When to Leave the Table

 

My studio has a corner where infrequently used, but still dear to my memories, items are kept. Among these is an old Panasonic portable radio/cassette player, a 9 inch screen car plug-in TV with a built-in DVD player, and letters from old friends who have passed.

Next to that area are the wall shelves where I keep most of my vintage mechanical cameras that I still use for my B&W photography. So, I call that corner of my studio “the place where time has taken a respite.”

Last night I decided to do some spring cleaning to free up space in “the place.” Instead, I took out the Panasonic radio and inserted a cassette tape from the 1970s that was labeled “Aznavour.”

 

… Charles Aznavour was a famous French singer, and his songs were poetry delivered with the thoughtfulness of a person who had lived his songs. He was one of three such singers who sang in French and touched my teenage years – Jacques Brel, Charles Aznavour and Georges Brassens.

On that moment, I did not need technology – just the sound waves to take me back decades.

One of the songs is “Il faut savoir” (one must know) and its lyrics meant little to me when I was a budding young man. But yesterday, the message of the song seemed to touch on many of the life experiences I have had since. Here are the famous lines where Aznavour gives a life lesson he had learned the hard way:

 

“ Il faut savoir quitter la table, lorsque l'amour est desservi" (One must know how to leave the table, when love is no longer served).

"Sans s'accrocher, l'air pitoyable, mais partir sans faire de bruit" (Without holding on, looking pitiful, but leaving without making noise).

 

I listened to the song twice, hanging on to the words of those two lines. And I realized that the imagery of being on the table where love is served (or no longer served) had stayed in my view of life experiences through my photography and past writings. Indeed, one of my books’ cover (circa 2000) showed a woman sitting alone at a table next to mine in a dimly lit Fado restaurant, in Lisboa. I had a Nikon F2 with me, rested it on my table, set the shutter speed to 1/15^th seconds and zone focused. It remains one of my favorite shots. The title of my book is “Table for One”….

 

Over time, Aznavour’s lesson has also applied to instances when dignity, empathy and kindness were no longer served. When the table served no food for the soul. When holding on was ignorance.

 

The photo atop the page includes a woman, seemingly thoughtful, perhaps disappointed, at the lonesome table listening to Portuguese Fado which always is melancholic and full of longing. But was I reflecting on my own feelings? Perhaps she just came alone to the Fado restaurant. But why were there two wine glasses, yet empty, on the table?

 

Here is another photo that I took in Bellagio, Italy that follows Aznavour’s philosophy:

 

 

In the country of love and romanticism, an empty street and lonesome trattoria tables seem out of place.

 

Finally, below a poem I had published in 2022 (https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2022/02/i-did-wait.html) that perhaps shows how the lyrics of a 1961 song can stay in us and resurface:

 

 

April 10, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026

I Did Wait

 

 

 

Then

 

I held 

each worry bead

for the space

of a name

 

Now

 

a bottle of Cava

and a window

without

a frame

 

Often

 

I let

one bead slide

as I held

the next one

 

a while

longer

next to

a round table

 

where the space

of a name

was lovingly

left

lonely

 

February 19, 2022

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2022

The Easter Bunny Was the Ghost of a Bird

 

 

The sun was almost disappearing behind the mountain range after a glorious day in the high desert of Arizona.

I heard a loud thump in the kitchen. As I looked around, the last rays of sunshine fell on the window above the sink and there was an amazing imprint of a bird that had just hit the glass.

We do get a few such events, but this one was breathtakingly detailed, complete and a work of art. Every feather, given the desert dust it carried, had left a print on the window glass.

I had a few seconds to take a picture before the blue sunset turned red, yellow and dark blue.

The one atop this entry is a rendition in B&W that I like. Here is the original view:

 

 

… And all disappeared within the blink of the eye. And I recalled a 2016 book by Eliot Weinberger titled “The Ghost of Birds”.

 

It is an eclectic book touching upon Chinese poetry, Aztec rituals and Buddhism among other things. I recalled a 10-page poem about birds and searched for it. Here are a few lines that seem to fit with the “visit” of that bird to my kitchen window:

 

Red: the color of bravery.  Red: the sacred color of the gods.  Red feathers on the cloaks, mats, axes, kites, headdresses,
                  digging sticks, the gables of houses, the ceremonial aprons.  Red feather tied to the middle finger of the corpse of a chief. 
 
                   There were ninety shades of red.  Red feathers were said to shine   
                   in darkness. 
                   Red shift: it shifts to red as it retreats in distance and time… 

 

It was a Good Friday to remember.

 

April 4, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026

Would Caterpillars be Surprised When They Metamorphose?

 

 

And it happens without fanfare.

“I did not want to change, but one cannot remain a caterpillar. Time teaches us resilience with continuation.”

He was our teacher of arts in middle school. A painter famous for using ink pens to meticulously sketch the setting of his water colour creations. He was in his sixties then, an old man for the times, teaching painting in a small room, in the basement of the school building. And we were eager to play with colours.

He called us his caterpillars, which we never knew why. Until we were thrown to the world without the warmth of our cocoon. By then he was gone – his wings were broken.

… It will be spring soon and my butterfly trees will attract those who once were caterpillars. Those with colourful wings and gracious posture to discover a new world under the desert sun. The tree will open flowers for nectar and ambrosia for their flight.

Then, a nesting robin will fly over the butterfly trees and change the metamorphosis of the once caterpillar to become food for hungry chicks calling from the nest.

Resilience and continuation.

… And every year, I find myself watching these trees and the butterflies wondering how we all metamorphose, sometimes without fanfare, to find our identity. Who we were perhaps destined to be. Even when we did not want to change, like our arts teacher once told us.

And sometimes we metamorphose to protect, cover or perhaps forget our identity. Because we do not trust the new “wings” we acquired to carry us high and away. Because our colourful wings attracts robins eager to feed themselves or the chicks in the nest.

… My thoughts always end in understanding identity. Not the process to change. Not the discovery of the world through the wings metamorphosis gives us.

And, I always find my comfort in realizing that there is no “I” in identity. That multiple caterpillars do not mature in the same cocoon. And that the nectar offered by butterfly trees is worth having colourful wings to discover the world.

Even if red-chested robins have to feed their chicks. For continuing the promise.

 

March 25, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026

The Color of the Grave is Green (Emily Dickinson, 1862)

 

 

Graveyards have their space in poetic expression, as they materialise life. Graveyards, through memorial sculptures or slabs of stones upon them, link us to what was or what awaits to happen. Often, they are finite spaces where we find refuge from the infinite. Other times, the rows of stones, or an isolate single one, make us revisit ourselves.

 

While graveyards in the side of mountains have an undeniable charm, I find “resting places” in urban landscapes most welcoming. When I travel around a globe where countless have lived, died, and often buried, I try to visit urban graveyards. Somehow the contrast between the hustle of cities and the restfulness of cemeteries make me aware of what matters, during and at the end of our journey.

 

… This morning, thinking about graveyards, I re-read a rather simple poem by Emily Dickinson titled “The Color of the Grave is Green”, circa 1862. I was thinking about graveyards because a reader of my photography blog shared his thoughts about the photos I had taken at the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires. In fact, that cemetery was one of my favorites to visit during every trip to Argentina.

Re-reading poems, or any literary work, is an exercise in introspection which changes our interpretation given life experiences. In my previous readings I had seen Dickinson, in a straightforward way, addressing death, human and ecological natures, through the color of graveyards stones.

The first stanza sets color as the theme of the poem:

The Color of the Grave is Green—
The Outer Grave—I mean—
You would not know it from the Field—
Except it own a Stone—

And the rest of the poem uses the colours white and black (through a parallel with the bonnet wore at the funeral) to describe the changes in nature’s seasons surrounding the graves.

And in my previous readings I had often thought of this poem as a serene moment Dickinson’s pen had surrendered to paper.

But this morning, I focused on two descriptors that suddenly took me away from that serene moment to a more turbulent and personal introspection. These words were “the Outer Grave” and “the Grave Within” she called “the Duplicate”.

Here is that stanza:

The Color of the Grave within—
The Duplicate—I mean—
Not all the snows c'd make it white—
Not all the Summers—Green—

This time, the Grave Within was not what laid under the stone, but it was a metaphor for what we had buried within ourselves. It was that secret burial site deep in us where our memories, secrets and fears were interred.  It was the site we all have away from others, perhaps from ourselves even. And it was the site where the only visitor has always been our self.

As such, it was not a “duplicate” – it was the Forbidden City where only we allowed ourselves to travel. It has its own distinct identity.

… I took another sip of coffee, which was now cold, and found myself reciting aloud a poem by Victor Hugo as I had done in secondary school. It is a poem about Hugo traveling across Normandy to visit the grave of his daughter. (My dog woke up under my desk wondering to whom I was talking …)

The poem is called “Demain, dès l’aube” and the first stanza reads:

Demain, dès l’aube, à l’heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m’attends.
J’irai par la forêt, j’irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

(Tomorrow, at dawn, in the hour when the countryside becomes white,
I will leave. You see, I know that you are waiting for me.
I will go by the forest, I will go by the mountain.
I cannot stay far from you any longer.)

 

And the third stanza, most tender and somber, is:

Je ne regarderai ni l’or du soir qui tombe,
Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et quand j’arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.

(I will not look at the gold of the evening which falls,
Nor the faraway sails descending towards Harfleur.
And when I arrive, I will put on your tomb
A green bouquet of holly and flowering heather.)

 

The English translation is By Camille Chevalier, and remains my favorite as it captures Hugo’s style and imagery perfectly.

 

Now back to photos I have taken in two of my favorite graveyards, one in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the other in Singapore.

The Recoleta Cemetery is the ultimate urban graveyard where memorial statues are works of art. One feels like walking through a museum where the stories of thousands’ lives are shared with unknown visitors. The opening photo of this post is my favorite, not only because of the sculpture, but how the message of that memorial contrasts with the coldness of urban buildings surrounding the cemetery.

This next photo is about motherhood, childhood, and the passage of time. The moss left on the marble adds to the visualisation of that passage, and there is a tenderness, and hope, that touched me at every visit.

 

Finally, a memorial statue where mythology, religion and human interpretation are united in an imposing work of art.

 

 

The second graveyard I have often visited is behind the Armenian Apostolic Church of St. Gregory the Illuminator, in Singapore. The statues and engraved stone heads are few, and rarely made of marble. Time and the tropical climate of Singapore have taken a toll on the sandstones, but the church and its cemetery are beautifully and caringly preserved by the government.  The statue that touches me most is all about grace in celebrating and accepting every step of our journey. The statue seems to look inside its stony self, and I always saw much beauty in that introspection.

 

Perhaps that is the “Grave Within” sometimes shared with every visitor.

 

March 15, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026

The Child who is Carried Does Not Know the Road is Long (African Proverb)

 

And that road

Carried

The dust simple words

Left behind

Under the August rain

When I left

For new roads

 

Yet

What I kept in me

Are secret meadows

Stony walls

And a few tears

To where

No roads

Were made to lead

 

And in the shade

Of a pine tree

Next to the bluest sea

I learned that the carry

No matter how kind

No matter how warm

Always ends in simple words

About learning to breath

Alone

In the dust others left

Before us

Under the August

Rain

 

And then

To find that empty chair

And table

For

One

 

March 13, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026

Sub Umbra Magnarum Memoriae

 

I still carry a small notebook in my back pocket. Because I worry that thoughts, things I see or hear will not find enough space in my memory to nestle. The pen and paper have a unique relationship when it comes to writing, even when I still write down my “to do” or groceries lists on paper.

I also write poetry that way. Over 35 years of international travel, I wrote on planes, in hotel rooms, and during walks in streets of four continents. Most of what I wrote was not to publish – just to show my gratitude for the moment. I wrote in four languages, on the margins of airline magazines; on the back of “Welcome” cards left in my hotel rooms; and, even on purchase receipts. Most have been lost through time.

Here is a snapshot from the pocketbook I carry these days:

 

As a street photographer, my photography is similar to capturing my thoughts of the moment. And, like pen and paper, I still use B&W film, and antique mechanical cameras. They have a unique relationship with the photographer.

 

... I picked up a poetry book for my weekend reading and was surprised by the page marker on page 10. It was a poem I had written, and forgot, 13 years ago during a stay on Lake Como in Italy. After reading it, what seemed to feel like the first time, I recalled the occasion and reason.  So, I put down the poetry book and let my memories fill the moment.

 

Here is the poem. But more importantly, the joy of rediscovering what Lake Como had kept in silence for more than a decade.

 

Italian Alps as Background

A chapel embayed in a sea of devil's claws
Atop once a rock
A lake deluded by morning fog
A stony path faintly feline and glabrous

A look I took there to cache
Among milkweed shining in morning dew
A smile, the sweet smell of her tremor
Ambrosia, secret promise and a whisper to forget

Angels lovingly lost their way
Arching over the chapel atop a rock
Across the fallen stones a wall still reads
A simple line "Magni nominis umbra"

As I kept her sorrow
And forgot to pray

April 16, 2013
Bellagio on Lake Como

 

March 8, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026

Poetry as Chemistry; the Poet as Alchemist

 

My weekend was dedicated to reading Fernando Pessoa and Charles Baudelaire. I often pick up a book (or searched online) without a topic in mind. Just to be curious about what I had not yet discovered. This weekend was different – while walking my dog I kept on thinking about how poets have transformed pain and suffering into their own unmaking. Into beatitude. Even celebration.

With each step during the mile long walk in the darkness of dawn, the line from Rumi kept repeating in my mind:

                              "The wound is the place where the light enters you"

When I came back, the Sufi asceticism in seeing a wound as a portal to becoming and celebrating lead me to the “Les Fleurs du Mal” (The Flowers of Evil) of Baudelaire published a century before I was born. Somehow, this masterpiece keeps me going back to re-reading it every time I think about the power of poetry and the human condition.

Indeed, few poets have distilled the human condition through only two words – that we are able to grow flowers through evil. Perhaps because of evil. That Rumi’s wound is not just an opening but a fertile experience to transcend and transform our human-centered boredom into the vastness of our curiosity.

And that was a central message by Baudelaire. He even gave it a pseudo scientific definition in “L’Alchimie de la Douleur” (The Alchemy of Pain), proposing that pain can be transformed, as if by alchemy, into joy along a spectrum of non-pain.  As a poet, that made him an alchemist. Or a druid, using words to show the transformation of evil and pain into that state of unmaking, serenity and even fulfillment. It was the genius of the alchemist that transformed lead into gold, while it is possible to turn gold into lead, and chain the weight of sorrow to our ankle and live a life of boredom and misery.

Alas, Baudelaire was not the great alchemist. While Rumi learned to celebrate the light that came through his wounds, Baudelaire cut his own wounds hoping that light will come through. It did not. But he is considered a forerunner of the Symbolism movement by transforming disgust into art.

 

Pessoa tackled the same issues, differently. For him, pain and existential boredom (tédio) allowed human consciousness to realise that suffering came from our awareness of pain not by the burden of pain itself.

Pessoa intellectualised the presence of pain through observation of our reason for existence. He was an analyst who did not allow the feeling of pain obscure the beauty of what was around and in him.

As such, Pessoa was a chemist, not an alchemist.

And Pessoa was not alone as a poet who explored the harmonious co-existence of analytic, scientific consciousness with poetry. Indeed, Humphrey Davy, a British chemist who discovered sodium and potassium in 1807, was a well known poet and his works celebrated by Coleridge and Wordsworth. More recently, Roald Hoffman, a Nobel Prize winner chemist wrote poetry to re-interpret what science could not explain.

Other scientists, like the immunologist Miroslav Holup demonstrated the usefulness of integrating rational/analytic explorations along poetry.

And perhaps my favorite on this subject is from Albert Einstein

                         “I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music.”

 

… It was time for another long walk with my dog, this time under the afternoon warm sunshine of Arizona’s High Desert.  On our way out, I recalled my father’s frequent advice to his kids:

“We start dying the moment we are born. It is how you manage the journey that counts”

PS/ I took this photo in Santa Cruz, California. I always think about this frame to represent the "unmaking"  of dark rocks amidst swirling waves.

March 3, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026