pathology

Sunday, October 25, 2009
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OPTIONS
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A slave has two options: to obey or to die. An Armenian writer's position today is not much different: he either says “yes, sir!” to our bosses, bishops, benefactors and their flunkies or he starves.
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Like commissars, readers who are against criticism can be nasty critics and excellent executioners.
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If you have been taken in by fools, you can't be as smart as you think you are. Now then, consider the number of times we have been taken in by the empty verbiage of promises and treaties of the West, our Big Brothers to the North, and American presidential candidates. I suspect if fools of the world had their own United Nations and we applied for membership, we would be rejected as surely as Turks are today by the EU on the grounds that we are not smart enough to be one of them.
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If I am the only one who writes as I do, that doesn't mean I am also the only one who thinks as I do.
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If you disagree with those who speak in the name of God and Country, you will be accused of speaking in the name of the Devil and in defense of treason. And dupes being dupes (present company suspected) will be against you.
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What if I am wrong?
O how I wish I were!
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“The unspoken message of everything he wrote was his conviction that far from being the smartest people on earth, his fellow countrymen were the dumbest.”
I would welcome this verdict in my obituary.
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Words and actions have consequences; so do silence and inaction.
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Monday, October 26, 2009
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GOLDEN APPLES
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One reason I write as I do is to celebrate the fact that I am no longer dependent on the charity of swine. Another is that no one gives a damn. In the kind of environment we have created for ourselves, the status of Armenian writers is (in the expression of Southern hillbillies) lower than a snake's belly full of buckshot.
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And speaking of hillbillies: There was once and was not an old peasant by the name of Abou Hassan who had a worn out pair of shoes he wanted to get rid of. First he flings them out the window and they come flying right back in – compliments of an irate passerby. Next he takes a long walk and hurls them into a lake. Again they are returned to him by a furious fisherman. Finally he decides to bury them in his backyard. But as he gets busy digging a hole under cover of darkness, he is spied on by a nosy neighbor who thinks old man Abou is trying to hide his valuables...
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Armenian writers and Abou Hassan's worn out shoes share one thing in common: they are not easy to get rid of. Systematically murdered by the likes of Talaat and Stalin, silenced and starved by our bosses, bishops, and benefactors, they refuse to be cast aside, drowned, and buried.
Why?
To what end?
For what purpose?
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In Nicholson Baker's latest novel, THE ANTHOLOGIST (New York, 2009) I come across the following three lines from a poem by Coventry Patmore that may provide a tentative answer:
“When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;
The truth is great and shall prevail,
When none cares whether it prevail or not.”
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Armenian fables have a traditional ending that goes something like this:
“Three golden apples fell from heaven: the first for the teller of the tale, the second for those who heard it, and the third for those who understood it.”
What happens to the third golden apple when no one understands the hidden message of the story?
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We are told people deserve their leaders. The same applies to their writers. If we no longer have writers like Abovian, Raffi, and Zabel Yessayan it may be because we are buried beneath a Mt. Ararat of rotten apples.
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
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MINOU
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When a little girl by the name of Minou Drouet published a volume of verse and was hailed as a prodigy by the French press, Cocteau said: “Every child is a genius except Minou Drouet.” And sure enough, she was never heard from again.
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No one is born mediocre. Mediocrity is premeditated, planned, advertised, and promoted on the grounds that we need factory hands to build cars, construction workers to raise sky-scrapers; we need janitors and garbage collectors more than we need prophets; and above all, we need dupes willing and eager to fight and die for us in the name of patriotism.
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A coward thinks he deserves a medal for slicing a watermelon; and my guess is, bullies like Bush Jr. and his vice think they deserve to be treated like saviors of the nation for their tough talk.
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Those who have been exposed to only one side of the story as children, will find it very difficult to believe there may be another side as adults.
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Who is more guilty: our enemies who slaughtered us or our friends who, for all practical purposes, they might as well have issued an invitation to the slaughter? As for our revolutionaries: all they appear to have learned from their blunders is to make fiery speeches.
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Wednesday, October 28, 2009
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PATHOLOGY
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To hate, to really hate,
means to hate even those
who do not share your hatred.
That's the way our Turcocentric ghazetajis hate.
You can recognize a Turcocentric ghazetaji
by the fact that he writes only against Turks,
and he hates because he has been taught to hate.
He is following orders.
He has been told
Turks are the source of all evil.
As for the arrogance,
the incompetence,
and the stupidity of our bosses:
what arrogance?
What incompetence?
What stupidity?
What bosses?
A dog, it is said, knows his master,
but not his master's master.
Once, when I tried to explain
the dangers of pathological hatred
to one of our ghazetajis, he said:
“But all I am doing is
trying to defend our interests.”
Why is it that with defenders like him
I feel more threatened?
If you live in a world of illusions,
reality becomes a source of dread.
And because I speak of reality
I am identified as an enemy,
and worse, as pro-Turkish.
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