So still we could hear our eyes move, as they searched the shadows for one more instant of reflection, a life-time of be
Richard Ney

There are so many moments I have been through in the past where I thought, "Yes, this is one for the recording, for the camera, for a film scene."

I remember one moment last winter, it must have been early in the winter, because the mobile monitors were having a celebration at Samvel's house since they had just received their first paychecks and three were celebrating a birthday.

I had to be coaxed into coming, since I normally worked until I dropped, dragged myself home, and went fast asleep (or not, depending on the mood swings of the other Americans).

I remember the moment after we had devoured the Khorovatz, the salads, the bread, the coffee, tea, desserts, fruit of the rich land, the good talk among friends, new friends, friends who did not know each other before meeting at work. How quickly they form friendships here. As opposed to in Theatre, where each new production causes a friction of activity followed by a closeness that is later betrayed by closing night, here the friendships are resilient, the ties that bind do not break.

Just as we were reveling in one story, the lights went out. A groan of disappointment erupted from the group (some 30 people gathered around the tables merged together to form a feasting place, with chairs of every kind of imaginable fabrication ringing the feast. We had Soviet Louis XIV, a stuffed velveteen and carved oak. We had antiques from before the revolution, each lovingly caressed by years of sitting, they wrapped the body warmest, truest of all. There were metal and vinyl kitchen chairs, even benches made from leftover construction wood and bent nails. All draped, colored, painted and festooned for the time they were created, they supported our devices of merriment.

I reminded all that God indeed works in mysterious ways. The suffering of His people in Armenia, without light and heat had given a glimmer of hope for our lives, providing us with jobs, with dignity, with a chance to help others.

The lights flicker, delight! "Rick has summoned the minister of power to give us light!" someone said, too soon.

The lights faded, then sparked out (Yes, sparked out. It is always amazing to me that lights here whimper as they come on, and spark as they go out. They do. They flicker furiously, squeezing each ounce of electricity from the wire, then with one last gasp, a spark of light, then total darkness. "To Spark out." A new verb granted us from our brothers and sisters in Armenia)

A squeal. A laugh. In unison we played with the fates of ArmEnergo. Candles were lit, kerosene lamps brought in, a gas lamp used for camping threw a harsh yellow light indiscriminately upon the patrons of this feast. Yet in the shadows, in the shadows of that unnatural light, there was joy and peace, and contentment. Light gives us contrast. Shadows provide reflection.

What I remember from that moment are the songs. First from one soul, then another, both casting dispersion on the harsh yellow glare, both living within the shadows of their existence, beckoning us, each one of us, to join them. Simple persons who worked nights to stamp and hand number 250,000 coupons ( a punishment from the Government, who said they could not print numerically, that we would have to do it ourselves. A punishment or a test, it was a way of forging the bonds between us). I remember at night passing from my office through the basement room we had allotted for this factory work. And how the monitors allowed the work not to defeat them, but as a means of proving their resilience. One opera singer, desperate for a job, worked the hardest and sang the loudest. Verdi, Puccini, Mozart, no aria too great, no job too small for her passionate soul. Sadly, she had breast cancer, and passed much of the Spring between aching to work and aching to live. Other Americans condemned her for not working enough, they said she was skipping work, a typical foul local. I alone knew the truth, and never reneged on my promise not to betray the true terror of her life.

She sang first. At first, the talk did not cease. For this was a time of celebration, a time of the harsh glare of light striving to feed off of the shadows. She sang a little bolder, a little stronger, gathering her courage from those around her. And the shadows leapt! In the shadows I saw the eyes of each person think of his or her aspect of Ararat, furious with confusion as to where, why, how, but irrevocably focused on the prize. To sing. To dance. To Love. This is all in the moment. And the moment forgives. What if there are no lights to switch on and off? What if the night brings unearthly solitude, cold, despair? No matter. The moment forgives all transgressions, and beckons one to join.

I have never been in a place where to join is given such high regard. Where peace is found not only in solitude, but also in the event of discourse, of revelry, of life. One must join to find oneself, as surely as one must look within. This power of the Spirit to feed off others we seldom regard in the States. We hold the holy grail of independence as if that mantra alone will save our souls. Then we find we are without fulfillment. We shop. We feed off of materialism as though it will replace the emptiness we acquired when we became "purposeful individuals", when we became adults. How bittersweet the existence of the man who dwells outside his soul, never reflecting upon the image of his Self.

And what terror to leave one's country, to escape a genocide, to move West and live in empty shells called traditions, to sing the songs of one's grandparents without its beginning point, without its memory. They try to evoke a time that has gone, a frozen time. A time no longer to come. For it must be reinvented, each generation renewing it with new feelings, new discoveries. It is archaic because it is copied, not reinvented. And then, the terror of the soul that is so empty, that cannot feed off of material things, that must seek a like soul, as two lights that call to each other in the darkness, two lamps on a table of half-eaten food, greens mixed with the juice of the lamb, asking for only a song, a moment. It cannot be forced.

It cannot be forced.

It cannot be called forth unless one is willing to succumb to its awful changes. To say, I am among you. I am one of you. I have no home but here. I do not know what tomorrow will bring. I renounce the traditions of my grandparents, because I know they live within me. They are not dead as long as I forget them and reinvent them anew. How sad the Immigrants.

Words too harsh for those who immigrate to utter. These words have no boundaries, they have no blood, no lineage. To speak a language is far from qualifying one for membership. They are not a people unless they see themselves belonging as one to the entire world.

It is that cliche, it is that true. Words to simple and profound for us to utter in our race to the future. No, we substitute BigMac for nourishment, and call nourishment a new car. How strange.

The song is joined by another voice, then another, then another. "Akhchika, kez sirumem." "Yerevan." Hayastan" The words come out like a torrent.

But the torrent is quiet. Like drops on a pool of running water. We gaze at the lights, we stare at each other in the shadows. These are our gifts to one another. And the silence that follows is more than the parts, yet parts all the same. I see the way we reclined, the way we tilted our heads in the light, making oblong shadows across the plates of half- eaten food, across the table and stretching high up on the far wall. Fingers of shadow stretching and yawning in the light. So still we could hear our eyes move, as they searched the shadows for one more instant of reflection, a life-time of belonging together.

And then the yellow glare dissolved into a mist. The shadows etched out the features of those around me, but the mist protected us from nervous reaction. We sighed in unison. We paused. No one spoke.

Then out of the loneliness of our sighs, from our ache to invent again, one voice began, a whisper at first, then growing louder, stronger as our hearts fed its purpose. Bit by bit, we began to join in, and the song, an ancient, old before our times, wise beyond its years to have survived these centuries, wily in its art, smoothing in its character song lulled us each to our own experiences. To our own pleasures, pains, sufferings and beauties.

The circle was complete.