Halloween is Cancelled; Samhain is Not

 

Between the coronavirus pandemic, which believe me is bad enough, and the war in Armenia with my homeland bombed and in flames, as far as I am concerned, there is no Halloween this year. Anything I do this year in relation to Halloween, like taking my kid Trick or Treating, is merely an act. Going through the motions. I am not in the Halloween spirit at all. Not in the slightest. If it were strictly up to me I wouldn’t celebrate it at all this year. Perhaps in some ways when you’re a goth and live in darkness all year, like I do, Halloween can become just another day. We have been wearing masks most of the year already, thanks to the pandemic. Even so, I usually enjoy Halloween. It’s usually my favorite holiday. Not this time. 

However, in lieu of Halloween, I can instead turn to its Celtic pagan root, Samhain. A day to honor the dead ancestors. That feels much more appropriate this year. Although I wouldn’t call myself either a Druid or a Wiccan, strictly speaking, I dabbled in Wicca in my early days as a pagan and used it as somewhat of a foundation for my practice. As it stands now I am more of a pantheist and panpsychist, and believe the universe has a consciousness, particularly stars and other celestial bodies. I have some Scottish and Irish blood through my mother, so it isn’t quite cultural appropriation, although I can add Armenian elements to the holiday. As a nerdy little aside, the ancient Armenian calendar designates this month as Սահմի (Sahmi). Sounds a bit like Samhain, does it not? I know Samhain is actually pronounced like “Sow-wen”, but still, curious. Was there a cultural exchange between ancient Armenia and the ancient Celts? Or perhaps it just goes back to the original Indo-European language. But, it could be a coincidence too.

 As you can see in the picture above, I have assembled a shrine especially for Samhain in my bedroom, right beside my regular shrine. Included are photographs of deceased relatives (I wish I had more). These are my paternal grandparents Suren and Olga, Suren’s older brother in the black and white photo beside him (I believe that’s him in the picture anyway, I don’t think anyone is completely sure who it is), and a picture with my recently deceased distant cousin (second soldier from the right). In front of that picture is a feather, which represents the Aralez, a winged wolf from Armenian mythology who could resurrect fallen soldiers with their licks and thus represent healing and protection for the soldiers fighting the invasion of Armenia. The granite stone came from my grandfather’s village Shvanidzor. It called to me when I was there, and I grabbed it. I have a trilobite fossil as part of the shrine to represent humanity’s primordial ancestors of prehistory (because why not?). Every life form that lives, has ever lived and will ever live, has changed the universe in their own small way, and that is what the fossil symbolizes. Overlooking the shrine is the Urartian God Khaldi, a God of war and victory, a figure I got at Erebuni in Yerevan, Armenia. Tonight I will burn a candle, recite poems and burn incense, focusing my energy toward Armenia’s victory, healing for those harmed by the war and the country itself, and peace. My other plans for today include cooking ghapama, an Armenian dish of rice, nuts and dried fruit cooked inside a pumpkin.

The moon is full, and it’s a blue moon at that. If ever there was a time to try to dabble in magic, this is the night. To quote a certain voice sample that appears in a song by Godsmack, “Does the moon actually possess such strange powers? Or is it all just...lunacy?” I can’t explain in scientific terms why the full moon has a certain energy to it, but I have always felt that it does. It is the daytime on another world, reflected back on us. Obviously the sun has even more energy, being the actual source of moonlight, but perhaps it is simply too strong to wield other than using it as solar power, which even the strictest atheist can agree exists. Maybe this is all nothing more than a coping mechanism made to make me feel like I have more control over the world than I really do. I am open to it being nothing more than that, if it is. But if it is all just “hocus pocus” or lunacy, at least it isn’t hurting anyone really. Except maybe the corrupt genocidal leaders of Turkey and Azerbaijan, I hope. 

I called this blog entry Part 1 in case I have more to say in retrospect tomorrow. I may or may not follow up. If I don’t then this will be the only part and I will change the title.

One Month of War, What Can I Do?

 

It was on September 27th that the invasion of Artsakh began, and still it continues. To my deepest horror, the Azeris are getting closer to my grandfather’s village in the south. They want to join Azerbaijan with their exclave Nakhichevan, cutting off Armenia’s only border with a country it can trust, Iran (Georgia is run by a bunch of backstabbers). I don’t know what is going to happen. There have been three attempts at a ceasefire but the Azeris aren’t stopping.

Looking at Facebook and reading the news just stresses me out and depresses me. Maybe I should stop going on there so much. It’s not as if there’s anything I can do about the situation, beyond donate what I can (which isn’t much), sign some petitions through ANCA, that sort of thing. It isn’t good for my mental health. It’s putting me in a bad mood. If it’s beyond my control though, then I’m stressing myself out for no real reason, right? I should take a break from the internet altogether and watch a movie, read a book. Draw and write. I’m all the way in Florida, after all, where everyone’s more concerned with a stupid election (all other news besides the war feels trivial and irrelevant to me now) than a war on the other side of the world between two countries they have never heard of. Halloween is coming up. Maybe I should marathon my favorite horror films like I do every year.

Yes, let’s just bury my head in the sand and hope it all goes away.

Sure would be nice if the people actually on the frontlines fighting this war had that luxury, wouldn’t it? They don’t get to take a break from the war. Neither do the civilians holed up in bunkers. Neither do those who lost loved ones. Neither do those who lost limbs. Neither do those who are dead. How privileged am I? I’ve never been through anything remotely like that. What kind of person am I if I look away? A whiner. An awful person who doesn’t care about Armenia, that’s what. It’s a new Armenian genocide! How can I carry on with life, how can I keep posting that webcomic, how can I act like nothing’s wrong, when EVERYTHING is wrong? How dare I ignore it?

So you see my dilemma.

A distant cousin of mine died in the war. I only met him once, very briefly, when I went with my cousin Raffi to Meghri, Shvanidzor and Agarak, where his family lived. He was the great-grandchild of my grandfather’s sister. Am I even allowed to mourn someone I barely know? It isn’t really my tragedy. I can’t turn it around and make it about me, nor do I want to. That’s why I am not going to post about it on Facebook or anything tasteless like that. But how am I supposed to react? How am I supposed to feel? I don’t know at all. Perhaps, it just makes this whole war hit closer to home. It puts a face on the tragedy for me. 

I can’t even smile or laugh without feeling guilty. And there is no answer. 

The Debut of Loose-Headed Harry

 

I have been drawing comics off and on since I was 11 years old. My first comic, back then, was Tim & Miles, a comic about two friends who got into all sorts of mischief. I was 16 when I came up with the comic I draw now, Loose-Headed Harry; the gory misadventures of a bullied teen whose head detaches easily but doesn’t die. It was perhaps a way to deal with how I myself had been bullied. The comic started as just doodles on the backs of my math homework, then just one page gags, and then ongoing storylines which were mainly an extreme exaggeration of what I saw as the injustice of the American school system at the time. Teachers would look the other way when Harry was bullied, punish him for things he didn’t do, and plot behind the scenes to make their student’s lives miserable. His bully, Bully Billy, was never brought to justice, or at most would be punished along with Harry despite being the aggressor. Harry’s school, Alcatraz High School, was named for an infamous prison and surrounded by barbed wire. Behind the gory and perhaps immature humor, there was a real statement. There were more recurring characters as well. The comic itself was never seen by more than a few family and friends, though. I eventually stopped drawing it in college to focus on writing novels. 

My wife Deborah encouraged me to bring it back after I eventually showed her some of my old comics. Writing novels hadn’t really gotten me anywhere (yet, anyway), although I still plan on writing more of them. So we decided that we would make it a webcomic and just see what happens. We’ve seen other webcomic artists who make a decent amount of money through Patreon. It seems easier to make money from than self-publishing novels. I worked on pencil drawings for about three years from then on. Early this year I finally acquired a drawing tablet, and could finally start making the digital version. The new version will be more sophisticated than the original comic, more of a fantasy  high school dramedy than simple gory humor. Although it will not stray too far from its roots. If it were a show it would probably be rated TV-MA. I worked on the first chapter of about 56 pages for ten months. Finally today I have begun publishing it. 

So far I have it up on Webtoons, Tapas, and Patreon. Over on Patreon I am going to have a blog just for the comic, to be read by patrons. I will still be keeping up this blog for other things I want to write. You can read the comic at the following links, and likely other places where I will be posting it.

https://www.patreon.com/Surenity

https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/loose-headed-harry/list?title_no=536101

https://tapas.io/series/Loose-Headed-Harry

Reconnecting with the Land of my Birth - California

 As I mentioned on the blog earlier, I spent two weeks in California recently. Traveling in the age if the coronavirus may be a bit risky, but as a result, the plane tickets were cheap. I was originally going to go in early September, but the state caught on fire so I waited a month. I hadn’t visited my family since 2018. In the intervening time since then I’d had a son, making travel somewhat out of the question. So I was in Florida, slowly forgetting what hills and non-humid weather was like. As it so happened, Azerbaijan and Turkey attacked Armenia just before my trip, and this burdened my mind gravely the entire trip. However, I did my best to enjoy myself. 

The fires weren’t quite done when I got there. When I got off the plane at the Santa Rosa airport, the air was smoky and the sun was red. It was rather eerie. I couldn’t help but be reminded of a key scene from the video game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

 

I was only gone two years, what happened?!

I stayed in Guerneville, a small town north of San Francisco located deep in the redwood forests, where my family lives now. After a day or so we did a road trip to Oregon to pick up my niece and nephew for the occasion. It was my first time in Oregon as well. The sight of redwoods, mountains and cold foggy beaches was cleansing to the soul. Florida beaches are flat, hot, and featureless. But these were real beaches. 

The beaches of the northern Pacific cleanse the soul in a way nothing else does for me, besides perhaps the mountains of Armenia and the cold air of Lake Sevan, that is. We also stopped in Eureka and Crescent City, towns along the northern coast. It was my first time visiting these towns, which had a similar feel to Monterey further south, but smaller. I also had a deliciously refreshing bread bowl of clam chowder as well. You just can’t get chowder like that in Florida. I don’t know why.

It was a 9 hour trip there and back, probably the longest road trip I have ever been on. We were accompanied by my sister’s spotify DJ skills. At any rate, I didn’t stay long in Oregon but at least I can say I have been there.

My next big excursion during the trip was back to Contra Costa County, where I grew up. I stayed with my good brother in Pleasant Hill, catching up on old times and making new memories. Foremost, along with our traditional visits to the Mongolian bbq restaurant at the nearby mall, was a hike up Mt. Wanda in Martinez, for which my other dear brother joined us. This isn’t a proper mountain, but was named by the daughter of John Muir, the environmental activist from the 19th century whose large home is preserved nearby as a museum. When I lived in Martinez I would do this hike whenever the mood struck me, and to do it again was rejuvenating. Especially after having gone so long without seeing hills. Here are some nice pictures from that hike. 

The summit. Mt. Diablo in the background, rising like a smaller Mt. Ararat.

I don't want to stay away from where I came from for so long again. As my child becomes more independent I shouldn’t have to. I feel like home for me is nowhere in particular, or conversely, several places at once. I always miss someplace or someone no matter where I am. That will likely never go away. But by traveling, I now feel whole again in a way I hadn’t for a long time.

Now I just get to stress about the war going on in Armenia. 

Top 3 Songs of the Month - October 2020/Սահմի 4513 -Minuit Machine, Tearful Moon, STWTD

 100th blog post. Woo hoo, yay. 

October. The world is still very much on fire. It’s hard to feel the Halloween spirit when your favorite country is being carpet bombed by a mad dictator who today is ignoring a ceasefire that was established so that both sides could collect the dead bodies of their fallen soldiers after almost two weeks of fighting. Oh but by all means, ignore the war in Armenia and focus on a fly on the US vice president’s head, who by the way also gets more media coverage than any third party presidential candidate. And the Covid is still going strong too. Isn’t the world just grand? 

I would really be stewing in it if I weren’t visiting family in California at the moment; yes, perhaps ill advised these days, but plane tickets were cheap. I had planned to do this trip in early September but the whole state was on fire so I had to reschedule. But as my last two blog posts show, the trip isn’t enough to distract me from what’s going on in Armenia. I have donated what I can, I really can’t do much else sadly. When I do get more money perhaps I can help with the rebuilding efforts. 

This will be the month I debut my webcomic. Before the month is out. It is pretty much ready. I just have to work out the logistics of publishing it online. As for blog plans, well, we will see. It feels wrong to blog about frivolous Halloween stuff with the war going on. But my monthly tradition of talking about what music I’m currently into isn’t too frivolous, I guess. If only due to my stubbornness. The Azeris can’t take that from me.

Minuit Machine - Don’t Run From the Fire

“Don’t run from the fire. Fight.” 

This song just came out at a timely moment for me, between both the war I previously mentioned and the fires in California. It works as an obvious metaphor. Don’t run away from your problems. Stand up and confront them. There’s another song by Boy Harsher, “Face the Fire”, that is really similar to this one, using the same exact metaphor. Not sure if there was any actual influence there, but I will put them on a mix tape together, for great justice. Minuit Machine features the same singer from Hante, which is her solo project. I found out about Hante first, but I really like Minuit Machine too, which sounds almost the same I guess. 

Also, any music video that uses the Deliberate VHS Quality trope gets bonus points from me. I just like it for some reason.

The EP of the same name releases October 16th. Here’s their Bandcamp: https://minuitmachine.bandcamp.com/

Tearful Moon - Run Away, Simon (featuring This Cold Night)

We just had a song telling us not to run away, and here’s one with the opposite message! This song is strangely catchy. I have no idea who Simon is. The nerdy one from Alvin and the Chipmunks perhaps? Or Simon Belmont from Castlevania? That was a pretty hard video game, I ran away from it too. Anyway, this is a song about getting yourself out of a toxic situation if I’m interpreting the lyrics correctly, and it’s okay to run from that. My favorite line is “Run with the wolves, they shout your name”. Now I have to imagine a wolf trying to howl the name Simon.

I have been enjoying Tearful Moon’s music lately, and this song is my current favorite of theirs. 

Here it is on Bandcamp: https://tearfulmoon.bandcamp.com/track/run-away-simon

Slow Danse With the Dead - Monday Mourning (Another Day of Suffering)

I wish this song had been out when I was working at the call centers! This is the perfect “I hate Monday” song. This song captures exactly what it’s like to wake up after a day or two off and have to go back to an awful job that you hate, with your next day off in the distant future. To anticipate another day of suffering. Slow Danse With the Dead is best at conveying this type of existential depression. This is off their latest album I Look Like Death, and marks their third month in a row on my Top 3 Songs lists, which is an auspicious honor to be sure (lol not really). 

Anyway here it is on Bandcamp: https://slowdansewiththedead.bandcamp.com/album/i-look-like-death

Honorary Mention: SYZYGYX - Times Are Hard for Dreamers

I haven’t really been venturing outside my usual genres in the last month so I don’t have anything too different to put as an honorary mention. But I heard this song for the first time a couple days ago. I haven’t really had the time to sit with it yet so it hasn’t beaten out the other three I just listed. But I do love SYZYGYX. Times are indeed really hard for dreamers. You can’t focus on your dreams unless you’re already rich. Or just lucky. The title alone is enough to capture my attention. Surprisingly this song came out last year; times are even harder now. I need to get the album Fading Bodies, I think it is the only one of their’s I don’t have yet. Weirdly, the CD is less expensive than the digital album; I guess if you add shipping costs it isn’t, but still, maybe I ought to get a CD copy. Saves me the trouble of burning the MP3s on a blank CD like I always do. 

Well here it is on Bandcamp: https://syzygy-x.bandcamp.com/album/fading-bodies

Diasporan Paralysis

 

I found the above circulating on Facebook; a site I have been half-avoiding ever since Azerbaijan invaded Artsakh in late September. I think it reflects the feeling of it well. 

Last night I had a dream. From where I live in Florida, we can see NASA rocket launches from outside our window. So I saw one go up and called to my wife to come watch, she bringing my young son. But the rocket broke into pieces in the sky and the pieces turned toward us, like missiles. We ran back inside and ducked under the table as everything exploded. The nightmare shocked me awake. I am half a planet away from Azerbaijani bombardment, and still it haunts me. I have a comfortable life, I am not at the war front nor is anyone in my family. But I still feel the pain of Armenia. It still effects my sleep. I still struggle against stress and despair over it.

And I can’t do enough. I can’t really do anything much. I’m even too poor to send much money to Armenia Fund or other charities. I have signed petitions and given the Armenian National Committee of America permission to send messages to people in the US government on my behalf. I have done a few posts on Facebook. Other than that all I have “thoughts and prayers“, for all the good that does. 

For any non-Armenian American that might be reading this, I would compare it to how many felt after September 11, 2001. Mourning, scared, and this overwhelming guilt. Like you feel selfish for enjoying anything at all, while there are people dying. At the same time, distractions are the only things that help. I also try to focus on the limited things I can control in my life. My art, my family. 

Anyway, I don’t really know where I’m going with this. I have been to Artsakh and even though it was only for five days it occupies a special place in my heart. And it is sad that it no longer looks as it did when I was there five years ago. I should probably do a blog entry about my stay. Perhaps that is forthcoming. Anyway, for the moment this is the picture I have to share right now. It is a wall from the Museum of Fallen Soldiers in Stepanakert, Artsakh. I hope the building remains undisturbed. 

Rest in peace, dear warriors.