A Donkey Turning a Millstone is not Trying to Press Oil from Sesame Seed. He is Fleeing the Blow That Was Just Struck and Hoping to Avoid the Next (Rumi)

Millstones grind

Like memories do

And all becomes powder

And all flies with the evening wind

I have seen desert Marigold flower

Ignore the sun and heat

And only drink of the moon

To give a shade to the quail

But when the rain washes away

All the comfort of the harsh days

What remains are deep scars

That have no wounds

That have no memory

Of the blow

Just the patience

Of survival

About the Photo: I took it in Morocco with a 1970's Minolta Autocord TLR camera.

August 16, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

National Awakening Through Poetry, Prose and Music: the Finnish, Estonian and Armenian Historical Experiences

It has been more than a century since the Finns discovered enough of an identity to separate themselves from the Russians. Indeed it was in 1917 that today’s Finland was born. And I was thinking about the discovery of identity lately, not of a tribe or a nation but of an individual. I posted an essay about monosyllabs that got me a lot of email feedback from readers especially from Northern Europe. In my essay (https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2019/07/monosyllabic.html) I said that at some point we do what helps us become who we inherently are instead of trying to minimize antagonism. I was speaking about individuals, but I think it also relates to communities and nations.

… Looking back at human history, it seems like there are a few descriptors of human groups that eventually result in an identity. These are – customs, cuisine, costumes and geographic contingency. Eventually these influence dialects that become variations of a common language. When the four “C”s and the language converge and come together at a point in history, I think one gets an identity.

And, as all epiphanies of identity, the result is independence.

… I approached my education about Finland and Estonia by watching Finnish movies and TV series on Netflix. Why? I do not know. I had never seen Finnish, Swedish or Estonian TV series and decided it would give me a glimpse into cultures that I know very little about. So, for a week after sunset I watched dramatic movies and crime series in their original language with subscripts/subtitles. It took me about 10 minutes to realize that there was no foul language, no blood, no guns and no car chases. In addition all special effects were left out and what we were offered were human interactions and introspection. It was refreshing and I was in a delightful comfort zone.

So, I looked for a translation of the Kalewala. It seemed the logical thing to do to understand how poetry would have helped a nation find its identity. A national awakening through a montage of folk poetry is not unique – many nations have distilled their identity through music, poetry and storytelling. Yet the Finnish Kalewala seems unique in the sense that the collection of poetry and the montage of the various parts were the vision of an individual, Elias Lönnrot, and which was then organized into an epic poem culminating in the 1917 separation of the Finnish from the Soviets and declaring independence and sovereignty.

This line of learning led me to Kalevipoeg, which is the compilation of prose from Estonia that lead to the Estonian awakening and identity. Both documents, poetry or prose, mention Kalevi as the giant who fought evil and created two nations.

… As an Armenian, I know that the creation of an alphabet or the systematic compilation of folk stories and music creates the tangible difference between communities and geo-political regions. Mesrop Mashdots, an Armenian linguist, created the Armenian alphabet in 405 AD presumably using the Greek alphabet as a guide. And in the late 18^th century a cleric, Komidas Vartabet collected folk music and songs before he suffered mental and psychological meltdown witnessing the Hamidian (Ottoman) massacres of Armenians. He spent the last 20 years of his life in a paranoid state in an asylum. But what he compiled and saved determined an identity that more than a century later is taught in schools in the Diaspora and in the motherland.

I grew up with that identity so I understand very well how in Sufism Majnooon and Layla is the most influential Islamic literary work based on love and rejection, and how Kalewala and Kalevipoeg would awaken national identities. I cannot fathom that Shakespeare had not read Majnooon and Layla, and that the Finns and Estonians did not know about the 12 giants in mythology all descendants of Titan. Or, that the Irish giant Fionn Mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) fought the Scottish giant Bennandoner to allow passage from Ireland to Scotland.

.. But all that is myth and legend -- now I need to just figure out why I so much like the Finnish drama series on and especially Pihla Viitala on Netflix!

August 10, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

 Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn MacCool)

Permissionem

To give

As the sand clock

Reminds you

Of the shore

Where you left

The promise

To never

Return

    To receive

    As the sand clock

    Gets half full

    And you know

    That the next half

    Runs faster

    Thru the memory

    Of what you were

    Allowed

    In permission

          To hold

          The sand clock

          With fingers that ache

          But not rotate it

          Rather watch 
          The sand 
          Run

          Like the wind in your hair

          When on that shore

          You once thought

          Time was just a word

               And then

               To take your shoulder as back as

               It can go

               And throw the sand clock

               Against the memory

               Of the mossy rocks

               That kept returning waves

               From reaching the shore

July 30, 2019

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Monosyllabic

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

I did not answer, as the answer was obvious.

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

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

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

Sky, sun, stay, eyes and heart.

Trust and guilt. Void and feel.

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

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

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

July 28, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Naufrage

Capturing what wants to be free

Without the veil to hide its spirit

Of monosynaptic simplicity

Letting all impulse to become action

While tying the wooden canoe

To a tree trunk out of the muddy water

And whispering lines

From past moonlights

The feather dropped in flight

Will never ride Northern winds

As the name left between the lines

Will often want to be free

Free to call the journey silly

Free to dip old bread in onion soup

While the canoe hopes

For new shores and wind

There is nothing after the regret

Of not letting the feather be free alone

For when we untie the wooden canoe

The river never finds its ocean

It just sinks in the sand

Of days we once thought

Would last

For times we would have

July 26, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Photo taken with a 1954 Soviet Zorkii camera

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

July 13, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Lamiaceae

To wake up with Rosemary

Surrounding my senses

In purple and blue flowers

At sunrise

In the desert

I need to have slept

Under the vast skies

The night before

And remember

How the waves never die

On the white beaches

Of the bluest sea

Where I spent my youth

And left it there

For it was spent

To wake up with Rosemary

With fragrance of days past

In purple and blue flowers

Next to the bluest of seas

I should have dreamt

The night before

Under the vast skies

Of the burning desert

July 11, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019