sevan

“Thats not realistic”

In Armenian, when we want to say “damn you” or “go to hell”, we use the expressions "գրողը քեզ տանի" [groxy qez tani] or "գնա գրողի ծոցը" [gna (kori) groxi tsocy], which translate to “may the writer take you away” or “go and get lost in the writer’s embrace” in English. You might wonder, “Who is this writer-person?” and “Why is it considered a curse?”

“For myself, I have no aim. I have no ambition. I will let myself be carried on by the general impulse. The surface of my mind slips along like a pale-grey stream reflecting what passes. I cannot remember my past, my nose, or the colour of my eyes, or what my general opinion of myself is. Only in moments of emergency, at a crossing, at a kerb, the wish to preserve my body springs out and seizes me and stops me, here, before this omnibus. We insist, it seems, on living. Then again, indifference descends. The roar of the traffic, the passage of undifferentiated faces, this way and that way, drugs me into dreams; rubs the features from faces. People might walk through me. And, what is this moment of time, this particular day in which I have found myself caught? The growl of traffic might be any uproar – forest trees or the roar of wild beasts. Time has whizzed back an inch or two on its reel; our short progress has been cancelled. I think also that our bodies are in truth naked. We are only lightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these pavements are shells, bones and silence.”