Indeterminism

And I observed what could have been when I was distracted by the desire for discovery. On a snowy evening, I fell upon the veil I had avoided finding. It was unhidden, perhaps in await, yet calm. Neither cold nor warm, it was a veil of predictability.

… Observing my passage through time and people’s expectations, my own fantasies have given me the peace of accepting. “There are no mysteries”, I often told myself “just our inability to lift a corner of that veil.” Because we avoid the veil in fear that we could indeed lift its corner. Not because we do not know where that veil patiently awaits for us.

It is not fear of discovery, therefore, that stops us from acting upon the impulse of wanting to know what is beyond. For the veil is not the curtain in a theater, nor it is the stage itself.  Instead, it is the comfort of the predictable that makes us lovers and warriors, jealous and indiscreet, even indifferent.  For the predictable has a past, hence a future, and we are at our best along a continuum.

What we learn from our observation of what could have been, is that what is beyond that continuum is the very continuum itself. So why discover the predictable that builds upon what one already knows?

… Observing my passage taught me about the very path upon where countless others had left a print, dropped a tear, stole a kiss, and continued. A passage needs a path, and there, some had seen the veil, neither cold nor warm, during a sunset or on rainy days. Yet, many had not lifted a corner; they had not peeped through. They just continued, for the continuum is where we find our predictability.

All mysteries disappear when we feel at peace with discomfort.  When our continuum gets interrupted by observations of expectations, and they make these expectations real. When drops of tears left behind by those who did not lift the veil become a promise in need of action. That is when we interrupt our continuum and become less than predictable.

We become curious, lonely and disappointed.

We become part of the veil.

December 29, 2013

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2103

The Comfort of Old Slippers

It is to know that you will come back to old slippers and to that curve in the bed that makes you wonder how it feels to run barefoot again, upon hot asphalt streets.  The sunsets you missed holding a child to your breast make your breast the color of sunsets you would like to see, there in the mountains where the air is different.  And you run your finger over the lip of the cup, while remembering that you have not touched a trembling lip since the last time you did. 

It is to fancy the smell of garlic jumping in cold pressed hot olive oil, for it makes you recall the dusty roads shaded by pine trees.  For now, it is to accept that cities of stone cannot grow a secret garden.  A city where unshaved men have a story to tell and women of no age have time to listen to stories since they lost theirs. 

And you hide in your coat, as you want to keep the name you once had given to the one who told you he would be back.  Yet, you missed the sunsets, and you missed the early morning fog on summer days.  For you did believe that he would come back. You just remained where you had left him go.

It is the blond kids of Gottingen who run in your open mind.  And the Henna upon deep eyes reminds you of a girl you knew.  The wine is stronger now because you are not as free; and it takes a Gypsy violin serenade to cloud your eyes.  And you look in those clouds, and look through them, as you did during the walk you walked in Prague, near the Danube, of the winter angry.  You wore red shoes on that day, while a proud woman tried to sell you the two heads of cabbage and four sugar beets she had harvested from the piece of land she called her garden. Yet that land was not hers, and that land was hardly larger than the scarf you were wearing, that winter day, near the Danube.  And you walked away in your red shoes.

It is now simple, and it is past already.  Your return is to a place you never left before, because you can leave only yourself behind.  Your comfort is to throw the old slippers out of the windows upon which you once hung curtains of Egyptian cotton to remind you of places you did not visit.  And you prepare a dish from a recipe your mother did not teach you.  And you eat alone.

… It is then that through the curtains you once hung that you see a sunset of pleasant colors.  A few pastel shades upon your bedroom wall, and the sun disappears behind the walls of stone where unshaved men have a story to tell.  It is then that you touch your breasts and it feels good.  The smell of golden garlic in Moroccan olive oil reminds you of the places you do not want to visit anymore.  And you approach the window, look upon the street where you threw the old slippers.

It is the joy of walking barefoot on that street that makes you smile.  And you pick up the old slippers, dust the day off of them, and walk back.  It is the comfort of that curve in the bed that brings you back.  And you smile again, because now you know you can watch another sunset tomorrow.  A sunset upon your secret garden.

December 19, 2013

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Intemperence

The thin dampness of a stone, upon which I reposed my head, made me smile today.  It was not the thought of a cuddled name, nor was it the share of the theatrical life we lead.  No.  I was aloof unto myself, as sunsets help me to celebrate, upon that stone where I lowered my front.  There I met the tremors which had escaped me, and I called them home.

I stressed a grin in resignation and undertook the simplest road to the troubled bay, hoping it would remind me of a distant blue sea.  It did not.  Yet, in the silly tempest of ordinary things, I learned how to meet the whirling of goodbyes.

The purpose of each day is not to survive them.  The ennui of protracted benevolence to the slow passage of pleasures is the fear of having them.  It is folly, or at least untimely entrapment, to forego the colors and richness of sunsets without a poem to share.  And the fires of verse cannot hold your heart for long without the depth of brown eyes, near the troubled bay where you bathe your chaste tremors, and let them escape you.

You will let your heart forget its cunning but you will not share it with the Muse asking to bathe in the froth of your day. Friend, let her play your harp, let her sound your lyre, let her fall in those pleasant places where you hide your anti-self.  Sorrow is silent only when you know her; till then, sorrow is pain and pleasure, and distractingly so.  Let her play your harp, all anguish ends in intercourse with yourself.

… The thin dampness of a stone, upon which I had a dream, reminded me of the frivoly all quarrels eventually display.  And I imposed, in a fateful way, my verse upon her memory, as if the sweep of my fear from lonesome eyes, at sunset.

December 11, 2013

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Zayy El A'assfura

Muddy, black shoes on the carpet

The room still acrid of Gitane smoke

Folly in age, or fury perhaps

For the feel of a lazy noon

And the balm of a dusty summer rain

           Boats do not dream of ports

           Nor of times in distance lost

           But of an old deluge, now a tremolo

           Shy, as dressed in tender thoughts only

           Awaiting that tremor of silent mornings

           Free of dew and yet untouched by frost

                 The black shoes are still on the carpet

                 As unrushed, I watch an old port city wake up to the taste

                 Of a name, that like a bird on a weak pine tree branch

                 Rests, without malice

                 Upon a pale moment of grace

                                                                              December 10, 2013

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Absolutely Relative

“Learn what people take for granted before you meet them. Never challenge these deep beliefs the first time you meet. All is relative to people in time and place. Do not propose standards.”

I was a junior health care professional on my way to my first international assignment. That was my advisor’s response to my “What should I know about where I am going?” Many decades later, I somehow think that I made that advice a practical road-map during my vagabondage around the globe.

What people take for granted is what builds their expectations. Unreasonable expectations are never unreasonable to those who believe they deserve what they expect. Many expectations are reasonable when there is no absolute value about what a person or a group can expect from life. About life.  About how they compare to others.

These are thoughts I had when reading an article on psychological research during WW II which stated that the term “relative deprivation” originated during that period of conflict.  It is now a solidly anchored concept when psychologists and sociologists try to interpret or even predict behavioral change. When dealing with groups and societies, it is proposed that it is the perceived relative deprivation that leads to action for social change when people want to have or forcefully acquire what others have. Because they believe they should have it too.

As a health care professional, my experience equates relative deprivation with “lack of access to and receipt of good medical care.” That is what I have tried to promote or support since my advisor said “learn what people take for granted.”  Indeed, what do people take for granted regarding their ability to get good care?

In every corner of our round world I have heard the same argument “People should have the same basic care available to them. If they need more, they should pay for it.” Is this what people take for granted? Will they experience relative deprivation if they do not? How come we do not have patient revolutions where patients of all ailments and maladies unite and ask for access to good care? Is it because they are too sick to do so? Or will that be the case of “absolute deprivation”, a state of poverty in health more than in wealth? After all these two statuses are correlated.

Or perhaps people take for granted that they are supposed to suffer more than others, and accept it? Is that possible?

…“The rate of suicide is higher in richer countries than in poorer ones” the article reported.

I stopped again and looked out of the window. A rainy day. But I do have a roof above me and it is not leaking. I do have the luxury to read an article, for my dog to take me on walks. Am I at a higher risk for suicide than one with a leaky roof? Even if my roof is not leaking, it is just an ordinary roof. Should I compare it to the roofs of those who have them in slate, cedar wood, bronze or even gold?

The answer seems to be again in the term “relative”. The argument is that disadvantaged populations within a richer country see a bigger gap to overcome than those in poorer countries. And that state of despair leads to suicide more often. The thesis is that when everyone is poor there is less discontent or the sense of deprivation, hence less suicide. So if the world were divided into populations with “absolute deprivation” and those with “absolute non-deprivation”, there would be less tension, conflict, war, suicide and perhaps even more health and joy!  People would then take only relative things for granted!

As far as theory goes, I could understand it. But that is not our world anymore.Geography itself has become a relative term. Even virtual.

.. It was still raining when I put down the journal and thought about the importance of everyone having the basic health care, facing narrower gaps, and how any new idea should first consider what the recipients take for granted.

Then I invited my dog to go for a walk. He looked outside, listened to the rain, and ignored my invitation. So I took my umbrella and went out for a walk alone.

December 5, 2013

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Boussole

It was perhaps the simple moment of a few tears over dinner.  The fluted wine glasses were almost empty then, asking for more wine.  And soon the wine was gone, asking for more questions.

It was perhaps the way streets meandered into the soft bed of the river while purple neon lights inundated the facade of the museum, in front of which a band played into the early morning.

Or, it was perhaps the loss of that inner compass which takes dreamers astray, into old dreams, into new questions, and into unknown fears, as that compass lead us to that river which never invited passersby for a swim.  Chestnut trees were in blossom, somewhere, but we walked the shores of the river searching for that compass.

The compass was disoriented but never lost.  It was still showing the North, the South, the East and West.  But, the space of an uncompleted poem, it seemed to show direction capriciously – the North was a bit more East; the South was much Northerly than before. A bi-polar, whimsical compass.

It was simple.  Sometimes, not finding the right bubbles in a fluted glass makes it less of a promise and more of an expected surprise. But a Cava wine, no matter how good, will not be accepted en lieu of a bottle of Veuve Cliquot. I learned that when chestnut trees were in bloom, somewhere.

{Date Not Recorded}

Both pictures were taken from the Buda Castle on a misty evening in December. The Danube separates Buda from Pest.

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Gravel Road

I would give little

To be young again

The large chair holds me tight

My beret makes me smart

And my dog sleeps

His head upon my slippers

I have seen sunsets

Upon fields of hay

And I have walked in the gentle rain

Among cities with simple names

Often alone, sometimes arm in arm

With the passing, unforgiving time

I will give nothing

To gather, piece by piece

My heart after brown eyes

Have looked for somebody new

I will give nothing

For what I got was a summer storm

But not hurricanes I had hoped for and asked

Moonshine or warm beer

I gladly still keep by near

When turning pages

Of a silly book late at night

As my slippers feel  warm

And my dog, a cataract in left eye

Dreams, sighs, and chases chipmunks

Trembling, like I once did

When chased by those brown eyes

I will give little

For perhaps

I have given it all

August 20, 2010

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

The Artfulness of Flight Attendants

I had not had white wine for almost 30 years.  It was the cheap wine we had in college.  It was college, the simple and pleasurable time when all limits were reached; when there were no limits.

Since then, having white wine seemed to defeat the purpose of having wine.  A rosé is still acceptable on a hot day in Lisbon.  But white?

… It was a warm day in November.  I was leaving from San Francisco to Taipei.  A long trip, but I was looking forward to it.  My life had been a total race for months and, somehow, being away from email and phone, at 36000 feet in the clouds felt like a mini vacation!

I placed myself the best I could in the seat, smiled at the man who was going to be my travel companion for almost a day, then put my earplugs in to be transported by Silk Road Ghazal music, and then by religious Gregorian chants.  These are my favorites on long trips- they take me where I have not yet been and I identify with the moment.  Not the past.  Not the future.  Just the moment, at 360000 feet in the clouds, over some ocean or snow capped mountain chain.

… There was a decent selection of wines for dinner- a 2004 Tempranillo from the Toro region; a same year Trepiche from Mendoza; and a 2005 Pouilly Fumé Sauvignon Blanc.  And then, I noticed the unthinkable- a 2005 Chablis Champ Royaux!  Chablis probably tasting of old mushrooms, tart fruits and unknown minerals!  Chablis we used to buy by the gallon for cheaper than a hot dog and Coke!  Chablis that reminded me of the long and cold nights of Michigan. 

That was 30 years ago, and I had not had Chablis wine since.  Yet, on this pleasant November day, I was tempted.  I wanted to remember the taste of that wine, as simple as that.  I wanted to live a past time in a no-time zone, somewhere over a vast ocean or a snow topped mountain range. 

The flight attendant was a man in his late 50’s.  I am sure he could detect a red wine drinker from a white one habitué within minutes.  He could even guess how many drinks they will have before putting down a management or oncology book and try to sleep for a while.  He could, I am sure.

So, he came near our row with his little cart and asked:

“The Merlot, the Trepiche or the Spanish Tempranillo?”

Without looking at him, I almost murmured “A glass of Chablis, please.”

There was a moment of no communication.  At least without words.  I continued to look away from his eyes (he also reminded me of the Arabic teacher I had in high school…)

Then, “Did you say Chablis?”

“Yes, a full glass of that very nectar” I tried to joke.

… I stopped the Gregorian chants and dialed into the in-flight music, channel 12.

“I wished on the moon for something I never knew” sang B. Holliday.  We used to listen to Jazz in Detroit.  We used to drink Signature beer in Detroit.  We used to also drink Chablis, which was cheaper than a hot dog sandwich and a Coke.

… The over steamed mushrooms were there!  And the unpleasant minerals!  They seemed to have never changed.  It was a taste I once knew and now I could relive within a single sip.  Chablis was college students, and I was not a student anymore.  Yet, I recalled that young man, who wanted to learn so one day he may apply.  So that one day he may teach, to those young man and women ready to learn.  Yes, I was that young man again, living for the unknown, for the moment only.

I do not recall the last time I shut my eyes while taking a sip of wine.  I do not recall when it was that I kept my eyes shut after swallowing the sip of wine.  But I did.

The feeling was intense.  It had nothing to do with the wine.  It had nothing to do with memories.  It was one of those moments when as B. Holliday sang “half-love never appealed to me.  If it is love, there is nothing in between.”  Well, it was love.  Love of what I had learned while I watched 30 years pass by.  I recalled buying Chablis and pipe tobacco on a snowy night in Ann Arbor.  Because I was writing my dissertation and needed to work into the night.  It was Chablis and the first MAC computer circa 1983!  And I thought I had everything (especially when I had enough wood to keep the fireplace working overtime…).  Perhaps I did.  Everything was not that much, then.

… I practically forgot to eat my “Asian Vegetarian Special Meal”.  And the flight attendant came to check on me.

“You do not like the meal?”

This time, I looked at him.   And without shame I said:

“I like the Chablis better.”

His facial expression was priceless.  Then he regrouped, put on a fake smile and said:

“It is a special type of wine, isn't it?  Has its followers.  Almost like a cult.”

Ah!  I felt proud to be a “Chablis Cultist” while over a vast ocean or a snow capped mountain range.

November 17, 2010

San Francisco to Taipei

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013  

The picture is of Taipei at night, taken with a Yashica 14 rangefinder.

Parallel Lines

Oddly

You are free

In mid-sentence

And in her frozen embrace

Stroll slow

Beside your own shadow

The silence of the shallow river

Is now a new season, and old reason to shiver

There is no order

Leap; pursue pleading, or just meander

In the snow you will leave your steps lost to her feelings

While the river runs shallow, you feel free, you have wings

Fly!

November 14, 2013

 ©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Table for One

The wait.

It is an art that we learn to first reject, and then cherish. For someone, an idea, or the sharing of a thought. There has to be a reward in waiting, but maybe not for waiting.

As a writer, the empty page or a blank electronic screen have promised me the visit of my muse. And I have waited.  I have looked at empty pages on long plane flights, in lonesome hotel rooms, on crowded trains, or in shelters during war times. These pages are all the same – empty spaces full of promises. What will it be this time? A poem about brown eyes? A Scandinavian city full of sun at midnight? The story of a genocide I was told as a kid? The page remains empty, flat, and I wait.

Amazingly, as I have looked at empty pages in every corner of the world, somehow my muse has found my hiding place. A space where I did cache myself from the moment I had promised to others. Sometimes students, sometimes government representatives. I was there to be a healthcare professional, and yet, always found the space to be just myself. Facing a blank page.

And when my muse arrived, wearing dream and shiny tear drops, I saw the page eager to surrender. My words would now break the silence of the emptiness; my fears would make the page tremble. My muse, wearing shadow and without make up, was near me now to give permission. Not a story, not hope. Just the permission to write. What I wrote was always my choice.

… Waiting is an art, which becomes a craft in daily life. This time, we wait for cycles to complete themselves. It is not about writing anymore but the readiness for what is to happen. One cannot be impatient or forceful, time is an unforgiving lover.

Like empty pages, the wait is faced with empty moments when we hear the seconds tick at the pace of our inner resonance. The artfulness of being patient becomes the resilience of surviving these empty moments. Because their bare timescape is also filled with promises. Because we believe it is.

An artist becomes a craftsman by sharing his art. A writer becomes at peace by waiting for his muse. And an empty page just learns to wait.

November 7, 2013

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Paradox and Uncertainty

A big storm outside.  The wind was moving the clouds at a speed that changed the horizon over the ocean as I contemplated from my window.  But I knew it was temporary—the forecast was for sunshine in a few hours.

Why would I believe the forecast though? What I see now is a low and dark sky, and water everywhere.  I played with my pencil for a few minutes, and then wrote parapluie, French for umbrella. As I looked at that word, I realized that it really means “beyond the rain”—para and pluie. Ha! I had not thought about that before.  Did it mean that the person under the umbrella was beyond the rain? Or that the umbrella eventually leads to sunshine and takes upon it the role of shading the person? Can there be ombre (shadow) in umbrella?

Clearly my mind was not focused on that academic article I had decided to dedicate my morning to editing. And after a few jousting movements with my #2 pencil, I wrote paradox.  That was it, my mind was eager to play with words and concepts. So I let it do so.

Para and doxa, in Greek mean “beyond thought” or beyond what we can rationally understand. What was paradoxical this morning? Was it that the clouds defined a horizon that otherwise does not exist? Was it that it was my observing the clouds made the horizon real? After all, the horizon is just an illusion.

Illusion. After thinking about it I wrote Maya, the Buddhist term for illusion. Now I was in a different sphere of thought, and took my glasses off to see the horizon better.

… Since my college days I had an attraction to physics, especially quantum mechanics. Heisenberg’s contribution to the imprecision of knowing where an atom is and where it will be seems more than physics to me. It is philosophy, and it is Zen. Indeed, that we cannot measure the position and the momentum of an electron at the same time has been verified by calculation and experiment, but that “the path of a particle comes into existence only when we observe it” is beyond formulae and mathematics. To me, it is synonymous to the Zen teaching that it is all about grasping – the world around us exists because we decided to grasp it, to reach for it. Otherwise the path of things be that of particles, desires or fear does not have a meaning. Nor will the particles, desires or fear have a meaning. And if they do not have a meaning, they do not exist. Or do they?

The big picture versus the sub-atomic. The big picture versus the sub-conscient. Is there a parallel? Newtonian principles are valid for the big picture, most of the time. His assumptions have been that the real world exists despite us. Then Heisenberg challenged the applicability of the big picture assumptions to the sub-atomic world. He proposed that the particles exist at a position because we are observing them. If we do not, not only they do not exist, but they have no meaning. Specifically, he said that orbits do not exist in nature. They acquire a meaning, or “exist” only when we observe the electron.

What gives a meaning to the clouds framing the horizon? With my glasses off, I cannot see the horizon but I know it is there. Or is it? As a parallel thought I wondered what gives a meaning to my desires. Is it the existence of another person? Another goal in life? Another path to my curiosity?

I looked at the page on my desk:  paradox, parapluie, Maya. Then I added uncertainty.

Put my glasses back on, and before I returned to my computer and the paper I was supposed to write, thought about all the electrons I cannot see and the quantum mechanics principles that I partly understand which made it possible to build a computer. Which gave a meaning to my moment. Which therefore exists.

Then remembered a line from Albert Camus “In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion."  I am glad I did.

November 1, 2013

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

I took this picture many years ago and I have only a tortured, damaged print of it. As I wrote this piece I wondered if the picture represented a single woman reflecting in another. I recall taking it at a circus show, hence the pony. Still, is it paradox or illusion?

Moon Eclipse

In the woods again. This time it was high noon although the moon eclipse on October 18 seemed to have my reference points confused. For the past few days the moon has been in the sky till the late hours of the morning. Sun and moon over the same forest made me somewhat disoriented.

It was under the moon, this morning, when I found a dead red fox. Was it the same fox my dog chased a few nights ago? Or just a fox who had lived his time without being chased? Yet something was different in the posture of this fox- his back was to a tree as if leaning against it. This fox had died in an almost standing posture on his hind legs.

My initial reaction was that it was pushed as such by another inhabitant of the woods, but there were no apparent injuries. Could it be that the fox, at the moment of death, stood on its hind legs like a dog begging for a bone, leaned against the tree and tried to reach for the moon?

I sat down on a rock near that tree and looked at the fox. Soon, I could not see that unusually postured secretive troubadour of the woods anymore, as my mind dissociated my self from the moment. I listened to the monotonous whisper of the fall leaves and recalled a Zen Japanese dictum Zadatsu Ryõbõ which I had interpreted as “Die sitting. Die standing.”

… I have seen people at the last moments of life, and I have seen others just after death. I had never thought about their posture. My father-in-law died sitting in his favorite chair, but I have never seen anyone or any mammal die standing. Was this fox chasing the moon for enlightment?

Or was the dictum about living each day to appreciate the here and now? Could it be that the posture in death is the final attitude impersonating how we lived? If we had the choice, would we sit under a tree, reach for the eclipsed moon, and let it go? Or would we struggle to stay alive even if we cannot see the moon anymore?

Resisting further philosophical vagabondage, I got off the rock, went to the pine tree facing north, and sat down leaning against it. I could not see the moon but it was there, I knew. So I shut my eyes to find it in the sky above me.

… In a strange way, and for a short moment, it was pure experience.

October 23, 2013

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

In the New England Woods

Nature loves the beauty of simplicity.

I knew this dictum by Newton, its adoption by Ockham, and its pursuit by Einstein. This morning, while walking the woods with my dog before sunrise, it occurred to me that while the fall colors and fallen leaves of New England’s woods often meant nature for me, walking in the dark gave them a different meaning. They were just woods now, with brittle leaves and brushwood under my feet. These woods became a new context, within which I could hear my dog walk without seeing him. Yet I knew he always kept the same distance from me, perhaps worried that I may leave him in the wilderness and go back to my warm bed.

I kept repeating that sentence throughout my walk. I do not know why, possibly a parietal lobe short-circuiting resulting from my desire for a cup of strong coffee.  A simple sentence, yet an assemblage of the three most potent words that have shaped my passage through the past half century: love, beauty, and simplicity.

And I walked through the New England woods, which I knew were of that fall color splendor. But it was dark now, all around me was black, and sunrise was an hour away. My dog picked up a scent and started running in circles. Or ellipses. Or just randomly. But he kept the safe distance from me.

So, there we were:  a man and his dog. Or is it a dog and his man? No leash.  Both of us were free in our own way, but still dependent. He was chasing the scent of a red fox, and I was pursuing a new line of thought.

… One has to start with beauty, I thought. I wondered what single word would define beauty for me, in the New England woods, before sunrise. I slowed down hoping that I could think of that word easier. I shut out the sounds around me, and wondered: what would that word be?

And the answer was there, in front of me, in the dark. Beauty, at that moment, was symmetry! I felt curious; I wanted more. Was symmetry a shape, or was it a state of being? Was I thinking of form and optical reflections that are ultimately symmetrical? Or symmetry was the gate to something more fundamental? I stopped and looked at the sky—full of stars, a few of which I knew. But there was no symmetry in what I guessed beyond the sky. The stars seemed stationary, nothing was collapsing. And I saw beauty.

Then it occurred to me: beauty is harmony.

The next word to tackle was love. I listened to my dog chase that scent and thought of him sleeping at the end of the bed. Snoring like a sailor’s dog snores. And I thought how love has been central to my interaction with people, with food, with photography, with poetry, and with medicine. Yet, I could not define it in a word. Why try when humanity had tried since our ancestors felt a feeling that they did not know what to do with! But I pushed myself, and love became a two-word definition: curiosity of discovery.

And now, simplicity, the distillate of all things complex and seemingly incongruous. Simplicity was easy for me to define. It was the sound a running dog made, at almost sunrise, in the New England woods now exhaling their morning breath of colors in gold, rust, yellow, red, and rotting trees fallen without a sound. Simplicity was, unexpectedly, both beauty and symphony, which to my caffeine deprived brain was sym-phony, the harmony of sounds. It was not about parsimony as defined by Ockham, but the reaching of a meaningful coexistence without the superfluous.

… I could hear my dog’s heavy breathing and now could see his smiling face.  When dogs pant, it makes them smile. At least to us humans who wonder about love, beauty and simplicity while walking upon bristle twigs in the New England woods.

I was about to tackle the joint-identity of the beauty of simplicity when we returned to our cabin in the mountain. It was sunrise now, glorious upon a cold fall morning. My dog had food in mind, and I had coffee as my only desire for the moment.

So, I postponed all thoughts about the beauty of simplicity for another walk in the woods, before sunrise or at midnight. For sure before the first snow.

October 16, 2013

(Picture taken with a Yashica 12 medium format camera)

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Palmas Sordas

To part

And leave behind

In melody and in silence

What I have not done

Part to part

Kettle on the stove

But the stove is cold

Cherry tobacco in a tin can

But my pipe is old

To part

And leave unchanged

The lust that turned to rust

Near the empty window

That looks on to nowhere

Part to part

Whispering North winds

Have already kept their secret

But forgot where they kept them

Yet know why

To part

Knowing that what I felt the first time

Will happen again to those who stay

Near the empty window

That looks on to those

Who depart

October 15, 2013

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Cloud Computing

I looked long at the keyboard.  In me was yet another essay to write, but the keyboard wanted to be left alone. Untouched. Words, images passed in front of me sometimes as fast and overwhelming as locust I have seen in the desert sky. Or eagles in the High Sierras. What was the story brewing in me?

I kept looking at the keyboard as the screen was blank. Till suddenly and in quiet, the first key atop the row of keys jumped out, and left the board! Do keys just leave the board like that? Was I self-hypnotising myself by starring at the keyboard for so long?

I followed the rectangular black key stumble on the piles of paper around my laptop, then fall unto the open space of my desk, roll around for a second and finally crash onto the floor. I opened my eyes wide to make sure I was not just seeing things. No, there now was an empty gap where the first key was, on the top row, left.

I looked under my desk, picked up the key and leaning back on my chair, held the key up: it was the “Esc” key!!!

That was it. That was the story I had in me. ESCAPE.

But from what? Why?

I looked at the keyboard again. Would other keys jump out and away? Nothing, they all were where they were supposed to be.

… I had used a keyboard for more than three decades, but suddenly realised that I had not paid much attention to many of its keys. Could they help me understand why the “Esc” key escaped? Why I could not write my story?

At the far right, almost a mirror image of the “Esc” key was “Delete”. I had used it many times. It was for errors, misuses, and it was for unwanted thoughts. Funny, that seemed a very powerful key at this moment. Delete and its gone. Do we do the same with our memories, names, places, acts, unwanted thoughts? But are they really gone when we push that key on the keyboard or in our soul? Or do they hide for a while, till you remember them again? And for the first time, I noticed that the "Esc" key was a bigger rectangle than the "Delete" key. Does form follow function?

Under “Delete” was “Home”. Amazing! It is the key that brings you back home. Just one touch and you are home. When one forgets where is home, or stay away from it for too long. That key knows, however. It can take you back. All you need to do is decide to push it. Home. Where the heart is. Where the story starts and develops. The place we go back to when we have used too many keys and had too many thoughts. When we get lost. When we escape!

I looked back to the gap left atop all other keys, on the left of my keyboard. The “Esc” key used to be there. Now I am holding it in my hand. Because it escaped. But where is home for the”Esc” key? Was it not supposed to be the keyboard? And deep under it, the Motherboard? Why did the “Esc” key escape? Will it return to its spot and fill the gap if I push the “Home” key?

I sat back, looked at the blank screen and wondered what I should write about.  I thought I had a story to tell, but now I am lost in this phantasmagoric world of unused keys. Keys with meaning beyond being keys.

So I decided to write about the “Esc” key, knowing that I can always delete what I wrote and get back to my home page. 

September 21, 2013
[ Picture taken with a Voigtlander VSL35E and a 200mm Tele Tessar, on ASA 100 Ilford film]

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Iron, Rust, and Steel

I looked at the blue pill in the palm of my hand. A rectangle with rounded edges.  And for reasons both due somnolence and seemingly Kafkaesque, I challenged myself to enumerate the elements in the pill: iron, zinc, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum…

This exercise cleared my mind and I started to laugh: I had the aftermath of a supernova in my hand!  I swallowed the blue pill with hot coffee and sat by the window to remember my beloved chemistry professor.

… He was a Greek chemist, a prominent man in the field of organic chemistry. Looking at him, one would have thought of a basketball coach, or an uncle who brings pistachio nuts from Syria. But when he entered the auditorium, he was the story teller, the man who taught chemistry without chemistry, and who found in atoms many of the precursors to our behaviors.

“We have supernovae in our veins and stardust in our muscle” he once said. And proceeded to tell a story about how the explosion of supernovae created the original elements of the Periodic Table.

“Hydrogen to helium to lithium—we would have stayed at that level and not exist” he almost whispered philosophically. “But stars exploded, made more elements for us, they combined, heavy ones, lighter ones. Then in the deep of oceans, they played matching games till a bacterium was formed. And that bacterium exhaled oxygen. And one day that oxygen saturated the oceans, and was exhaled into the atmosphere. Billions of years later we had enough oxygen to start life!”

And he looked at us, chemistry, biology, and medicine students, then hung his head down and threw his arms in the air.

“What do we get after 5 billion years of work? YOU! Lazy students who do not care about chemistry! Your DNA is the supreme helix where hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen record the history of humanity; and you have more bacteria in your intestines than the entire population of humans on our planet. And yet, I have not seen any one of you excited during our lab experiments. It is sad to have wasted the energy of the Big Bang, supernovae, stars and anaerobic bacteria on you!”

But, when the session was over, he left the room saying “Well, oxygen makes rust out of iron, and perhaps this course will help you appreciate that we can also make steel out of iron. And build statues, buildings and cars. Maybe one day you will recognise how chemistry makes us leaders, innovators, followers and changes our mood.”

… It was still dark outside, sunrise was an hour away. In my mind I traced the path of the multivitamin pill I had just taken. Parts of it will soon get dissolved interacting with my gastric medium. Some elements will be released and absorbed to enter my blood stream. The other part of the pill will patiently wait till it is time to reach my intestinal flora. There it will find another medium, less acidic to surrender its other elements. In a few hours I will have an entire supernova flowing in me!

“I will keep an eye on the heavy elements from the stardust, though” I cautiously promised myself. "These will sink to the deeps of my inner core and affect the compass of my days."

September 17, 2013

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2013

An Islander's Diary

When I took my shoes off, I realized I was stuck. It was an island. I was not alone on it. It was surrounded by names and faces. But no waves.

It was an island in time and I gave it a name - “Present”. 

What does one do on such an island? Think about being rescued? But from what? It was a beautiful landscape, and buzzing with people. Yet, no one seemed to notice me. Perhaps because I was barefoot.  Or because they were wearing shoes. No matter, I was of no interest to them.

But they were of interest to me. So, I put my shoes back on, was surprised that I had a camera hanging from my neck, and that my hat was amply rimmed and rather classy. It was time to meet these people, on the island of the present.

… Over the next half-century I explored every corner of the island, its coves and its eroding beaches. It was not a big island, yet seemed to stretch with every step I took.  I introduced myself to many of its inhabitants, but they could not pronounce my name. Delightfully, the lush fruit trees never gave fruit, and there were no sunsets. Rather, a series of sunrises, sometimes glorious, sometimes barely noticed. It was an island where time had no meaning, other that it seemed meaningless to worry about it. I watched lovers love, fighters fight, and many wonder if they would ever go back. There was even one carrot-top woman who ignored the island and planned for the escape. Into the future. Where she believed all the promises were. And she turned to stone, because she did not look back.

Eventually the island became a site of pilgrimage into the core of the present where to receive the blessings from the moment. And to share them back without pretension, pretention or remorse. I did not parse the time I had to freeze time itself; and I did not ask why an island had beaches but no waves from the past. While at first I thought to be stuck, I experienced a transformation into a feeling of joy. Then to the joy of having a feeling of joy. And eventually to the accepting that this was not an island to be rescued from, but to be invited to discover. The island of the present was the entire bubble within which what was done was already gone, and what could be done remained unknown.

… And all remained unpredictable, since there was no passing time. I learned that predictability needs both the waves from the past and the promises of the future. Not on this island!

And, while watching the endless sunrises, I noticed that I had not used my camera for half a century. And it occurred to me that freezing a moment in time on an ancient roll of film had no meaning when time itself was already frozen!

So I got up, walked to the beach, and threw my camera as far as I could. Then wondered: if there are no waves and no water, where did my camera go?

September 15, 2013

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2013

Nocturna in D-Mension

To repeat

The same thought

In a crowded place

Which once

Was your mind

To ring the bell

Yet hug yourself

For there is no one around

Before sunrise

To wipe your face

Of the dream

You thought

You had

To look at your feet

As if they were away

Elongating and stretching

To a place you recall

But cannot find its name

In the red phone book

Always in your purse

Where only one phone number

Is kept

To wait, expecting

That from behind the old walnut tree

Your son will come back

Dressed in scents

And rays

From the shore you once left

But, did you leave it for sure?

And you want to be one again

With yourself, and for all times to come

But time has gone by

Yet kept a thought of you

In a frame, yellowed and fragile

As you have become

But often wonder why

Why you left yourself

One August day

On a shore of froth, war and tears

But left for a short while only

Till the Mediterranean finds its blues again

And calls you back
In Jasmin and morning Gardenia

For sure, as promised

That short time,

Dear mother,

Became a lifetime

September 7, 2013

 © Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

I took this picture of a statue in the main cemetery of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Jinjinha

The sea calls its waves back

No matter how errant their swell

Cavernous or flat, shores abandon the froth

Old waves still try to offer en guise of goodbye

Shores do not belong to either sea or clouds

The moment they have is an escape from time

For when the sea calls its thunders home

Rocks forget their moss and in secret they dry

A siren will bathe in moonlight and in promises

While a poet upon the blue smoke inhales

Both lonesome, both free, yet to the same sea bound

And to its rocky shores in perdition aligned

It is all blue and dark, but a poem it remains, and a lost sigh

To the swirl of the days spent upon a shady shore

Where time awaits its rhyme, its rhythm, its turn

To hold promises once made to deep, brown eyes

When a siren lost her song under moonlight and in froth

 Date Unknown

 © Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Oochoorma Guleshi

I remember Nat King Cole singing “Stardust” in the background.

A sunset upon the bluest sea, relentless and old. Pumpkin seeds, termos, and orange Fanta. The termos (lupin seeds) was my favorite covered with sea salt. A simple pleasure of squeezing the skin of the seed, ejecting the yellow split-seed into the mouth, and mixing the sweet with the salty.

Yet of that evening, I remember most her cotton dress and the sea breeze playing with it. It was in the form of a shirwal, the hybrid dress style mixing a traditional dress with the shapes of baggy pants. White and black, light and teasing.  A dress I could see the sunset through. The salt from the pumpkin seeds and the termos had dried our lips and made them puffy. The orange Fanta was warm and the carbonation more pronounced.

… I used to make kites when I was pre-pubescent. Wax paper, bamboo carefully split into three four-foot pieces, string, glue and pride.  I used to tie the bamboo sticks into a hexagon, glue the wax paper over it, make a six foot tail of string and shredded paper, write my name in Armenian and Arabic on the paper, attach the 100 feet long string and get ready for the kite fight. My kites looked like flying Sea Ray.

It was a primordial urge to fly the kite seventy, hundred feet into the breeze, and hold on to it, guide it, and come close to the competitor’s kite. Then, high in the air, an aerial flight would start each competitor trying to poke a hole into the other’s kite with the edge of one of the hexagon tips. Once the paper was torn, the kite would not catch the wind anymore, and in an unpredictable farandole, come down. The winner got the tail of the downed kite. Like the matador gets the ears of the bull. A primordial act.

My grandfather had a Turkish description of the ritual—it was an “Oochoorma Guleshi” or the wrestling of kites. He watched us from a distance and asked us to learn how to perfect our kites, not to rejoice from downing the competitor’s kite. “Learn to fly,” he told us, “fly high and proud.”

… That evening, on the shore of the bluest sea, I was a young man, with a new set of primordial needs. But for a minute, that cotton dress became a kite, attached to the rays of the sunset, and held by the sea. She was the most beautiful kite any boy or young man could fly. She then became the sunset in my memories.

That evening, I remember Nat King Cole singing “Stardust” in the background on a Phillips transistor radio powered by mercury batteries. We did not know English, yet we understood the song. It was all about the sea, the sunset, termos, Fanta and a kite I wanted to fly.

.. Last summer, on Robben Island, South Africa, I saw that cotton shirwal dress again. It was not the Mediterranean, it was not during sunset, nor was she spitting termos and pumpkin seeds. I was not a young man, and my lips were not puffy of the salty seeds. Yet, for a moment, I closed my eyes and saw a pre-pubescent boy fly a kite where his name was written on the wax paper. In Armenian and in Arabic.

Then I opened my eyes, looked through the ground glass of my 1949 Rolleiflex camera, and depressed the shutter release.

August 24, 2013

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

This picture is the one I took on Robben Island, a few hundred meters away from the prison where Nelson Mandela spend almost two decades in a small cell.