Sitting Crooked, Talking Straight

• A brief sample of my book Sitting Crooked and Talking Straight out everywhere March 2024. For the sake of convenience and some AI fun, I am using midjourney to create small graphic blurbs of the story, but have my own artist team to add graphic elements for the book.

I will be posting the excerpts from every chapter of my book on medium for everyone. Each chapter has roughly 12–15 pages in the book, where I go through my adventure of moving back to Armenia. The realizations, philosophical paradigms, work life balance and professional drive it takes to pack up and work from far far away. I won’t pretend this is advice, vanity has a way of catching up to people, but this is definitely a story that reminds you “don’t worry about it. tomorrow is another day, and don’t forget to ask for dessert” I’m not a nomad, I’m not some tech dude who is going to teach you how to make 1 billion dollars with a 4$ laptop and 10$ phone bill, those guys are all frauds and full of shit, I know because I happily work for a company than can produce those digital persona’s at a dime a dozen. Those posers ultimately have no sense of happiness or life long ambition. They show you a profitable way to stay mediocre through the use of Instagram filters and cute-cramming sensorial triggers, its all bullshit. A big bed feels better than a van mattress, having a home garden has its complexities, and although world governments are corrupt and misleading, society is a collection of humans who have had the same ideas, needs and desires since the fall of Adam. Not everything is out to get you, not everything needs the opinion of a first year shrink to become real, truth is a finite segment of time space that reverberates into the infinite interpretation of the human mind. Temper the mind to uncover the truth, bet on yourself, and don’t listen to anyone who defines truth for you. Be ready to humbly accept intellectual defeat when you have no answers or the capacity to find an alternative to the position you so staunchly represent. Without further ado, here is Sitting Crooked Talking Straight.

New Spuirk in Town - Chapter 1

It only takes 1 year in paradise

Planets, continents, countries, states, provinces, cities, streets, hoods, sidewalks, my foot takes a step that reverberates all the way up and all the way down the geographic food chain.

I find myself at a Cafe called Central. Its burgundy paint mingles my conscious oversight that I have left the country my parents sought refuge in and returned to the city their ancestors fled from. They call me a re-pat now, yesterday they called me a Spuirk, tomrrow they will call me axper, as if i had never left. Branding has a way of getting to you faster than you can identify with it. But hell, this is the pax Americana that every Coke can we ever bought has brought us closer too.

The term Spuirk is not derogatory, but it essentially means outsider with the blood of an insider. It has a certain flakey connotation to it, that 100 years of divisive community politics has tainted, driving a slow drip towards the “abandonneer” rather than “survivor”. Amongst those who left in the great catastrophe of 1915, the majority who arrived across the Atlantic were from the western regions of the Ottoman Empire which included the big cities established by the Greek or Roman emperors of old as well as the Armenian cities that had been there for 2 millennia prior to the appearance of Mongol or Turkic tribes in the region. Armenians had been native to the land well, forever, even when it was called Sumeria, Babylon, Ilahimo, the Armenian was there. Perhaps under another tribal name , but the dark haired, big cheek bones, heavy noses, and deep concave eyed tribes who were fans of science, and who most importantly spoke a distinct language separate from the worlds vernacular tongue, have called the region around the Ararat mountains home since the word home had meaning.

When one arrives on the shores of the motherland, the only real questions the local will ask us is, why? if you meet the industrious Armenian first they will ask “why did it take you so long?” If you meet the disillusioned Armenian they will stand in awe and ask “why you left the one place they strive to reach”. After a year of getting to know my country men I do not belittle either or. The industrious mind will understand the value of this almost perfect society and it’s punctured bureaucracy. The one that was hidden under the pile of soviet cultural rubble that plagued their every move has been dreaming of a way out for over 2 decades, and will never be able to work their way through and out their scars. One thing though that both these characters have in common, is their passion for patriotism, every conversation, be it flogging the local government, discussing art , or global politics with a Yandex driver, ends with “There is no country like our country” and that my lucky readers, is the absolute truth all must understand when it comes to returning to Armenia.

(…)

It took me 90 days to accept that idea unequivocally. I let the adrenaline settle, I let the wonder dip, but no matter how far down this travelers rabbit hole I went, the high of the environment was never really tempered. Every inch of the city, every curse word from a local gave me a sense of belonging I had not felt in my hometown where I was born and raised. It felt like I was back to where it all began, more than my past, more than my ancestors, It felt like I reached the waiting room for the end of the world, or the backstage cantina to civilizations theater. Yerevan, the city of cities, dense with pride and hospitality, every stone turned with its own mythological ballad. Impossible to cross the street without realizing that someone a few thousand years ago, probably took the exact same left-right-left-right steps and wound up at a medieval loshig shop.

(…)

You flip open any social media platform, and you are instantly flooded by a host of how to AI’s, alien invasions and a dude with 40 figure salary telling you how to live your life to get rich. In reality, what it actually takes is 12 months of a proper mindset that puts work at a high regard, comfort as a tempered simplicity, and the dream as the fish at the end of your hook that you are reeling into your reality. I had a knack for writing, a strong back to lift, and as a former addict an unyielding energy to pursue the height of pleasure. In Yerevan I linked up with 2 characters that have drastically changed my life by giving me the opportunity to live the one I wanted. Claiming that gauntlet and asking for seconds, my work as a PR man and “copywriter” in the music marketing industry began. I became the mouth piece for the worlds top pop-stars, writing their bio’s, creating their story lines for journalists to follow, and coordinating their content so that regardless of who they are, they became something far greater than they can ever conceive themselves.

Changing your life is not about changing who you are inside, its about strengthening the filter that is between the inner and the outer self. Deep down we are all just pleasure fiends, how that is tempered to create rather than destroy is where the “change” occurs. It doesn’t mean don’t be yourself, in fact it means the complete opposite. It means take what you are and make sure it gives to the world a fortitude to be kinder, to be productive, to be helpful, to be attractive, to be what will allow others to be. Identifying as an x or a y doesn't achieve anything, it’s what the x or y will put out to the universe that will determine their role in the cosmos of collective consciousness, something i hadn’t grasped in a long long time. For all those who think money is not the means to freedom have yet to accept that means and ends are not the same thing. They also are yet to even try and do help anyone in a meaningful way. The shoulder to lean on can serve its purpose for momentary comfort, but ultimately you are disabling a persons capacity to direct and shape that filter for themselves.

(…)