Art for a Stoic

I had oysters for lunch with a friend.  “This has been a good season for these bivalve mollusks” he said. “With all the dangers we know about eating raw seafood, why do we do it?”

“Sensual pleasure,” I said, “no other reason.”

And then we talked about pleasure as a guiding principle. Not of the temporary types, but the pleasure as an art of celebrating life.

“We artists use canvas, photographic paper, computers, sound, scream, words and silence to feed our art,” he thoughtfully stated, “yet we die of tuberculosis, cirrhosis, depression, loneliness and forgotten. We age if we are lucky, yet do we age with artfulness?”

Then we talked about the art of living, the art of aging, and the art of dying.

… When I returned home, I parked my bicycle in its usual place, scratched my dog behind the ears, and recalled a few ideas from Simone de Beauvoir’s book La Vieillesse. I do not have a copy anymore, so went to the Web and found an English translation as “The Coming of Age”.  So I read the first chapter, this time in English.

A few passages reminded me of my original reading, while others were a new discovery. I reread these few lines:

“Great numbers of people, particularly old people, told me, kindly or angrily, but always at great length and again and again, that old age simply did not exist! There were some who were less young than others, and that was all it amounted to.”

My dog was sleeping under my desk and snoring. I reached for his head and touched his face. He opened one eye but did not raise his head. He knew it was me. That I was touching him to stop his snoring. Just like old couples do. We have been together now for ten years.

I looked at him and saw an old dog. Yet, every morning, the moment I put his leash on and open the front door, he jumps out looking for squirrels. For an hour or so he is like a young puppy running after every squirrel even if he had never caught one. It does not matter; it is the pleasure of chasing. When we come back home, he drinks water from his bowl, eats breakfast, goes to his favorite corner and sleeps for hours. And if I am around and writing, he comes to sleep under my desk, put his head on my foot and snore while seemingly dreaming of squirrels.

Is he, at some hours of the day, less old than other dogs? Or at other times less young than he used to be?

I wanted to read more. So I checked a reference to Seneca’s work. This passage, from his Letters from a Stoic written two thousand years ago made me smile:

“We should cherish old age and enjoy it. It is full of pleasure if you know how to use it. Fruit tastes most delicious just when its season is ending. The charms of youth are at their greatest at the time of its passing.”

What was my canvas? My dance, my photographic paper, my silence?

After a few minutes I realized that the answer was very apparent and simple: I was my own canvas, my secret dance, my own photographic paper in a darkroom full of unprinted pictures, and that it was my own silence that I share in my writings, my photos, and the whispers during walks on promenades at the edge of the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the Atlantic, the Irish Sea, the Pacific, Adriatic or China Sea.

… Do we age with artfulness? I do not know, but after having oysters for lunch, I felt like reading Simone de Beauvoir and taking my dog for a long walk on the promenade around the port of Baltimore.

September 17, 2014

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2104

PS/ The first picture was taken near a port celebrating the Atlantic Ocean. The second is from Prague on a rainy day.

Veronica's Veil

I received an email from an old friend last night, who had accidentally discovered my blog and decided to say hello. A philosopher and physician, he discovered later in life that medicine had no answers for him. Philosophy did not either, but at least helped him ask questions.

“I see you are also touching that veil many of us eventually do” he wrote “have you lived your life full enough to decide to lift that veil sometime soon?”

So, I left all other daily chores aside, made a tall cup of coffee and put my laptop on my lap.

“Some veils separate our questions from new questions” I replied, “or perhaps questions from answers. Other veils are said to heal; and some veils are so opaque that it is the fear of lifting them that stops our desire for discovery.”

The veil of Maya, the veil of ignorance, the veil of Veronica, and the veil of tears….

“Do you know the origin of the name Veronica?” he asked.

“It is a linguistic portmanteau” I tried to impress him. “Latin Vera for true and Greek Eikon for image. It is the True Image and that is why it is believed to heal.”

He replied by first sending happy faces, and then followed with his answer in a separate email.

“Ha! No, no, no portmanteau – leave that fancy lexicon to your academic colleagues. Veronica is derived from Greek only. It is a combination of Pherein and Nike, and in the case of a female it means “the woman who brings victory”. Now you know why Nike adopted that word for a sports product line.  No one seeks defeat, and Veronica is the anti-thesis of our daily struggles. She is victory over pain, fear, broken hearts and words we did not say in a train station. There is no healing, just the good feeling of doing it. Just like Nike said!”

Then he added:

“Veils do not heal, nor do they let you see through. The veils that haunt us at the end of our lives are different from the bridal veil – you will not kiss or make love after you lift those veils. Instead, these are the veils that make us wonder if we have lived our days in full, with respect, and often in excess. For it is when we face those veils that we wonder about our past and not as much about our future. Veils are our reality checks.”

My coffee was cold by the end of our email retrouvailles. He and I are at the same crossroads, but we seem to have a different attitude to crossing it: he is checking left and right, while I am delighted to be at the intersection of these roads.

… I took a sip and wondered who will cross first and let the other know what is beyond the veil…

September 2, 2014
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2014

Coquelicot

Tout est accident

Que le matin efface

Sans regret, comme si un nom

Qu’on oublie parfois

Tout est par accident

Quand le vin change de bouquet

Comme un baiser qu’on délaisse

Et qui, ainsi que le vin

Nous amollit, émeut, tourne et devient soi

Toute attente est pour l’accident

Qui devient le prévu, le contretemps

Qu’on espère un jour ébranler

Qu’importe le mensonge d’un temps

Où l’on croyait s’offrir

À tout accident

Sans s’endommager

Le 7 Mars, 2014

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2014

I do not post my writings in languages other than English. However, I received a number of emails since I published a book in French in April, asking if I have writings in French. Yes I do, mostly poetry. So, for those who read French, here is a sample!

Nihil Obstat

Incomplete

As marble is

Before it finds its statue

In the silent whisper of summer nights

When solitude curves its neck

To let forgotten lips

Like petals lost to the north wind

Rest , dance, become a secret garden

Stolen

Like a shape once unknown

Of the color in which I kept

What was for someone else

Returned

As a bottle lost to the sea

With no message

Just memories of a voyage

Made alone

August 20, 2014

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2014

From Varna with an Umbrella

During a leisurely stroll among street vendor booths of used books, a title caught my eye – “18% Gray”.  I picked it up thinking it was about B&W photography, to realize that it was about the pleasure of being alive by a Bulgarian novelist Zachary Karabashliev.  I had not heard his name before, and decided to buy the book.

Bulgarian literature, classic or modern, is an unknown to me. Primarily because I do not read in the original language and there seem few translations into those that I speak. But I knew about one Bulgarian writer because of his assassination in the late 1970s. I had read many articles about the way ricin was used to kill Georgi Markov, and Karabashliev’s novel made me recall how the world was surprised that a modified umbrella would be used to shoot a pellet filled  with ricin.  And as I read the novel, as I read about the stories every immigrant has to tell be that from Varna to San Diego, or from Warsaw to New York, my mind was still curious about the umbrella, about ricin and about the oldest form of assassination—that with poison.

So, I decided to learn more about the origins of the umbrella.

… And how glorious these origins are! From Parasol (shade from the sun) to Parapluie (protecting from the rain), this tent-like apparatus has been used in ancient Nineveh, Babylon, China, India, Greece until it found its way to the West. It has shaded royalty on chariots, the rich sitting outside their mansions, and over millennia has kept Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Western women away from the damaging rays of the sun. It can be large when anchored in the sand on a beach, foldable and colourful for a walk on the promenade, waterproof or in plain cotton. An umbrella has been used as a walking cane, a defensive weapon against street attackers, can hide a sword blade or even be modified to conceal a gun shooting bullets or ricin pellets!  In short, an umbrella is among the most versatile inventions to achieve “protection”, be that against the elements, violence, or ideologists against a dogma or a regime.

An umbrella is the most universal representative of a shield.

.. As I read Karabashliev’s book, his passion for life, for photography, his nostalgia for Stella, for Varna, his attention to everyday events on the streets of Tijuana, I ended thinking that it is a book about self-realization. Perhaps the most intimate imageries, even pornographic, about him and Stella would attract a wider audience; perhaps the scenes and discussion about photography would allure those like me who still use mechanical cameras and film; but at the end, this is a book about an immigrant.

A Bulgarian immigrant who without talking about umbrellas talked about protection and shielding. An immigrant who made me pick up his book because the title seems to be about photography. An immigrant who took me back to the 1970s, to the story of Georgi Markov, and the start of my own life as an immigrant.

Used books, when bought from a kiosk on the street, have delightful secrets to share.

August 15, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

PS. I took this picture a couple of days after I finished reading the book.  I am certain that without the hyperbolic thoughts about umbrellas Karabashliev’s “18% Gray” triggered in my mind, while I would have noticed this young lady with an umbrella, I would not have taken a picture.

Ottoman Times; Armenian Timemakers

In previous blogs and published books I have written about my constant struggle in dealing with the concept of time. I am an amateur in understanding time as a dimension where past, present and future events parade in an orderly manner. Yet I have read Kant, understood Newtonian Time where events occur in a sequence, and tried to understand the dimensionality and bending properties of time as Einstein saw them.

I have given time, had time, shared time, lost time, celebrated time, sacrificed time, and let time pass by. But I had not felt time. Till a couple of days ago when I found an old pocket watch in a box where my mother’s few belongings were kept.

It was an absolute feeling—I was holding time and through that tactile action traveling back a century.

… I had seen that watch as a kid. My mother said that it was a watch my grandfather kept with him when he escaped the Ottoman oppression in the early 1900’s. I had seen that pocket watch but had not opened it. Because it was not a watch but a memory of my grandfather.

A couple of days ago, when I found it in the box, I put it in my palm and wondered what was inside. Was there an actual watch between these tarnished silver covers? Could I even open it without everything falling apart? After all, I believe that this watch has not been played with for a century.

But first I looked at it closely. Heavy, and with that old silver patina. A handmade silver chain clamped to its loop, with a winding key at the end. The key itself was anachronistic. No, it was the very form that described the time travel I was about to embark upon. A handmade key to wind a handmade watch. To hand wind time.

But time had stopped a century ago. Can I, by holding this key between my index and thumb rewind time? Will it be Ottoman time? Armenian genocide time? Exodus through the Syrian Desert time? Or will it be just stopped time that should remain untouched?

The case is covered with intricate etchings, so is the rim of the watch. Still, I am not sure if there is a watch in it. Not sure my mother knew either. She was not a mechanically-inclined woman and I doubt it that she tried to open the covers.

But I am, and as the grandson of the man who I was told carried this watch with him from Konya to Aleppo, then to Beirut, I want to open the watch.

So I did.

Without hesitation, the spring under the cover relaxed and the exquisite face of a pocket watch appeared! The dials are delicate and still there; there is a seconds dial as well. The hours are depicted in symbols I had not seen before. And in the upper quadrant, a floral design arches over letters too small to read.

As a photographer used to looking at film strips under a loupe, I unscrewed the lens from my camera, and looked through the front glass. That’s how a lens becomes a loupe.  And I froze. It read:

                                        “Pouldjian Djezvedjian & Arabian, Constantinople”

Three Armenian names, and the Ottoman era name of Istanbul.  I looked again. Yes, the letters were clear, as if written yesterday. Time had stopped. And I was holding it in my hand.

Then I looked, with my makeshift loupe, inside the front cover. Intricate stamped letters read “Bellevue”. There was a lion, numbers and other symbols.

…Should I open the back? Could it have my grandfather’s name engraved? What if it has another person’s name? In such a case the entire history of this watch will be rejected. Or it would open a new chapter of wondering about how my grandfather obtained it. 

Should I open the back?

I did. With a bit of tremor, I looked inside the back cover through my lens. No name, just additional numbers. And the silver, protected for a century from exposure was shiny as silver is.  I was relieved. …

Two openings in the back with tiny rods in them. I knew one was to set the dials, the other to wind. I had to do it.

… I do not know if time is a measure or a feeling. I do not understand the power of that little key and the tension I felt on the spring. What I know is that within one rotation, that stopped time became alive, became vocal, and with the predictability of mechanical watches, started ticking. I turned the watch around to see if the dials were moving. They were, although I was not sure if it was an illusion associated with my trembling hand.

There I was, listening to a century old watch just as my grandfather had. His times were immeasurably harder than mine; he challenged destiny and walked through the Syrian Desert. He survived the journey and started a new life. And today, his grandson, at the autumn of his life, was holding that stopped time, gave it new life and in a small way, rejected letting his grandfather's, Karnig Kazandjian born in Konya, story go silent.

… Once my nerves calmed down, I opened the third “coquille” (pocket watch cover in French) to see the mechanism. All was there and ticking beautifully. Under my loupe I could again read “Bellevue” and then all around the casing engravings in Arabic letter. I know it is Turkish, as in that era they used the Arabic alphabet.

My curiosity could not be satisfied without some search on the Internet. I found that these three Armenians were famous watchmakers around 1900. They used known watchmakers’ mechanisms (such as Longines) to build their own watches. And these watches were exquisite jewelry as well since they were jewelers and watchmakers. I found some of their watches auctioned on Christie’s site in London; others displayed in museums.

But most importantly, I found a historic document about Djezvedjian, one of the watchmakers, written in Armenian, French and Turkish. Now the loop was closed.

July 28, 2014

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2014

PS/ The watch is working like a charm and keeping time with less than a minute/day delay. And it is in the space of that slow minute that I find my daily moment of history, identity, and evasion from the present.

Dignity and a Wedding Ring

A week ago, a friend and professor of public health sent me a note after reading my essay on “Elegance and Harmony”¹. He suggested that the third dimension could have been “Dignity” since I was discussing harmony as a state of health. He further stressed that there is growing evidence that, for populations living in zones of conflict and economic distress, the feeling of dignity is correlated with their state of health, in a direct way.

To learn more about the moral and philosophical dimensions of dignity, I got hold of a well respected book by Michael Rosen entitled “Dignity: Its History and Meaning”². I am halfway through its reading while our world seems to have become more dangerous with the downing of the Malaysian Airline’s MH 17. I have been following the news like anyone else, and today I learned that there has been theft at the crash site, such as taking a wedding ring found on the site. And as I watched the somber procession of funeral hearse cars in Eindhoven, the reporters kept using the term “dignity” for how the Dutch were treating the victims of the downed Malaysian airline.

And, suddenly a number of events from my own experiences came out of hiding in my memory compartments and forgotten brain-files to help me understand dignity in perhaps a more tangible way.

… It was in the late 1990 when I started a project with the Isala Kliniken hospital in Zwolle, the Netherlands. It is a bucolic town an hour north of Eindhoven and the drive through the countryside perfectly inviting. During my meetings with the hospital staff, their dedication for respecting patient dignity was frequently mentioned.  “Dignity is part of quality and healing” I was told.

One evening, the medical director noticing my interest in learning more about the relationship of quality of care and dignity, explained it as such:

“Dignity is not for the living alone, but also for the memory of the deceased. See, here in Zwolle we have the only company in the world where precious metals, and hip and knee implants are collected from crematoria and recycled. In other countries they either bury the deceased with these or collect and sell these metals by separating them from the ashes. In fact, German law does not consider taking cold fillings and gold crowns stealing, because according to the law, they do not belong to anybody anymore after cremation. Here, OrthoMetals collects the gold, steel and titanium, recycles them, and sells them. But all proceeds go to charity. In some way, it is the dignity of the deceased that is celebrated by helping others with the proceeds.”

… As I watched the funeral hearse cars in Eindhoven, listened to the story of wedding rings stolen at the crash site and thought more about and the correlation between dignity and health, the definition of post-mortem dignity became even more intriguing.  There is a moral arc that bends differently with the times. But it always bends. We often think of dignity when it lacks, such as when people do not receive the respect, are not treated with dignity, or are humiliated and hence all dignity taken from them.

But how do we define dignity when it exists, rather than when it lacks?

Rosen has an ingenious formulation in his book. He proposes that there is a gap between respect for rights, and a "right to respect”.  Specifically, his thesis is that the respect for rights is what we commonly associate dignity to mean; while the right to respect is a societal morality. Well, at least that is how I understood it. If correct, then how do we acquire that “right to respect”?

It cannot be by force or by fiat.  Could it be a human duty toward other humans as proposed by Kant? Or is it a manifestation of human consciousness as Aristotle stated "Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them."

… When a human body is cremated in a crematorium or after a crashed airline, how would a wedding ring found in the crash site teach us about dignity?

¹http://vahezen.blogspot.com/2014/06/elegance-and-harmony.html

²Michael Rosen, Dignity: Its History and Meaning, Harvard University Press, 2012, 176 pp.

July 24, 2014

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2014

I took this picture in Auschwitz, Poland.