Feb 26, 2013 Awake in Dream Time - Journal Entries about the almost real, the surreal and the unreal

So, school was back in session today, after a week-long hiatus, and as usual, I got no sleep at all, despite trying, really trying to get to bed, before 12:00 midnight.  As the hours ticked on into the darkness, and it was one o’clock, and then probably close to two o’clock, I lay there, watching the cars advertise their presence through their trails of light moving mysteriously across the ceiling. Their Dopplerian sounds waxed and waned, like waves coming close and receding into the distance, and I found them all madly distracting.  Yet, they seemed friendly.  Total and utter silence would have suffocated me, considering how awake, yet insanely desperate for sleep I was.  I needed those sounds.

An asonic and aluminescent world would be death.  I imagine all those spirits of the dead weaving about unsteadily through the utter and crushing blackness of non-being, unable to see, hear, feel, speak and touch.  How terrifying!  Poor things!  One day, I’ll be one of them, unless, of course, I push off with both feet towards the stars.

The darkness used to hold terrors for me when I was young, and (shame-facedly, I admit) even into my twenties.  My imagination peopled it with ghosts and demons, and even fantastical creatures out of Hieronymus Bosch or Michael Crichton.  Once I dispensed with the fantastic or the allegorical, I thought that lurking there, just beyond my ken, were humans with malign motives.  I used to lie awake at night, in my teens, after practising sitar or guitar well into the night, or reading and writing into the wee hours, and then trying to get to sleep.  I’d pull the covers right up to my chin, and lie on my back.  My theory was that if something or someone wanted to get at me, it’d have to look me in the eye first — then, it’d be slain cleanly by my vengeful guardian angel, who stood, alert and attentive, beside me.  Fanciful, of course, and considering I was a spiritual atheist, laughable in the extreme.

Thus, the child gets mixed up with the emerging adult inside one’s skin.  Magical thinking rules all.  Reality is always out on a cigarette break, or rolling up its sleeves to greet the day effusively and maniacally.

Meanwhile, my child-self lay in bed, until sleep came, like a gentle mother or perhaps a lover, and soothed me, or took me into its arms.

These days, the darkness does nothing for me.  Not much, anyway.  I am not afraid of spirits or lurkers.  Fantastical monsters have left my imagination for the nonce.   I miss them at times.  I have to be practical, pragmatic, pedestrian.  No flights of fancy, or terror for me.  I miss all that.

However, sometimes, I fancy I see a moving dot or streak of light between my half-shut eyelashes.  A ghost at last, I say welcomingly in my mind.  Then, I open my eyes wide, and realize it’s just a goddamned car on the road far below, tracing its passage across the ceiling.  At other times, I smile at it, and say, It’s just those floaters and flashes of light you sometimes get, when your eyes are overworked. Go to sleep!

Or, perhaps, it’s a ghost.

I used to tell ghosts to keep away and leave me alone.  Now, I miss them.  Still, time enough to be one of them one day, if I so choose.  They need a little oomph and goosing along to keep them from becoming despondent.

On the other hand, they might get too attached, and I would like to detach myself from everything when I die.  I’d float away like a balloon into the outer atmosphere, and contribute my atmosphere to the rest of the thin blanket that protects the earth from death.

And now, it’s eleven o’clock, and I AM jolly well going to sleep early!  I defy the gods of unrest to try and make me budge from my fell purpose.

In eight hours, I’ll be in school again, churning out learning and knowledge and fun and assignments to the assembled throngs.  Makes one cheerful, doesn’t it?

So, goodnight, dear readers, if you’re there.  And if you’re not, goodnight anyway!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tags: #Teaching, back to school, Death and the Maiden, Ghosts, Hieronymus Bosch, Imagination, Insomnia, Sleep, Sleeplessness

Feb 19, 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

The Red Rectangle 
© By Vijaya Sundaram
Written on Thursday, Jan. 25th, 2006
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am an imposter in the world of the real.

Yesterday, I went to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and had an atavistic encounter with art — in the room that contained the “red rectangle.”  I cannot remember the name of the installation artist, because my mind was busily paper-shredding all the petty numbers I had to rustle up to “feed the beast” (that remarkable phrase which my husband kindly created for me when I ranted petulantly about submitting quarterly grades for my eighth graders).  This beast demanded a sacrifice.  Numbers satisfied it.

So, there I sat on a subway train rumbling angrily through Cambridge into Boston, seated beside my Head of the Department of English, while internally stacking up inventive curses against an administration which demanded that we turn our grades in before noon on an “Early Release Day.”

The rest of the afternoon was to be a “professional day,” with the English and History departments taking a trip to the ICA.  Most of us wanted to be back at school, being PROFESSIONAL, and doing our grading without the added pressure of taking the “T” all the way to the waterfront by 12:30. p.m.  Three, tearful, silent meltdowns between school and there and out did not make me look very professional, I admit, but I didn’t care.  Weariness was hugging my bones, and exhaustion was curled up in a fetal position in my cerebral cortex, hiccuping, vibrating in my ganglions.

So, there I was at the ICA, not in the least bit in the mood for modern art, fully prepared to be cynical and criticize everything, just because … and there it was:  The Red Rectangle.

It looked kind.  I looked, hypnotized, into that glowing red rectangle, and walked towards it, thinking, “Is it real?”  It seemed to be a bi-dimensional red thing on the wall, pretending to be art.  I walked closer, impelled, in spite of myself, by its arterial redness, a translucent ruby-red, space-less projection – and bumped into a wall that stopped at my waist.

I put out my hand, thinking, “It’s not real, is it?”  My hand went through the redness, catching air, crimson air that escaped easily.  I had been expecting a wall.  Instead, beyond it was space – a red space, like a room that was hard to see.  It seemed like a cradle for a star or a planet.  It was outer space in an alternate reality.  It carried the primordial promise and message of blood.  It was a womb.  It wasn’t an angry red.  It looked peaceful.

I felt my breath turn into a many-edged diamond in my throat, crystallizing into sharp points. I looked vaguely about me, and everyone who was there seemed to recede into the far reaches of reality.

What was I doing here, on the outside?  I needed to be in there, inside, in that alternate world.  I would make my home there, in a nest of straw, a nest of dreams, and plump myself up, ruffle my feathers, stick my head in softness that was everywhere and nowhere, curl up, and fall fast asleep never to wake up for a hundred years, waking up in dream-time.  I would escape reality forever.  My home was in the land of the unreal, more real to me than this world.

The diamond dissolved.  This was home.
It would be the world of the unreal real.
I would not be an imposter there.

And I would carry that red rectangle back with me, deep within my womb back into the world of the real.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~TheEnd~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tags: #Peace, Art, Boston, Dream Time, Dreaming, grades, Institute of Contemporary Art, teachers, womb

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tags: #Death, #Music, mind, songs

Feb 10, 2013 Awake in Dream Time - Journal Entries about the almost real, the surreal and the unreal

Tags: almost-real, border-world, Dreams, Imagination, mind, Sleep