The ripe mulberries are falling down.
We said good-bye to spring again.
The sunflower seed seller said,
“Nine months till the Lord comes.”
Armen Shekoyan
There is a video tape featuring the speech of soldier of the independence struggle Movses Gorgisyan. It’s May 28, 1988. Movses is talking about Armenia’s independence of 1918, which must continue with the ’88 national movement. That romantic man ended his speech with the following words: “Long live the future Armenia”. He meant modern-day Armenia, the Armenia that he didn’t get to see.
Now, as Armenia celebrates 15 years of independence, I say, “Long live the future Armenia”, because the future is still ahead, or it’s the future that I was dreaming about during the Soviet era, in the squares and the marches.
Just like the river, history can’t go back. I understood that when I saw the corpse of my friend.
“I’m still not perfect as a dead body,” said my friend Vahagn Atabekyan, but he didn’t say it to me, or you, or any other person, rather to the people who always say the opposite and don’t know much about the history of Armenia.
The cold, darkness, hunger and misery were just one side of the story, but the contradictor doesn’t make an effort to picture that darkness, the cold, hunger and misery and simply wishes to commit suicide. The contradictors reasons cynically that the unsatisfied person goes to heaven and is reincarnated sooner.
The unsatisfied person is reincarnated sooner if his being unsatisfied isn’t a result of self-consumption. Self-consumption: a word that was invented, just like all the words starting with “self” are invented, for example, self-respect (disrespect is used more often). Man respects himself because he doesn’t have allies, conscience or a God to believe in.
The only word that is different from the rest of the words starting with “self” is autonomy because it denies the individual’s narcissism as something besides personal desire.
Autonomy is one’s responsibility when it comes to time. When you ask someone what time it is, you already sense how much time you have lost, but when you know what time it is, you know about space and time. I think Armenian poet Sevak said once: “Eternal Armenia, an honorable name.” I don’t know why he said that. Perhaps he didn’t realize at the time that eternity is the past, the past indefinite and the past perfect. The future can’t be eternal, as well as the word “honorable”.
The future is full of suprises. But when Movses Grigoryan said “the future Armenia”, he meant the Armenia full of surprises, which can be based on autonomy, and not an old rock where there are inscriptions everywhere. But perhaps there is one text on that rock that includes the word “eternal” and there is a decoration predicting the eternal life of the dead, which is also a surprise. You never know. One thing is for sure: the same surprise doesn’t happen twice, just like the law remains in tact. That’s why it’s worth dreaming of the future Armenia.