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
“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 31st 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
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 16th 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
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
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
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
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
nth 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
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
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
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
I had left my coffee cup in the car, and when I
picked it up I saw a serpent in it! Well, not a real one, but the grounds had
dried into a Rorschach “coffeeblots”. I took a picture before I wash the cup.
So, it was an opportunity to proceed with a
self-psychoanalysis, and to revisit an essay I had written a decade ago about
reading coffee grounds https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2015/08/reading-tea-leaves-in-arabic-coffee.html
Immediately, I saw a threatening canine head, jaws
open, a fierce look in the eye. Wolf?
Dog? Coyote? And, the snake was growing out of the canine head with a perfectly
shaped head of its own, even its tongue was out. The canine and the snake were
in a similar posture but looking in opposite directions.
Here is a crop of the canine
And the one of the snake
Ok, now that I let my imagination transform a dirty
coffee cup into a story, I wondered what these interpretations meant in tasseography.
As I was inquiring about this ancient art of reading
coffee grounds and predicting the future, I learned a few things about coffee
and the human propensity to see things where things did not exist (pareidolia).
It is
believed that coffee was first cultivated in Ethiopia and found its way to
Yemen and today’s Iran. From there coffee became the prime social drink in the
Levant, the region of the Middle East with all the ceremonies associated with
its preparation and serving, including fortune telling by reading the grounds
left in the cups. Eventually it found its way to present day Turkey and from
there to the world in the 17th century.
The human propensity to see predictions in various
organic media proceeded that period of time and tasseography, though. Indeed
reading tea leaves was popular in China, so was reading goat entrails part of
ancient Greek and Roman cultures. And let us not forget the macabre practice of
Druids in ancient Celtic societies (Britain, Ireland and Gaul) of examining the
entails of human sacrifice victims to consult deities.
As I was doing my research, I had a smile on my face
reading that during the Ottoman period coffee ground readings, of course in
cups of Turkish coffee, were popular in harems. Indeed, there were “professional”
tasseographers who read the ladies’ cups to make predictions about love and
pregnancy. However it is believed that
this art was primarily a matriarchal one, where older women taught the secrets
of interpretation to their daughters.
And that was the reason for my smile, as an old
memory, somehow hidden in the remote storage areas of my brain, came back as I
washed my cup of coffee.
… I was perhaps 6 years old when I first witnessed
an old tradition. Women in our neighborhood would periodically gather in our apartment
to have a “Doing the Sugar Day.” It was a socialization day when women would
bring pastries and sugary treats, make coffee (Turkish, Arabic or Greek) all
day long, and help each other with epilation! It was called a “sugar day”
because the full body removal of hair was done via a paste made of melted sugar
and lemon juice, not wax per se. So, no men were allowed in the place for that
day, only prepubescent boys and girls for whom that gathering, plus the sweet
treats, were a much anticipated play day.
I recall the women drinking coffee, listening to the
gossip born from reading the grounds, smoking cigarettes, and often sighing in discomfort
as their bodies were covered in that sugary paste which were lifted and pulled abruptly
to pull hair from their roots. Eventually, especially when the epilation was
for facial hair, these women had swollen and reddish skin. But they were happy,
as were we kids mimicking the sugar paste epilation on each other.
And at night, my father was always happy to have a
few of my mother’s the left over vol-au-vent
pastries filled with homemade apricot jam, with his own cup of coffee.
In retrospect, these gatherings were like a scene from a harem, and I think those sessions were my initial and comprehensive
introduction to female anatomy…
The
last mystery from my cup: As I was looking at the pictures
I took of the coffee grounds, I discovered yet another animal at the very
bottom of the cup – it was a black cat, in perfect posture, ears perked, with his tail
showing, looking at the snake and the canine!
A black cat and a snake are interpreted as a bad omen and a deception in tasseography. That cannot be a good thing, I thought.
So I forewent another cup of coffee, make my favorite lemon drop mate with matcha
and green tea leaves, and sat by my laptop to write about the moment and my
memories.
I wonder what my readers will see in these pictures
during their own fortune telling.
May 17, 2025
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025
