Permissionem

To give

As the sand clock

Reminds you

Of the shore

Where you left

The promise

To never

Return

    To receive

    As the sand clock

    Gets half full

    And you know

    That the next half

    Runs faster

    Thru the memory

    Of what you were

    Allowed

    In permission

          To hold

          The sand clock

          With fingers that ache

          But not rotate it

          Rather watch 
          The sand 
          Run

          Like the wind in your hair

          When on that shore

          You once thought

          Time was just a word

               And then

               To take your shoulder as back as

               It can go

               And throw the sand clock

               Against the memory

               Of the mossy rocks

               That kept returning waves

               From reaching the shore

July 30, 2019

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Monosyllabic

“You seem to move like when we can express everything in monosyllabs” he said without looking at me.

I did not answer, as the answer was obvious.

“Love, soul, death, dream and trust are all monosyllabic words. I think our most important descriptors are monosyllabs” I finally replied.

… When I left the outdoor café where we sometimes meet to talk about what is left after most of our life-days have passed, I thought about the idea that one can move in a way that makes his life philosophy obvious.

I think most of us, for a period of our live, try to be uneventful to the eyes of others. We minimize variability and we remain quiet about variation. But that changes at a later time in life. We become ourselves and like it. It does not matter what variability others see in us or thru us – we feel comfortable painting what our brush allows us to paint. We like making hunting bags out of rabbit skin. We grow a ponytail. We still use film in our mechanical cameras. We love without letting people know, because it is not their business anymore. And we walk as if all we only care about what can be described in monosyllabic words.

Sky, sun, stay, eyes and heart.

Trust and guilt. Void and feel.

Then we jump ahead. We find a few people who do not pretend to be interested in many topics. They talk about only a few and practice their interest without pretention. We go and have coffee with such people. And, on the way to the café, we walk like we use monosyllabs.

Hero, friend, stay, leave, fly.
Cry.

About the photo:  I took it from my kayak. The eagle was at the edge of a large boulder, and in this frame, it seemed to be looking into his own self. When I printed this photo all I could think about was introspection. Even eagles do that!

July 28, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Naufrage

Capturing what wants to be free

Without the veil to hide its spirit

Of monosynaptic simplicity

Letting all impulse to become action

While tying the wooden canoe

To a tree trunk out of the muddy water

And whispering lines

From past moonlights

The feather dropped in flight

Will never ride Northern winds

As the name left between the lines

Will often want to be free

Free to call the journey silly

Free to dip old bread in onion soup

While the canoe hopes

For new shores and wind

There is nothing after the regret

Of not letting the feather be free alone

For when we untie the wooden canoe

The river never finds its ocean

It just sinks in the sand

Of days we once thought

Would last

For times we would have

July 26, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Quantum Behavior -- Sufism, Hinduism and the Rejection of Our Binary Existence

Weekends are for introspection for me – I paint, I do sculpture and I read poetry. Sometimes I read about philosophies that have shaped the human race, and inevitably spirituality takes a central stance at the end of my séances.

Interestingly, I also end up recalling my amateur knowledge of physics, especially quantum physics. Somehow since the first course of physics I took in college I found so many intersections between the world of pure science and the worlds of philosophical flexibilities.

So, I read a book about Sufism where the philosophy found in the oldest preserved classical manual on Sufism written by Abū Naṣr as-Sarrāj is discussed. I wanted a “how to” manual where abstract philosophy is translated into steps, and a certain rationale is provided for these steps.

And I learned about States and Stations which are the required contextual building stones to reaching the consciousness through self-discipline. Ok, that suddenly got too abstract. But a bit of re-reading made me realize that these states are a compendium of self-achievements during the vagabonding upon the spiritual path in search of consciousness.  And, that with each station that is achieved, a new state form inside the person as a consequence.

Of course the Hindu Philosophy of Consciousness has a similar blueprint. There are four states in our search for consciousness. Jagrit, or the walking state, is the first one. In this state we find our identity, our creative skills, and pursue to contribute to humanity. Yet, Jagrit is often thought as an illusion, the veil of Maya that provides dreams rather than anchor us in reality.

And this achievement of this state, the Jagrit, takes us to the second state which is Sapna or the dream state. I have to admit that this is my favorite state, and I am happy to go from Jagrit to Sapna and not pursue the next two steps!

Ok, in Sapna, we lose our identity, we listen only to abstracted memories, and we lose the constructs of time and space. It is an introspective state of chaos that we try to organize and give the semblance of order.

I have always thought that scientists find their consciousness in the Jagrit state, while artists somehow reach Sapna and stay there! But over time I learned that there are many who excel in the back and forth between Jagrit and Sapna. That these states are not like turning a page, but a co-existing continuum where we go back from Sapna to Jagrit to re-energize our creativity, to recall our identity.

And this is when I fall into the loving tentacles of Quantum Physics!

The historic proposal of Niels Bohr in 1913 is most à propos to the discussion of states and stations in Sufism and Hindu Philosophy. During the gestational years of Quantum Mechanics, Bohr proposed that electrons in an atom exist only in certain stationary states, including a ground state. Most remarkably, his theory was that electrons change their energy by "jumping" between the stationary states.

Voila! Atoms as our stable context and us as the pesky electrons.  Sure, I think I will get quite a few emails for my naïve comparison of concepts and philosophies, but I think that the idea of states, stations, energy harvesting though the back-and-forth between the states is intriguing. Of course, during the pursuit of consciousness the states and stations are not stationary, but Bohr was never a philosopher, really…

Back to Sufism and Hindu philosophy. The key pursuit on the path of self-realisation is the reaching of consciousness. Needless to say, this concept is influenced by ethno-philosophy, spirituality, religion, and of course philosophy.

What is consciousness? The simplest definition may be the reaching of a higher self or transcendental reality by going beyond animal instincts. That is what I was taught when reading Emanuel Kant to understand how we synthesize between ideas and philosophies. The “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” triad was very useful to me during my years as a scientist and a culturally flexible student of human expectations.

One cannot address the definition of a higher self or transcendental reality without touching upon religious teachings. Interestingly, while the linguistic equivalent of the word consciousness is the Greek word Suneidesis, there is no mention of it in the Old Testament. Rather scholars believe that the Hebrew term for “heart” is how self-awareness, or consciousness, is defined. Even the Dead Sea Scrolls lack a term for consciousness. In contrast, the term consciousness is used 32 times in the New Testament.

In all situations, suneidesis and consciousness represent a person’s inner compass for moral behavior. They define us as binary – floating between good and evil and requiring to make a choice.

…The rainy season, called monsoon, started today in Arizona. A lot of rain fell upon the dry desert and in a few days the magic will happen again – all will be green, and parts of the desert will look like a gof course for a couple of weeks.

Is that a new station or state for the desert? When the water will disappear, the desert will go back to its previous state of dryness but also of resilience. It will save all its energy to stay intact and vibrant till the next cycle of bloom and rejuvenation.

I hope to be in the right space and time when that happens.

July 13, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Lamiaceae

To wake up with Rosemary

Surrounding my senses

In purple and blue flowers

At sunrise

In the desert

I need to have slept

Under the vast skies

The night before

And remember

How the waves never die

On the white beaches

Of the bluest sea

Where I spent my youth

And left it there

For it was spent

To wake up with Rosemary

With fragrance of days past

In purple and blue flowers

Next to the bluest of seas

I should have dreamt

The night before

Under the vast skies

Of the burning desert

July 11, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Tenho Uma Rosa

I received a note from a childhood friend who attached a video of Cristina Branco singing Fado in Macau which was Portuguese territory till 1999 and now it is called the Last Vegas of Asia. Few people pass by Hong Kong without a short stop in Macau.

My friend did not know how much Fado had touched me during my visits to Portugal As I watched the video and listened to the language I learned to guess given my knowledge of Italian, French and Spanish, a few old lines came back to take me back.

“Com àgua e mel”… Somehow I recall hearing that line sang by La Grande Dame de Fado, Amàlia Rodriguez on cassette from a ginjinha kiosk in Lisbon.  Water and honey against all the pains of life.

Then, I heard Branco whisper “secreto rouxinol” and I recall telling my friend in Lisbon that I never really understood why the nightingale was so often the bird of poets. Perhaps it is because the lonesome male often sings at night when all other birds are asleep?

I do not know. But there are poems that have stayed in me perhaps because they found a curious respite in my wondering soul. For example, there is a poem to the Rossignol by Paul Verlaine (Poèmes saturniens) that starts:

Comme un vol criard d’oiseaux en émoi,
Tous mes souvenirs s’abattent sur moi,
S’abattent parmi le feuillage jaune
De mon coeur mirant son tronc plié d’aune

It is a very famous poem for anyone who was educated in French literature. I recall many of the lines, but it is a poem where the song of the bird has not changed – what has changed is the poet, the man who lost his first love, and perhaps the man who lost love.

Another famous poem about the nightingale is by John Keats, who dedicates an ode to the nocturnal bird. It is again a melancholic poem, where the poet feels numb, as though he was under the influence of a drug he had just taken. He tells the nightingale that he is not jealous of the singing nightingale but that  “drowsy numbness” is grateful for the song that makes his too happy.

Again, I am not sure why the nightingale was chosen for the poem, but here are the opening lines:

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 

 My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 

But not all rouxinol poems and songs are melancholic. I remember how my kids used to love listening to Cinderella sing “Sweet Nightingale” a Cornish refrain from the 1800s. Cinderella, Drizella, Lady Tremaine and Anastasia made that song memorable in its joyful simplicity.

… So, from the Cornish song to the sad Fado songs sailors’ wives sang to those who left from Lisbon or Oporto, the nightingale came back to tease my memories tonight. I am sure there is a rossignol  singing in a forest somewhere at this moment, and that would be a lonesome male hoping for a mate.

… At sunrise, no one will remember his song.

July 7, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Black and White Photos Are Mostly Gray

When you push on a wound

The bleeding does not stop

It just opens the wound wide

So you can enter and be alone

You should not hope for a welcome

Old wounds heal but never close

You should not whisper nor shout

The space has been open for a while now

When you push on an old wound

The wound holds you back tight

There is no pain anymore

But here is still a name

That

On every pulse of pain

Makes the old wound alive

On every tear of space and time

When you thought you will forget

That when you push on the wound

Again

The wound will come alive

July 2, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

When a Boy Learns About Cooking

The transformation of any ingredient into a new taste is metamorphosis. Herbs, grains, muscle, fruits, even exoskeleton do not end their existence with the harvest. When homo erectus discovered fire, cooking by fire started about 1.5 million years ago. Ötzi the Iceman found in the Alps in 1991 had eaten grain, herbs and deer meat. More than 5,300 years ago, Ötzi may had even made bread by cooking einkorn wheat over fire.

.. I started watching my mom prepare food when I was a few years old. She would make me stand on a stool next to her in the kitchen and talk to me about food. Not only she was able to keep an eye on me, but taught me lessons that may have shaped many of my habits.

First, all ingredients have a story to tell but only when allowed to share it with other ingredients. “Chick peas have little to offer by themselves” she used to say “but put tahini, olive oil, garlic and salt, and the peas get a new life.” Indeed, a story needs many tellers, many actors and a creative story teller to put them together in a unique way.

Second, be frugal. After almost 60 years I remember my mom looking at the left over cuttings of meat and vegetables and thinking “how I can use them in a new dish?” Nothing went to waste while cooking, and nothing went to waste when served on the table.

The third lesson that affected my behavior over the lucky life I have had was that of believing and celebrating seasonality. Indeed, lamb was a dish for spring, beans for summer, fish most of the year and fruits rarely in winter. Born on the Mediterranean, cooking creativity was dictated by the seasonality of the ingredients’ availability. Which meant that jams, preserves and canned food were an art inherited from ancient civilizations that started with the storage of millet and the drying of meats.

These three lessons -- co-existence of ingredients for a new taste story telling; frugality; and, the respect of seasonality have made me a more flexible person during my life on multiple continents, my professional work in a couple of dozen countries, and the acceptance of all new modes of thinking and expression as the essence of creativity.

As I get closer to the sunset of my days, celebrating seasonality becomes more important. Not the seasonality of ingredients but the seasonality of our body and mind. To accept the change of seasons and what they bring to our energy, expectations and promises we once made is the secret spice in the recipe of new tastes we need to discover.

… Interestingly, I always remind myself (and some others when they are in a mood to listen) that agriculture started to grow hops for brewing beer! Indeed, the water was often polluted and dangerous to drink when communities took shape. Beer was drank instead of water, in lieu of water and as a wholesome drink. So civilization owns a lot to beer!

Finally, frugality and creativity also mean that observing and understanding natural processes may cut down on our interference with ingredients storytelling. For example, the South American fish dish ceviche uses the acid in lime and lemon to actually cook the fish. There is no heat or fire used.

Similarly, it has been discovered that early humans drank the juice of naturally fermented wild grapes during when the grapes ripe in the Fall, eliminating the need for fermentation (of course there were no large volumes of alcoholic drinks exported during the Paleolithic…)

… Today, I thought about my mother and how she shaped parts of my life by making me stay on a stool next to her when she was cooking.

And I felt grateful, once again.

July 1, 2019