Piercing the Veil of Time -- The Only Beauty of 2020 to Celebrate

 

This morning the cloud upon the mountain range was like a flat saucer and then a while cloud seemed to jet out of it. It was like a lance; like a bolt as what perhaps Zeus would have thrown from the top of Mount Olympus.

And it was a perfect moment to think about the end of a year when every land of our globe got touched by disease, unknown prognosis, lockdown, shutdown, elimination of socialization with fellow humans, and the wearing of the mask.

Many of these aspects of an epidemic have happened before in human history. But a pandemic in year 2020 when the world travels, when the people believe that they are invincible because man has conquered all infections with a pill or an injection, yes, in that case a pandemic is like that white “Zeus Cloud” I saw this morning.

…. I have always been attracted to the concept of a veil. Because it keeps secrets gracefully, with beauty even. A veil is what separates what we know from what we see. It dissociates our fears but also our trust.  A veil is privacy, like an iron fence can be.

And the pandemic pushed us to wear our masks, not to keep secrets from others but to not share and receive what is dangerous and contagious. Or contagious and dangerous depending if we think of the mask as a veil.

And in the privacy of our isolation, for 10 months now we have found a certain comfort. Even if large numbers of people resist the notion that a mask can be life saving.  In fact we have created virtual masks though our isolation. We may communicate even continue to work through virtual images of ourselves on a screen large or small, but we are not there. Because we are worried.

We are worried that our veil would not protect us anymore from our own secrets. From our own memories. From what we have forgotten once to say; from what we indeed once said.

And in that way, the mask protects us from sharing what we harbor, but the veil protects our time. The time we have stopped and placed behind that very veil.

… This morning I realised that the veil, like that flat saucer–shaped cloud atop the mountain range, is not only harboring and protecting frozen personal time but with the passage each one of us proceeds through, the veil becomes time itself. More, the veil becomes the mask of time. So we do not share what is harbored, through time, with others.

Sometimes even not with ourselves anymore.

So, when I took a photo, I did not think of clouds or Mount Olympus, but of a moment when our isolation within the year 2020 has suddenly pierced the veil of time!

And that is a wonderful way to end such a personal year.

 

December 28, 2020

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

Like a Drunken Boat – Pandemic, Isolation and the Wisdom of Rimbaud and Baudelaire

 

In my multicultural and multilingual upbringing and education, I have kept a soft spot for languages that allow poetry to flourish. French is one of them, and over decades I have revisited the classics either in time of extreme anxiousness, uncertainty or to recalibrate my compass regarding where my serenity waits for me.

The past year has certainly made me revisit many books in different languages. Isolation seems to provide the ample space for reading and writing.

So, it was a commentary I heard a few days ago that made me think of Arthur Rimbaud, one of the”enfants terribles” of French symbolic poetry. I heard a commentator define 2020 as the year when “countries navigated through the pandemic like a drunken would through the streets of an unknown city.”

Fair enough. So, I went to search for the “Le Bateau Ivre” (Drunken Boat) by Rimbaud.

Rimbaud was a capricious writer. He wrote a few poems, the most remembered entitled “Le Bateau Ivre” was written in 1891. It is a symbolic poem where a boat (bateau) is describing, as a human would do, its travels. It is also about escape, new horizons and discoveries.

As such, a perfect construct for someone in isolation to understand and use for his own mental, emotional or spiritual travels.

And that brings us to another “poèt maudit”, namely Charles Baudelaire who in 1857 wrote a poem entitled “Le Voyage” in his most famous poetry book “Les Fleurs du Mal.” In pure Baudelairian arrogance, he described the “real travelers “/ (vrais voyageurs) as those who travel on the impulse for a journey but without a journey. Just for the sake of adventure. He wrote :

Mais les vrais voyageurs sont ceux-là seuls qui partent

Pour partir, cœurs légers, semblables aux ballons, 

De leur fatalité jamais ils ne s'écartent, 

Et, sans savoir pourquoi, disent toujours : Allons !

So, it is spontaneity that counts, even when we may not know why we take on the journey. For after all, it is a futile one. We never learn why we stay, why we go. We just realize that we have to go.

Rimbaud’s “Drunken Boat” seems to follow a similar pattern of self discovery.  Here are a few lines from his twenty five lines of alternate-rhymed alexandrines:

Mais, vrai, j'ai trop pleuré. Les aubes sont navrantes,

Toute lune est atroce et tout soleil amer.

L'acre amour m'a gonfle de torpeurs enivrantes.

Oh! que ma quille éclate ! Oh! que j’aille à la mer!

It is the futility of the journey that Rimbaud realises, just as Baudelaire did toward the end of his poem. From my high school days, I still recall these lines, although now I understand them better as my own boat, sober or drunken, has taken most of its journey.

And for my bilingual readers, here is a masterful translation of Rimbaud’s poem by Samuel Beckett. In fact, Beckett titled it “The Drunken Boat” and his translation is more of an interpretation than a literal translation:

But no more tears.

Dawns have broken my heart,

And every moon is torment, every sun bitterness;

I am bloated with the stagnant fumes of acrid loving –

May I split from stem to stern and founder, ah founder!

 

… As I wrote these lines, I recalled a photo I had taken in a small New England town in the North East of the United States. It was of a small boat that was in the middle of a forest…

So, we can ask “How did that boat get there?” but the answer would be simple – because someone dumped it there. Maybe it was taking in water; maybe the engine could not keep up with the journey.

But the real question, the one that Baudelaire and Rimbaud have been faced with would be “Why did that boat get there?”

Maybe one day I will know the answer.

 

December 10, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

“It is Forbidden to Spit on Cats in Plague-time.” ― Albert Camus, The Plague, 1947

It was only a question of time before I gave up on all the sensationalism around the world about Covid-19 and decide to re-read, Albert Camus’ La Peste/The Plague. Last time I revisited this book was when I was in Taiwan during the SARS epidemic as the story is about an epidemic where rats die of but still transmitted the bacterium Yersinia pestis via their fleas in a fictionalized Algerian town called Oran. While it is a fictional novel, the science, epidemiology and population’s behavior are factual as Camus had studied all documentation of past plague outbreaks before starting writing La Peste in 1941.

The story is indeed a familiar one. It is a tense co-habitation between science, human attitudes, political posturing, and the eventual impact of the bacterium.  As I read the book, this time in digital medium on the internet, I was mesmerized by a few sentences that had escaped me in the past. For example:

“The evil that is in the world comes out of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. One the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill.”

It almost reads like the opening paragraph of news reports we have seen in the past few months.

The original language, French, is much more to the point on this:

“Le mal qui est dans le monde vient presque toujours de l'ignorance”

How about:

“Each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on earth is free from it. And I know, too, that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless moment we breathe in someone's face and fasten the infection on him. What's natural is the microbe. All the rest – health, integrity, and purity (if you like) – is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter.”

Wow. Our globe is still struggling with this. Wearing masks seems to be at the core of Camus’ statement above. But also our attitude about the disease and our responsibility.

“…in a careless moment we breathe in someone's face and fasten the infection on him.”

In an interesting way, this attitude of carelessness, lack of vigilance and perhaps celebrated ignorance reminded me of a photo I tool at The Leopold Museum in Vienna. I never thought of it as the attitude of two people exhibiting the above attitudes. But today it does seem to describe just that.

Finally, there was a line that marvelously encapsulated the situation of populations held prisoner to an epidemic or a pandemic. It does have a profound message of hope and love shadowed by the specter of the unknown and consequent death.

« À Oran comme ailleurs, faute de temps et de réflexion, on est bien obligé de s'aimer sans le savoir. »

This roughly translates as:

« In Oran like anywhere else, short on time and reflection, we are bound to love each other even without knowing it.”

I believe that Camus, in a single sentence, described the generic state of a population during a pandemic.

And that reminded me of another photo, shown at the outset, I took in Prescott, Arizona on a back street of a local bar. There was an anthropology I could not ignore in the posture of those mops. There was acceptance, cleaning of the mess, but also a comfort of being together through the ordeal.

November 29, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

We All Love in Accepting Ways

 

 

Even when so much has passed

Through and next our path to go

It will happen that the foretold

On a day clear as a singer’s throat

Will join a promise with its own

Surprise

 

And in the rush of finishing

A journey we started alone

Across the way, where footprints show the way

It will happen that the foretold

Will make a wet rock

A rest for our tired wait

 

And then, as quiet as an acorn falling

Vast spaces will hold the whisper we shared

In acceptance and in hope

That foot prints along our journey

Will still leave a patch of old snow

Untouched

 

And it is there

That winter will carry the cozy in its breath

To melt that patch in slow and in the sign of the goodbye

That was left behind a door, on a winter day

In a past that let footsteps mark the path

Where we once got lost

With acceptance

 

November 21, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

 

PS/ In 2014 I co-authored a fictional biography book with a friend and writer I had met four decades ago. The publisher of the book, a Montréal, Canada based printing house, wanted to use one of my photographs for the cover. The choice was made to use a photo I had taken in Nazaré, Portugal where a couple walked on the sandy beach next to foot prints already on the sand.

Here is about that book and a photo of the cover:

https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2014/04/this-posting-will-be-different-from-my.html

This poem tackles similar memories.

Chambre En Desarroi

 

The shadow 

Of an orchid

Washes the wall

In purple and in promise

Pillows 

Got lost

Fell off the bed

In remembrance

And with a smile

Sunrise is bright

As windows are

Without curtain

So the Big Dipper

Finds its way

Unnoticed

The dog snores

Under my bed

And a coyote

Retires

From the night

It is time

To water

The orchid

November 10, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

Neural Connectivity and Social Distancing

 

Years ago, when the first Apple Macintosh 128K computer was released in 1984, I recall spending countless hours writing my dissertation, and being delighted that I could change anything I had typed in a second compared to the typewriter days that were only a couple of years in the past.

And, typing till the early hours of the morning while the snowstorm was raging over that small Midwestern town, we had a definition of our relationship with the Macintosh: “Companionship without Compassion.”

The Internet seemed to remedy to the above solitary relationship by facilitating social connectedness. Now we learned to use technology to stay connected.

Yet, compassion did not seem to be defined in the innumerable combinations of 1&0. Even when connected, we had distance among and across us. The virtual boundaries of our connectedness were "safe" because denuded from compassion, touch, and smell and often sound. We were now part of a network, created through and by technologies that would change us and our world in less than 40 years. And the social connectedness definition would now join a new paradigm, that of “connectivity.” Indeed, now our interaction, virtual and without being enwrapped in compassion, was defined thru becoming one of the at least two points in a network and establishing a connection.

A book I enjoyed to read about this topic is by a professor from Utrecht University José Van Dijck “The Culture of Connectivity. A Critical History of Social Media.” And, while learning about the role of the media in connectedness and connectivity, my mind made connections between the biological world of the brain and the importance of distance in both social media users and the connectivity in neural networks.

Here is how my medico-biological world helped me understand digital connectivity and social connectedness:

A distinct line of analytic neuroscience research deals with the understanding of geometric distance and the effectiveness of human brain networks. It is of course unadvised to make comparisons across disciplines by mixing biologic, metabolic and social topics, but the connectivity in the digital world reminded me of neural network connectivity, and the connectedness across media of the concept of distance. A recent article about geometric distance and brain networks by Alessio Perenelle at al. “Dependence of connectivity on geometric distance in brain networks” Scientific Reports 9; Article no. 13412 (2019) discusses this topic in an accessible style for wide audiences.

Another scholarly analysis of the brain networks is from Brazil by Jean Faber et al’, “Critical elements for connectivity analysis of brain networks” (2019) arxiv.org/ftq/arxiv/papers/1904/1904.07231.pdf which builds upon the earlier work of Bullmore and Sporns. My favorite summary of the latter authors' thesis is:

The dependence of connectivity on the physical distance appears to be a trade-off between the complexity required to carry out cognitive tasks and the metabolic costs of establishing and sustaining s huge number of elements and links

And that trade-off brought me back to the physical distancing imposed upon us by the digital technology. Interestingly, no one today even thinks about how life was before virtual everything. But we are now affected by “social distancing” imposed upon us by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Physical distancing and social distancing. In both instances it is a form of isolation, of loneliness and often depressive moods for some. But in either instance it is for survival either in a world changing because driven by new technology, or a new social configuration where people remain fellow humans but also vectors, carriers, and sometimes inconsiderate citizens.

So, we will connect two points in a network and we may learn where the nods are, but many of us will often take a halt and recall how things were when  “good morning” was followed by a warm hug not an emoji!

 

September 21, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

 

PS/ I took this photo with a Soviet/Ukrainian medium format Kiev camera in Vienna, Austria near the Stefan Dome cathedral. There is a lack of connectivity AND connectedness in this photo even when one person was mimicking Charlie Chaplin!

Short or Long, the Tale of Our Lives Remains Ours

We are filled with the uncoordinated sum of blessings. And tears. And wishes. But we always dream of that volcano that has left the mountain dormant. Or quiet.

Our fingerprints are formed when the fetus touches the womb. It is the first touch, the one that defines us. Ridges, arches, whorls and loops mean nothing then. How we touch remains in us as the memory of a chaotic world where we bounce in the density and fluidity of our time capsule.

And when we leave feet out first or shoulder or head, we already know what to expect. Just that we do not know when.

The rest is a tale shaped as pre-planned. We just go through it pretending it is a surprise, a discovery or a riddle. But when we smell the last night’s sweat upon our pillow, we know. It was not a surprise, nor a riddle. A discovery, perhaps.

And when we leave again, feet pointed west or shoulders caved in from the burden of time, we have forgotten it all.

Except, when  feet pointed west or shoulders caved in, we still think of that volcano which now has a name we recall. One more time. For the last time.

Because a dormant mountain is just a pile of rocks. It is boring.

September 5, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

La Belle Dame Sans Soucis

I do not need a muse

 Floating like a mid-morning thought 

To remember

The gentle breeze 

That left  me lonely

 On an August night 

When hands that had made 

Breakfast 

On a snowy morning 

Waved goodbye 

And left the door open 

 I do not need a muse 

To paint photos of blue seas 

Where I left a name so short 

That a midnight breath 

Could hardly recall 

After a search in the narrow streets

Of a city where a secret was shared

Next to a building of old stones 

And never repeated 

Over time

Continents

And lonesome sunsets

 I do not need a muse 

To know that I still can 

On a full moon or through 

A desert storm 

Repeat 

What was once left 

With me 

As the door was left open 

And I was left to wonder

If I could still find words 

Colours 

Or a simple touch 

To paint the gentle breeze 

Of an August night 

Next to the bluest sea 

But now I know

That

All I need is to keep 

The door open 

And when on a humid night 

I hear distant thunder and the promise 

Of rain

Away from the seas

Away from cities of steel and concrete 

I secretly let the desert whisper again 

A name 

So short 

So it simply 

Feels good 

To not have a muse

But to know

That I once 

Had 

One 

 August 27, 2020 

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020 

 I took this photo with a 1954 Canon L3 rangefinder during a concert by Andrea Bocelli. The slow speed of the shutter made it a parade of memories, muses or ghosts on that stage…

The Beginning and The End of The Tango is The Walk (Robert Duvall)

… And in between walks

Solitude stands alone

On its toes

It is a fight

With the steps

Not taken

It is the look

That sees inside

And not beyond

Skirts with ruffles

Wrap

Around that fight

Like a summer rain

When walking on the beach

Alone

… And between walks

Shoulders carry

The tired tempo

Of rejection

PS/ I took this photo of street Tango dancers in Barcelona with a 1969 Nikon F.

July 19, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

If There's Any Kind of Magic in this World, It Must be in the Attempt of Understanding Someone, Sharing Something. (Céline in Before Sunset)

The pandemic has given me the space to rediscover what I had forgotten to remember.  I have focused on writing and painting since street photography is at halt now: how can one take photos of people when the streets are empty?

In some ways, walking back on the streets of time can have similar challenges. What if you walk back and over the past half a century there are few people you meet again on those streets? What if they seem now different, strangers, and you do not find anything to talk about?

Walking back is also surrounded by goodbyes. You see faces, you recall names, but you mostly find yourself in buildings, in various countries, in train stations, in airports. You hear the crowd, or you hear nothing. You smell tobacco and tea in a remote countryside, or your senses become sterile and unassuming.

.. When I am not writing or walking the desert away from masked and unmasked people, I like to watch a movie. In fact this is a new experience since before the pandemic I never had the luxury of personal time so frequently.  I like Scandinavian TV series and movies. Somehow the minimalist action and the thoughtful content are fresh escapes from car chases, violence, drugs and gratuitous sex. It also makes it comforting to see that actors do not have perfectly white implanted teeth! It makes the watch more compatible with daily life. 

But this time as I was moving through the movies on Netflix, I stopped on a Spanish 2016 movie titled “The Reconquest” or “La Reconquista”. I knew nothing about it so decided to start watching it.

…As a street photographer I am not keen on studying context or frame of where a shot may take place. Rather, I have learned to anticipate (people are mostly predictable…) what can happen when this or that are in the moment. So I stay ready to click just before it happens. So I did not read about the movie, just thought the title fit in my present mood of returning and rediscovering.

… A few seconds after the movie started, I had the funny feeling of watching the 1995 cultish movie ”Before Sunrise” by Richard Linklater. Like thousands of viewers, I thought Julie Delpy was someone many have met at some point. She was fresh, spontaneous and real. Of course Linklater built on the success to proceed with a Trilogy as “Before Sunset” (2004) and “Before Midnight” (2013).

The central theme is goodbyes and retrouvailles between a young couple. It was perhaps that aspect of life that attracted me most. After all, since the modern Homo sapiens walked this earth 50,000 years ago, it is estimated that 108 billion humans have so far come and gone. I think it would be impossible not to have 108 billion goodbyes having happened, with or without retrouvailles.

The simple statements, and underlying down-to-earth philosophy of “Before Sunrise” may be when Céline (Delpy) said:

“It's depressing, no? That the... the only thing we're gonna think of is when we're gonna have to say goodbye tomorrow”

And Jesse (Hawke) proposed:

“ Well, we could say goodbye now. Then we wouldn't have to worry about it in the morning.”

There you have it – instead of rejecting what is bound to happen, finding harmony with reality.

… La Reconquista has a similar theme. Manuela (Itasaso Arana) and Olmo (Francesco Carril), childhood sweethearts, meet in Madrid for one evening to relive the past and think about the future. The movie is fresh as Manuela’s smile and delightfully conversant eyes. It is as comforting as Olmo’s silent smile. There is no violence, no sex, not even a single kiss. It is all about walking that street back and celebrating the walk they separately took 15 years before that evening in Madrid.

While Céline and Jesse shared existential philosophy in there conversations through 3 movies, La Reconquista  lets the Spanish troubadour/poet Rafael Berrio sing the philosophy of expectations, wasted time and goodbyes. It is pure poetry sung by Berrio and embodied by Itsaso and Carril.

Here are a few translated lines from Berrio’s songs:

If everything in it is an improvised and stuffed part

I am afraid I have spent my life gathering the courage I lack

And declaring solemn intentions in front of the mirror

Leaving things for a better time that never arrives

… That time might have happened early in life but we always think there is more to come., That is why we live a life of postponing things instead of recognizing that the best moments of our lives can be early on. Hence we need to celebrate and hold on to these. Not bypass them as mere building stones toward something bigger. In some way, that is the message of La Reconquista – not goodbyes, not retrouvailles and Hollywood endings. Just now 30 year old Manuela ad Olmo who meet for one evening in Madrid to recognize and celebrate that the best moment of their lives happened when they were teenagers, 15 years ago. There is no reconquest in the sense of getting back together. No. The reconquest is of the times 15 years ago when they experienced the magic of being together, unconditionally. And in order to keep that feeling unaltered, Manuela wrote a goodbye note to Olmo. Not because she wanted to leave him, but because she wanted to keep the moment in its grandeur.

And these are reflected upon in other lines from Berrio as:

I have always been distracted with my mind so far away

I am afraid I am badly wounded

I am afraid I have used myself up

To live

And now it is late

Quite late

I am afraid I am badly wounded

I am afraid I have used myself up

As if I

Had the talent

To live

Twice

… We do not sleep in the same bed twice. We do not step in the same river twice. And surely we do not live twice. But if, like a street photographer, we are ready to click when a story unfolds for us, we may have captured that magic moment that does not need the rest of our lives to wait for. It is now part of our rediscovery to love, celebrate and remember.

PS/ By coincidence, this morning I read a January 22, 2020 Vanity Fair interview with Richard Linklater where he does not seem to dismiss the possibility of a 4^th “Before” movie… Well, I do hope that he keeps it to the trilogy as they represent a specific time capsule of a genre.

July 18, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

Tire- Bouchon

Free

As an unlit candle

To be transformed

Drip by drip

And cover

The empty bottle

Of Vinho Verde

In the colours of

An April sky

Free

As a thought

That is kept unshared

So it may become

A once whispered

Name

When the empty bottle from Minho

Gets covered

In the colours

Of a summer night

Free

As a goodbye

In a train station

When all was said

When all was left

In the empty bottle

To hold a candle

Left unlit

Because the flame

Would make it drip

In silence

When the train

Goes

Into the mist

Of a

Winter night

July 13, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

High Noon

It is perhaps the flight

Of pain

From the shiny dark

Of a dreary thought

… An island without a beach

Where wandering boats

Have let their anchors

Rust in silence

The Lone Cypress

Has the shape of the ocean

Winds

And the whisper of distant names

It is perhaps

The high noon dreary

They chase away

Under their wings

The raven

PS/ I took this photo in Prescott, Arizona where the raven is a protected species and part of the Native American mythology. I have written about it here: https://liveingray.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-raven-in-native-american-cultures.html

June 27, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

Mandolino Plucked with the Plectrum of Remembrance

The strings of my mandolino have the farewell of memory

Borrowed from the imagination of hands

That once wondered on a distant balcony

How the city below remembers full moons

I was given that mandolino

To hear myself grow with time

I did not know that the melody of my grandfather’s tears

Would stay silent in the space

Where I became what I once was

Unknowing and grateful

And I accepted that

While the dead are done with the losses they kept secret

I had to learn how to mourn my own losses

Alone

On the strings of a mandolino

When my hands were ready again

To play

PS/ This 75-years old mandolino was given to me by my grandfather, a professional musician, almost 60 years ago. I kept it silent since. Today, I heard it play a melody borrowed from my own imagination.

June 18, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

Sprezzatura

The gold rim

Still keeps the shape

Of the last kiss

By trembling lips

Forest green

Bohemian glass of times past

Now

Dreams alone

Of simple days

When Rulandské modré

Kept the secrets

Of Moravia

Warm

In that glass

Forest wines

In forest green

Lipstick on the rim

En guise

Of

Goodbye

May 31, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

Note: I took this photo with a Pre-war Carl Zeiss Jena Biotar "T" 1:1.5 F=7.5 cm mounted on a Exakta Varex camera of the same era. This is a legendary and rare lens and wide open to 1.5 shows the most amazing bokeh in portraiture work.

Broken Meerschaum Pipe

Not to turn the clock back

Nor to quiet its tic-toc

But to sit next to it

And light a pipe with English tobacco

Next to the bed

Is the old diary, leather bound

And past bound

Leave the diary pages untouched

Then

Leave the room with a steady pace

Whistle is silence that song you once knew

Give it a new name rhyming with the old one

Next to the bed

In a clay vase

There are wild violets

From an ancient field

Keep your eyes open and let your memories in

Hear the clock

Close your diary book 

And dance

Barefoot

May 25, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

Vote: The picture is of my last sculpture. More about it on https://vaheark.blogspot.com/2020/05/pandemic-and-hero-with-thousand-masks.html

Otro Día Veremos la Resurrección de Las Mariposas Disecadas

I am in the desert

Where spring grass is now tall

No one can see the rabbit holes

No one walks alone anymore

Away from the city

Where people now hide

In their own rabbit holes

Fear is now like a dream

For eyes that stay wide open

In await

For in the desert spring grass

Does not move, it undulates

Unda after unda

As people hide

From each other

A falcon cuts thru the air

As a broken spear

As a lost arrow

And fear makes us forget

The stolen kisses

Of simple times

Near a night-blooming

Wild jasmine bush

Butterflies have many lives

Each colourful and lonely

As they rise with the morning sun

And rest under the high noon whistle

A lost arrow makes

When it finds its way

The spring grass is tall

No one can find the rabbit holes

May 16, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

The title is a verse from Ciudad sin Sueño by Frederico Garcia Lorca.  As I was re-reading that poem, I found in its lines predictions of pandemics and people’s reaction to isolation. 

Mothers' Day in the Night

And I did fly a kite while waiting for the wind. It was an unmoon night but the darkness was pierced by souls searching a new home. I was alone with myself, and my kite had a string which stretched as the kite left me behind.

And I recalled names without faces, and faces without goodbyes. Train stations, high seas and dry deserts. Names that swirled around me waiting for the night wind. Large cities, unshaved men, women with no children. Those who stayed because they could not leave. Those who left because others stayed. Like my kite.

The night was filled with the Arbequina olive trees’ exhale. It is a very unique aroma when the night is dark like Spanish eyebrows, through which eyes look at the names swirling around. And a steady hand gently finds the string to keep the kite away.

I was alone with myself yet lost in the silence of the unmoon night. I secretly recalled the sound peasant bread makes when still warm and crusty. And how pleasant to my lips it becomes after a soft touch of olive oil.

So I did not invite all the faces without goodbyes and all the names without a face to break that bread with me. On my back, I started counting the piercings in the dark cover. I knew it will be a while till my count is complete, but the bread was still warm and my kite still pulling from afar.

… It is Mothers’ Day in North America and one of bright dots in the dark cover has a name I know. And a face.

So I let my kite’s sting go. It is a shame to tie down a kite.

May 10, 2020

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

I took this photo when the moon and Venus were closest or "Moon conjunct Venus". The conjunction represents harmony.

A Rainbow Made of Stones

And the bridge hung alone, upon the dried creek. When the sun at its zenith, the shadow of the old stones did not play in the running water anymore. At night, the moon did not reflect upon the changing times.

Yet, it was by the courtesy of passing days that the stones kept the shape of that bridge. In the spring ephemerals bloomed between the cracks of these stone block where a bit of the earth was trapped. Hepaticas and bloodroot made the bridge look like an old woman going to her last friend’s funeral wearing a hat where dried flowers were as old as she was.

I sat under that bridge often.  After a rainy day, my senses were saturated with the smell of wet time. Rocks, flowers, weed or dirt all spoke of time, that tic-toc of the secret clock that is in all of us. I had the same feeling when I visited my parents in the last years of their lives. They had seldom rewinded that clock. They knew it will stop soon. And the smell of their apartment was that of time caught behind the curtains they rarely fully opened. There was an entire life hiding behind these curtains that separated them from the past and the present.

The creek was already dry when I discovered that bridge. But, to be a kid again, I often threw a pebble or a stone in that creek bed. And in the mist of my memories, I saw the circle the pebble or stone made all around them. These were the circles of our existence. Not perfect, sometimes elliptic, these circles always closed upon themselves. The end of the line touched its start. Like a snake eating its own tail.

It is raining today. Early tomorrow I will go and search for that bridge. I am sure it exists.

April 21, 2020

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

The Heart Is a Cage, Love a Bird That Flies Away

When you hold in your smile

The days of youth and folly

With each searching glance

The countdown of your time begins

When you promise

Time smiles in secret

For it moves at a pace

No promise can help linger

 And in cities of steel

Or near the bluest of seas

When that birds flies over you

Do not hope for future wings

As you will find the cage door open

And only hear nightingales from afar

And in cities of stone

Or in valleys of mist and calm

When your smile is of wrinkles

And promises are hollow as your bones

Let your hand touch your own face

En guise of all flights you missed

Now you hold in your smile

The days of regret for past

Follies

April 8, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

Pandemic and Introspection

Sometimes, a free moment is all it takes to fill a personal time with the lament that it is already too late to live it again.

Sometimes, there can be only one memory to make you unnoticed to all around you. You become your own island; no one notices a tiny island in the ocean. And the island is covered in night blooming jasmine, coquelicot and gardenia flowers which fall in the ocean and float around the island. Around you.  And it is the memory of that one who passed that stays in suspense upon these fields of flowers and smells. But unannounced, the aroma from a pine tree in April, or the taste of Arabic coffee on a hot August noon suddenly freezes all around you. You become who you were when you were wondering what you would, one day, become.

Sometimes, all it takes is the sigh of a woman cozy under a blanket. A simple act of selfishness that is suddenly shared and treasured. And you recall the night under the stars; and you almost smell again the acrid smell of the room. And the woman under the blanket now has curly dark locks; and a minute later she is a brunette with a lingering cough. And then she has no face. And when you want to kiss her, you see she has your face. And you do not want to kiss your own lips. So you shut your eyes and stay next to her, because sometimes, all it takes is the woolly smell of an old blanket.

White wine has a place in moments when the regret is to not having time left to try again. Perhaps to do it right this time. Perhaps just to listen as the only act of loving. White wine is fine for regret. But when the memory is for those wondering eyes; when the world of every day becomes too small for an old thought, and when the name of a flower is all you need to feel against the harsh, woolly blanket upon your aching hips. Then the present becomes a must to live while regretting that you cannot live as who you thought you would become when you did not know who you were. On those times, wine has to be of old tannins; wine has to come from old vines. Wine that can only be deeply incarnadine. On those days, such wine should be drank alone upon a balcony still wet of the afternoon showers.  A balcony where others made love. Often. And left doubt in every corner of the Terra Cotta floor.

And, sometimes, you realize who you are. It happens within the space of making green tea in a two star hotel room. Or after drinking Puerto Rico's rum on a busy beach late in the night. And that realization is disappointing because you knew who you were all along but did not want to face it. You had hoped that someone from under that blanket will tell you a different story. A story you would believe; a story you could tell yourself when the wine is white and the days predictable.

But often, there is no one to tell you a story about yourself. It is you against the hope of a different time. And you lose. Because you cannot be who you never were.

March 23, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

PS/ The photo is from my balcony of the night sky against the mountain range. I think there was a shooting star on the upper right quadrant of the frame.