My first political posting

Listening to all these people yesterday I wondered for the nth time about taking sides: how do you keep out of taking sides? I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s ever possible… doesn’t “not taking sides” mean making no judgments? If it means making no judgments how do you tell the right from the wrong? Transcendence is the answer, but when has transcendence been a political principle (perhaps the only exception was Gandhi. I really need to study his life more)?

According to L. Broers he was trying to be all-inclusive, which in Armenia (and most probably in Azerbaijan it will be same) is interpreted as “artificial symmetry”. I’m fine with all-inclusiveness, but I can’t stop siding with what the adviser to the NKR President said, “Conflict cannot be resolved unless based on the principles of fairness”. So, even all-inclusiveness should reflect these principles.

Another Broers argument which did not sound too convincing (to me at least) was the statement that ACCORD does not attempt to provide a historical overview of the countries. Well, yes, but erring against historical accuracy in any excerpt that is HISTORICAL, does provoke bitterness, and instead of instigating constructive public dialog (which according to the CR is the aim of the publication) it will kindle a heated and hateful historical debate who was before whom…

Finally, going beyond labels: again, too much contradiction in what he says should be done about them. Labels are really what matter in negotiations. How many times have we felt the weight of a wrong word cracking a sound relationship? And here we’re talking about a frozen conflict…

And before I go to Mango for a nice pair of jeans (have my fingures crossed! Can’t really find a decent pair of jeans in this country:-) the final comment: I can’t figure out what is more beneficial in this situation: treating the conflict as one between Armenia and Azerbaijan or one between NKR and Azerbaijan? This uncertainty bothers me..

matisse

there's so much to do but i can't help writing about the matisse (1869-1954, i'd rather write this down, since with my love to figures i'll manage to forget this in an hour:-)) film at the national art gallery i just saw (skipped the lunch, but what a wonderful break!). i've never seen his later paintings (or rather were those paintings or collages? i've got to research this some time later). extremely fascinating! his nudes in blue, the dancing figures and the wolve were so vivid and lively, notwithstanding the abtractism. maybe that's what genuis is???????

a quick one on wilco

wilco "summerteeth" - a nice mix of the beatles (or perhaps the who???), poi dog pondering (i finally overcame my laziness to look up poi in the dictionary and found out it's sort of a thai food) and phish... i quite like it:-)

well, have to go to lunch. i guess it's the snow...

Be yourself, not matter what they say, says Sting in his “Englishman in New York”. It changes your whole perspective once you get a reader. I wonder how novelists write: do they write already knowing somebody (in this case ‘many bodies’:-)) will read what they’re writing?

It’s beautiful outside… gorgeous I would say. Another of New Year postcard days. This is an interesting day as well: (a) found the coat button I lost on Friday (it was really funny: I’m walking out with Monique and throw in very casually, between our conversation about Monday “Mon, wish I could find the button”. A minute later I look down and see the button… Experiences like this have always baffled me…) (b) I’m learning that I’m a project coordinator of a project I have no clue about or to be more accurate, have been only a very small part of the whole thing, (c) get a call from Karen. I have a big problem: I can’t say no. But I have to say no, since I can’t stand cheesy poetry recitals on the phone smelling of tasteless butchery of the verse. And especially if that's the song I love so much…I wonder if the parrot story was true though:-) Karen is the reality I’ve always managed to avoid, or rather he’s not a player in my reality: a normal, ordinary Armenian guy taking advantage of Armenian demographics and one summer day when I was too tired to think strait:-) (d) listen to Wilco which appears in my CD collection from nowhere. I wonder whether it’s Eric who gave it to me or whether it’s Edgar’s. and I told Warren I don’t know the band:-) (e) finally made up my mind to call this studio about the ballroom classes. I want to start again. If I can’t take classes with Gagik, I’d rather go on with what I’ve started. (it still snows in small fluffy flakes!) Why ballroom will come next:-)

The Namesake reminds me so much of the White Teeth by Zaide Smith. Though I’ve read only 1/3 of the novel, I can’t stop thinking of the one I read last year. Why have such novels become so popular? No, I’m not saying I don’t like either. I enjoyed White Teeth and I'm enjoying the Namesake. But I’m wondering about how we’ve changed: we seem to have engaged in a war of identity survival. I know the reason is the shrinking world. Homer, Cervantes, Mauppassant, Gothe, Shelley etc etc were concerned of who the human is, and contemporary novelists seem to be concerned of who an individual is. No, this is not what I mean really and what I write does not make any sense:-) All these writers and the ones I’ve not managed to mention here have traveled a lot back then - I remember reading Weininger and the sudden shock when I suddenly realized a simple fact I somehow have never noticed: at the end of the 19th century this man has managed to learn of such huge diversity of cultures, to cite Russians, English, Americans, French etc, being an Austrian himself. Today we talk of globalization, mobility and of other buzz words to describe the contemporary international society and treat these factors as sound reasons to explain the life today. But back then all this was happening as well, right? Perhaps the only difference is in numbers that have accumulated into quality: in the Middle Ages an average European carpenter could not travel to Thailand for a vacation:-) So, today we’ve got the novels about statistically average humans, whereas before we had the novels about the human who’s on the quest… again this makes little sense, but I’ll edit all this in couple of days, when I finish the novel and have more tangible feelings and thoughts:-)

Now, home!

pastoral=pasteurized milk:-)

wow, there seems to be a guy who can't find a woman in Armenia: http://www.cilicia.com/armo_life-log.html:-) should tell dzyuno about it :-)))

yeah, tolstoy and dostoevsky, urbanism and pastoralism... this is what i wanted to write about :-) (i've got to drop this stupid habit of 'savoring' my messages with emoticons:-)) while cooking in a freezing kitchen of my apartment yesterday, for some reason or another i started thinking of why we are so fascinated with urban areas and why intelligentsia which apparently should have seen the devastating influence of being torn away from the nature seem to prefer towns and is drawn to these places like bees to their hives. my answer was 'suffering', in the case of intelligentsia: painter, writers etc. etc. it sounds weird but suffering opens up the doors to intellect and emotions, hence no surprise towns serve as honeycombs for these intelligent bees. one suffers when torn away from his natural milieu, right? as humans we’re indispensable from nature (and don’t give me the crap on human superiority and stuff! (a call in a desert! who’s the one not to give me the crap anyway:-)?)) and once away from her we tend to suffer. so tolstoy returned to the nature and perhaps that’s the reason behind the aristocracy and harmony of his novel. dostoevsky stayed in town, hence the darkness his work is permeated with.

on armenians diasporans kundera and other things in 2006

recently read nathan's posting and the loooong feedback on armenian blogosphere. can't stop wondering why people like breaking the whole into pieces, though i give credit to those who do and research one piece to the exhaustion of turning into a philosopher:-) i've always wondered at the meaningless debate of who's armenian and who's not, and who's got the right of deciding on the future of my country. i'll define armenianness as a quality which is shaped be genes, geography, culture, language, traditions, but not only. there's smth that does not materialize easily for one to be able to provide a comprehensive definition and this indefinable (what is the word here?) vogi mortars all the above-mentioned into the quality of armenianness. so being an armenian means demonstrating this quality in your daily life. anyone who does so, no matter local or diasporan is armenian. even petrina is armenian!

i know this does not sound too convincing of an argument, so i'll try another way. i wonder why there's a common, or rather a wide-spread perception that diasporans do not have a stake in this country's future, especially, when it refers to those who live and work in the country. using the accepted terms, this will be just another social group that comprises the armenian public and definitely can have a say in how it wants the country to develop. we don't say yezidees or the gay community can't have a say in the future of armenia if they happen to live here. as a local, it pains me to witness this meaningless debate that causes hostility and takes us further from the vision of exerting joint efforts for building a prosperious (in all aspects, not just gdp!) country. diasporans were perhaps the first armenians that made me love my being armenian. they're the ones to introduce healthy diversity to a society that does not even know the value of its traditions and how those can be used to their advantage...

another point: nathan argues that the blogs of the diasporans do not reflect armenian reality. and why not? reality is reflected differently by different reflectors, right? the argument would have been more convincing had it stressed the lack of diversity of reflections. of course, the local glance would have revealed a different picture, but there's a big issue here: diasporans have the skills to play with blogs, locals are still getting used to the concept of web presence. at this point the intelligent and skillful locals are into online forums (e.g. http://www.openarmenia.com) , so give them some time to get to blogs:-)

eemmm, anyway... now on kundera...unbearable lightness of being... a very good novel, but why am i not so impressed? why do i still prefer the life of pi? no doubt i enjoyed the intellectualism of it and still remember the simile on love and melody, but...intellectualism haunts me and i seem to fully enjoy simplicity only. or might it be his attitude to dostoevsky:-)? i guess i need to reread the book and read other novels as well.

karen dilemma: what does the guy want? i am not the type; it’s way too obvious, but he keeps calling. not that i mind it. simply he does not care about talking to me, he just wants to see me and gets mad when i say no:-) strange...

i'm rapidly gaining weight; feeling like starting that book (tavjutakov tghan :-)) which i know i'll never do (when's the last time i've written anything?); being inexcusably slow in getting back to people who write to me; drafting already the third research proposal without ever producing a final version of any; thinking how we can help samvel karapetyan in publishing the documents in the state archives; wanting to have kids (the other day i found the solution to actually realizing my dream: now being 30 and still single i won't manage giving birth to 7 kids:-) so as soon as i find the dad, we'll adopt the other 4:-)))))); thinking of mom; wanting to travel; guess this is all of the wishlist for the moment:-)