TAVLU **************** As far as I know, none of my critics is an investigative reporter; and I have every reason to suspect most of them are no better than brainwashed ignoramuses like myself whose mantra was: Who the hell do you think you are to question the honesty and wisdom of bishops and benefactors – men of God and capital (make it, Capital and god)? * By the time I could afford to say “There is some shit / I will not eat,” I was no better than a middle-aged wholesale dealer in chauvinist crapola. * I know now that writing for Armenians is a waste of time and our writers – all 599 (or is it 722) of them – have made no difference. I envy Armenian writers who write for an odar audience. Consider Raffi Khachadourian who contributes regularly fascinating essays to the NEW YORKER. His last essay about tavlu was published about a month ago. I did not read it but I suspect millions around the world did. * If only I could convince myself writing about subjects in which Armenians are not even mentioned. But then, in what way writing about tavlu is different from writing about the eternal snows of Ararat or nightingales serenading the moon? * In our environment to survive as a writer is to write not about what you see in broad daylight at high noon but to behave like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black hat that does not exist. I repeat myself? Maybe, but only to those who read everything I write religiously. # PORTRAIT OF AN ARMENIAN ********************************************* Not only is he easily corruptible, he enjoys being corrupted. He considers it a privilege and an honor. He is flattered to be thought of as worthy of corruption. But perhaps I speak of myself as a young man. * I am fully aware of the fact that my status is that of a perennial loser and failure – very much like my people. That may well be why I understand them better than those who make all kinds of absurd claims on their behalf – smart, compassionate, progressive, civilized, generous, law-abiding, lovers of freedom, and so on and so forth. These claims have been made so frequently that they are now taken for granted and anyone who dares to question them is dismissed as “a piece of sh*t who doesn’t have Ararat in his heart.” * When death enters in the final act, it’s a tragedy. In that sense we are all actors in a tragedy even when we think of ourselves as comedians. * If I can write a readable line a day, a good sentence once a month or a quotable line once a year, I am satisfied. # ON TYRANNY ************************ A nation can be victimized by its own corrupt leaders as surely as by an alien tyrant. * ROLE MODELS ************************ My first reaction on reading a line written by an Armenian is to detect its hidden dishonesty. That maybe because respect for truth is not exactly our strong suit. Neither was it to our most recent role models, environments, and masters: Turks, Soviets, the Levant, and America. * FOUR ****************************************** Four Armenian taboo subjects: Dialogue, compromise, consensus, solidarity. Four popular subjects as defined by our political parties and Turcocentric ghazetajis: Turks, Turks, Turks and Turks. * A DEFINITION OF POETRY ************************************ The encounter of two words or ideas that have never met before – this according to an old Indian definition. An example that comes readily to mind: “An Armenian who does not have Ararat in his heart Is a piece of sh*t.” There you have it: the encounter of the purest (eternal snows) and the filthiest (a bad Armenian). #

ON BISHOPS ****************************** To the reader who has compiled a list of bishops who served the nation faithfully and selflessly, I say: There are good men everywhere but they are invariably outnumbered by the bad; and good bishops owe their goodness not to their religion but to their humanity, which is present in all men, including imams, rabbis, gurus, Zen masters, and witch doctors. * ON BEING HONEST *************************** If you decide to be honest in an Armenian environment be prepared to be called pro-Turkish or even the “son of a Turkish wh*re.” I speak from experience. * ON BEING NEGATIVE ***************************** If I emphasize the negative it may be because the negative should be emphasized especially when it’s covered up. * ON WOMEN *********************** Women may be real to other women but to men they are works of fiction. * ON DISAGREEMENT *************************** To those who disagree with me today I say, in such matters what counts is tomorrow and to live without learning is to be brain dead. * THE WORD OF GOD ******************************** The word of God is the word of megalomaniacs and their archetype is Moses. #

ASSERTIONS (MOSTLY AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL) ******************************************** No one can be as stupid as a self-ASSessed smart man in love. * To excel in one thing also means to fail in a thousand others. * Gandhi is right: there are not atheists; only people with different belief systems one of which is based on the non-existence of God. * In the kind of world we live in, corruption and incompetence are not seen as crimes against humanity. If they were, who would escape hanging? * Our leaders have committed so many blunders that their capacity for them must be ascribed to a gift rather than bad judgment. * No need to be afraid of what I say. I could be wrong; and if I am I will be the first to rejoice. * I have behaved like a pig and I have behaved like a human being: I can tell the difference. # IF KARL MARX… ******************************* If Karl Marx had lived in the USSR under Stalin and said he disagreed with Kremlin’s version of Communism he would have been arrested by the KGB and spent the rest of his life in the Gulag. * When fanatics fight it is the moderates who die. * When it comes to self-interest there are no sheep, only wolves. * We gain nothing when we replace the Turkish master with an Armenian master. * I write as I do because I am no longer dependent on the charity of swine. # A LINE FROM MOLIERE *************************************** “Are we among Turks who lock up their women?” * To be too careful may also be a mistake. * Marriage is the best cure for love as suicide is the best antidote for fear of death. * If reason is on our side reality may be against us. That may well be the most important lesson history can teach us. * What doesn’t kill us may make us so sick that we wish we were dead. * We live in a world where good men are persecuted by bad men and where the ignorant behave as if they had a license to kill those who may know better. #

Wednesday, August 07, 2013 ****************************** CHOICES ******************************* To live in the Homeland or in Turkey? Thousands of Armenians today choose Turkey. “Yes im anoush Hayastani!” * The God of Christians is an idol. I didn’t say that. Martin Luther did. * Two of the shortest sayings in the world: “Adam had’em” (microbes) and “Kirk krik” = forty broken (in Turkish). Freely translated “at the age of forty consider yourself half-dead.” * The secret of rewriting consists in deleting. If you can say the same thing in two words, why use three? * I see contradictions everywhere: moral failure in financial success and scratching the bottom in reaching the top. * Was the beginning of our cosmos the end of another? Does God recycle? * Two kinds of readers: the few who insult me anonymously and the many who ignore me. * Very often in life our choices are not between the good and the bad but between the bad and the worse, or between the worse and the worst. # FORGIVE MY FRENCH ********************************* My favorite political joke consists of a brief exchange between a speechifying Republican presidential candidate and a heckler. HECKLER: My grandfather was a Democrat; my father was a Democrat; I am a Democrat. CANDIDATE: If your grandfather were a jackass and your father were a jackass, what would you be? HECKLER: A Republican! * In the eyes of some we, all of us, are no better than jackasses. I speak from experience. Recently I was myself called “a piece of sh*t” by a committed patriot who spoke in the name of the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat. * Like all ideologies and belief systems, patriotism too is an instrument of deception whose aim is to divide, exploit, and deceive dupes. * The key to life is cooperation. If we are alive now it’s because of countless atoms in our body cooperating with one another. Let one of them deviate from its path and the result would be catastrophic illness and death. * As a nation we continue to be led by individuals who have consistently deviated from the right path by dividing us in the name of this or that ideology or belief system. In their eyes we may well be no better than jackasses who will believe everything they are told. * Some day in the near or distant future a historian may be justified in describing us as a nation of jackasses led by sh*ts – if you will forgive my French. # CONTRADICTIONS (IV) *********************************** Kipling: “When you know what you can do, do something else.” * What if what you do or say does not even register on anyone’s consciousness? What if nothing changes and when on those rare occasions something does change, the change is more likely to be for the worse. * I see contradictions everywhere. * The most important decisions in our lives are made behind closed doors. * The aristocracy does not work. Work is for the working classes. What the aristocracy does is create an educational system that promotes the importance of work. * If exploitation and thievery are both legal and profitable and if the 99% are more than willing to work for minimum wage, why deprive them of the privilege? * What if we have created an environment in which only liars and bloodsuckers prosper? * I see contradictions everywhere. Readers who demand a positive approach to our affairs blabber endless about massacres and genocide recognition. And consider our Turcocentric ghazetajis: the offspring of revolutionaries who promised heaven and delivered hall; and now they promise justice provided of course the 99% support their efforts financially. Mi kich pogh oughargetsek. * Samuel Johnson: “I can give you reasons; I can’t give you understanding.” I should like to see an Armenian writer producing such a line. # “C” POWER ************************* Louis B. Mayer on Ava Gardner: “She has cunt power.” (Mayer of Metro Goldwyn Mayer fame: no doubt an expert on the subject – he probably had more women in his stable than the last sultan had concubines in his harem). * Edmund Wilson on Saroyan: “…an agreeable mixture of San Francisco bonhomie and Armenian Christianity.” In what way is Armenian Christianity different from Gringo or Negro Christianity? I don’t know. I suspect neither does Wilson. * Armenians are smart but easily moronized. But then so is the rest of mankind. It is not that I have a low opinion of my fellow men; rather, I am beginning to see them through women’s eyes and think “Men are so stupid!” – especially when it comes to women’s “C” power. * Leonard Bernstein: “Love brings on tears.” Now I know why Bach’s Cello Suites make me cry. #

Saturday, August 03, 2013 ***************************************** OLD WOUNDS *************************** Smart Armenians give up on their fellow Armenians at an early age, but, in Saroyan’s words, “mothers hang in forever.” * I don’t take myself seriously except when I quote or paraphrase better men than myself, if you know what I am saying… * Since I never made more than minimum wage I cannot be accused of exploiting anyone; and yet, I have been called a capitalist by some of my detractors probably because I don’t allow my income bracket to determine my writing style. * The overwhelming majority of regimes today, including the most advanced, civilized democracies are either corrupt or incompetent or both; and the overwhelming majority of people are either dupes or greedy for either money or power and probably both. I am reminded of Southern rednecks who used to deliver speeches in praise of “Anglo-Saxon democracy” and against “Jews, Catholics and niggers.” Old wounds or new cancer? # GRANDMASTERS OF THE BLAME GAME ************************************************* In the Decalogue of our leadership there is only one commandment repeated ten times: “Thou shalt not assume responsibility.” * If you can blame it on bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians or the degenerate West or even our mountains and rivers and Almighty God Himself, why plead guilty as charged? * Who in his right mind would be against one nation under God? The answer must be obvious: the opposition! * Because I write against dividers I am myself accused of dividing the nation. How? Why? Elementary my dear Watson. I am a divider because I divide the nation between deceivers and dupes. * To be a good writer, I am told, means to see the good in everyone, including irresponsible idiots who recycle propaganda and see moral victory in military defeat. * A member of the Party, very much like a theologian, is brainwashed to believe his God is the only true God and all others are in cahoots with the Devil. If you believe that, consider yourself a certified moron, and if saying so is a crime against humanity, I plead guilty as charged. # WHERE I STAND **************************** The only way to survive as a writer in our environment is by writing what someone else wants you to write. The only way to become a best-seller in America is by writing what everyone wants to read. I want to achieve popularity by writing what no one wants to read. Figure that one out if you can. * In his youth Thomas Mann was a nationalist; so was Dostoevsky in his old age. Nabokov was different: he didn’t give a damn about czars, commissars, Mother Russia and the Orthodox Church. But then he went to the other extreme: he supported McCarthy in America and the war in Vietnam. * Sartre loathed the French bourgeoisie to such a degree that he supported Stalin, Mao and Castro. It takes all kinds. * As children we are shaped by propaganda – that is to say, lies. As adults some of us become aware of this fact. Many others never do. * Political parties win elections not because they know better but because they are superior liars and organizers. That’s the only way to explain the victory of Stalinists in Russia and fascists in Germany, Italy, Spain and many other countries. * I don’t write as a writer. I write as a layman who is on the side of victims even when they happen to be writers with bad ideas. * When not systematically slaughtered by our enemies, our writers were ignored, insults, starved, and betrayed by our own ruling classes and the indifference of the people. * As you can see, I don’t happen to be one who is easily infatuated by my fellow men even when they happen to be my “brothers.” #

Sunday, July 28, 2013 ************************************ DIARY ******************** Because our youth in the Homeland was galvanized by petty cash, some thought that cause for celebration. As a skeptic with a touch of pessimism in all things Armenian, all I am prepared to say is, “Inshallah!” * I have no reason to trust Turkish or Azeri patriotism. Neither do I trust American, German, or Russian patriotism. Now then, tell me please, why should I trust Armenian patriotism? * One good thing about old age: the end can’t be too far and the end of a bad thing is bound to be good. * Muslims don’t respect one another but they are unanimous in demanding the respect of the world, including and above all the respect of infidels. Are we different? # NEXT DAY ************************ On Armenian TV today an interview with a community leader from Greece named Kurdoghlian – probably Kurdoghlanian (literally son of a Kurd). * Question: Will we ever know how many of our community leaders are odars or even Turks (according to one of our elder statesmen) who speak Armenian fluently? Please note that I have nothing against odars. As an Armenian I am even flattered that some of them choose to work for us. Unless of course the only reason they do so is that the pay is good; or as a community we are too ignorant, backward, and naïve to tell the difference between a good leader and one that is both corrupt and incompetent in addition to being a habitual and compulsive liar. * 11th COMMANDMENT ********************************** “Thou shalt not look up to dividers for moral and political guidance.” * ON EXPLANATIONS ****************************** We say an explanation makes sense only when it runs parallel to our limitations and prejudices. # REFLECTIONS ********************************** Blunders are not planned. They are more like unintended consequences of our ignorance, inaudible echoes of our limitations, and invisible reflections of our stupidity and arrogance. * The biggest mistake we make is to assume that man is a reasonable being. In reality Homo sapiens is less sapiens and more ignoramus. * The rotten apple false. Time is the true revolutionary. But unlike Chopin’s Etude, its tempo is Adagio molto. * I criticize myself in others. * The function of literature is to say what everyone suspects to be true. # FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ******************************************* To stand on your own feet does not mean to step on someone else’s throat. * Old age: not a confrontation but a siege. * If luck is on your side even your liabilities become assets. * My first job at the age of seven or eight was that of an apprentice to a blacksmith in the neighborhood. I didn’t think of it as work. I even looked forward to it. * To be a Romanian, according to Saul Steinberg, means to “carry a curse, the place from which you come, we carry it inside us. It doesn’t heal easily. Maybe never.” * The astonishing ease with which we make false assumptions about ideas, people, oneself. Every devout believer is convinced anyone who does not share his belief is wrong, maybe even in cahoots with the devil. * An academic once tried to explain to me why a poem by Hardy was a masterpiece. I felt as though I was being taught a new language. * In the last pages of Richard Burrton’s diary many entries consist of a single word: “Booze…” At one point he writes: “Both Elizabeth’s and my manners are appalling…” * When asked what he reads, Glenn Gould is said to have replied: “Everything by Thomas Mann, Kafka, and the Russians…” #

Thursday, July 25, 2013 ********************************** NOTES & COMMENTS ********************************** “You are not an Armenian writer!” I consider that a compliment. I don’t write as an Armenian. I write as a human being. There is no merit in being a member of an exclusive club at the expense of your humanity. * As a child I was exposed to many lectures on obedience and respect, but I don’t remember a single occasion in which subservience was mentioned. * If only I could count the number of times I should have said nothing instead of saying the wrong thing. * I am suspicious of men say “I know” more often than “I don’t know.” * The only time I feel sure about my moral stance is when I act against my own interests. * Nobody can be as free as a nobody. The higher you rise, the heavier the chains. * We have no choice but to admit that we have played a central role in our history – in our defeats (countless) as well as victories (very few), in our tragedies (without number) as well we comedies (one or at most two). # HAVE I SAID THIS BEFORE? ***************************************** “You repeat yourself.” “And you are an idiot.” “Why am I an idiot?” “Because you waste your time reading someone who says the same thing over and over again.” “I thought I was being helpful.” “You want to be helpful? Say that to our speechifiers and sermonizers.” “Say what?” “You repeat yourself.” * HE REPEATED HIMSELF ********************************** A headline in a French magazine: “The Zen Master was a serial killer.” Further down: “What’s the number of his victims? Hard to say. There are new revelations every day.” * EITHER/OR ********************* Solidarity is not our forte. Either that or we have a highly developed sense of mutual disapproval. * ON BAD MARRIAGES ******************************* Blame neither the man nor the woman. Blame instead the games nature (or the irresistible urge to procreate) plays on both. * THE CONSOLATIONS OF MEDIOCRITY *********************************************** “Like Shakespeare, Bach, and Vermeer, he was not much prized by his contemporaries.” # ON A REVOLTING DEVELOPMENT ************************************ My worst enemies are former best friends. You will surprise me if you say you are surprised. * ON MORAL SUPERIORITY ******************************* Have you ever heard a morally superior man brag about his moral superiority? No, of course not! It never happens. Only pimps and shits brag about their moral superiority. Something similar could be said of patriotism. Whenever an Armenian brags about the superior brand of his patriotism I know his next move will be to crap on me – in the name of patriotism, of course! * THEM & US ************************************** If you can’t brainwash them, silence them. If you can silence them, why reason with them? If they are silenced, who will listen to them? #