,” “superior race,” “first nation this/first nation that.” One could even say that politicians are in the business of inventing and exploiting big lies, and writers in exposing them. This may explain why to this day Hitler, an unspeakably mediocre intellect, has his admirers, and Thomas Mann, a writer of genius, his detractors.
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The chosen people: If one is to adopt history, facts, and reality as an index, it would be more accurate to speak of the unchosen people.
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To speak of superiority even as one behaves as the most depraved of criminals: what could be more asinine, perverse and inferior?
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Perhaps one reason big lies are popular is that they combat repellent truth that are even bigger.
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What could be more absurd than dupes at the mercy of control freaks speaking of freedom?
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It is not safe being a law-abiding citizen among criminals, or to speak one's mind among the mindless.
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Wednesday, February 4, 2009
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WITH OLD AGE
COMES OBJECTIVITY
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With old age comes objectivity, which means the more aware I become of our failings, beginning with my own, the more clearly I see the strategies we employ to cover them up.
We survived because we were divided.
It is all the fault of the bloodthirsty barbarians that surround us.
There is nothing wrong with us.
It's all the fault of the rotten world in which we are condemned to live.
Had we lived in a civilized world, we would have been a role model to all nations.
As for our critics, beginning with Naregatsi: all they do is project their rotten problems on the rest of us because misery like company.
Hence our fondness for massals and vodanavors like “Yes im anoush Hayastani” and the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat.
Between “once there was and was not” we have a marked preference for “was not,” at the end of which three golden apples will fall and we will live happily ever after.
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