Dried Poppy Flowers: 2013

Grey Racism

Once my sister told me that when she was a little girl she used to look at those black and white movies and think that life was also black and white in those days. Was it? Maybe, we can never know.

What I do know is only after what she said I realized that our world is truly colorful. I started watching the old movies from a different point of view. I was doing my best to catch the missing colors in each scene, trying to guess the shades that were hidden in black, white, and grey. Can you imagine if life truly was black and white? Black sun and white moon in the black sky, grey sunsets and oceans. Grey trees slowly dancing with the white wind and black flowers around it.
And... grey people, all the same, walking down the grey streets. I wonder what people would come up with then to substitute racism. Different shades of grey? Maybe, maybe not, but most likely we would come up with something. We people love to point fingers at others, we like to create differences and then label people according to them. We have an urge to belong to groups, therefore we invent those groups. It doesn't really matter what we call those groups, religions or political parties, they are still just labels that we proudly wear to know that we are part of something. Why? Fear of being alone, unique, different? Fear of being pointed at by another group?
How easily we pick roles and then quickly adapt to them, We do things because we should, we are supposed to, because that's what the role is automatically telling you to do. We take actions that are expected, not from who we are but from the role we picked. The saddest part of it, however, is the fact that we ourselves believe in those roles, we wear the costumes believing that those are us, we proudly represent the fiction as our own life.
Colors... One of the biggest gifts of our world. We admire it when it is out there in nature, away from us, but when it comes to our own skin we label it, we divide it into groups and start pointing at each other. You think blue flowers dislike the red ones? Sounds silly, doesn't it. But look at what we are doing people, apparently flowers are smarter then us.
Colors... once my sister thought me to really appreciate them, because we could have a black and white life like the old movies.

Ghosts

We're only ghosts my love
There isn't much to life

We come and go
Like many did
And at the end
That's all we need

We're only ghosts, my dear.
There's nothing left in here.

Reunion

And here they are, years later
Sharing only the awkward silence
Neither friends, nor lovers
Hiding, behind the darkness.

I wish my soul was a dancer

I wish my soul was a dancer
Things would be so easy then
All fears, thoughts and the emotions
I would simply dance away.

I wish my soul was a dancer
So it could always stand up strong,
Seem fragile but inside a warrior
Firm, flexible, and never wrong.

I could dance away my worries
Feel the glory of free soul,
I would express my self in moves
Like nobody has seen before.

I would be able to jump so high,
That my fingers would reach the sky.
I would waltz along with starts,
Touch the sun with painless scars.

If my poor soul was a dancer
Tango would be the tune of my heart.
I would jive away my sadness,
For my dancer soul, nothing would be hard.

I wish my soul was a dancer
So it could lead a life its own.
My own path would've been so much better
If only my soul was a dancer.

My self-portrait of You

I drew a portrait of myself

And there were you...

I was looking at the reflection of my face

And seeing you, staring back at me.

I saw your eyes throughout my own

And felt the touch of your soft hand

Upon my painted cheek.

An oily paint of tear run down

And you were there to catch it,

My brush was redening my lips

But it was you who put a smile on it.

I painted my dark hair

Falling down up to my shoulders

And I could feel your hand

Softly playing through them,

My brush put on the black waves

But it was you

That moved them away from my face

I couldn't help but notice

Your eyes staring back at me

Through my own gaze

Warming and protecting me.

I drew a self-portrait

And had to capture You in it,

Because that's how I see myself

With marks left by you all over it.

Small DOT

All it takes is a small black dot

On a big white canvas
And we call it wasted, lost
And throw away the canvas.

All it takes is a small black dot
And the jar of white paint is gone
We label it as useless
Hide it somewhere in the dark

Isn't it too much power to give
To nothing but a small black dot?
A dot that doesn't let us to forgive
A piece that steels the peace of mind

She saw the tiny lip-shaped stain
The small red stain on your shirt
And now she has to wash it all
The shirt, the love and you for all.

© LiLit Ghazaryan

Accused of not struggling enough

She simply left

And never came back

"How could he?"

And here he was

A man that lost his kid and wife

A man accused of not struggling enough

His face, again, hardly changed

But his hair grew white

In less then a night

His heartbeat was slower then a clock

His voice was almost gone

Once a young man, he looked so old

With only one question in his mind

"How could you?"

He lived the rest of his days

Like a puppet forced to breathe

He never talked

And hardly walked

And died unknown

Suddenly, but expected

One late night he died.

The man accused of not struggling enough

He died alone and lost

In the darkness of the night

And was buried by some strangers

With no priest or a cry

That's how he lived, that's how he died

The man accused of not struggling enough.

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Frida

The day I died
It rained so hard,
But I was smiling
I was free at last.

My body sick
And my soul weak
Love was all I did
Love is all I need.

I'm famous now
I see and know
As I am Frida Khalo.

If I had to live again
With all the power I could gain
My art would surely stay the same
If there is one thing I would change
It's him, it's us, it's our love
I loved him more than my own life.

But every time when he came home
I smelled another strong perfume
And I would yell and cry and fight
But things would be the same each night

If I could live my life again
I wouldn't change a thing,
Not my faith, not my works, but only him
Diego...

Dedicated to Frida Khalo, a true inspiration

One Simple Night

This is a story of one night, a story about a man and a woman... Just like so many other stories....

She was sitting in the living room, looking for something to watch on her laptop. All she needed was something to keep her mind busy, because waiting was a torture for her. It was 11 in the evening and he was still not home, usually he used to be home around 8. It's been three hours already, three hours of random thoughts, three hours of just walking around the house, from one room to another with the hopes of finding something to do, something useful and destructing. She had washed the dishes, ironed her dress for the next day's meetings, but there was nothing else to do. She had tried to finish the book that she had started couple days ago, but after two or three pages realized that her eyes are just running through the lines but her mind was somewhere else and she could not even remember what she was reading. So she had decided to watch something. Comedies, they are always good for such situations, they can make you stop thinking too much but they also don't require so much attention in case your thoughts do fly somewhere else after all . She finally found an old comedy that she had already seen once and started watching it.

It was dark outside, he still was not home. That was so rare, he always used to come home before sunset, especially now that it was summer and the days were so much longer. Suddenly she realized that it had been a long while since she had to spend an evening all alone, by herself. Every evening he was there with her and now she felt so weird and uncomfortable, in a way it was even scary. But she didn't know what was more scary, the fact that he was not there or the fact that she was so used to him. They have been living together for almost two years now and she was more than just used to him. Her entire life was now about him, around him, everything was somehow connected with him. And now she was by herself only for one night and she was already loosing the control, she was so used to his presence that she was actually bored without his company.

The time was going so slow. She was looking at her watch every five minutes, every time getting surprised that it was only five minutes past the last time she stared at the watch. Suddenly she had this strong feeling of missing him. She kept counting each minute, knowing that she can't call him, which made waiting even harder.

And then she heard the car noise, his car. She had even learned to recognize his car sound without mixing it with any other car among the hundreds that used to pass their house. For a second her body went numb, she heard the car parking in front of the house, then the engine stopped and she heard the noise of the door closing. His footsteps were the next and at that point her own heartbeat was louder than the sound of his keys opening the front door. He stepped in and went towards the stares that were leading to the living room where she was sitting. She was standing on the very last step, waiting for him. He smiled and hugged her. That was it... There in his arms she forget about the three hours of torture and all she could feel was his warmth. He was out working all day and was so tired that could hardly walk, but he would never do anything else but hug her and give her a kiss first thing when he got home every single day.

That day he had called earlier and told her that he would be late, there was some extra work he had to take care of. It took him three hours to finish all the paper work, three hours that she spent doing nothing but thinking about him. Three simple hours that the day took from them and they both had felt like they hadn't seen each other for whole three days. The rest was as usual, they had dinner, watched a movie and went to bed to wake up early next morning. But there was so much more in their simple evenings, every look and smile they ever shared had so much warmth behind it, so much love...

Love is simple and whatever is simple has a little love in it, but every simple thing turns into something so much deeper when there is love...

© LiLit Ghazaryan

Beautiful women are invisible...

Beautiful women are invisible...
They are like a book that nobody ever opens because the cover by itself is already beautiful, sometimes even too beautiful to leave any place of interest for whatever is written inside.

Beautiful women are invisible...

Men see and admire the way they look, they see them from outside but they never make it inside, they never get to the depths of their personality and character. They become talking dolls that are empty inside. They turn into beautiful gift boxes with no gift inside. And even if some of them have a gift inside, nobody ever sees it, because the box itself is too beautiful and people will not dare to spoil it only for finding out what's inside.

Beautiful women are invisible...
At one point they get so used to it that even women themselves start believing that they are nothing but a cover. How long can the words inside a book shout and scream? The cover is always heavier and stronger than the fragile pages. How long can a gift locked in a box be eager to be found? Gift boxes are always tied up with bright and shiny strings. Eventually the gift gives up and a gift that is not being used or noticed, sooner or later dies.

Beautiful women are invisible...
People look into those eyes only to see the reflection of their own faces, but never the depth of the eyes. They eagerly want to catch her look to only admire it but never to try to see her soul behind it. They die to see her smile but always fail to read the tears that are hiding behind it. They long to hear her laughter for sure joy and self-satisfaction but never for her own happiness.

Beautiful women are invisible...
Men see them but never look deep into them, while all the other women out there hate them... For what? For being invisible?

...beautiful women are invisible...

© LiLit Ghazaryan

We Are All Broken Statues

   We live in a crazy world, always have, always will...
   But it seems like things around us make less and less sense. People around us get more and more complicated, more distant. You can never guess what the answer to a random question can be. You can never expect what reaction or action you will get from someone, whether that person is a stranger or an old friend. The simple contact between people is different. For some reason we have turned into this metallic boxes full of negative energy and we are just waiting for the right time or for some excuse to open up the box and let all that negative energy flow outside, hurting us and the ones around us.

   Smile has lost its meaning and became just a tool for moving forward. Tears are not even taken seriously anymore, they are everywhere and you can not separate fake ones from the real tears. Happiness is a secret that should be kept far away, it's a secret that should be hidden so that nobody finds it. Your own happiness becomes a flag people attack, while the happiness of others turns into a flag for ourselves, a flag that locates the territory that should be destroyed. We turn each other into monsters who know nothing else but to fight. Fight for what? For more battle, nothing else...

    Since when we became strangers leaving in cages? Since when we decided to put locks everywhere? We are closing ourselves to everyone, locking our feelings even from ourselves. We are like stone statues that so strong outside but broken inside, one way or another.

   This crazy world... We live in a time where politeness is considered weakness, where wise are considered naive and the ones who are loud are the winners. We leave in a time where observers get kicked out of the game, where the smartest get lost in people's stupidity and become the stupidest themselves. Our world is controlled by the wild crowds, while the leaders' voices are lost among the noise of those crowds.

   And after all this there are still those few courageous ones that try to do something good for the others. But what do they get in result? People take whatever they offer and just run away and then laugh behind the courageous ones backs, and they laugh and laugh and laugh...
   They are not considered nice or kind for them, for the crowd they are just stupid and naive people that gave them whatever they needed. For the crowd it was just a smart deal they made. Poor brave ones... Poor brave ones... They are left with nothing but disappointment that is hanging in front of their door and silently screaming. They are left with nothing but the sound of footsteps of the running crowds, the proud crowds that keep laughing... and laughing...
If only they knew that they are laughing at themselves...

                                                                                                               © LiLit Ghazaryan

A Phone Call

What's harder, trusting someone or knowing that someone trusts you?

What is easier, to rely on someone or to have someone to rely on you?

It takes time to believe in someone, to trust someone and have that feeling that you can rely on that person. Some are lucky enough to have that one person that they can call at any time, knowing that their call will be answered no matter what.

A phone call in the middle of the night and two different people on the two sides of the phone call. One is the calling person, the other one is the answering. Which situation is the one that makes a person happy and fulfilled? Knowing that you have someone out there who will always be on your side or being the person that is strong and kind enough to always be there for that one person?
   And what if the call is left unanswered? Whom does it hurt more, the one calling or the one not answering? Does the calling person lose a person or does the one not answering lose a friend?
   Who are you? The one that trusts or the one that is trusted? Why?
    Shouldn't it be mutual?

   "A phone call in the middle of the night and two different people on the two sides of the phone call. I was expecting nothing more but just another conversation with the person I knew that I could rely on at any time. But that night my call was left unanswered...
Emptiness, anger, sadness... I did not know what to feel. I think the strongest among all the feelings at that point was regret. How ironic. It takes so much time to trust a person, to believe in someone and we erase it all so easily during couple seconds. I was sitting there still holding the phone in my hand and feeling completely lost".
     That's what she wrote on the napkin before going to bed. She was not the writing type, never had diaries like most girls do, never wrote about anything personal. But that night was different, her call was left unanswered...
    Did she lose the person she was calling that night or did the person not answering loose her?

                                                                                                               © LiLit Ghazaryan

The Shadows of Our Identities

Who am I?

Who are we?

We all have different personalities and characters, but we all are the same in a way.

I am me to you, but I am someone else to another. So am I still the same person?

I know you the way I know you, but someone else knows you in a different way.

It's like a room with mirrors, all the people around us are windows that reflect our faces and our personality in their own way, adding their own shadows and uncovering the lights that we let them to.
We all represent ourselves differently, we are different with different people and each of those people have their own perspectives and understanding of that one same person. There are no two people that know me exactly the same way. There is no one whom I know exactly as someone else knows that same person. We are never the same, but we are not different either, to some we are less and to some we are more. Some get the chance to discover us better, others learn more, some are just walking by. It's a two way dialogue, I have the right to share and show as much as I want to, but you have the ability to learn and see as much as you are able to.

And at the center of that dialogue are our shadows, those that we learned and discovered about each other. We all share those shadows, giving specific shades and colours to each of them. We exchange those shadows that create the impression and idea about each others identity.
   We, humans, have this bright skill of remembering all those shadows that we have given away, we always know which mask to where according to who we are about to meet. The big chain of the created shadows keeps growing as we meet more and more people, but somehow it never gets confusing. At one point we just stop noticing the differences between our own selves, we forget how many versions of our own identity we have given away. Is there a real one left after all? Do we manage to keep our own character behind all those shadows? And if we do, who do we keep that for? Does anyone else but ourselves ever get to discover our nature? Is there ever a person that knows us as well as we do? The more brighter our shadow, the closer that person gets to us. The more colours you share with them, the more intimate we become with those people, the more they discover about us, the better and the deeper they see our personality.
   But is there ever a person that passes the shadows and reaches to us, to our real selves?


                                                                                                              © LiLit Ghazaryan

Imaginary Meeting

I've imagined our meeting thousand times. I imagined how we would randomly meet on a street, see each other in a restaurant or in front of a theater. I even used to think about small details like who I would be with or would you be alone or with some one else. I even thought about the season we would meet. Sometimes I wish it was Autumn, but mostly I want to meet you in Summer. Spring would be too boring and Winter would make the situation even colder. The only thing I could never imagine was the dialogue. Would there be any dialogue after all? Would we even talk? I don't even know if you would stop to greet or would I even respond if you did. Maybe we would just walk pass each other, pretending that we did not notice any similar face.

Who are we after all to each other? Friends? Lovers? Strangers? I don't know and I think that's what makes me go back to you. I just want to know who we are for each other. And even if we end up being strangers, I will be fine with that as long as I get my answer. Sometimes I really look forward to that imaginary meeting. I want it to be random and unexpected, but at the same time not important enough. I don't know why but I believe that seeing you again would clear the confusion that is left. I want to see you again to just understand myself, to realize that I can let it go and tear off that page from my life. I want to look into your eyes with the hope that my reflection is not there anymore. I want to see your smile and understand that it has lost its warmth and meaning for me long time ago. I want to see you for looking at me through your eyes. I hope your look will mean nothing, I hope we both will forget that meeting. And if we do then I will know for sure that it was worth it.
The truth is that I just want to make sure that you are ok. After all you have always been a friend for me, a goof friend, nothing more and nothing less. I want to meet you ad make sure that my friend is doing great.

© LiLit Ghazaryan

Missing Colours

When the feeling is there but you can't find a word to describe it you look for definitions, synonyms and substitutes for that word. But what do you do when the right colour is missing?

Here I am, sitting in front of my white canvas and looking for the right colour. I can see the image, it's there. It's clear and simple, but the colour... The colour is missing. Do I simply not see it? Is it only about the colour? What if there is something more?

   I had all the colours I wanted right there in front of me. There was no colour missing, there was something missing inside me. And I could not figure out what it was. My palette was full of colours but my own colours where not there. How do you describe the emptiness of the colours? It can't be blank white, white is also a colour. It can't be darkness, the colour of the darkness is black. Everything we see, touch and even feel have their colours. But here I was with no single colour in me. Who was I in that case? What was I after all? Even my empty canvas was full of all the possible shades of white. My brushes were laying on the table as a palette themselves, with different colours. All those breathless things I was surrounded by had colours. And among all those shades I felt like an invisible statue with no point or meaning. I wanted to create an image, to give life to all those colours and make the blank canvas to come to life. But how could I do it when I myself had turned into an emptiness? I myself needed an artist who would bring me back to life, who would find my colours or at least give me new ones.
    I was an artist trying to create a painting, who ended up looking for another artist who could restore her own image. I was an artist with no colours of my own.

                                                                                    © LiLit Ghazaryan

After The Fight

I was walking down the streets of that beautiful island that seemed like heaven just hours ago. Now I was just walking and not even seeing anything. My own thoughts had filled the air and everything around me. I wish I could at least cry, but there were no tears. Fear, frustration, disappointment... Everything had mixed up together and I did not know what exactly I was feeling.

What do I do now? I can't walk any further, I don't know the streets and I can not take the risk of getting lost here at this late hour. Where should I go now? I made two-three circles around the hotel and the nearest shops again. How long could I go around the same blocks? I had no choice but to go back to the hotel room. I had no other choice but to face him again, to sit there with him in the same room. How can I go back to whatever I just ran away from? That awkward silence in the room was killing me, there was no way I could take it any longer. Something was eating me inside. I wanted to cry, to scream, to do something... But instead I was just sitting there like a frozen statue. It took me a lot of courage to finally get all my strength to just open the door and walk out of the room. And now I had nowhere else to go, but to that same door. This time it probably would be even harder to open that door again. After making the fifth circle around the hotel I finally decided to enter the building. The lobby, and the way to the elevators... I was walking as slow as possible, so that a little more time would pass. I don't even know why. I was lying to myself that those couple more seconds would change anything or would matter at all. I was alone in the elevator and it made me feel even worse. It felt like there was nobody else in that huge hotel, just me and him. I got out of the elevator at the eighth floor and headed towards our room. The door was locked and it felt like hours passed while I reached for my key and opened it. He was right where I had left him, sitting in the balcony. It was like I had never even left. All this while when I was aimlessly walking and torturing myself with my thoughts, he was just sitting here. I kept going back and forth, trying to figure out what happened and why, but he was just sitting there, at the same place. He hadn't even moved and I doubt that there was a single thought in his head.

The awkward silence filled the room again. It was one of those strange moments when you so want to talk but your mouth just doesn't open. I kept running sentences in my head like a recording but did not dare to say them out loud. I was sure he was going through the same confusion. Why can't one of us just say it, just say something to put an end to that pointless silence. Here I was again, back to my frozen statue mood, not moving and not talking, just killing time.
     I don't know how long I was just standing there while he was sitting in the balcony, but at that point I did not care about anything else but just that very moment. I desperately wanted that moment to end. I even wanted to just go and hug him to make the frustration melt away. I hoped that a single kiss would brake that wall that we so easily created between us just during couple minutes. However, I was still standing there, not even moving my eyes. I could hear myself breath and my own heartbeat was so loud that it felt like my entire body was beating along with my heart.

   -Wanna go eat something?
     -Yeah, sure
    And just like that he broke the invisible wall between us. I felt like I heard a big glass door brake. And all the small glass pieces fell on the ground, creating a loud noise, each of them representing a minute of that long hour that we've been torturing ourselves and each other.

                                                                                     © LiLit Ghazaryan