lamentation

Thursday, October 21, 2010
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LAMENTATION
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The lies that flatter us
cease to be lies and don the vestments
of self-evident truths.
It is this that allows our phony patriots
to declare pride in their Armenianism
momentarily forgetting that our past
is nothing but a concatenation
of defeats, subservience, degradation, and massacre.
As for the empty boast, “We survived!”
I say, the worst, yes.
The best no!
Ottomanism and Sovietism, yes;
Armenianism (assuming such a thing exists,
and if it does we can recognize it when we see it)
certainly not!
*
Unhappy is the man
whose sole source of pride is propaganda;
and unhappy is the nation
whose leadership's central concern
is to moronize its children.
*
I sense the disintegration of our communities
by the fact that in the company of my fellow countrymen
I feel like a stranger in a strange land.
*
How many bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs do we have today?
I don't know and I don't care to know.
But I do know that you can count the number of intellectuals
on the fingers of one thumb.
There is money in charlatanism,
only unemployment, insults, and starvation
in dedication to ideas and principles.
#
Friday, October 22, 2010
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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There are less than 3 million Mongols in Mongolia today. But there are as many as 60 million Turks (former Mongols) in Turkey. There is only one rational explanation for this glaring disparity: rape and concubinage (legally sanctioned rape).
*
Has anyone ever read a Mongol poet or novelist? One is therefore justified in wondering to which fraction of his DNA does Orhan Pamuk owe his Nobel Prize?
*
I know now that everything I was taught as a child – except perhaps the rules of grammar – was wrong.
And speaking of grammar: There is a saying in French to the effect that even kings must obey the rules of grammar. And yet, Frederick the Great couldn't even speak German fluently, and the several books he authored (some with Voltaire's help) were written in French.
*
When we speak about the meaning of life, what we really mean of course is the meaning of death, or rather its meaninglessness.
*
Once upon a time when Turkey was discussed in diplomatic circles or in the international press, Armenians were also invariably mentioned. Just finished reading a long commentary on Turkey in the Op-Ed page of my morning paper in which Armenians are nowhere to be seen. We appear to have lost our relevance. Either that or we have ceased to be a political football.
*
If you pretend to know more than you do, sooner or later you will run into someone who will call your bluff and you will be caught with your pants down.
To rely too much on someone else's ignorance is an enterprise doomed to end in failure.
*
The older I grow the more frequently I catch myself saying “I don't know,” and “I don't understand.”
#
Saturday, October 23, 2010
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LAMENTATION (II)
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To the same degree that they have been Armenianized,
we have been Ottomanized.
I see symptoms of this malaise
in all our institutions – be they political, cultural, and religious.
*
Nothing can be more depressing to me
than the spectacle of a childhood friend
turning into a hireling and mouthing the party line,
and doing so with the unshakable conviction
that he is serving the community and the nation.
So what if in the process he is also making a comfortable living?
Why shouldn't he?
Isn't it the duty of every responsible man
to provide for his family?
Why should there be a contradiction
between his duty as a husband and a father
and his patriotism?
*
Never underestimate the cunning of crooks
and their ability to behave like their own dream team
of defense lawyers.
*
For every dissident,
the Soviets had ten perhaps even a hundred commissars
and a thousand brainwashed citizens
who believed they were law-abiding citizens
and dissidents were criminals.
But ultimately what brought down the Soviet Union
was not dissent but lies.
*
When the best are marginalized,
it is the worst that reach the top.
And when that happens,
death is sure to follow.
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