Feb 18, 2013 Awake in Dream Time - Journal Entries about the almost real, the surreal and the unreal, Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries
With songs and lines from poems jostling each other to get off, or get in.
I find myself singing a song, then interrupt myself rudely with lines from another song, with no idea that I just did that! So, how do I know? My alert, interested, attentive, bemused, flatteringly fascinated daughter tells me!
Mom, she says, Did you know you just switched in the middle of the song you were just singing to this other song? Surprised and startled, I look up from the mundane task I am doing. I can hear the ghost of the previous song lingering longingly in the the air near my ears — and I laugh.
It’s true, I say, I did just do that –switched to another song right in the middle of this one! And I stop to think in the middle of the song which I just interrupted with another song.
I have this romantic notion that when I am on the point of death, all those songs will come tumbling out of me, winging out into the world, and letting the air take them into the sun, where they belong.
And they will make for me a pillow of song, and I will be borne along on them, higher and higher into the ether, scattering birds and planes, as I turn and turn, spiraling forever upwards into the sun, where they belong, where I belong.
And the crowded bus of song will be transformed into a thing of wings and updrafts, scattering birds and planes, as it lifts itself into the sea of melodies high above the earth, making the spheres hum in their orbits. Not a bad way to go, I think.
First, however, I must make a mental note to arrange for that to happen. I have to find my way to a thought so as to record it in the midst of this unceasing singing in my head.
Sigh! Too late. Another song comes impertinently down the aisle and knocks the thought over, and it falls out of the bus. Still, I can remember it. Quick! Don’t let it be run over. I leap down and give it a helping hand. The songs press back, a little ashamed and mortified. The thought salutes, and goes into the world.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Feb 18, 2013 Uncategorized
Event Horizon -- A Poem © By Vijaya Sundaram April 27th, 2012
Forever circling, forever spinning
Closer and closer to the core
Seemingly for an eternity, like a golf ball
Into a vortex built for it in a Children’s Museum,
I dance towards the center.
I know the wider circles will narrow
Into an infinitesimally
Small one, and finally
I will drop into that other world
That other universe waiting for me,
The shadow world
Of visions unseen, and nightmares unimagined.
Is it down, though?
Or is it just beyond?
Time stretches into the far reaches
Of space, condenses into a black hole.
And I circle, circle, circle
Well past the event horizon,
And no light escapes.
This is what my life seems here,
Spinning, plunging forward towards the core,
Always spinning, spinning, spinning.
I watch myself from the other side,
The far side of the event horizon.
And I appear to shift and slow down.
Within, I continue just as I always did.
Without, old age chains my ankles, and I feel so slow,
Within, I speed up, a child heedlessly
Racing towards non-being.
Without, I send out cries of light to that other side, where
My old self watches, helpless, while I pitch headlong towards,
But never quite reaching, that heart of death.
My cries do not pass through.
I move in opposite directions,
Watch from two places: One towards,
And one away from that final plunge.
Eventually, I know I’ll circle, and tumble into
A world beyond that pinpoint of darkness.
Will it all be flat there?
No concentric circles, no Schwarzchild radius
To grab at my ankles?
Or will it always be circles
Within circles, within circles,
Within which the spinning top
Of selfhood disintegrates into atoms
Torn apart by invisible hands?
And as I dance inexorably towards this question,
I see something new
Forming out of that dense, closely-pressed space:
Light radiates from the particles,
Re-forms from those atoms
Into another being, frees itself
From ankle-chains, and escapes.
Tags: #Death, #Original Poetry, #Rebirth, Black Hole, Event Horizon, Red Shift, Schwarzchild Radius
Feb 18, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
It snowed most of the day today — not quite a blizzardy kind of day, but a sort of blustery and white-swirly-kind of day. The winds, reportedly, were twenty-four miles an hour. We huddled indoors most of the day, mainly because the holidays stretched ahead for me for another seven days, and thus, my family felt a weight roll off our collective chests. Not that I do not have any obligations. They were just, for the nonce, suspended, like stills in those busy-seeming scenes in movies, while chaos reigns all around, because a magical thing might have just occurred.
Late to bed last night, late to arise, late, late, late for everything. We were answerable to no one but ourselves, and that was GREAT!
Oh, my husband had to work (Skype, singing lessons), but my daughter and I hung out, read a bit, sang a bit, and lazed around, and watched strange vids on YouTube.
Then, just to add interest and variety to a day that would have come and gone like a snowflake, she and I tromped together through howling winds and sub-zero temperatures in the latter half of the afternoon, through the snow-sifted landscape, snow that was like so much confectionery sugar heaped on ice-cream, wherever it was clean (and horrid dirt-encrusted sludge wherever it was not), she leaping like a mountain goat from craggy snow-and-dirt-crusted ploughed-piles on the sidewalk, and I stepping gingerly on the road, putting myself at the mercy of drivers who plunged like sea-horses into the wind, gaily proceeding at thirty miles an hour, and slowing down only slightly so as to not mow down this “tropical hot-house flower” as my husband used to jocosely refer to me.
And my husband? In between the music lessons he gave on Skype, he made fresh pasta using our pasta maker, and dried them on clamps from our basement (which, he assured me, he had washed thoroughly). Later, we had a delicious dinner, and feasted on ambrosia and nectar, or, more accurately, homemade pasta, with homemade pasta sauce that had been slow-cooked to perfection. Oh, and we talked and laughed, and it was all good.
That’s what we did today. Later, we shall all sing together. Perfection.
Now, I sit quietly at the kitchen table, with my daughter reading her favorite book of the moment, and I type up all these lovely, idle happenings, so as to not forget the beauty and pleasantness that are part of my life. I want these memories to sustain me when things are difficult, or when I worry about the state of the world, or when I doubt myself (frequently), or am frustrated by the slowness and stubbornness of the human species when it comes to change for the better (I count myself among these, of course!), or when I am unaccountably sad.
Some days are for long-winded, almost-run-on sentences. Other days are for sentences from Kurt Vonnegut-land.
In short, I was happy today. Not bad for a wintry, icy, blustery Sunday, where naught happened, but idleness. Oscar Wilde would have approved.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~FINIS~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Family, #Oscar Wilde, Gratitude, Idleness, Journal