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 Mun...