I-dentity

I do not remember her name, only that she was from South Lebanon and very bright in quantitative thinking. I was from Beirut and read poetry. Yet, we both were biology students and had already decided that we will continue our lives in a medical field.

One evening, after finishing our organic chemistry lab work, we sat on a bench atop the campus of the American University of Beirut and watched the sea. She asked me if I like theories or postulates. I did not know the difference and replied that I like physics.

… Thirty-five years have passed since my student days, and I had not thought about quantum mechanics, or that evening at the university. Until I picked up Walter Isaacson’s biography of Einstein while on vacation in the New England mountains. And I had an epiphany!

I recalled that a genetics-biology class had introduced us to the theories of existence (or were they postulates?)  From the “primordial amino acid soup” to the probabilistic coupling of atoms, elements and minerals, I remembered a theory that had no attraction to me then, but now, thirty-five years later, suddenly appeared endearing. It was the theory of “Directed Spermia”, which had its counter-thesis as “Pan-Spermia”.  The former proposed that existence was selectively initiated, while the latter argued that it was universal in its happening and timing, hence not directed. I do not recall how the teacher approached the question of whom or what directed or magnanimously sperminated the building blocks upon our planet for cells to form, then divide in a precise and repetitive way and create organisms. But that day, I found a parallel in physics in the probability of quantum mechanics and the determinism of Newton.

I put the book down and let my mind wander, this time around a topic which has been an integral building block of my thoughts and writings for the past decade—the concept of identity.

At first glance, there seemed no reason why quantum mechanics, determinism and spermia theories should make me think about identity.  How can sub-atomic theories of probability for calculating the position and momentum of a particle draw bridges over the struggles of understanding why we are who we are?  Why would the memory of that evening talk with a classmate three decades ago return to me:  was I still struggling with theories and postulates?

I looked at the mountains, forgot to drink my dark roast coffee, and hung my head down to read more. But my mind was now speeding faster than all the equations formulated by Einstein, Bohr and Plank. I knew a vault was opened and I had to peep in. So I did.

Thirty years in the Western hemisphere taught me to respect the individual gravitas of pursuing a self-made identity. And yet when I find myself in different cultures I feel uneasy with the thought that we are who we make. I did not find the space or time, however, for introspection or detached exploration. The days went by, and I remained an Armenian who was also a Lebanese, a Canadian, and American, maybe even French.

I rediscovered my parents when they established a new life in France. Their outlook was now different having done what they wanted to do in life. It was now time to be old folks and cherish the essential simplicities. And I was now older and transformed into a friend to my parents, in addition to being a son. When my parents died in Paris a few years apart, I cleaned their apartment, saved all the papers, photographs and souvenirs I could. For days I looked into the only bathroom mirror like my dad did every morning while shaving. And I saw myself as him, and I found him in me. I realized that I brushed my teeth like he used to—same strokes, facial expressions, number of rinses with cold water. And I smiled at the discovery that I did still keep photographs in a similar way as my mom always did - in shoeboxes.

Back to Newton and his postulate that “nature is pleased with simplicity”. While I had read extensively esteemed works about identity and origins, I had no simple description of what it meant for me. I was uneasy with the fact that if someone said “explain to me what is identity, in a few words”, I could not do so. Yet, as an immigrant more than once, I knew that identity had been part of my behavior in countries and among people I lived. It has been a defining attribute that I certainly have presented to others and most often received good reception.  Now, I was wondering if, as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty, I was not able to define it because I could not pin-down its exact posturing throughout my days, but can only have a probabilistic estimate of what it has meant to me and to others.

Then, a silly play on words triggered a formulation.  As I was listening to the interview of a basketball coach on radio, he repeated the cliché saying that “there is no “I” in TEAM.” And I said to myself “there is no “I” in IDENTITY”.

What does it mean?

I think that I now know and can explain it. I think that is why determinism, pan-spermia and simplicity whirled in my thoughts since I brushed my teeth “in” my father’s partly de-silvered mirror. There is no “I” in identity-the discovery of it is simply contingent on our willingness to unearth it from within us.

What a relief!

… “Can you explain to me what is identity, in a few words?”

Yes. It is what you uncover from within you when you are ready. It is what you always had in you but did not let it surface because you were expected to be someone else. And for whatever reason, you went along with that expectation.

And, I smile, because it reminds me, again, of a saying my mother often repeated “When you search for beauty, look inside yourself first. If it is not already there, you will never recognize it in others.”

Now I understand.

August 25, 2012

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Hokhmah

Separate the veil from the wander

Your face will become

Like a teardrop on a rainy day

When the drop remains drop

When it becomes the fear of the broken

And the next goodbye

The next tremor a poet’s hands would give

An August night

In a train or near the water fountain

Or at the center of the middle of an old city

Full of traditions

Question destiny

In a thirst of communion

When the peaceful center of your revolt

Is destiny itself, anointed in times yet to accept

Times held together by the courtesy of the broken

That makes us ourselves

Makes us our parents

Makes us fearful of rainy nights when the only fire

Is to the tip of a candle

When the candle consumes its flame before sunset

When morning mist is never dew

But just cold

As river pearls wrapped around your ankles, in revolt,

To gamble and lose

Become large and small

In grace and in mercy

For the contraction of death

Is just a sunset, or a bird fallen

From its nest.

Bring wine

At dawn

But let us not drink

Bring love

But let us resist

Bring time

For we need to remember

That the pearls around your ankle

Once were of the river

Where a teardrop, on a rainy day

Remained drop

In fear that its salt

Would change destiny

And let that river run

Beneath your veil

And touch your face

Before the dreaming poet

Sang his words to you

Because of you

And upon your lips, anointed of time and fear,

He stayed for a while

Till he found his poem

And new fears

May 13, 2009

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Robin of Urban Woods

“Swallow, beautiful bird of spring

    Where do your wings take you

      Why do you fly so fast?

        So, fly to my home in Ashdarag

          And make your nest 

            Under my ancestral home’s

              Roof top”

I grew up, as an Armenian boy, with folkloric songs. Every Armenian mother, at some time, sang the “Dzidzernag” (Swallow) ballad to their sons. As a nation forced by history to be immigrants, waiting for those who left is a common theme of the sad songs mothers sing with one eye wet and the other on the road. Will my son return? And migratory birds, with their return every spring, are nature’s reminders that a son, a husband or a lover can return. Perhaps.

Swallows have a special place in the Armenian folk songs. Maybe it is their scissor-like wing span cutting through the air as if to tear the daily canvas of hopeless waiting. Perhaps it is their instinct to return to the same ancestral roof that makes them messengers of news from distant lands. But do they really return? Could it be that another bird, a look-alike, made the nest this year? It does not matter—a mother sees her son in every return.

And I have come to have special feelings about birds nesting under my roof. Last year, a North American Robin made her’s atop the front door of our home. She laid her eggs and sat patiently. 

A week later, when I opened the door in the early morning, I found her feathers all over the door entrance. A hawk had ended her motherhood.  I carefully scooped the nest and the four greenish-blue eggs from the door top, noticing how much mud she had used to stick the nest to the door-top glass. But she could not avoid the hawks of the world. 

Armenian mothers built their homes with tradition, national identity, songs and music. These were the glue, the cement and the protection from the tempests of history. They did not worry about themselves, but about their sons and husbands being taken by hawks. And almost 100 years ago, they were. More than a million of them.

… This year, another Robin made her nest, exactly on the same spot as the last one. If I had not seen the feathers on the door steps, and the empty nest I still have, I would have thought it was the same bird. Returning. As my ancestors thought they would. Returning to bless the home and perhaps bring news from the son who is now working in unknown lands. A son who would never come back.

This time, the nest had long grass stems and twigs extending almost two feet down from the nest. Like a veil my ancestors’ wives wore. 

The mom was as worried about our opening the door, our dog going out, the car being parked nearby. But, after a few days, she learned to trust us. We did not look like hawks; we did not fly near her nest. At night, we turned the lights off the hallway so her circadian cycle would not be altered.

We became expecting foster parents.

Early that morning, I could hear faint chirping when I opened the door to take the dog out.  And in two days, four chicks filled that nest with new sounds and new hopes. Yes, it was just an ordinary Robin nest. Yes, other Robins had also made their nests and laid green-blue eggs. But this one was our Robin, and now our four chicks. They were under our roof.

The next 10 days were a life movie projected at high speed. By the hour the chicks became semi-birds, then bird-like things that could extend their necks 4 inches in the air asking for a worm from tirelessly working mom. In fact, she was a single mother with 4 mouths to feed, but never complained. At least not to me.

And the nest started getting too small and the chicks too big. A few days of single-motherhood, and a male Robin showed up to help with the catching of earthworms and feeding the demanding mouths. Where did he come from? Surely not the father of these eggs. Or was he? Or perhaps there is a social support network for Robins helping single moms with the last week’s demands.  The week before chicks become birds and forget about their parents. It was delightful to see both adults feeding the chicks now covered in fuzz and eyes almost open.

And the fuzz turned to feather, and the eyes opened wide. A week into the feeding frenzy, mom decided to sleep away at night. The nest was too small for five birds, and she was probably ready for an adult’s night out. Post-partum relaxation, I thought. Perhaps with that handsome male Robin helping her with the chicks.

A couple of days later, one of the chicks, the one already testing his wings in the nest, got out of the nest and sat upon the door top, just next to the nest. Now we could see him in full—he was a junior with no tail, clumsy on his feet, but the orange feathers on his chest made him a Robin. He looked around for a while “A big world!” he should have thought. Then mom came and fed him a worm along with the other three still in the nest.

When I looked again, all four were in the nest. The curious one had decided that as long as he can fit in the nest and mom is feeding him, there was no need to work hard and be alone. I thought about our son. Our own Robin….

But the next morning, he jumped. It was that time. We all leave our nests for one reason or another. It was good to see him jump. And sit on the grass, tail-less and bewildered. He did not know what had happened. “Now what do I do?” he must have thought. But not for long. He noticed the bushes nearby and instinctively took refuge. Away from the hawks of the world.

And the next morning, another one jumped.

“Swallow, beautiful bird of spring

    Where do your wings take you

       Why do you fly so fast?”

June 23, 2013

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Koan-Tum Leap

“So, what is the sound of a single hand clapping?”

I listened to the endless rain which now made the nearby creek full and running. I know about the sound drops of rain, drops of tears, drops of blood make. All three smell of that sweetness that lasts for a moment upon warm cheeks. It is sound and smell, the primordial triggers which make us run or stay.

A single hand and bitten nails. I have seen hands in well used gloves wave hello, and wave goodbye in train stations. Hands that find their way under the arm of a woman in a nursing home to help her out of bed.  Hands that wipe her eyes even when she could not see anymore. In streets of concrete and darkness, I have seen single hands held out asking for compassion. But also hands in long satin gloves asking for a kiss.  Single hands searching for other single hands.

What is the sound of a single hand clapping? Is it the sound of the search or the search for that melody ending in a celebration? I have seen newborn hands grabbing the blue, yellow or pink blanket. Tiny hands just learning how they will become part of their own bodies and of someone else’s body one day. I have also seen hands grabbing the blanket for the last time. Tortured, well lived hands. Often more vein than hands, more skin than flesh. Hands that do not want to clap anymore, for their melody will soon be unheard.

I have never been under the Bo tree, nor unselfish enough to forget my own hands. But under pine, ash and palm trees I have seen hands touch my face, touch my thoughts. Happy hands, lovers’ hands, friends’ hands, and hands of people I never met again. I saw careful hands pick night blooming Jasmine and rubbing my eyes with that perfume that is of the Mediterranean and of rocky shores. I have seen hands pricked by the rose stem they were about to place on a pine coffin.

And when people fell because other people wanted them to fall, I saw hands kept in pockets. Or behind the backs of those who looked away. These were hands smelling of tobacco, of gunpowder, of unwashed acts. Hands that once held a pencil and wrote pleasant letters on blue paper. Hands that now had ivory-yellow nails and did not want to write letters anymore.  When people fell, hands were used to keep them down, not to raise them up again.

“So, what is the sound of a single hand clapping?”  I have not heard it yet, but I know how it sounds. It is the sound of independence from another hand.  It is the sound of dissociation and content.  It is exactly the sound a hand would make if it could clap by itself. It is the sound of one person loving. For the pure comfort of loving.

June 13, 2013

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Of Boundaries

It is said that two clocks close together tick at nearly the same rate. But clocks separated by distance tick at different rates, the farther apart the more out of step.

     Time flows at different speed, depending on distance. When it is time to tell a story under a pine tree, it may already be an old story for the fishermen on Lake Baikal. But we get stuck in that time, and we want to have others stuck with us. Because how can one tell a story if left alone in time?

It is said that heartbeats are like clocks, they measure what we do not want to measure: the sacrifice we make, every time unit, of our life. We gain nothing for our lives from watching time pass. We only lose.

     Yet it is said that even a broken clock is right twice a day. The arms of that clock tell you exactly the time, before it is not exact anymore. Because it is broken. Because it is stuck in its own time.  Are broken hearts correct sometimes? Are they stuck in a place, a goodbye, a name? Should one fix a broken clock? Should one fix a broken heart? Or, just as deciding to get a new clock, get another name, be another place, be ready for another goodbye?

It is said that eternity has boundaries shaped as lips when dry of the wait.  There is no time to waste in eternal waiting. Because there is no time, and there is no kiss. One cannot be stuck in eternity, but can be frozen there.

     Is eternity still flat when one is young and has time? Does an old man ask for time to kiss ample lips, or for eternity bound by dry, unkissable lips? And with the time that does not exist in eternity, will those lips shrink and wrinkle as they would at the center of time?  Will those lips at one time whisper a cosmic whisper and say “eternity is boring, kiss me now!”?

It is said that if we had only one day to live, we would not think about tomorrow.

     Yet, if we were not time-deaf, would we want to know about tomorrow to shape our one day? Does tomorrow count if you will not be there? And if those in tomorrow had only one day to live, would they care about the past and learn about you? Or would they only guess about their own tomorrow?

It is said that the best time is unmeasured time. It is the time one remembers for its passion and quality. Such time is rarefied time, distilled time, and it is when the arms of the big clock fall under the weight of counted but not-cared-for time.

     It is when you remember your first love by saying “it was the year my sister got her piano”. It is when you recall your last love as “it was just before I drowned in those brown eyes and learned to swim again”.

It is said that waiting for the right time is a consolation for those who knew only grief in past times.

     But there is no right or wrong in time. The hope for the right time justifies the wait only. It consoles you even when you know there is only passage or being stuck in. Time is more than minutes, it is careless impatience.

It is said that eventually we learn to forget about time and only recall those for whom time was cut short.  That we keep on walking.

     I have never learned to forget the moment my child lost her time. What I learned is to walk in a new way. A different way. Alone.

June 2, 2013

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

The Art of Springtime Window Cleaning

I do not return. Sometimes, I do not finish the wine I like to drink poured into a Mason jar. Next morning, when I try to make coffee before sunrise, I can smell the acrid leftover wine. I do not return, for memories are like that wine – what I drank, from the Mason jar of time, was enough.

I do not re-read what I wrote. I write as I take pictures- once imprinted upon the pellicle of the moment, it is captive.  It is the foolish love of the unplanned, of the unsurprising yet intense that makes me write. One cannot re-read what was delightfully foolish.

I do not love till love makes me sign. And sometimes, I do not see, or I misread the signs. Then I wonder if it is not time, anymore, to love. But, during a walk in the rain or when in line for buying organic red beets, I laugh and just let myself be. Love finds me when brown eyes forget how much better red wine tastes when drank from a Mason jar.

And I do not pretend to know what the days have kept for surprises. Upon my balcony I hope to still fall in and out of love during a full moon, as a fool. And when a laggard cloud would veil the moon for a short while, to look at the city below my balcony and giggle as a kid.

A kid, gray-haired and ephemeropteric, who just made love, to destiny, upon his balcony.                  

May 25, 2012

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

What Stays Within Us

At low-tide, I walked bare feet in the wet sand feeling for oysters.  At midnight I slept in beds where others had slept before. And at high-tide I watched the ocean spit back to shore what it could not swallow.

Pine trees leave their resinous sap under the fingernails of those who climb for pine cones.  The smell of pine cones roasting in hot coal and opening slowly to show the pine nut shell often surrounds me in my dreams. And I wake up, lick my fingers hoping to taste again the pine resin under my nails. All I taste now is my impersonal moment, surrounded by the Atlantic.

The streets are cold already, and the ladies of pleasure waiting in windy corners, even colder now. Yet they wear skirts with easy on-off zippers, faux tiger skin shoulder bags, high boots with uneven worn heels, and makeup the color of proletariat in Romania. They do not say good evening, they do not look at you. They know who has an interest in giving them 15 minutes break away from the cold street. And who does not.

At low-tide I walked bare feet in the wet sand. I cannot remember anymore how many sunsets I have watched; so I just walk in the sand and I do not cramp my toes feeling for oysters. I have missed sunsets in Porto and in Malaga; I was late for sunrise in Kyoto and in Oslo. But I watched many a sun set here and there. Funny, they all now seem to have been alike.

I have an ashtray made of petrified seashell a Touareg sold it to me in the Sahel, near Tunisia’s mountain range. I wanted to smoke a cigar and let the ashes cover the tray. Or, find an old pipe and puff on it when the streets are cold and the Atlantic in rage. Then, scrape the pipe bowl and empty the half burned tobacco into the ashtray from the desert. And let the room fill with the acrid smell of smoldering pipe tobacco. Instead, I put the ashtray next to the sink and found a small, jasmine-scented bar of soap to fit in it.

But tonight, when lights of apartments around me turn off, one by one, and the only sparkle is from fake Christmas trees near a few windows, I will become one with the shadows of the night and watch a black-and-white movie from the 1930s. Perhaps “Ladies of Leisure” where B. Stanwyck is so vulnerable and sublime. Or, I will look for that old pipe, the bowl lined in Meerschaum, and settle in a deep chair with an Armenian poetry book upon my belly.

It will be a good way to wait for sunrise.

December 6, 2012

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013