Tattoos: Rumi, Mastectomy and the Army

Spring storms over the Arizona high desert kept me inside for a couple of days. So I picked up a translation compendium of Rumi’s writings and sat by the window to listen to the rain.

I thought I had read most of his writings translated in English. Yet I was surprised to find a poem about a man who decides to get a tattoo of a lion’s face but after seeing the needle and learning about the pain, backs off.  The barber who was going to tattoo the lion’s face says to the squeamish man:

“O brother, endure the pain of the lancet, that you may escape from the poison of your miscreant self,

For sky and sun and moon bow to the people who have escaped from self existence.”

While the poem is typical Rumi concerning transcendence and self effacement, it made me wonder if tattoos were common in his days. So, while surrounded by the aroma of the wet sand, juniper and mesquite trees, I explored the topic.

I learned that tattoos and body piercing were common in Persia thousands of years before Rumi’s time. Specifically statues dating back to the Achaemenid Empire show tattoos and earrings on kings and soldiers.

Things may be returning full circle as in 2015 the US Army changed its regulations about solders and tattoos and now, under the Army’s new tattoo policy, soldiers will be able to have ink on their arms and legs as long as it isn’t visible in the Army Service Uniform.

I knew about soldiers or at least the Japanese Samurai who, as outcasts, tattooed their bodies both as identity and for the scare-factor. I have seen facial tattoos in descendents of the Atayal tribe in Taiwan. In ancient China criminals were tattooed on the face; in ancient Egypt tattoos may have had medicinal purposes, as anthropologists have suggested that many female mummies had tattoos on their pelvic area perhaps as a cure for pelvic peritonitis.

This got my attention and I searched more about the role of tattoos in folk medicine. Surprisingly it was not folk medicine but survivors of cancer after western medical treatment and surgery who have adopted tattooing as a new way of self expression. Especially mastectomy patients who have found tattooing as a way to turn their disfiguring scars into a form of art and self-expression.

How wonderful!

Actually there is a website called P.Ink that connects tattoo artists with mastectomy patient. One artist is quoted there saying:

“What was clinical became beautiful again… We turned sterile into sensual. We took back control.”

And that made me think about Rumi’s statement about self-existence. If Rumi knew that tattooing could restore self esteem, confidence, femininity and sensuality, would he still question the pursuit of self-existence?

… I looked in my “Ali Baba’s Photo Cave”… I had taken pictures of men with elaborate tattoos.

Placing them within the context of when and where I took these pictures, I wondered -- was it art? Search for identity? Self existence? Or perhaps simply therapeutic?

I may never know.

May 16, 2015

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2015

Shape, Mood and Imagineering

Lately I have been doing much walking in the high desert of Arizona. It is a special place where the desert climate and topography varies every mile or so from barren lands to Juniper bushes and even pine trees. The granite rock mountains at this high altitude of 2000 meters change color with the ever present sun, occasional clouds, and type of grass.

Given the very low humidity, any dead tree becomes weathered by the sun and preserved carefully. The high winds and the sand give the dead wood a gentle polish and shades of gray. When I walk in these deserts I look at the ground as much as at the mountains. Well, sometimes it is to avoid a rattle snake,  but often because of my curiosity in finding “creative” dead wood shaped by the winds and polished by the flying sand.

I am in the creative studio of a unique artist, Mother Nature, when I walk between cacti and Juniper bushes.

… Here is my latest find. A twisted piece of a Juniper bush branch, about 20 cm long, probably fallen and dried for a few seasons now. I immediately noticed it as I thought, with its head on the left of the picture frame,  it looked like a coyote in motion. I did not think of a wolf because I have not seen wolves here, but plenty of coyotes that run sometimes as close as 30 meters from me and keep on looking at me as the intruder in their land.

So, I picked the piece of wood, put it in my backpack and continued my hike.

Upon return, I placed it on a table and to my surprise it was perfectly balanced on its 4 “legs”! Now I saw a coyote smiling while looking at me without slowing down his slow trot. And his hind right leg was in perfect proportion to its body and trot posture...

My curiosity increased and I slightly moved the “coyote” around. Now it looked like a strange hippopotamus! Its jaws were large open and ready to challenge my presence. Or was it a crocodile?

At this point I realized how delightful it is to be in the mood for seeing “something”. For anyone else, this would be just a piece of wood. For me, it was a fantasy moment when crocodiles, hippos and coyotes were right there, on my table.

…The photographer in me was intrigued by what 3-dimentional objects can give to the ready eye that 4th dimension of “Imagineering”. That is a term I like – it is the power of the image that lets us imagine. Fantasize.

I wondered how a two dimensional picture would “feel” after looking at this exquisite natural carving from various angles. So, I pulled out a couple of pictures I had taken on Coronado Island in San Diego to contrast and test my mood for imagination.

These birds are in motion, the ocean waves are undulating and there is a feel for the soft light of sunset. Yet, the motion is too obvious, predictable, and hardly surprising. In contrast, the coyote has character, body language, even a smile!

The next picture I chose was also from San Diego. Sunset again, 105mm lens for slight telephoto effect, and a lot of texture. There is a towering steel post, palm trees gently moving in the evening sun, and a bicyclist contre-jour. Yet the picture is static, even stagnant. The motion is implied but all seems to be very orderly.

… Texture, curvature and angle of observation may be the requisites for seeing what we are in the mood for seeing. One can freeze motion on film as one does on his retina or his memory.

But to see motion ones’ mood has to be in motion!

April 12, 2015
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2015

Turkish Oud: Armenian Destiny

I am perhaps at that phase of life when one starts thinking about origin and descendence. In the past year I have published a number of essays (1,2) about my grandfather Karnig Kazandjian who survived the Armenian massacres in the early 1900 and from Konya to Damascus, then to Beirut where he started a new generation. As his first grandson, I have been greatly influenced by his history and posture to life. Last year I co-authored a book (3) where his survival is presented within the context of how the identity of a new generation is shaped consequent to massacres, exodus and the cloak of being an immigrant. Indeed, once one leaves his native land, one remains an immigrant no matter the new hospitality and acceptance.

And along with stories, photographs and writings, certain memorabilia, especially when linked to the story of becoming an immigrant, take on a special meaning.

One of these memorabilia is the Oud that belonged to my grandfather. It has a special meaning because my grandfather was a musician and he escaped the massacres of Armenians in Turkey by having admirers of his music, both Armenians and Turks. As a kid I was told that he took a few things with him, among them a watch and his Oud. When he arrived to Damascus, he received a warm welcome from people who knew him and was able to teach music to the kids of wealthy Syrians. Then he moved to Beirut where he raised his son (my father) and daughter and in the 1920’s was among the founders of the Lebanese Conservatory of Music. He remained at the conservatory till his death in 1968.

As a kid, I have seen him play the Oud and the violin. He used to place the violin on his thigh like a mini-viola and play. My father played the violin, but by placing it under his chin. It was always a funny thing for me as a kid to see them play together in such different ways.

There was one Oud, however, that I had never seen, as it was always wrapped in a quilt-like cloth. I was told it was grandpa’s special Oud, the one he brought with him from Konya. And, that the quilt-like cloth was made by my grandmother (who died before I was born) by stitching together remnants of cloth during the hard times.

… When my parents passed, I finally found that Oud. They lived their last 25 years of life in Paris and the Oud was kept, still in my grandmother’s quilt, in the garage. The rib was badly damaged, and the pegbox severed and hanging by the cords. When I first saw it coming out of the quilt I slowly unfolded, I had the impression of seeing a decapitated body. Perhaps symbolically that was correct.

But first, a few words about the Oud.

The Oud was created during the early Pharaonic era, and according to Farabi (a philosopher and music scholar of the early Islamic era) the Oud was invented by Lamech, the sixth grandson of Adam. The legend tells that when Lamech’s son died, in grieving he hung his son’s body from a tree. The first Oud is said to be inspired by the shape of his son’s bleached skeleton (4).

Wow! Quite a story.

The more recent history of the Oud is confined to the Middle East and Turkey. As such there are two types of Oud – Arabic and Turkish. The Arabic Oud is a bit longer and larger, but most importantly has a deeper tone due to the heavier wood used in its construction. The Turkish Oud is therefore shorter, and the lighter wood (historically spruce wood) gives it a more vibrato sound rather than the deeper, more romantic sound of its Arabic counterpart.

I am not an expert in Ouds but have heard enough variations during my childhood that the romantic vs the vibrato makes sense to me. However, I was delighted that there is a simple way of identifying a Turkish Oud: Where the fingerboard joins the soundboard, there is a small ornament that looks like an extension of the fingerboard that joins to a point as the picture below (5):

With all this new knowledge, I decided to learn about my grandfather’s Oud and perhaps about him.

First, the quilt. I do not know how old it is but definitely more than 60 years have passed since the remnants have been carefully sewn together.

Next, the Oud. As the picture shows, it is badly damaged. The soundboard is detached at many places from the ribs, and it is very brittle. “What can one expect from a 100 year old Oud wrapped in a quilt and transported from Turkey to Syria, then to Lebanon, then to France, to end up in the United States?” I convinced myself.

I felt confident that it is a Turkish Oud because of the ornament where the fingerboard joined the soundboard.

There are three soundholes, not ornate, but covered with etched wood. Overall the Oud seems very simple, with none of the mother-of-pearl inlays or exotic woods I have seen during my Internet search.  But amazingly, the pick my grandfather used to play the Oud is somehow stuck in the cords. The symbolism of that pick, as a virtual extension of my grandfather’s hand, made me wonder: am I the player now, telling the story of this instrument which, broken and cached away, vibrates a different vibe?

Then I peeped inside the larger soundhole. I could see a sticker with letters. My heart missed a beat, as I realized that this humble instrument may have a story kept in its tortured entrails for a century.
So, I decided to shine light into the soundhole. This is when the story unfolded!

The first thing I saw was a small Black & White picture, in the left corner. Then Arabic alphabet next to it. This Oud had a history to tell. So I got the light closer and here is what this tortured instrument revealed to me:

It was time to take a picture. With my 1970’s Micro-Nikkor 55mm lens I got closer to the soundhole.

There it was, a man from the past looking at me with one eye covered by the passage of time. Still, as a photographer my first thought was “How can a century old picture, hidden in the ribs of this Oud look so good?” Practically no yellowing, no cracks on that picture. What kind of paper did they use to withstand the passage and most inhospitable conditions in which this Oud had traveled from across three continents?

I looked closer. The writing is in Arabic alphabet as I would have expected from that era when Turkish was written with Arabic alphabet. There is damage to this part of the sticker, but still I could read “Oudi” as the first word. That can mean “Oud player” or “Oud maker”. I expected this as it is customary (minus the picture) to have the maker’s name specified inside old instruments.  What made me hold my breath was the name of the maker: NISHAN PROUDIAN! An Armenian.

At this point I was transported to a sphere of thought and feelings that perhaps a field anthropologist experiences. I was peeping through a hole of history.

Looking through my camera, I skipped a line and stopped on the Arabic numerals specifying a date. It read “1240” which is the Hijri calendar. I know enough about this calendar to realize that the history of this Oud may be different from what I thought. A quick Internet conversion of the Hijri to Gregorian calendar confirmed my initial thought:

The date on the sticker is 1824!

1824. Now all I thought I knew about the history of this Oud was changed. This Oud was made at least 50 years before my grandfather was born.
How did it end in his hands?

One more piece of the puzzle: my grandmother’s maiden name was PROUDIAN. But neither she nor my grandfather were born when this Oud seems to have been made. Was this a family heirloom of my grandmother? Is it just a coincidence? Were the Proudians famous Oud makers in Konya?

… April 24, 2015 is the 100th Commemoration and remembrance date of the Armenian Genocide. I hold in my hands a musical instrument made 90 years before the massacres that uprooted my grandfather from his birthplace. Yet it was this instrument (as I was told) that helped him survive the exodus and get enrooted in the Middle East.
And through the small soundhole of the Oud, a handsome man, Nishan Proudian is now looking at me. I do not know who he was, but I know he still has a story to tell me.

…And I recall a passage from Ezekiel 17:9 where uprooting a vine and enrooting it is described as:

Will this vine grow and prosper? No! I will pull it up, roots and all! I will cut off its fruit and let its leaves wither and die. I will pull it up easily without a strong arm or a large army”

And yet, the parable states that the vine was planted in good soil beside abundant waters, so that it might yield branches and bear fruit and become a splendid vine.

… My grandfather, and his Oud, was enrooted next to the abundant waters of the Mediterranean Sea, almost a century ago. And his grandson, now holding that Oud, continues to cherish that splendid vine.

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2015
March 21, 2015




   1. http://vahezen.blogspot.com/2014/07/ottoman-times-armenian-timemakers.html
   2. http://vahezen.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-spice-road-from-lebanon-to-mongolia.html
   3. http://vahezen.blogspot.com/2014/04/this-posting-will-be-different-from-my.html
   4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oud
   5.  http://www.oudforguitarists.com/types-of-ouds-ultimate-oud-buyers-guide-1/

A Stone to Turn the Page

This morning I am thinking about headstones. The past two days’ full moon was spectacular upon the mountain where I am now.  Late at night I sat outside with my dog next to me looking at the moon and the stony mountain. At some point, while listening to the coyotes howling at the moon, its silvery light did cast a shadow below the countless rocks and boulders in the open field facing me. 

Perhaps it was the late night, but I thought of the mountain as a vast cemetery full of randomly dispersed headstones.

The sun is out now although I can still see the moon. Faded, still round, it shines no light upon my morning. It is its own headstone, for a few hours. And then, it will be back, reborn and dominant.

Between two sips of strong coffee, I realized that I did not know the origin of headstones. Like so many things, I have taken it for granted that humans always put a headstone upon the tomb of the dead. I have also used the symbolism of the headstone to define the end of an experience, of a feeling, or of an attempt. Like “turning the page”. 

But is that the case?  Can one also put a headstone upon the living? Upon an ongoing feeling? And, does “turning the page” always result in a better chapter of life?

… It seems that the origin of the headstone dates back to Judea, where it was customary to bury the dead and ask every mourner to place a stone upon the head of the grave. Over centuries that tradition became more socially institutionalized and the headstone turned into a marker of the tomb with information about the deceased. In other words, it became an immortalizer. A marker for the future more than of the past.

Interestingly, that tradition from Judea may not be peculiar to humans. It is said that when an elephant dies, members of the herd mourn and each brings a branch, even a small tree and place them upon the lifeless body. And today, many throw a flower upon the casket or the tomb. 

A universal gesture perhaps.

But to remember one often goes to grandiose efforts. After all if we want to remember it is because there was love, admiration, and that there were good times. Hence the ornate edifices upon certain tombs, called Stelae. These are more than headstones; they are veritable funerary art forms. 

Do we symbolically place a stele over memories as well to remember and let other generations learn about the good times we had? 

… A couple of decades ago I took pictures of stelae in the only Armenian cemetery in Singapore. In the middle of the city, the cemetery is next to a small chapel kept as a historical heritage. I do not think there are Armenians left in Singapore, but the graves of the passed generation are still there reminding us of times past and heritages respected. More, the stelae are carved in limestone, and the tropical weather of Singapore has joined the passage of time itself to erode and irreversibly blunt the sharp edges of passion, love and remembrance.

One stele attracted me because of the intense emotions the statue showed. Rain, wind, sun and time had further smoothened the stone and darkened its color. I stayed next to that headstone for a long while. The expression of the statue was so tender, so sad, so accepting.  

And then, as it is the case with the observation of what seems ordinary, I discovered an extraordinary detail: there was a toothbrush left near the hands of the statue! Now the expression of the statue seemed even more mysterious: why would anyone leave a toothbrush on that headstone?

… Many years have passed since I took that picture, but the symbolism of that toothbrush has stayed with me. Can one clean and efface the marks of time upon a headstone? Of the name of a person? Of memorable times under moonlight? Could a toothbrush symbolize our inability to keep up with the pace of the passage and our helplessness in reversing its ravages? 

I have chosen, placed and visited a number of headstones for the dear ones I lost. And, life has taken me around, from place to place, from people to new people and I have left these headstones lonesome. They somehow mark a time of my own passage rather than a place where a loved one was given back to the earth.

I have come to accept that a headstone is for the living not for the dead.

… This morning I am thinking about headstones. Not the ones I saw under the full moon atop a high mountain. But the headstones we put upon memories and feelings. 

And I am sure that when it is full moon again, I will sit outside with my dog next to me and look at the rocks and boulders casting a silvery shadow in moonlight. And I will then think what I think today: that one never really “turns a page” or buries the memory of good times. 

Instead, we celebrate, each in our own way, the kindness of that passage.

March 7, 2015

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2015

New Wine in an Old Bottle

I finished reading Walter Isaacson’s “The Innovators”. I was delighted by his previous work on Einstein and was hoping to be captivated by this one too. It was not the case, and when I reached the final pages a line from Isaacson, while written for another context, summed up my thoughts: it was “old wine in a new bottle”. I found little innovative thinking in this book, but that line made me think.

Where did the saying come from? Today it insinuates that one is “pouring” old ideas into a new framework and selling it as a new creation. Was that the origin of the saying?

So I did a bit of research.

Interestingly, “new wine in old bottle” is a conceptual transliteration of a parable found in the New Testament. There are different versions of it, but the one in Matthew 9:17 reads:

“Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”

A little more reading on this and I discovered delightful anthropology and philosophy to form the background for explaining this parable.

Indeed, historically wine was made by first fermenting the pressed juice in clay jars to let the gassy phase take its course. Then the fermenting juice was placed in new vats or if to be transported, in “wineskins”. The wineskins were actually the entire skin of a goat where the openings of the legs and tail were tightly sewn. The opening of the neck was the “neck” of this container and the partially fermented wine was poured in the opening at the neck then tied off securely. (Now I know where the “neck” of a bottle came from!)

One never puts freshly pressed grape juice immediately into the goat skin “container” as the gassy phase (Tumultuous Stage) of fermentation would burst the wineskin. But once partially fermented, the “calmer” fermentation of the juice can be accommodated by the stretchiness of the goat skin. But “old” wineskins stretch once, and if new juice is poured into old wineskins, even the calmer fermentation phase would tear the skin!

Wow!

So, the “new wine” is not really wine yet; and, the “old bottle” is not even a bottle! Instead, the parable has at least two philosophical implications:

            a. The container should be adequate for accommodating what is poured into it; and

            b. Tumultuous phases should be contained within flexible contexts.

Of course these are my interpretations and I am sure there are a multitude other ways for analyzing this parable.

… So, I believe that today we are using the old parable in a non-authentic way. But does the lesson, the implications and philosophy of the parable still hold true today?

The poet in me immediately placed wine within the context of love and passion. After all, even today, wine is often associated with romance, and from Rumi to Baudelaire has found its place in poetry. So I went to search in my favorite poets’ and philosophers’ works lines about wine and love.

Let’s start with Rumi:

“There are thousands of wines that can take over our minds. Don’t think all ecstasies are the same!”

Was he really talking about wine or about what passions can fill our lives and gives us the ecstasies we so pursue? If one replaces “wines” by “passions” would the message be the same?

Wine and”French” cannot be dissociated easily, so I looked into the works of Baudelaire, Colette, and even Pasteur.

According to Baudelaire:

“One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters…But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, if you so chose. But get drunk.”

Again, wine seems irrelevant to this saying. He is suggesting a life of passion, of going to the limit, of being totally driven and taken by our interests. Poetry, science, philosophy or love of nature – it does not matter.

Colette brings wine into the domain of “influence” and psychology when she writes:

“There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.”

While pharmacologically easily understood, these lines from Colette can very easily also dissociate themselves from wine. What will happen if I replace “wine” again with passion, or ideology, or professional drive? Would our psychological state show similar side-effects?

Since we are talking pharmacology, let’s go to Pasteur, who is often quoted to have said:

“Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages.”

There is no poetry here, nor any philosophy. It is the most famous bacteriologist who looked at the composition of wine from a biological point of view. Possibly Pasteur never got drunk, nor did he pursue Rumi’s ecstasies. For him it was a medium where fermentation took place.

… What about wine and love?

It can be as simple as a bucolic setting to which wine adds a special touch. Pablo Neruda said it simply and with grace:

“I like on the table, 

when we're speaking, 

the light of a bottle

of intelligent wine.”

Every time I read these simple lines I see a painting in aquarelle. What would have happened if Neruda and Monet were contemporaries?

Yet love is never pure aquarelle. It is never two-dimensional as a painting. It is rarely the “light of a bottle”.  W.B. Yeats, in a few words, brings love and wine together:

“Wine enters through the mouth, 

Love, the eyes.

I raise the glass to my mouth, 

I look at you, 

I sigh.” 

… So what to do with the wineskin and wine parable? Can one resemble the wineskin to a person’s soul? A soul where love had already fermented and given the passion, the ecstasies and their side-effects? So now would it be wise to pour new love into this used, expanded to its limits, and old soul? Would the “Tumultuous Stage” of a new love’s fermentation tear this soul to parts?  

In other words, and to stay conform to the original parable, should one pour new wine in an old bottle?

.. And I smiled realizing that our present day usage of the saying is “Old wine in a New bottle”!  The implications of this version deserve a discussion in a separate essay….

February 22, 2015

© Vahé  A. Kazandjian, 2015

I wanted a picture that also represents the old and the new, while touching on the topic of wine. So, I used the new technology of scanning film negatives and decided to use this picture of a man in a large city drinking wine in the street. The quality of the scan is so bad that it cannot be used for photographic work, but the bad quality also preserves the privacy of the person. I took this picture with a 1970’s Mamiya 645 medium format camera.

PS/ I hope this essay will also have an additional contemporaneous dimension as 2015 is the Chinese Year of The Goat!  

Thank You!

This is a special entry on this blog which I started 1 year ago. As many of my visitors have discovered by clicking the “About Me” icon, I do have two other blogs as well which are often visited regularly by my unknown-to-me readers… Indeed, while I can see the countries of the visitors and the pages they visited and read, I do not know who they are nor can I discover their email addresses. I think it is better that way.

The reason I am posting this short note is that my three blogs were visited 10,000 times as of today! It is an important milestone since my blogs’ focus areas (photography, poetry, and literary essays) are of interest to people who are not just surfing the Web but purposefully looking for specific topics.

Further, the tally of the countries shows that I have had the privilege to be read by visitors from 62 countries!  It sure gives me the encouragement to continue to share my street photos and literary essays with renewed passion.

So, to all of you who I do not know by name but who read my work, THANK YOU! And for those of you who after reading sent me an email (or two) and shared your thoughts and suggestions, please know that you have helped me tell my stories better.

Hope our joint and mutual journeys continue.

February 19, 2015

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2015

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