Moon Eclipse

In the woods again. This time it was high noon although the moon eclipse on October 18 seemed to have my reference points confused. For the past few days the moon has been in the sky till the late hours of the morning. Sun and moon over the same forest made me somewhat disoriented.

It was under the moon, this morning, when I found a dead red fox. Was it the same fox my dog chased a few nights ago? Or just a fox who had lived his time without being chased? Yet something was different in the posture of this fox- his back was to a tree as if leaning against it. This fox had died in an almost standing posture on his hind legs.

My initial reaction was that it was pushed as such by another inhabitant of the woods, but there were no apparent injuries. Could it be that the fox, at the moment of death, stood on its hind legs like a dog begging for a bone, leaned against the tree and tried to reach for the moon?

I sat down on a rock near that tree and looked at the fox. Soon, I could not see that unusually postured secretive troubadour of the woods anymore, as my mind dissociated my self from the moment. I listened to the monotonous whisper of the fall leaves and recalled a Zen Japanese dictum Zadatsu Ryõbõ which I had interpreted as “Die sitting. Die standing.”

… I have seen people at the last moments of life, and I have seen others just after death. I had never thought about their posture. My father-in-law died sitting in his favorite chair, but I have never seen anyone or any mammal die standing. Was this fox chasing the moon for enlightment?

Or was the dictum about living each day to appreciate the here and now? Could it be that the posture in death is the final attitude impersonating how we lived? If we had the choice, would we sit under a tree, reach for the eclipsed moon, and let it go? Or would we struggle to stay alive even if we cannot see the moon anymore?

Resisting further philosophical vagabondage, I got off the rock, went to the pine tree facing north, and sat down leaning against it. I could not see the moon but it was there, I knew. So I shut my eyes to find it in the sky above me.

… In a strange way, and for a short moment, it was pure experience.

October 23, 2013

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

In the New England Woods

Nature loves the beauty of simplicity.

I knew this dictum by Newton, its adoption by Ockham, and its pursuit by Einstein. This morning, while walking the woods with my dog before sunrise, it occurred to me that while the fall colors and fallen leaves of New England’s woods often meant nature for me, walking in the dark gave them a different meaning. They were just woods now, with brittle leaves and brushwood under my feet. These woods became a new context, within which I could hear my dog walk without seeing him. Yet I knew he always kept the same distance from me, perhaps worried that I may leave him in the wilderness and go back to my warm bed.

I kept repeating that sentence throughout my walk. I do not know why, possibly a parietal lobe short-circuiting resulting from my desire for a cup of strong coffee.  A simple sentence, yet an assemblage of the three most potent words that have shaped my passage through the past half century: love, beauty, and simplicity.

And I walked through the New England woods, which I knew were of that fall color splendor. But it was dark now, all around me was black, and sunrise was an hour away. My dog picked up a scent and started running in circles. Or ellipses. Or just randomly. But he kept the safe distance from me.

So, there we were:  a man and his dog. Or is it a dog and his man? No leash.  Both of us were free in our own way, but still dependent. He was chasing the scent of a red fox, and I was pursuing a new line of thought.

… One has to start with beauty, I thought. I wondered what single word would define beauty for me, in the New England woods, before sunrise. I slowed down hoping that I could think of that word easier. I shut out the sounds around me, and wondered: what would that word be?

And the answer was there, in front of me, in the dark. Beauty, at that moment, was symmetry! I felt curious; I wanted more. Was symmetry a shape, or was it a state of being? Was I thinking of form and optical reflections that are ultimately symmetrical? Or symmetry was the gate to something more fundamental? I stopped and looked at the sky—full of stars, a few of which I knew. But there was no symmetry in what I guessed beyond the sky. The stars seemed stationary, nothing was collapsing. And I saw beauty.

Then it occurred to me: beauty is harmony.

The next word to tackle was love. I listened to my dog chase that scent and thought of him sleeping at the end of the bed. Snoring like a sailor’s dog snores. And I thought how love has been central to my interaction with people, with food, with photography, with poetry, and with medicine. Yet, I could not define it in a word. Why try when humanity had tried since our ancestors felt a feeling that they did not know what to do with! But I pushed myself, and love became a two-word definition: curiosity of discovery.

And now, simplicity, the distillate of all things complex and seemingly incongruous. Simplicity was easy for me to define. It was the sound a running dog made, at almost sunrise, in the New England woods now exhaling their morning breath of colors in gold, rust, yellow, red, and rotting trees fallen without a sound. Simplicity was, unexpectedly, both beauty and symphony, which to my caffeine deprived brain was sym-phony, the harmony of sounds. It was not about parsimony as defined by Ockham, but the reaching of a meaningful coexistence without the superfluous.

… I could hear my dog’s heavy breathing and now could see his smiling face.  When dogs pant, it makes them smile. At least to us humans who wonder about love, beauty and simplicity while walking upon bristle twigs in the New England woods.

I was about to tackle the joint-identity of the beauty of simplicity when we returned to our cabin in the mountain. It was sunrise now, glorious upon a cold fall morning. My dog had food in mind, and I had coffee as my only desire for the moment.

So, I postponed all thoughts about the beauty of simplicity for another walk in the woods, before sunrise or at midnight. For sure before the first snow.

October 16, 2013

(Picture taken with a Yashica 12 medium format camera)

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Palmas Sordas

To part

And leave behind

In melody and in silence

What I have not done

Part to part

Kettle on the stove

But the stove is cold

Cherry tobacco in a tin can

But my pipe is old

To part

And leave unchanged

The lust that turned to rust

Near the empty window

That looks on to nowhere

Part to part

Whispering North winds

Have already kept their secret

But forgot where they kept them

Yet know why

To part

Knowing that what I felt the first time

Will happen again to those who stay

Near the empty window

That looks on to those

Who depart

October 15, 2013

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Cloud Computing

I looked long at the keyboard.  In me was yet another essay to write, but the keyboard wanted to be left alone. Untouched. Words, images passed in front of me sometimes as fast and overwhelming as locust I have seen in the desert sky. Or eagles in the High Sierras. What was the story brewing in me?

I kept looking at the keyboard as the screen was blank. Till suddenly and in quiet, the first key atop the row of keys jumped out, and left the board! Do keys just leave the board like that? Was I self-hypnotising myself by starring at the keyboard for so long?

I followed the rectangular black key stumble on the piles of paper around my laptop, then fall unto the open space of my desk, roll around for a second and finally crash onto the floor. I opened my eyes wide to make sure I was not just seeing things. No, there now was an empty gap where the first key was, on the top row, left.

I looked under my desk, picked up the key and leaning back on my chair, held the key up: it was the “Esc” key!!!

That was it. That was the story I had in me. ESCAPE.

But from what? Why?

I looked at the keyboard again. Would other keys jump out and away? Nothing, they all were where they were supposed to be.

… I had used a keyboard for more than three decades, but suddenly realised that I had not paid much attention to many of its keys. Could they help me understand why the “Esc” key escaped? Why I could not write my story?

At the far right, almost a mirror image of the “Esc” key was “Delete”. I had used it many times. It was for errors, misuses, and it was for unwanted thoughts. Funny, that seemed a very powerful key at this moment. Delete and its gone. Do we do the same with our memories, names, places, acts, unwanted thoughts? But are they really gone when we push that key on the keyboard or in our soul? Or do they hide for a while, till you remember them again? And for the first time, I noticed that the "Esc" key was a bigger rectangle than the "Delete" key. Does form follow function?

Under “Delete” was “Home”. Amazing! It is the key that brings you back home. Just one touch and you are home. When one forgets where is home, or stay away from it for too long. That key knows, however. It can take you back. All you need to do is decide to push it. Home. Where the heart is. Where the story starts and develops. The place we go back to when we have used too many keys and had too many thoughts. When we get lost. When we escape!

I looked back to the gap left atop all other keys, on the left of my keyboard. The “Esc” key used to be there. Now I am holding it in my hand. Because it escaped. But where is home for the”Esc” key? Was it not supposed to be the keyboard? And deep under it, the Motherboard? Why did the “Esc” key escape? Will it return to its spot and fill the gap if I push the “Home” key?

I sat back, looked at the blank screen and wondered what I should write about.  I thought I had a story to tell, but now I am lost in this phantasmagoric world of unused keys. Keys with meaning beyond being keys.

So I decided to write about the “Esc” key, knowing that I can always delete what I wrote and get back to my home page. 

September 21, 2013
[ Picture taken with a Voigtlander VSL35E and a 200mm Tele Tessar, on ASA 100 Ilford film]

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Iron, Rust, and Steel

I looked at the blue pill in the palm of my hand. A rectangle with rounded edges.  And for reasons both due somnolence and seemingly Kafkaesque, I challenged myself to enumerate the elements in the pill: iron, zinc, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum…

This exercise cleared my mind and I started to laugh: I had the aftermath of a supernova in my hand!  I swallowed the blue pill with hot coffee and sat by the window to remember my beloved chemistry professor.

… He was a Greek chemist, a prominent man in the field of organic chemistry. Looking at him, one would have thought of a basketball coach, or an uncle who brings pistachio nuts from Syria. But when he entered the auditorium, he was the story teller, the man who taught chemistry without chemistry, and who found in atoms many of the precursors to our behaviors.

“We have supernovae in our veins and stardust in our muscle” he once said. And proceeded to tell a story about how the explosion of supernovae created the original elements of the Periodic Table.

“Hydrogen to helium to lithium—we would have stayed at that level and not exist” he almost whispered philosophically. “But stars exploded, made more elements for us, they combined, heavy ones, lighter ones. Then in the deep of oceans, they played matching games till a bacterium was formed. And that bacterium exhaled oxygen. And one day that oxygen saturated the oceans, and was exhaled into the atmosphere. Billions of years later we had enough oxygen to start life!”

And he looked at us, chemistry, biology, and medicine students, then hung his head down and threw his arms in the air.

“What do we get after 5 billion years of work? YOU! Lazy students who do not care about chemistry! Your DNA is the supreme helix where hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen record the history of humanity; and you have more bacteria in your intestines than the entire population of humans on our planet. And yet, I have not seen any one of you excited during our lab experiments. It is sad to have wasted the energy of the Big Bang, supernovae, stars and anaerobic bacteria on you!”

But, when the session was over, he left the room saying “Well, oxygen makes rust out of iron, and perhaps this course will help you appreciate that we can also make steel out of iron. And build statues, buildings and cars. Maybe one day you will recognise how chemistry makes us leaders, innovators, followers and changes our mood.”

… It was still dark outside, sunrise was an hour away. In my mind I traced the path of the multivitamin pill I had just taken. Parts of it will soon get dissolved interacting with my gastric medium. Some elements will be released and absorbed to enter my blood stream. The other part of the pill will patiently wait till it is time to reach my intestinal flora. There it will find another medium, less acidic to surrender its other elements. In a few hours I will have an entire supernova flowing in me!

“I will keep an eye on the heavy elements from the stardust, though” I cautiously promised myself. "These will sink to the deeps of my inner core and affect the compass of my days."

September 17, 2013

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2013

An Islander's Diary

When I took my shoes off, I realized I was stuck. It was an island. I was not alone on it. It was surrounded by names and faces. But no waves.

It was an island in time and I gave it a name - “Present”. 

What does one do on such an island? Think about being rescued? But from what? It was a beautiful landscape, and buzzing with people. Yet, no one seemed to notice me. Perhaps because I was barefoot.  Or because they were wearing shoes. No matter, I was of no interest to them.

But they were of interest to me. So, I put my shoes back on, was surprised that I had a camera hanging from my neck, and that my hat was amply rimmed and rather classy. It was time to meet these people, on the island of the present.

… Over the next half-century I explored every corner of the island, its coves and its eroding beaches. It was not a big island, yet seemed to stretch with every step I took.  I introduced myself to many of its inhabitants, but they could not pronounce my name. Delightfully, the lush fruit trees never gave fruit, and there were no sunsets. Rather, a series of sunrises, sometimes glorious, sometimes barely noticed. It was an island where time had no meaning, other that it seemed meaningless to worry about it. I watched lovers love, fighters fight, and many wonder if they would ever go back. There was even one carrot-top woman who ignored the island and planned for the escape. Into the future. Where she believed all the promises were. And she turned to stone, because she did not look back.

Eventually the island became a site of pilgrimage into the core of the present where to receive the blessings from the moment. And to share them back without pretension, pretention or remorse. I did not parse the time I had to freeze time itself; and I did not ask why an island had beaches but no waves from the past. While at first I thought to be stuck, I experienced a transformation into a feeling of joy. Then to the joy of having a feeling of joy. And eventually to the accepting that this was not an island to be rescued from, but to be invited to discover. The island of the present was the entire bubble within which what was done was already gone, and what could be done remained unknown.

… And all remained unpredictable, since there was no passing time. I learned that predictability needs both the waves from the past and the promises of the future. Not on this island!

And, while watching the endless sunrises, I noticed that I had not used my camera for half a century. And it occurred to me that freezing a moment in time on an ancient roll of film had no meaning when time itself was already frozen!

So I got up, walked to the beach, and threw my camera as far as I could. Then wondered: if there are no waves and no water, where did my camera go?

September 15, 2013

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2013

Nocturna in D-Mension

To repeat

The same thought

In a crowded place

Which once

Was your mind

To ring the bell

Yet hug yourself

For there is no one around

Before sunrise

To wipe your face

Of the dream

You thought

You had

To look at your feet

As if they were away

Elongating and stretching

To a place you recall

But cannot find its name

In the red phone book

Always in your purse

Where only one phone number

Is kept

To wait, expecting

That from behind the old walnut tree

Your son will come back

Dressed in scents

And rays

From the shore you once left

But, did you leave it for sure?

And you want to be one again

With yourself, and for all times to come

But time has gone by

Yet kept a thought of you

In a frame, yellowed and fragile

As you have become

But often wonder why

Why you left yourself

One August day

On a shore of froth, war and tears

But left for a short while only

Till the Mediterranean finds its blues again

And calls you back
In Jasmin and morning Gardenia

For sure, as promised

That short time,

Dear mother,

Became a lifetime

September 7, 2013

 © Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

I took this picture of a statue in the main cemetery of Buenos Aires, Argentina.