Rambling notes of trauma
by Paul Chaderjian
The 23rd melted into the 24th, 1915 became 2008, and I’m wide awake at the intersection of Atwater and Minneapolis in the metropolis of Los Angeles. It’s April 24 at 2:22 A.M., and I can’t sleep.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this; this wasn’t how it was supposed to play out. Twelve hours ahead in Yerevan right now, thousands are making an annual pilgrimage to Tstitsernakaberd. But what’s the point?
Later this morning, the bluetooth-wearing, 7-jeans-clad, chain-smoking young people will get into their cars and drive around with the tricolor hoisted out their windows, take over Hollywood Boulevard and then shout for justice at the Turkish Consulate on Wilshire, but what does that have to do with me?
Can our genius only do this much 93 years later?
U.S. proclamations, being pandered to by politicians seeking office, political speeches, and lots of songs and poetry recitations can’t bring back the dead, erase the trauma, erase the nightmare, vocalize Munch’s Scream or help me sleep, help me find an end to the free-floating anxiety; help allow me to take action in response to this thing – whatever you want to call it.
I’ve done the Tao, read the Bible, listened to Oprah discuss with Echkart the “pain body” and how to detach from culturally inherited traumas. I’ve maintained an athletic body, found success, and traveled the world.
The non-Armenian world has opened its arms to me, invited me into the consumerist haven and heaven of riches at the Walmarts and Vegas casinos. Travelocity can take you anywhere, and drugs can numb anyone, but why is one son of Armen sleepless on this morning of the 24th? Why does the past still preoccupy me? Why does this thing that happened to us keep drawing me back to my people?
What is so wrong that no amount of time on the couch, prayer, intellectualizing, reading survivor accounts, watching Ararat in repeat, and scoring points on the evening news can put to rest.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this, but tell that to the Armenian ladies getting their hair done in overpriced Beverly Hills salons or signing their next lease on Beamers they can’t afford. Tell that to the oligarchs who can hire butterflies for weddings but won’t feed the poor in their backyard.
Are we delusional? Is this the life to lead after 93 years of trauma?
Someone last week suggested that I should find Bill Gates and interview him. To me that was as extraordinary as saying I should call up Aliev and tell him to call off the war rhetoric. Or I should call Mr. Bush and ask why he’s dropping bombs in Iraq.
Are the sons of Genocide capable of getting any grip on reality? Or are our genetic codes too greatly influenced and the DNA shot so that acting out is the only thing we know how to do? Act out against people like the Consul General who ain’t listening or make ourselves believe we are the greatest race to come into existence.
Is protesting and calling for justice at the Turkish Consulate delusional too, when some of our people trash the countryside of Artsakh, the land they freed from Azerbaijani rule, land which cost hundred of lives to make into a second homeland? Are we delusional when sons of survivors can create civil strife and kill ten of their own people to gain power and riches in a post-Soviet reality? Did I ask why the hill behind the Genocide Memorial is a trash dump and the roads leading to Arstakh are covered with plastic bottles, candy wrappers, and abandoned coffee stands?
Was this how we wanted our history to turn out? And mind you, I didn’t hear the story from my grandmothers. They wouldn’t talk. They spared me. Micheline Marcom, Nancy Kricorian, and Patricia Sarrafian brought the trauma to life with their ground breaking literature.
Why couldn’t this have been a day of celebration, asked a friend yesterday. I told her to write a commentary and elaborate on her comparison about why the Jews celebrate by eating feasts on Passover and we light candles and cry on April 24.
Not tears and not anger, but a celebration, a feast, a day we hugged each other and counted our blessings. Why not make khorovatz for everyone, drink some oghi, and dance like there is no tomorrow? We survived the barbaric violence, didn’t we?
But who are we acting for when we block traffic with our flags up on our cars in the middle of “the Glendale?” Whose movie are we playing background characters in and whose lines are we reciting every year on this day? I can tell you, it’s not my script.
Who are we playing to when we walk in circles in the middle of rundown streets that were labeled “Little Armenia” to appease the immigrants who lived there when they sought refuge from Iran, Beirut, and Armenia?
Why does the pain, the torture, and the displacement that I cannot seem to do anything about not allow me to sleep? And I wasn’t even there. I didn’t even see my grandmother cry telling me the horrors that could never be uttered to a child of ten. Then she died.
I’ve tossed and turned, even watched “Joan of Arcadia” on television; I thought maybe God fictionalized into humans could have something for me to learn. I played this week’s podcast from Joel Osteen to “enlarge my vision” and listened to the end-of-the-world radio on a scratchy AM station about the year of 2012 and the end of Times. But the answers are not there. None of what’s being barraged to me tonight, not even Armenian media was able to put some context to this madness of the night.
Maybe the answers aren’t anywhere, and no matter what academics study, no matter what artists create to process this thing that happened to us, maybe the only thing I can do as an Armenian is to be wide awake on April 24 without any answers and without any understanding.
And if Turkey announced tomorrow that yes, they had planned a Genocide. Would that make any difference? Would we heal? Would I be able to sleep?
It’s 2:33 past midnight into Thursday, April 24, 2008, and all I know is that it wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.
It’s 3:27, and I just took two sleeping pills. Maybe I won’t remember this diatribe in the morning when I smile, shake hands, and mingle with the other mourners.
The 23rd melted into the 24th, 1915 became 2008, and I’m wide awake at the intersection of Atwater and Minneapolis in the metropolis of Los Angeles. It’s April 24 at 2:22 A.M., and I can’t sleep.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this; this wasn’t how it was supposed to play out. Twelve hours ahead in Yerevan right now, thousands are making an annual pilgrimage to Tstitsernakaberd. But what’s the point?
Later this morning, the bluetooth-wearing, 7-jeans-clad, chain-smoking young people will get into their cars and drive around with the tricolor hoisted out their windows, take over Hollywood Boulevard and then shout for justice at the Turkish Consulate on Wilshire, but what does that have to do with me?
Can our genius only do this much 93 years later?
U.S. proclamations, being pandered to by politicians seeking office, political speeches, and lots of songs and poetry recitations can’t bring back the dead, erase the trauma, erase the nightmare, vocalize Munch’s Scream or help me sleep, help me find an end to the free-floating anxiety; help allow me to take action in response to this thing – whatever you want to call it.
I’ve done the Tao, read the Bible, listened to Oprah discuss with Echkart the “pain body” and how to detach from culturally inherited traumas. I’ve maintained an athletic body, found success, and traveled the world.
The non-Armenian world has opened its arms to me, invited me into the consumerist haven and heaven of riches at the Walmarts and Vegas casinos. Travelocity can take you anywhere, and drugs can numb anyone, but why is one son of Armen sleepless on this morning of the 24th? Why does the past still preoccupy me? Why does this thing that happened to us keep drawing me back to my people?
What is so wrong that no amount of time on the couch, prayer, intellectualizing, reading survivor accounts, watching Ararat in repeat, and scoring points on the evening news can put to rest.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this, but tell that to the Armenian ladies getting their hair done in overpriced Beverly Hills salons or signing their next lease on Beamers they can’t afford. Tell that to the oligarchs who can hire butterflies for weddings but won’t feed the poor in their backyard.
Are we delusional? Is this the life to lead after 93 years of trauma?
Someone last week suggested that I should find Bill Gates and interview him. To me that was as extraordinary as saying I should call up Aliev and tell him to call off the war rhetoric. Or I should call Mr. Bush and ask why he’s dropping bombs in Iraq.
Are the sons of Genocide capable of getting any grip on reality? Or are our genetic codes too greatly influenced and the DNA shot so that acting out is the only thing we know how to do? Act out against people like the Consul General who ain’t listening or make ourselves believe we are the greatest race to come into existence.
Is protesting and calling for justice at the Turkish Consulate delusional too, when some of our people trash the countryside of Artsakh, the land they freed from Azerbaijani rule, land which cost hundred of lives to make into a second homeland? Are we delusional when sons of survivors can create civil strife and kill ten of their own people to gain power and riches in a post-Soviet reality? Did I ask why the hill behind the Genocide Memorial is a trash dump and the roads leading to Arstakh are covered with plastic bottles, candy wrappers, and abandoned coffee stands?
Was this how we wanted our history to turn out? And mind you, I didn’t hear the story from my grandmothers. They wouldn’t talk. They spared me. Micheline Marcom, Nancy Kricorian, and Patricia Sarrafian brought the trauma to life with their ground breaking literature.
Why couldn’t this have been a day of celebration, asked a friend yesterday. I told her to write a commentary and elaborate on her comparison about why the Jews celebrate by eating feasts on Passover and we light candles and cry on April 24.
Not tears and not anger, but a celebration, a feast, a day we hugged each other and counted our blessings. Why not make khorovatz for everyone, drink some oghi, and dance like there is no tomorrow? We survived the barbaric violence, didn’t we?
But who are we acting for when we block traffic with our flags up on our cars in the middle of “the Glendale?” Whose movie are we playing background characters in and whose lines are we reciting every year on this day? I can tell you, it’s not my script.
Who are we playing to when we walk in circles in the middle of rundown streets that were labeled “Little Armenia” to appease the immigrants who lived there when they sought refuge from Iran, Beirut, and Armenia?
Why does the pain, the torture, and the displacement that I cannot seem to do anything about not allow me to sleep? And I wasn’t even there. I didn’t even see my grandmother cry telling me the horrors that could never be uttered to a child of ten. Then she died.
I’ve tossed and turned, even watched “Joan of Arcadia” on television; I thought maybe God fictionalized into humans could have something for me to learn. I played this week’s podcast from Joel Osteen to “enlarge my vision” and listened to the end-of-the-world radio on a scratchy AM station about the year of 2012 and the end of Times. But the answers are not there. None of what’s being barraged to me tonight, not even Armenian media was able to put some context to this madness of the night.
Maybe the answers aren’t anywhere, and no matter what academics study, no matter what artists create to process this thing that happened to us, maybe the only thing I can do as an Armenian is to be wide awake on April 24 without any answers and without any understanding.
And if Turkey announced tomorrow that yes, they had planned a Genocide. Would that make any difference? Would we heal? Would I be able to sleep?
It’s 2:33 past midnight into Thursday, April 24, 2008, and all I know is that it wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.
It’s 3:27, and I just took two sleeping pills. Maybe I won’t remember this diatribe in the morning when I smile, shake hands, and mingle with the other mourners.
