Flattening Identity

Of all the belongings one can have, belonging to an identity and keeping it is perhaps what defines us.

Born as an immigrant, I have been an immigrant on every continent where I have lived. I suppose one can call it “immigrant recidivism” when one never becomes indigenous to the context, even after decades of being there.

While that is the observation or outcome, the reason of the “thousand shades of an immigrant” surely varies. Some try to “melt” and become part of the pot’s porridge; others want to find a win-win alternative to remain an immigrant yet be mostly unnoticed as such; and there are those who feel at peace only when their inherited identity is protected and cherished only by remaining an immigrant.

I have written about identity, published essays and books in different languages, and ended up with a motto that seems to encapsulate my observations about myself and others. I have proposed that “There is no “I” in Identity”. That, being who we are, while it can be a personal decision, is often defined by who we were. And if it is true that with time and age we become our parents, then I think the definition of identity evolves over time, and eventually takes a dominant posture along that time spectrum.

… I finished reading Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat: a Brief History of the Twenty-First Century” and while the book is not about identity, it seems to indirectly touch on that topic. There was a specific passage in there where the author meets with young Indian job-seekers in India and helps them learn how to speak American English, specifically the pronunciation of words as Minnesotans would. The goal was for these young Indians to do telemarketing and not letting folks in America know that they were calling from India. This supports the book’s thesis that the world is increasingly flat and that the opportunities are available to all no matter where one is on this otherwise round globe.

But that passage on page 27 ended with this:

“On the surface, there is something unappealing about the idea of inducing other people to flatten their accents in order to compete in a flatter world. But before you disparage it, you have to taste just how hungry these kids are to escape the lower end of the middle class and move up. If a little accent modification is the price they have to pay to jump a rung of the ladder, then so be it—they say.”

I looked at that page for a long while. The author was talking about a purposeful changing of accent, but my mind was to change of identity. I have seen many who tried to melt and become part of that pot’s porridge by first changing their accent. Then changing their name (I have received many calls from India where the caller identified himself as “Burt” or herself as “Sandy”…) Then stop mentioning where they were born but instead stress where in America or The United Kingdom they went to college.

… As I continued to look at that page and letting my mind travel free, I recalled a line by James Allen from his work As a Man Thinketh:

                                              The oak sleeps in the acorn

Indeed. And in the case of identity, we are both oak and acorn: while we have extended deep roots in our ground, we need to make sure our acorns remember they came from oak trees. Not just this oak tree but the ones before.  In some way, the oak sleeping in the acorn need to have a dream.  An old dream.  A dream forests of oak trees have had, even if many have been cut with rusty axes.

The acorns have survived.

… As I turned the page, I remembered a line from Paulo Coelho in The Alchemist:

     The only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.

An oak tree drops many acorns. It does not matter if some do not wake up from that dream.

February 9, 2015

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2015

Frankincense

It was a feeble flame

But it warmed my house

It burned upon its own ashes

And upon ancient scars

From dusty temples of India

To floating altars of Kyoto

From Taiwan and Morocco

Incense somehow paved my way

How the swirl of a gray plume of smoke

Can fill one’s soul of grace and fear

How a trembling flame of sunsets makes us hope

Where colors exhale their brightness and peace

It was a feeble flame upon nuggets of resin

Trees in the Sahara had dripped one secret night

Yet they found their way to my room somehow

To take me where a kid I once was

Life was all sunrise then

And when the sun let its hair down to bathe

In the bluest of seas

I did not think of sunsets

…Tonight

It is dark outside

But that swirling flame

Makes me think about sunrises, again

February 7, 2015

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2015

The Spice Road: From Lebanon to Mongolia

I have lived half of my life around the Mediterranean Sea and Arabian Gulf. Among the dearest memories are those about food and the joie de vivre preparing, cooking and sharing food brings to social interactions. But more than food, my olfactile memories are about spices while preparing the food.

As a kid, then a young man I could not think of any kitchen without the aromatic presence of cumin, cloves, cardamom and anise. Rice was just rice without saffron; lamb lost its identity without cloves and garlic; morning coffee had to have cardamom in it; and evening coffee rose water.  As such, food and its preparation have been part of my appreciation, celebration and enjoyment of many cultures and societies I have had the privilege to be part of, be adopted by, and miss them when life took me from continent to continent.

But, like the ancient travelers of the Silk Road, I have taken the spices or at least the recipes with me. I still cook; experiment and love gatherings when from fish to lamb to hare, my new culinary creations are tried and often enjoyed… (1)

… So it was no surprise that when I saw the book “Cumin, Camels, and Caravans: A Spice Odyssey” (2) by Gary Paul Nabhan I decided to read it on a foggy January morning.

It is a very well researched book on the origins of spice trade. But the main thesis of the book is that the Silk Road and Spice Road had unified many parts of the world through culinary and economic factors. He shows recipes in Mongolia that are identical to recipes in Morocco or Lebanon; and spices that are commonly used both for medicinal and culinary purposes.  In some ways spices were the vectors through which a “culinary colonialism” took place with grand and sometimes not so desirable consequences.  For example saffron weighs less than gold but was worth multiple times more. Hence 600 pounds of saffron on a camel’s back were a true treasure and pushed merchants to cross deserts and continents. Unfortunately the wealth from spices also was a factor in military colonization and wars.

While many of the arguments and ethno-botanical analyses were not totally new to me, the story of Frankincense was a true discovery. This gum that oozes from tree trunks in the Nejd of Southern Oman has influenced my childhood. Indeed this fragrant, aromatic resin is used as an air purifier and religious ceremonial incense in many cultures, and has a central role in the Orthodox Gregorian church, including Armenian. As a kid I recall my grandfather burning Frankincense in a silver, ornate burner he had brought with him from Konya. I still have that burner, but no incense had been burned in it for decades… Here is the Frankincense (called Khoung in Armenian) burner of my grandfather:

As I read the book, I also realized that many of the traditions of the Silk and Spice Road are still continued both in recipes, songs, and attitudes toward life. As a photographer I have taken pictures in the ancient world and now I realize they still represent many aspects of what the book describes the historical traditions associated with cumin, camels and caravans.

So I went to my pictures from Morocco and chose a few to illustrate.

Gary P. Nabhan describes cities in the desert where spices were traded along the Spice Road. The places where the trade took place were called funduk, which made me smile as that is today the word used for “hotel” in Arabic. Now I know the origin of that word—it was the place where traders stayed, their camels got a rest, and they did business. What a wonderful historical testimonial! I have taken a picture of a small town in Morocco with a panoramic lens. Now for me that is the funduk, well preserved.

Camels have to be part of the picture, and I do have a couple from near the Sahel. Time seems to have stopped in those pictures.

The market, or souk, is still there and again, spices and vegetables are sold in the same context and tradition as what is believed to be the case thousands of years ago. Here is a spice merchant and streets sellers of vegetables and roots. Were those pictures taken a couple of thousand years ago?

… The author ends the book by saying:

“We must wake up and smell the incense – the kind that pervades the air where we live, among those for whom we care.”

I now smell the incense through my olfactile memories, among the memories of all those who were part of my life and who are not of this world anymore. A life lived in celebration of togetherness where cumin, frankincense and clove were part of the love we shared.

January 28, 2015

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2015

(1)   For those of you who read French, the last chapters of my new book “A Quand le Vol Paris- Ėrevan?”(2014) have some of my recipes. Here is the link to the description of the book: http://vahezen.blogspot.com/2014/04/this-posting-will-be-different-from-my.html

(2)   Gary Paul Nabhan “Cumin, Camels, and Caravans: A Spice Odyssey”. University of California Press, pp.305, 2014.

Moonstruck

I may not know why rivers run

Without pride and their shadows soft

But last night away from the moon

I cried for what I secretly know

It may have been the lonesome owl

Perched atop the barren oak tree

Or the smoke from a seasoned chimney

Burning woods of past proud trees

And I knew then that a poem

Was like the old woods burning slow

As if memories crackling and warm

I once cherished and are now smoke

Yet I do not want to hear or know

Why rivers run to find their sea

Last night hiding from the moon

I secretly smiled for a long while

January 18, 2015

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2015

Kisses and Hugs

In the past two weeks I received cards and email from friends living in 3 continents. While the notes had personal characters, most shared the same last line: XO.

As I read a similar email today, I sat back and smiled: I did not know the origin of XO! It was time for me to learn.

... At first pass, my search yielded mixed messages: the “X” seems to come from the Middle Ages, but the “O” seems to come from nowhere!  There is consistent support to the documentation that the “X” was used in Europe as a signature by those who could not write and read. And it seems that it does have a religious background as the “X” is the first letter in XPIƩTOƩ, or Christ in Greek. The idea seems to be that, by marking an “X”, one pledges sincerity in signing a document.

But what makes it personal? Isn’t an “X” just and X? How would one know it was this and not that person who signed that document?

This is where things get exciting: After writing/drawing the”X”, the signatory was expected to seal it with a kiss!!!! That was the oath of honesty for the transaction.  

… I sat back on my chair and thought that today we still face similar situations when people who cannot write dip their thumb in ink and make an imprint. While the thumb print is more specific in identifying a person than perhaps the imprint of lips, the idea is the same. I even learned that the Japanese Samurai had a similar method of signing, this time substituting their blood to the ink on their thumb.

.. Of course “Sealing it with a kiss” is a popular statement between lovers when sending a letter. It is ultimately romantic, tender and very personal. It is the telemetry of an actual kiss…

Interestingly, the most recent song entitled “Seal it With a Kiss” belongs to Brittney Spears. Hmm, somehow I would have expected it to be a song by Nat King Cole or Frank Sinatra. And when I checked the lyrics of that song I realized that the original intent, in the Middle Ages to seal a document with a kiss, was very different from what Brittney Spears had in mind…!

But the romantic idea of “sealing with a kiss” seems adopted universally. Indeed there was a 2011 very popular drama series on Chinese television called, well yes, “Sealed With a Kiss”! Further, in the past 50 years Bobby Vinton, Bryan Hyland and Jason Donovan sang a song called “Sealed With a Kiss”. Finally, there is a myriad of stores on the spectrum of camp equipment to bridal gowns with the same name…

Clearly, that medieval tradition of officially sealing a document has found a pan-human resonance in all aspects of our expressions and services.

… But what about the “O”? And how come that we translate “XO” as “Hugs and Kisses” if the “X” is a kiss?  Is the “O” a hug? What is its origin?

Well, there seems to be no consensus as to where the “O” came from. It is said that it is a recent Western construct to make a new abbreviation to a signature meaning “Hugs and Kisses”.

.. Hmm. Next time I get email ending in “XO” I will write back asking the sender what it means.

January 11, 2015

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2015

Coincidence and Confirmation Bias

“There are no coincidences” I have heard often. “There is a cause for everything.”

Not a reason, but a cause.

Things seem to happen unexpectedly - people, ideas, images, and situations do find me off-guard and I find myself unable to immediately decide if the coming together of multiple ideas or situations is random or purposeful.

I posted an essay(1) a few days ago and got a lot of email from the Philippines to Russia, all inherently saying the same thing: believing in coincidences is a mental laziness on my part when I do not push hard enough to find the cause.

Again not the reason but the cause. In other words, I should not ask Why but What.

…So, I contacted a colleague well respected within the circles of psychology. Our email “debate” was so delightful that I decided to paraphrase some of it to show the progression of the communication which extended over two days.

                                                                                ***

“So, I am faced again with the dilemma of questioning if coincidences exist or if they are random but expected coming-together of events for which we do not have an explanation.”

“Why do you need an explanation?”

“Because I am trained to find the cause of things through investigation of events. The cause not only helps me interpret and explain, but also anticipate.”

“Therefore, you believe that for something to happen there should always be a cause?”

“Well, yes. Obviously you know better than I do about human nature and how we react to observations and events. Tell me, what have you learned in the past 40 years about our need to identify causality?”

“Ha, you sound like a radio interviewer who is looking for a sound bite! You really want me to summarize what I learned in a sentence?”

“Ok, tell me about coincidences and theories that explain how humans have dealt with coincidences.”

“That is also a tall order. Ok, to simplify things let me say that for this topic we can classify people into two groups: the empiricists and the mystics. The first group believes that coincidences are random collisions of events and, more importantly, that they can be explained by the laws of probability. In short, at some point something is bound to happen (Taoist, eh?)

The mystics, in contrast, believe that nothing happens without a purpose. As you know, Jung started this line of thinking by proposing the concept of synchronicity and influenced two generations of psychologists.”

“Yes, I know. But that never convinced me because synchronicity is the celebration of acausality: that things happen for a purpose but we cannot find a causal link. Eventually, it seemed to me that synchronicity is just an excuse for not finding the cause! You agree?”

“Not totally. A mystic has to believe in the purposefulness of what he cannot understand; and an empirically trained mind can only accept what it can understand. Both are, by fiat, valid inclinations.”

.. And then he turned his psychologist’s demeanor to discuss my personality.

“See, your challenge is that you do not fit well in either of these pure categories. I have known you for a long time, I have read your work, and I have seen you in various settings around the world. You are a mystic by birth, and an empiricist by training. Not a comfortable identity, my friend.”

Hmm.

“Ok, so I will not be comfortable looking for a cause only, and equally uncomfortable I am accepting a purposefulness that I cannot explain. Is that the case?”

“You can be comfortable with either or both, but not all the time. That is exactly why you are at a loss regarding coincidences. For you a coincidence is a rainbow over purposefulness and causality. It appears for a short while and you wonder if what you see really exists. It is like an illusion for you, but the mystic in you loves it. At the same time the empiricist scolds you saying “How dare you forget that if there is no causal relationship then it does not exist." 

I do not envy you.”

… We decided to call it a day and get back to our discussion, via email and across continents, the next day.

                                                                                      ***

“So, you thought more about the topic?” he asked.

“Of course. I even did some homework, as an empiricist! I learned that the word coincidence is derived from the Greek word Synkirian, which translates as “what occurs simultaneously by providential arrangement of circumstances.”  Is it possible that by construct, it is a mystical concept to which psychologists have tried to build an empirical framework?”

“You are not alone in such a proposal. But consider this: over the years I have, like Jung, asked my students what they think about this passage from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, when the Queen tells Alice that she is living backwards:

       “Living backwards! Alice repeated in great astonishment. “I never heard of such a thing!”

       “But there’s one great advantage in it” the Queen replied. “That one’s memory works both                          ways’”

       “I am sure MINE only works one way,” Alice remarked. “I can’t remember things before they                   happen.”

       “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked.

See what I mean? Causality makes you live backwards – there are things that we experience before they happen.”

..That sounded like the proposed idea of retrocausality by physicists. I have indeed read and written about this topic(2).

“Have you, as a photographer, taken pictures of people in the streets and in your darkroom seen faces appear on paper, faces you thought you had photographed before?” he continued.

This made me think. Probably. But I could not see the connection to synchronicity or coincidence.

“The human mind recognizes situations via patterns that are in our unconscious. A human face is the most recognizable pattern and strangers, people you never met, will remind you of others you have, and think that you had met them before. Further, you may think that it was a coincidence that you took a picture of a stranger when you were thinking about another person who looked just like this stranger. What you did is called apophenia, or our tendency of finding patterns where they do not exist; being sloppy with large amounts of data by injecting our preconceptions. In that sense you may say that coincidence is just a wishful thinking! See, I am not a mystic…”

I knew that. Still, I wanted to learn about a solid theory or interpretation that did not depend on a Queen, Alice or apophenia!

“So, let me put on my empiricist’s hat” I said. “Can we say that coincidence is a correlation out of meaningless data? That it has no causal basis, and it is observed because probability theory tells us one of these days such a correlation will happen?”

“Now you are neither a mystic nor an empiricist—you have degenerated into a skeptic!” he wrote back. "I have a simple suggestion which is based on a statement you published years ago. You once said “Correlation is the same as superstition – just because a black cat crossed the street before you fell, does not mean that you will fall every time you see a cat. You remember writing this?”

Yes, I did.

“Then, why not consider coincidence as another variant of superstition? There is no purpose, no cause. It was bound to happen by probability alone. Your unconscious did not unite you with a higher plan or goal. Your wondering about the Why vs. the What did not make a ripple in the fabric of time or place. You just have to accept that just because you cannot find causality; it does not mean that there was an acausal relationship. You are committing an interpretation bias, which psychologists have termed Confirmation Bias. In short, you are not letting go of your preconceptions as a mystic while trying to apply critical thinking on information that does not exist!

Friend, relax and just enjoy these probability surprises when they happen!”

… I took my time to answer.

“The Spanish say that a spice is a weed to which we have given a name. Are you telling me that coincidence is a common weed and we should not try to make a delicate spice from it?”

This time he took his time to reply. He simply sent me a smiley face in the body of his email.

(1)   http://toani.blogspot.com/2014/12/when-rocks-whisper-name.html

(2)   http://vahezen.blogspot.com/2014/03/hiraeththats-welsh-for-longing_4.html

December 26, 2014

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2014

Love-Time Quantum Mechanics

Perhaps reflections about the passing of time have preoccupied the human mind second only to our desire to understanding love. 

… This morning the sky is dark, it is a cold December day. My mind wonders about things I have wondered about in the past. Time has passed since and I have let it pass in peace.

But not peacefully. I have listened to its passage, I have challenged its pace, and I have shared it with love. This December cold morning reminds me of a line from Shakespeare:

                                       “The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time”

I must have had a different encounter with time than he did. My time has never been inaudible, or noiseless. It has been stream and river, volcano and silent valley. My time has been noisy, crowded and lonely; it has been gut tearing and sweet amber. It has been an open wound and charming ambrosia. My time has reminded me that it was passing and that there was nothing I could do about it.

… Time and love are like games we play, but games with no rules. There has to be a winner in every game, and time wins no matter the opponent. Love makes losing sweet, acceptable, and often desirable.  And we play these games differently during our own travel between the past and present: we do not get better at these games, just that we realize that love stops making the losing acceptable.

It is attributed to Heraclitus the saying that:

                                      “Time is a game played beautifully by children”

I am not a child, nor that once young man who shared his time with love. And with people. So is my game weaker? Less beautiful now?

Or perhaps there is nothing relative about time and love. That we are unnecessary by-standers in the game where time plays against itself and love watches the game with little interest. Perhaps we have tried, since the beginning of time, to insert ourselves into that game.

I think that we were never invited.

If therefore time and love are not relative, then they should be absolute. I do not know of a more beautiful line that the one by Khalil Gibran when he wrote:

                                          “Love has no desire than to fulfill itself”

Do we have a role in that process? Or like hungry birds we descend upon the fields where the harvest of love was done and we glean what was left behind?

… It is darker now outside and it is that sudden calm before snow starts falling. All will be calm, clean and covered soon. But my mind refuses to separate love from time. Perhaps because I still remember how to play that game beautifully, like children who do not understand time. Or like old men who have played that game and are better losers now.

And, as a temporary victory for my belief, I recite a line from Jorge Luis Borges that makes me as peaceful as the mountain I see from my window getting ready for snow:

     “Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time”

Let it snow now.

December 13, 2014

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2014