Jan 12, 2015 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Current Affairs / General Interest

On My Compulsive Urge to Seek Out The News of the World

©January 12th, 2015

By Vijaya Sundaram

What is wrong with me?

I never read the news fanatically when I was younger, and now, I go and look for it every day.  No, I don’t watch television, and I’ve even stopped reading the newspapers.  That is no protection.  I am a creature trapped by the Internet.  So, I read all the time — BBC news, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, other newspapers from all over the world, and various new sites that I learned about through Facebook.  Why?  Why do I do this?  Why do I punish myself with this onslaught of (let’s face it) mostly horrors?  Okay, I do find nice things too, which I pursue just as fanatically.  I love reading about innovations in ‘Green Technology’ or following articles about space, or about music, or about ‘Tiny Homes’ (something I adore), and I look for news about people doing good in the world as well.  Mostly, however, I find the bad news first.

WHY do I keep doing this?

Is it a compulsive habit now?

Is it that I need to make more sense of an insane reality, and discuss it with people?

Ultimately, does knowing change things?

I would hope so.  I’d like to think so.  I mean, if I know more, could I be more alert to injustice or to an increasingly hostile planetary climate?  Would I take more of an interest in my fellow humans, in whom I already take a great interest?  Would it help me teach those who don’t know, or those who do know, but don’t care?

I know what this need of mine is.  It’s about finding connection in an increasingly disconnected world.  It’s about understanding reality and how the injustices in one part of the world will affect my life and the lives of those about whom I care.  It’s about taking action wherever and whenever possible.

There have to be limits to this seeking out news, though.  Otherwise, I fear I’ll go mad with all this knowing, and be helpless about doing anything to change the course of human events.

I fear that it is crippling my creative impulse.

I feel my mind getting more and more cluttered with facts and opinions, both mine and others’.  I can barely move around without bumping up against some reminder of some horrible event or injustice that’s happening in the world right now.  And I am reminded of Oscar Wilde, who, back in the 19th century in The Picture of Dorian Gray, remarked, “The thoroughly well-informed man — that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.”

I need to do some spring cleaning.

And yet, and yet … I need to know.  Everything helps me formulate and re-formulate my reality.  While fantasy beckons, and it’s only too easy to lose myself in that world in my mind, I cannot afford to do so.

It’s sad.

I think I’ll wean myself from the Internet for a bit, or at least, check it every couple of days, instead of every single day.

Perhaps, I’ll be able to be more carefree, then.

And yet …

__________________________________________________________

Tags: Hostile reality and climate change, Media hound, News, Oscar Wilde reference, the Internet, The need to know things, The need to pursue the latest news of the world

Jan 10, 2015 Awake in Dream Time - Journal Entries about the almost real, Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries

Woke up from a good dream and a bad one.

Good Dream:  A recurring one.  I was leaping into the air, and able to spin while airborne, and any time I felt gravity pulling me down, I spun towards a wall, and kicked off, only to leap and spin (sort of fly, but not quite) in the air, and STAY airborne.  When others in the room asked me how, I said, “It’s really possible.  Just trust your intentions,” or words of that nature.  I awoke after that, in a good mood, then went back to sleep, and had the Bad Dream below.

Bad Dream: I was in a train heading towards a tiny town, where a bunch of school children were in their school-rooms.  As the train sped by a completely alien landscape, I saw the silver river snaking by in the opposite direction, and something told me it was going to flood.  I sent a message to the school, “Quick, evacuate everyone, and get to high ground,” but was scoffed at.  And as I watched in horror, the water overflowed the banks, and rushed towards the town, and my train.  Then, I awoke, and was in a bad mood.

No Freudian jokes, please!
🙂

Dreamer of Dreams

Tags: dream symbols, Dreams, Levitating/flying/dancing in a dream, symbolism

Jan 3, 2015 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries

A Walk in the Woods En Famille Plus Dog

© Jan. 3rd, 2014

By Vijaya Sundaram

We took another long walk in the Fells today, en famille.  It was a cold, cold day (30 degrees), and all three of us were warmly layered (S said, looking down at her snow pants and thick-jacketed trunk, “I look fat and lumpy!”  Dang!  When did she get self-conscious about imagined weight and looks?  We don’t even buy popular culture magazines or watch T.V.  Got to nip that in the bud!  I replied, “I see a nicely-shaped girl in padded, warm snow pants.  Why do you care how you look?”  Her response?  I wish I were old enough like you to NOT care how I look.”  Anyway, moving right along …).

Holly was beside herself with joy.  She gets to be off-leash for much of her time in the woods, and she loves, loves, loves racing up and down the little wooded paths, rushing up big, rocky ledges, hurtling down towards us, patrolling the area around to keep us safe from huge, monstrous forest beasts, and generally being very important and wavy-tailed.  She is very big-voiced, and sounds brave when she woofs.  Silly thing!

Lots of ice in little pools, happy dogs with their owners, little kids clambering up exposed rocks, breaking off lumps of ice in pooled hollows … nice day, despite the bone-chilling cold.  I lay on our favorite rocky outcrop, and looked up.  It was lovely to feel the heartbeat of the earth, and the embrace of an ash-grey sky.

Big, thick branches on the ground made good walking sticks for us intrepid hikers, and we slithered downhill, crunching on leaves and chunks of ice-outcroppings.  There was curling grass in clumps, and frozen-over moss and lichen.  Pine-needles softened the paths, and our feet were grateful.  Life is filled with beauty.

There was a lovely stream, glittering grey-black, rippling through at one point, but we wisely went over the makeshift bridge on it, since it was below-freezing, and the only reason the stream hadn’t frozen over was that it was moving too quickly.  The pond, however, closer to the road, was completely frozen over, and it was lovely to see young people skating away, playing ice-hockey — S wanted to skate too — we plan to go back there, and let her skate by the light of the almost-full moon tonight.

We came home, after going to S’s favorite spot in the woods– Panther Cave.  Too bad there aren’t any panthers here to speak of.  Or, perhaps, it’s just as well!  S clambered up and down huge rocks, made her way into various little cavernlets, nattering to herself about “ThunderClan territory.”  Meanwhile, Holly, back on her leash, went crazy, yelling at S, her big sister, to come back, or the wild beasts would get her!

As we left the woods behind, I felt my jaw freezing shut, and became silent for a while.  S looked at me, and said, “Look happy, Mom!”

I said, through clenched teeth, “But I AM happy — my jaw is icy; it’s hard to smile.”

She said, “Then, I’ll break the ice.”  At which point, I smiled, and said, “You just did!”

And we went home.

And we had lunch, and a book each, and laziness to follow.

Soon enough, school will begin, and I will become a tired wreck, a shadow of my former self.  Still, all is good, and all is well right now.
____________________________________________________________

Tags: Dreaming and Being, Freedom Trail, plus dog, walk in the woods en famille

Jan 1, 2015 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries

After a late morning, with Warren’s excellent fritters with Vermont maple syrup for breakfast, we went walking in the Fells en famille. Reached the top of the hill, wandered over into a rocky wooded area, and lay on the rocks, looking up at a powdery blue sky, which poured down sunshine. Holly gambolled about on the rocks, and crashed through bushes and small trees, returning to us in glee. S and Holly skidded about on a tiny frozen over pool of water, while Holly tried eating the ice. Home later, and a nice rest. Then, pasta and veggies. S read a book, while W and I watched Gravity. Good movie. Now, in the gentle silence of the night, I hear the thudding sounds of Holly chasing after a ball that W is throwing. This dog needs CONSTANT entertainment.

Tags: 2015, Chronicles of Holly, walk in the woods with family

Oct 3, 2014 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries

You know you are fully grown-up, when your child turns to you at bedtime, asking you to stay near her, because she’s newly afraid of the concept, the spectre of death and dying, because she’s read a book about Hades.

And when she says, “Parents make everything all right,” you hug your child and say, “Yes it will be all right.  Go to sleep, sweets.  I’ll stay near you till you’re asleep.”

And you sit next to her, holding her hand, reassuring her with a song and soft words, then with companionable silence, till sleep wafts her into sweet oblivion, and you know she’ll sleep until the day comes, and she will be all right, because you made her fears recede.

By Dreamer of Dreams

October 3rd, 2014

Tags: #Mother and Daughter, childhood fears, reassurance, Sleep

Sep 30, 2014 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries

Memory and Self

©September 30^th, 2014

By Vijaya Sundaram

Someone, and I think it was Oliver Sacks, raised the question (or perhaps the idea) of whether we are a collection of memories, and those memories constitute a “self,” that we identify as our own.

If our memories make up our “self”, what about those who lose their memories? Who are they? Are they truly “self” less? How would they carry on the business of stitching together parts of their day-to-day existence?

What about those who gain false memories? Are they creating a new self? Does that make them real people? Or are they figments of memories given flesh?

Memory is an astonishing, pliant thing. It is also sometimes a dying thing.

Is what we are what we were? What about what we will be?

What about when we’re born? Is the self then just amorphous?

What about those studies where babies are shown as possessing empathy? Where did they gain that? Did they have a sense before of it? Isn’t that a trait that reveals an aspect of a person’s “self”?

What does it mean to be forming into a person?

Does the blueprint already exist, or do we make it up, add, erase, expand and delineate parts of the blueprint of ourselves as we grow older?

If we insist that we are fully formed NOW, does that cut us off from forming some more?

If we are UNformed, does that let us off the hook when we commit a regrettable act? To what extent?

What about knowledge, the kind we add to our store of memories? Does the process of losing knowledge, as in our daily forgetting of things we’ve learned, mean that we’ve wasted some part of our self? Does it simply imply that we might have misplaced what we’ve learned, because it isn’t important right now?

True terror, then, would lie in losing one’s memory, because that would signal the erosion of one’s self.

It’s difficult to just exist – we bring mind and memory into the business of being, and it certainly complicates things. It also makes living fun … I think.

And of course, I wouldn’t know any better, since I only know what I know from the place where I stand, and that place houses a collection of memory cells in a bustling beehive of thought.

If I lose any part of it, I would imagine myself canceling myself out, until I’m just a face smiling in the trees,

and then just a smile,

and then, just the ghost of a smile,

and then, blue sky amidst green trees

And then … a voice carried away by the breeze

And then, someone else’s memory of

That smile

The ghost of that smile

That blue sky amidst green trees

That voice …

That breeze …

Then … nothing at all.

And why, oh why, oh why, am I SO attracted to that?

_______________________________________________________________

Tags: An Original Essay by Vijaya Sundaram, Cheshire Cat, Empathy in babies, Forgetting, Formation of the Self, Losing memory, loss of self, Memory, Oliver Sacks, Self, Selfhood

Sep 23, 2014 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries

No one said it better than Wordsworth.  I will add nothing more to the poem below, except to say, Thank you, Mr. Wordsworth.  This poem always, always resonated with me.

The World Is Too Much With Us

By  William Wordsworth

1770–1850

Tags: #Nature, #sonnet, artifice, Quotation, The World is Too Much With Us, William Wordsworth

Sep 21, 2014 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries

Torrent of Consciousness, or Leashless Grammar, Punctured Punctuations, OR:

DOG-FIGHT!

September 21st, 2014

Vijaya Sundaram

So I’m walking down one of the dog-inhabited streets in my neighborhood enjoying the cool evening air and thinking how nice it’s to be walking with my dog Holly who is the most beautiful Standard Poodle in the whole world and who is the goofiest 9-month old pup you ever saw with no vanity no vanity at all just a tumbling mess of poodle who happens to look elegant after coming home from the groomers with a bow around her neck with silken puppy hair cut close but not silly and with gently waving curly fantail like a flourish of joy and I’m thinking that when I get home I’ll be making dinner for my sweet family and then grade some papers and feel like I’ve finished off the day to my satisfaction when I’ve written my self-inflicted obligatory 100-word short story for the flash fiction group that I’m a part of online when my dog and I see a quiet cat sitting in feline fashion at ease with itself and with life, near a car.  And I say to Holly look look there’s a cat, and Holly who has seen an actual cat only about two or three times in her conscious existence is fascinated and leans closer and the cat is getting ready to flee or fight when the cat’s neighbor, a woman who might be in her mid-thirties or early forties shows up with a wheeled garbage bin and she and I get to talking about the stray cats in the neighborhood which her neighbor to her left feeds freely and this woman and Holly greet each other and the woman seems really nice when suddenly out of the right house a lumpen misshapen ungainly bulldog comes gallumphing towards us and i tense up because Holly sometimes is reticent in manner towards older male dogs and gets nervous.  However the bulldog seems friendly enough and greets the woman whom it seems to know and like and touches noses with Holly wagging its little non-existent stump-hint of a tail, and out of the corner of my eye, I see its presumed owner come trotting tensely up the street towards us, clearly somewhat alarmed that his dog had rushed out of the house, when suddenly, GRRRRROWL, BARK!

DOGFIGHT! Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God DOGFIGHT!

This beastly barrel of a bulldog is charging mindlessly towards my dainty but feisty Holly, who is yelling back, backing away all the while, while the bulldog’s plunging forward, aiming for what seems to me to be my dog’s neck, and from there being two dogs, there’s a sea of dogs around me, one pulling away, yet staying close to me, and the other pushing madly at me and at my dog, in pure and terrifying attack mode, and not remembering or even knowing at that moment that one should NEVER EVER separate two fighting dogs by hand I plunge into the mêlée and shove the bulldog away from my baby pup who is by now so terrified that she’s slipped her own collar and leash and is in abject terror but still unwilling to leave the general vicinity of her mom.

And in pushing the bulldog away from my baby I get BITTEN BITTEN by that horrid beast of a bulldog with its ugly fanged mouth and this creature commits this heinous deed in a thug-like remorseless way and meanwhile his owner wrestles him to the ground and I’m crying my hand my hand, it’s bleeding. I hope my dog isn’t bleeding, will you hold her please she’s slipped her collar and I can’t seem to get it on and I’m close to tears and the woman I’d been talking to puts her hands around Holly’s shoulders and gently steers her into her house inviting me to come in and she’s comforting both of us  offering Holly a bowl of water and looking around for a treat to give her but I say I have a treat here it is Holly and Holly looks fine and her tail is back up and she’s not bitten OR bleeding and she looks less freaked out but I am still in panic mode and I’m holding my hand under running water in the woman’s kitchen sink, while her husband (“I’m Laura, he’s Dan,” says my kindly host) looks through his emergency First Aid kit, fishes out a Bandaid and ointment, no I need some alcohol first I say, and he finds an alcohol swab which I use on my (now paper-towel-dried but still bleeding finger and then apply the Band-aid, thanking them both the while and I’m chattering nonstop I hope that dog’s had his shots, I hope my finger’s going to be okay, I say, and Laura says, he’s a good dog, he has never bitten anyone before and I’m so sorry because he was running up to say hello to me because I give him treats, and it’s my fault it all happened.  I say to her that the dog had not had a collar, and as we’re talking the dog’s owner knocks at the door and enters and looks terribly contrite and upset and says I’m so sorry about what happened and he assures me that his dog has had all his shots and I ask did he slip his collar and leash? And the man says,  I should never have let Max out without his collar and leash this is the last time I’ll do that for sure.  And I’m thinking you mean, you let him out like that every time? but I say, how come? and he says, well it’s a short route from his door to his truck, and Max usually just comes out and jumps in. 

We stand around digesting that information, and the silence is big.

And I surprise myself because I find myself saying it wasn’t his fault, it was just an accident, Max didn’t mean to bite, it was just an unfortunate series of events, don’t worry about it.  The man looks relieved, but says, I’m right next door to Laura, if you need me for anything at all, and I realize he’s talking about vet visits for Holly or doctor visits for me, and I say, I’m sure it’s nothing, just a small bite, please don’t worry about it.  Thus we mutually reassure each other and he goes back, still looking very upset.  Meanwhile, my panic level has come down several notches, and I’m glad I didn’t get upset and angry with the poor man whose dog might have almost killed mine (but didn’t) and bit me, because, after all, he’s just an unfortunate wretch to be the owner of that belligerent unpredictable bully of a bulldog* and one HAS to feel sorry for him.

And I thank my hosts and sally forth down the street with Holly and reach my home and THEN burst into tears and tell my husband and daughter about it all and get comforted and then I get to work prosaically cutting onions and other vegetables for dinner and happy that my loving husband and child had already helped by cutting cabbage and getting that ready and I cook a fantastic dinner and everyone is fine again

Except that my finger is infected and I see the doctor two days later and here I am downing an antibiotic twice a day for five to seven days and feeling resentful about it all but at least I have a story to tell, right?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

P.S.  I add this a few days later:  I actually thought it was an okay, even nice, dog at first, and I don’t hate bulldogs, although their faces are harder to read, and they can be like barrels ploughing into one, when they want to.  I still don’t hate that dog, although I wrote about it in a fit of resentment.  Also, it could have bitten my finger OFF, but it didn’t — the bite, though stinging, was not terrible, so all is well, right?

🙂

Tags: bull dog vs poodle, dog-fight, punctuations be damned!, real life incident, Run-ons, Stream-of-consciousness, unleashed

Aug 9, 2014 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Blogs and Bloggers, Reading, Thinking, Writing

… alas!

I will be in India.

Leaving today.

No real access to the Internet, unless I go to an Internet Cafe.

Who knows?  I just might do that!

Love,

Dreamer of Dreams

Tags: No flash fiction, No Friday Fictioneers stories from me, two-week hiatus

Jul 28, 2014 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Current Affairs / General Interest, Reading, Teaching and Learning, Thinking, Writing

And here we are, comfortable, with our little, daily stresses and cares, our worries, or work-related sorrows, or the baggage we carry from our lives.

And there they are, in Gaza, which is burning, with Israeli artillery strikes or misfired Hamas rockets.

Or in Baghdad, where Sunnis are being harassed by Shias.

Or, in Ukraine, where there are hundreds of civilian deaths, while governments fight for control in one direction or another.

This isn’t a world in which I wish to live.

And yet, life IS beautiful.  And Life is Beautiful, too.

We MUST try and speak for beauty, for life, for love, for peace.

We MUST end the little stesses in our own lives by being non-reactive, thoughtful, calm and measured.  (Of course, that’s easier said than done — but I’d like to try.)

Plant a garden of flowers, however small your yard is.  If there’s no yard, make a window garden.

Plant some tomatoes and basil in a box outside your window sill.

Plant a tree in a park.

Read a book, or write one.  Or, do both.

Teach a child to read a book or listen to music.

Write to your congressmen and congresswomen, and to your leaders.

Play music with your family, your friends, by yourself.

Play.

_________________________________________________________________________

Tags: #Trees, Baghdad, Gaza, Israel, life here and there, planting flowers, Playing, Playing music, reading, Teaching a child to read, Ukraine, vegetables, Writing