I Have Now Shared Fifty Thousand Times

My blogs have now been visited and read 50,000 times by curious internet explorers from more than 60 countries.

My photography blog (https://liveingray.blogspot.com or Vahe's Streets on Google)) is the oldest with more than 38,000 visits. My literary blog (https://sensoucis.blogspot.com) and painting/sculpture blog (https://vaheark.blogspot.com) have a much more dedicated group of readers who regularly visit my sites.

So, on the 15^th of May 2019 I would like to again say THANK YOU to all of you who keep me going with the pleasure and passion to share my ideas and creations with you.

May 15, 2019

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

I Was Born on a Day When God Was Sick. (César Vallejo, Peruvian Poet)

A few weeks ago I lost my dog. He was my companion of 14 years and I felt disoriented, out of daily routine and missing the primordial.

So, this morning, as I often do on Sundays, I read poetry and forgot the sunshine outside my window.

César Vallejo and Pablo Neruda were my choices for today. I started with a simple yet now most affectionate poem by Neruda about his dog. It read:

My dog has died.

I buried him in the garden

next to a rusted old machine

I have buried four of my dogs over the years. But never next to a rusted old machine. Yet the feeling is the same. It is the departure from a residence in the daily. Not life necessarily, but a distancing from the tempo man and dog establish for themselves.

A residence in the quotidian. The city. The mountain. The earth.

Perhaps Neruda’s most memorable poems about the human condition are in his collection titled Residencia en la Tierra or “residence on earth”. It is a collection about departure and alienation; about loneliness without knowing the void that surrounds us; and, it is about the promises we hoped earthly life would give us but no poet ever found it.

And that took me to César Vallejo.

In Black Stone on White Stone, the Peruvian poet writes:

I will die in Paris with a rainstorm,

on a day I already remember,

I will die in Paris—and I don't shy away—

perhaps on a Thursday, as today is, in autumn

Translated by Rebecca Seiferle, I love those lines somehow common to the work of many poets regarding the process of their death. Yet, Vallejo has already experienced his departure as a resident of the earth since he remembers the day he died.

Perhaps departure is different from death.

… For me Neruda has never been apocalyptic but one who celebrated lovers and perhaps love. Vallejo however, deciphered what he had not yet read – the joy of the primordial.

Instead, he navigated the catacomb of days:

There is an empty place
in my metaphysical shape
that no one can reach:
a cloister of silence
that spoke on the edge of a fire

On the day I was born,
God was sick.

And that is what my dog helped me avoid.

May 12, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2109

Fear Is The Cheapest Room In The House. I Would Like to See You Living in Better Conditions. (Hafiz e- Shirazi)

Dogs bark in the night

It is windy and warm

Wounds breathe as the moon

Hides in its own

Whisper

It is safe to be lonely

When company calls you dear

As dogs bark in the night

And fill your silent space

With primordial

Fear

I have known that look

Lonely eyes want to hide

As their chill fills the space

With a smell I still recall

Decades later

And moons away

Tomorrow desert lizards

Will run up your walls

And shiny raven will gurgling croak

For a new start without leaving

The past whither in the desert sun

As you wash your face

And say

That you

Can

May 5, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

I wrote this poem as I learned about a story of domestic violence from a friend.

In my previous life as a healthcare professional, I often wrote about health and epidemics using poetry as my medium. In the late 1990s I was the “violence poet” in The Lancet, one of the most prestigious medical journals. Here are the links I found to a couple of them but unfortunately they are not available for free.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)60808-2/fulltext

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)75356-3/fulltext

Cracked Mirror

It was not a dream

But an empty space

When the sun was high

And Spring late to come

In that space

I found memories of things yet

To come

And a constant whisper

To keep me awake

That place was warm

But my tremor never stopped

As all the departed

Walked by

I did not extend my hand

To wipe their forehead of the dust

Silent walks paint upon

Those who lost their names

But find company

In that empty space

In the secret entrails

Of my days

April 10, 2019

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

I’ll Spit on You so I Don’t Put the Evil Eye on You.

                  A Room Without Book is Like a Body Without a Soul (Cicero)

On my painting and sculpture blog (https://vaheark.blogspot.com/2017/10/vahes-ark-vessel-of-eclectic-modes-of.html) I titled a painting I did as “Listening with my Eyes” (https://vaheark.blogspot.com/2018/09/listening-with-my-eyes.html) in September 2018. I had no anterior reference to such a description, other than what I described in my entry that I “listen” to the natural materials I use in my art, since I believe their characteristics dictate the subject I use them for, and the message I try to communicate.

In this case, it was a painting I did on hare skin.

A few weeks ago, I got a note from a visitor of my blog who suggested that I check the New Mexico Judiciary, New Mexico Center for Language Access and gave me a website address https://www.nmcenterforlanguageaccess.org/cms/en/courts-agencies/judges-portal/how-to-monitor-interpretation. Of course I did and a whole new learning experience unraveled!

I had no idea about the existence of an entire science defined as listening with your eyes, where a court-appointed interpreter communicates and interprets with a deaf person or a person who does not speak English the questions asked and interprets their responses.  The New Mexico Judiciary site helps the judge understand his/her role in supervising the interpretation by listening to the interpreter with both eyes and ears to assure a quality interpretation.

As I tried to learn more about the challenges deaf consumer face when working with an interpreter, I came across a book that I found most educational. It is titled “Deaf Eyes on Interpreting” published by Gallaudet University in 2018. The central thesis of the book, and hence its recommendations, is that:

Despite the many gains being made in the interpreting services profession, with an emphasis on the accuracy of the interpreted work, the perspectives of Deaf individuals are rarely documented in the literature. Opportunities for enhanced participation and full inclusion need to be considered in order for Deaf people to best represent themselves to the hearing, nonsigning public as competent and intelligent individuals.

This is a new topic for me and I plan to learn more. But as I was reading the synopsis of the above book, suddenly two of the words got a different meaning – “interpreter” and “eye”. Indeed, how could I not think about the line from Charlotte Bronte in Jane Eyre that is often quoted:

“The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter - in the eye.” 

.. I have always thought of the eyes as “mirrors of the soul” where the eyes do not actively engage in “interpretation”. Rather they are the portals of entry into the inner world of the person (or perhaps all animals) and the person who enters that world does the interpretation and evaluation of what he/she sees.

As I was reflecting on this, I came across a quote from Marcus Tullius Cicero:

“The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.” 

Ok, now I was getting really excited! So, going back to 60 BC, the concept of eyes as interpreter was documented.  

… When I was growing up, all babies wore an amulet consisting of a glass blue eye known as, “Kharaza zaraa” which is believed to dispel the evil eye, or il Malocchio. Sometimes that amulet was made into exquisite jewelry as a cube of 4 glass eyes encased within an intricate 20 carat cold cage. I had one of these and it was believed that when someone transmitted the negative vibes of envy toward me, one of the eyes would crack. I have to admit that I made it through my childhood without any of those glass eyes cracking!!

But the role the malocchio or evil eyes occupy in the Arabic and Italian cultures derives from ancient Greece and Rome. The root of the negative vibe has always been envy about the beauty, health, wealth or success of the envied person. That is why in these cultures people behave humbly, and do not brag. Who knows, if their beauty and success does not create envy in fellow people, the Gods on Mount Olympus or Vesuvius may one day get jealous and do nasty things themselves!

In fact, many of the cultures around the Mediterranean (Greek, Italian, Lebanese, Moroccan, Tunisian and Algerian) celebrate the eyes for beauty and even for power. For example, the Arabic saying is “I am under the order of your eyes” when a woman has an ask from a man. And while in the West a woman is called “honey” by her lover, in the Arab world she is called “my eyes”.

The Greeks, like the Italians fear the evil eye. In addition to using the amulet of the glass blue eye to dispel the spell of envy, the Greeks have a very “Greek” way to prevent the effect of the evil eye, called Mati in Greek. They spit 3 times and say “Ptou sou na min se matiaso” which roughly translates as “I’ll spit on you so I don’t put the evil eye on you.”

… So, I looked into the eyes of my dogs. Two pairs of large brown eyes with sclera smaller than mine looked at me for a while without envy but with what I interpreted as love. And then, I realized that while there might have been love, they were most interested in interpreting MY soul to see if I had enough compassion to give them a few more snacks!

As I was laughing about my experiment, I could not resist wondering if Emily Bronte had read Cicero’s statement ….

PS/ I have used the above photo in a previous posting, but I think that it fits the topic of this essay perfectly.

March 21, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Time Passes Slowly When You're Lost in a Dream (Judy Collins)

I wanted to set my soul be

Free of me

As a song is to the singer

A poem to constant pain

And a name left on an island

Before the morning rays

I wanted to let my fear be

Free of me

But it would not leave me

In fear of finding respite

On a calm beach where all waves die

Of lonesome trips

I wanted to get my watch and stop

The race I cannot win

But the mountain was too high to touch

And the sea too far to swim

So I kept my fear

And I held my soul

Within the space

Of my time

And then

Upon that beach where waves

Had died

And became sea

I sang a name

And let it be

March 13, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Sui Ipsius

I poured the lake

Into a stone

And it bounced

Irrational

Existential

And absurd

And yet

I carried that stone

Up the hill

Till I reached

Nothingness

Then raced back down

Hoping in anguish

That the hilltop

Would find its hero

But it did not

And I was left

With the choice I did not make

March 8, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019