The Return

My book was tired

From being

Read

 

So I left it

Open

To whisper 

New lines

 

And in the cold

Night of

October

 

I woke up

My dog

And we left

 

For a silent

Walk

 

 

November 14, 2025

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

It is Scary to be Vulnerable

With your image

In the mirror

Reflected back

Like a moment

Long thought

To be lost

 

 

Every tear

Has a memory

As if a movie

In black and white

That ends 

With a beginning

Not an "End"

 

 

It is scary

To be vulnerable 

When your mirror 

Tarnished its silver

Lining

Tired of reflecting

Memories

 

Only you

Have

Kept 

Alive

 

 

October 22, 2025

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

Celtic Samhain, Halloween, Superstition, and a Birthday

 

 

 

“Write a story for me, for my birthday,” my friend said.

… I was looking through old photos, and I came across one that I had taken in Scotland sometime in the 1990s. I could not recall the name of the cemetery nor the castle in the background, but the trip I took with a colleague around Edinburgh remains vivid in my memory. And since my friend is of Scottish heritage, and Halloween is a couple weeks from now, this ghoulish photo gave me ideas for her request of a birthday story.

 First, today’s Halloween originated from the Celtic celebration of the harvest ending and advent of winter, known as Samhain. The tradition of wearing creative costumes on Halloween is said to be derived from the Celtic belief that on October 31^st the spirit of the dead return to haunt the living. So they wore creative costumes to fend the unwelcomed spirits away. The photo I took, well after sunset with my Nikon F2 has all the feelings the 2,000 year old Samhain tradition embodied regarding the dead, their eerie spirits, and a castle in the dark.

Second, I do not know how to write a story en guise of a birthday wish!

 

… I traveled for international health research work to Ireland and the UK more than a few times between late 1970s and-2000s. I found a couple of photos from Edinburgh that capture the Scottish spirit in a vivid way, through the pub names and signs:

As for a story, as requested by my friend, here is one that stands out:

In the late 1990s, at a conference in London, I met a most impressive participant from Edinburgh. A physician and professor, she was as “Dame”, the equivalent to a “Knight” title given to men to honor their achievements, in the UK. However, what impressed me most was her humility and life well lived through the sciences and the arts. We communicated by written letters (ah, those past times’ habits...) for a short while, and she proposed that I check with her next time I plan to be in Edinburgh. Which I did, and we met on a typically “low skies” afternoon.

“Since you like to cook and experiment, I can take you to an eclectic restaurant” she suggested. “The chef cooks only for a few people every night, and there is no menu – you eat whatever he had prepared that day.”

It was an offer I could not refuse.

The restaurant had four tables arranged to accommodate the ancient space or an edifice built centuries ago. Candles and a candle round chandelier displayed the shadows on the walls from any movement the chef, the single server and the patrons made.

“Today’s dinner is a windy day dinner,” the chef let us know.

As my friend smiled seeing my inability to guess what we were about to be served, the chef continued:

“On windy days I walk around the castle. Sometimes, the wind picks up and the pigeons lose their feet, or forget how to fly. I gathered enough for tonight,” he ceremoniously informed us.

And, after pouring a glass of Aberfeldy for each one of us, he went to his “cooking area” to prepare the windy day special.

It was my kind of food, prepared sublimely, even if I doubted the veracity of the chef’s story. A thin crust pie for each person had two pigeons’ torsos proudly placed upon pesto risotto and wild mushrooms.  And the environment was that of a time travel.

“Travel well,” my “Dame” colleague said as we left the restaurant. And we lost touch after the thank you letters we exchanged.

 

… A year later I was back to Edinburgh this time meeting with a dear friend, a physician and a philosopher, who cherishes the moments we have talking about the Scottish philosopher David Hume, rather than health care. Actually it was on that trip that I took the photo of the cemetery and castle. And also on that trip I learned about the “whitening” of David Hume’s toe on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, near the High Court. It seems that tourists and locals with a wish had started a tradition of rubbing the bronze statue’s toe for good luck in their endeavors.

“And say that Hume rejected the validity of all superstition in his works,” I recall my friend saying.

Of course superstition and rubbing parts of statues remains a well anchored human behavior in spirituality and wish-making. Here is a public domain photo of the Molly Malone’s statue in Dublin. The superstition is always the belief in good luck; the Irish seem less approving of rubbing statues’ breasts than the Scotts are regarding rubbing a bronze big toe.

But the English in London are the ones who took action – indeed; the statues of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Clement Attlee and David Lloyd, at the entrance of the Commons chamber have been involuntarily getting foot massages since Churchill’s statue was the first to be unveiled in 1970. In the past half century, these four statues have been seriously damaged (at least the feet of the above four persons, and the Parliament has placed these statues and their toes off-limits to all wishing to have good luck in the Commons chamber.

Finally, while the above examples are about the “rubbers’ ” superstition and hope for good luck and success, there are more prominent hopes associated with the ritual in question. For example, it is common for sailors to touch or rub parts of statues they associated, say, with maritime activities (fishing, war, etc). And what can be more promising for good fishing sorties or survival of maritime military conflicts than the rubbing bronze statues sirens’ breasts! Here is a photo I took about that ritual at the Port of Baltimore, Maryland:

 

… Somehow, this story transformed itself from Halloween to superstition, passing through toe and foot massage.

So, to make that circle close, here is a photo I took in Taipei of a walk-in massage parlor in the street. I was amazed to see a dozen men, lying on their backs in perfectly aligned parlor seats, having a foot massage. I was told that it was a common practice to take the day’s pains and troubles away after returning home at night.

The masseuse was happy and intrigued to see me point a vintage film camera at her.

 

October 12, 2025

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

When Pygmalion Meets Tilly Norwood, the AI-generated Actress

 

It should have been expected – an AI-generated “actress” has been created. The given name of this un-real creation is Tilly Norwood and unless told that it is a synthetic creation, she looks like a person one would meet on the street, in the grocery store, or in a dream just before sunrise.

But, is there such a thing as “un-real creation”? Isn’t all creation real, or eventually real?

.. As I watched the news on TV, I wondered if, forgetting about AI and associated technologies, the attraction humans may have to their own creations is integral part of the human nature. This attraction may be especially apparent when it comes to the creation of human figures and shapes, although creations via language, vocal expression modes and methods can facilitate personal attachment to those who experience their look or sound.

It should have been expected to finally meet Tilly Norwood because she is not the first creation by humans who synthesized a look-alike from various data sources of aesthetics, behavior and communication. Indeed, using AI, a group of Danish informatics designers have done magic of using data from all sources (movies and actors) to let the world see what I would call a “designer’s human”.

And many viewers, other than the actors who see some facets of their persona embedded in Tilly, have already expressed their attraction to Tilly.

… So, as I enjoyed the sunset with my dog snoring next to my chair, I thought about a couple of “ancestors” to Tilly through human creation of, and attraction by those who transformed the un-real to a mythology over the ages.

First, I recalled that in high school we had learned about the mythology of a Sylph which was proposed by Paracelsus, a Swiss alchemist in the 16^th century.  The sylph was always a human-looking female, and ethereal. Interestingly, the sylph was supposed to be mortal but did not have a soul, yet it could gain an immortal soul by marrying a human!

We also learned that the alchemist’s nymph was renamed Sylphide in the 1800s in French literature. Now the ethereal sylph was “re-engineered” as a fairy, an attractive female.

Needless to say, we were totally captivated by the idea of a sylphide! And today, a slender, attractive and mysterious woman is called a sylphide in French.

… As my curiosity about Tilly continued after the sunset, I remembered the story of a famous Cypriot king, Pygmalion, who disenchanted from women in Cyprus, carved a life-size statue of a woman who had all the attractive traits he could not find in women. And, he fell in love with the statue and, having finally found his ideal woman, never married.

More, he was so obsessed by his own creation that he asked Aphrodite, the goddess of love, to give life to the statue, and his wish was granted. Finally, through his “putting-together” of the ideal woman, Pygmalion married Galatea.

 

So, Tilly was created using data from countless actresses, acting moments in films, and facial and body characteristics about famous women. All were put together with AI technology, and now she is being proposed to be hired for movie/advertisement roles for which she could be programmed and ready. Still, she is as ethereal as a Sylphide, and as much as a synthesis of desires as Galatea was.

Hmm. Is it too capricious to imagine that in the near future, perhaps through open AI codes, driven people could synthesise their own desideratas and create their own comfort with neo-sylphides, soulmates without a soul? 

… That makes me smile, as I still use mechanical film cameras for my photography, and spend hours in the darkroom to print a couple of photos the way I like…

 

PS/ Regarding the photo of the car at the top of the page – I took it in Florida, a few years ago. I could not find the right context to use it, so it has been dormant among my rejected photos box.

As I was writing this essay, it occurred to me that whoever drove that truck wanted something that reflected the aesthetics of his hidden secret. He used parts from the kitchen, the garage, the plumbing supply, and created his own image of a car.

I wonder if he gave it a name.

 

October 3, 2025

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

Like a June Bug on a Hot Pan

 

 

The road I took was already taken by many

My compass was in my chest

And I followed no one

For my path came with no cost

To take it

Alone

 

I kept my own time

And I made time for time

As all races come with a pace

And brown eyes dream

Of promises

Of simple times

When paths cross

Before sunrise

 

I drank from the fountains

Of joy and grief

My palm folded, my eyes open wide

With thirst a traveler knows

When trains leave

And poems become

Simple

Words

 

The road I took was already taken

By many

 

 

September 21, 2025

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

 

Photo taken in Zagreb, Croatia

Not Learning Being In Two Places At Once

 

 

It is a landscape

Where sunsets

And sunrises

Share

The space

Of an August

Rain

 

Where

Unshaved men

And women of no

Age

Share sage flower

Without promise

To rub

Their hands

With gratitude

 

Where

Cities of steel

March to ocean fronts

To stay

Away

From what men

Can do

When unwelcomed

To the silence

Of a secret

Whisper

 

Where

Red-tailed hawks

Build their

Eyrie

In brush

Above

A quail nest

To keep them

Safe

 

When

Sunsets and sunrises

Make the

Landscape

For August

Rain

In the

Same space

Where once

Unshaved men

And women of no

Age

Rubbed their hands

With

Sage

Flower

And smiled

To

Secret

Whispers

 

August 21, 2025

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

I took this photo in front of the Colosseum in Rome

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing (T.S Elliot, Four Quatrets)

 

I went to the funeral of a mentor and friend exactly half a century after we met.

At the airport I recalled moments of our working together around the world. The vast communication we maintained about the arts, sharing our writings, paintings and sculpture. We published scientific works together and for decades taught two generations of public health students.

The last year of his life he did not recall who I was.

… While waiting for my flight back, I recalled the lines from T.S Elliot in “East Coker” about waiting without hope. I had read these lines before when faced with the dilemma of acceptance. And in the stillness of my await in an airport where all around me were eager to return to homes and the familiar scent of a warm bed were their siren song, I thought about all that I had found in waiting. Even though I was an explorer, carrying my body over continents or when, in the stillness of moments, letting my mind take flight.

But I have always engaged with the moment, and often engaged the moment in the process of waiting. Now, I found T.S Elliot’s “East Coker” perfect for my returning from a funeral.

Old men ought to be explorers

Here or there does not matter

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion

Through the dark cold and empty desolation,

The wave cry, the wing cry, the vast waters

Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

 

… It was at this moment of reflection when a woman sat in front of me, took her phone out of her bag and in a prostrate position stared at her phone for a long while. In await. For a message to come through. Perhaps for a promise or an apology.

 

And the last lines from the “East Coker” took on a whole new reality.

 

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing;

wait without love,

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

 But the faith and the love are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

 

 

August 10, 2025

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

Love Is a Rebellious Bird That No One Can Tame (From Habanera in Bizet’s Carmen Opera)

 

 

It is Saturday and I picked up a book of poetry, as I do most weekends. My dog knows the routine, so he found his spot next to my painting easel and let go of a gentle sigh.

 

I did not read poetry in July. It was a difficult month and my mood was to melancholy. I was glad when August announced itself and the desert welcomed me back. So it was appropriate for me to reread for the n^th time the classic poem by Arthur Rimbaud “Une Saison en Enfer” (A Season in Hell).

But somehow, the famous lines of Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen drove me away from the poem. I started whistling and the lines kept repeating in my head:

L'amour est un oiseau rebelle
Que nul ne peut apprivoiser

…
L'amour est enfant de bohème
Il n'a jamais, jamais, connu de loi

 

(Love is a rebellious bird
That no one can tame

…
Love is a bohemian child
He never, ever knew any law)

 

Hmm.

I searched for the B&W, 1964 video of Maria Callas singing Habanera. My favorite interpretations of that operatic passage from Carmen are by Callas and Elina Garanča. But today, the extraordinary coloratura voice of Callas was not what I desired. Rather it was Garanča’s mezzo-soprano timbre and her range of emotional interpretation that I was craving.

When I started playing Garanča’s Habanera as she portrayed the teasing and playful Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera in 2009 (my favorite of all her other interpretations over the years), I knew I had gotten over July. Even my dog opened his eyes and was happy to see me enjoying the moment. Then, he went back to sleep.

As the 6 or so minutes of the video were ending, I recalled another moment from a few years ago. I was reading poetry when I heard a loud hit on my window glass. I looked out and a hummingbird had misjudged its space and hit the glass in flight. I went out and picked up the bird, which to my delight, was alive but seemed in shock after the accident. I immediately took a picture with my phone hoping that it will “come to its senses“and fly away soon.

Which he did.

….I did not read Rimbaud today. But the memory of that moment when the hummingbird left my open palm reminded me of Habanera’s message.

 

August 2, 2025

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

“Le Spleen de Paris”: the Posthumously Published Prose Poems Book of Charles Baudelaire, circa 1869

 

 

It was a hot weekend in the Arizona. But like in any desert, the nights remain cool allowing for long walks with my dog before sunrise and close to midnight. The rest of the weekend I spent reading. This time I revisited the “prose poems” of Baudelaire known as Le spleen de Paris, a collection of fifty prose poems published in 1869, posthumously.

Written in paragraph form like prose, Baudelaire’s work deals with the Parisian life through a musicality and aesthetic outlook one finds in his poems. He has used the word Spleen before in his previous works to describe his dislike of many aspects of life. In this case, it is specifically about aspects of life in Paris that he covers through a writing genre which was adopted years later by another famous and rebellious French poet, Arthur Rimbaud.

As I read “Les Fenêtres” (The Windows) I recalled a photo I had taken in 2019. After a second reading, I let my pencil slide on a yellow pad page. I often take notes of the moments a poem (or prose) inspires me during lecture.

Here is what my pencil tip left behind:

 

So let the window half-open

And recall skies in rain

Eyes in surprise taken

And words on lips forgotten

 

Summer rain and the sea deaf

To the cry of returning waves

Let the window half-closed

Salty winds keep your candles in dark

 

And in the stillness of the unsaid

Forget about skies in rain

And barefoot and the briny breeze in your hair

Dance on the beach

 

But leave the window wide open

 

June 29, 2025

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

 

PS/ I found a masterful translation of “Les Fenêtres” by Emily Leithauser at https://www.literarymatters.org

Cielo a Pecorelle

 

 

I did not find

The wind had taken away

What the summer rain

Had forgotten to bring

 

I did not promise

The mossy rock had left no scars

On bare feet awaiting the waves

That forgot to swell

 

I did not let go

Broken dreams

Heal under the harvest moon

And become a name

I once knew

To spell

 

Yet, I have wondered

Like a wandering cloud

If the summer rain

Ever dropped a tear or two

On that mossy rock

By the bluest sea

 

June 22, 2025

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

The Death of an Old Man is Like a Library Burning to Ashes (African Proverb)

 

 

 

He was not an old man, but age did not wait for him to grateful. In fact, his dog looked older than he was, and it was his sixth 6 dog of his life.

“You find inspiration in all the things that make moments non-memorable” I once told him.

“And you, when you take a photo, do you look only at the subject you had in mind to capture?” his response was. “Or do you celebrate, under your loupe, looking at all the details, shapes, and perhaps stories that had found their way into your film’s negative strip when you were focused on the subject you had in mind?”

… We all eventually remember what we thought we had forgotten. It can be words, images, sentiments, taste or colour. But we do remember even when we are unaware how past experiences find their space in what we cherish, what we build, what we paint, or what we write. They find their space in who we were and who we become.

“And I assume you have something to share about why and how the morning dew is more important to you than the rare rain storms in the desert?”

“It is all about how you transfer your inspiration from one object, one event or one person to another. I used to think that I had to be inspired by the idea, the subject, or a pair of brown eyes to feel closeness, perhaps even love to that subject. But it was when I found inspiration in its own right, without a smell, colour, shape or words that I learned how I could transfer it to all things around me. Finding inspiration outside a person will allow you to be inspired by that person.”

… We all eventually remember what we thought we had forgotten. Or wanted to forget because we had not learned how to incorporate a person or event into who we were becoming. There was no space, no place, no urgency for such an inclusion.

 

“Sometimes I repeat thing, or maybe things get repeated. It is not spiritual, but all around us is repetitive. I think that when one finds that rhythm in small things, they end up like a rhyme. And they become poetry. I know that means something to you, yes?”

 

… Today, for whatever reason, I recalled this conversation which took place under far away skies, next to a sea, at a time when we all thought times would remain calm and predictable.

And I let my mind fly free, or fall free just because I had not revisited these words for a long while.

And somewhere during that flight or free fall, I thought about a famous French poem by Apollinaire, “Le Pont Mirabeau”.

Why? Because of the suggestion that all things around us are repetitive, and that identifying the rhythm of repetition helps us see the larger picture.

Here are the opening lines of the poem I still remember vividly:

 

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

Et nos amours

Faut-il qu’il men souvienne

La joie venait toujours après la peine

 

(Under the Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine

And our loves

Must it remind me

That joy always came after the pain)

 

 

And I realised why this poem came back to visit me: it was because we were taught that Apollinaire used repetitive words and imagery to help the reader appreciate the scenery, the feelings, and the moment. Just like what my friend was telling me about how he transferred inspiration from outside the subject to the subject to appreciate, love and celebrate that subject.

For the poet, it was a style of writing he called calligram; for my friend it was the way he found serenity; and I wondered if I had learned lessons from poetry and a wise man without knowing it. Had my past decades, my photography, my own writings found inspiration for the sake of inspiration, and then helped me celebrate life moments and people through that cache of inspiration ready for those red-letter moment?

 

I do not know. Perhaps the photo I took on a snowy day has the answer. It is all about simplicity but also the calm snow covered bushes provide, as the snow repetitively falls upon them, to transform the scenery, to make it new with every snow flake.

Yet, every snow flake is different.

But I will not have a chance to ask him – I learned that he passed a few years ago.

 

May 21, 2025

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025