Jan 14, 2014 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Blogs and Bloggers, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes, Reading, Writing, Thinking
Not Writing
A Sad Confession by Vijaya Sundaram
January 13th (or the 14th), 2014
This is a confession to nobody.
So, I missed writing yesterday (the 12th), and today (the 13th of January). Actually, now it’s officially the 14th, since it’s past midnight, but since I’m not in bed yet, it’s still the 13th! So there, ye Gods of Time! Take that and that and that!
So, shall I swallow strychnine?
Rend my garments and wail aloud in despair?
Toss in my lot with the “lotos-eaters?” (Yes, yes, I know it’s lotus, but Tennyson didn’t!)
Take up good works?
Live under a bridge?
Say, “writing is an indulgence,” and work in a prison?
Stare guiltily at my Facebook page, wondering how to never, ever, ever be screen-sucked again?
Grade papers? (Naaaah!)
Go to bed?
Oh, yes, that.
Bed it shall be.
But I managed to write — sure, just this sad, lonely piece about being a bad person, who didn’t write on the 12th AND the 13th (but today’s still the13th until I actually retire to bed, remember?), but still, it’s writing (of a sort, anyway).
Besides, I’m tired.
I taught all day on my feet.
I led the Green Team in its spirited recycling efforts after school.
I read to my daughter.
Fixed dinner.
Practised (and that IS the right spelling of the verb form of the word) guitar.
Practised kathak.
Sang with husband and daughter, playing guitar again.
Surely, I can be forgiven for my lapses, ye Gods of Writing, and ye Gods Who Induce Unwanted Guilt-Feelings!
Well, that’s all for now. I shall retire and nurse my sorrows in private. Sleep will soon drown them out. Then, the new day will begin, and the clockwork of my days will keep on moving, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, year by year, until I say, along with J. Alfred Prufrock, “I can hear the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.”
Only in my dreams, tonight, I hope.
____________________________ The End ______________________________
Tags: excuses, guilt, lame excuses, not writing, the desertion of my muse for a couple of days
Jan 9, 2014 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
A new person entered our lives. She transformed us … into parents. We haven’t been the same since. Life has more richness, more depth, more beauty, more music, more love, more … dimensionality.
Below is what I wrote on my Facebook page:
_________________________________________________
So, today, our little girl turned nine!
It’s hard not to feel sentimental.
Also, a sense of amazement at how time shapes reality.
Nine years and a day ago, she wasn’t at our table.
I remember (in the days leading up to her birth) trying to imagine her in our lives, at our table, in our living room, playing with toys, making up stories, singing all over the house, reading, sprawled in various positions in her room or any other room.
I almost succeeded.
This is where imagination cannot match reality. Reality is a million times more beautiful and satisfying.
Happy Birthday, dearest S!
Poets have muses.
She is mine.
________________________________________________
I am grateful for her. Thank you, Universe!
Dreamer of Dreams
Tags: #Daughter, #Love, #Mother and Daughter, birthdays, Gratitude, mother
Dec 8, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes, Reading, Writing, Thinking
Why Should I Write? A Conversation
©By Vijaya Sundaram
December 8th, 2013
The child at the table, brow furrowed, writes about her day with her best friend.
Why should I write? she moans.
If only things didn’t need to be written down! she exclaims, plaintively. I have them in my head, she adds.
The mother says, Keep writing. Describe what you saw today, when you and your friend went to see The Nutcracker ballet. Describe what you liked, how you felt, what you both did after the ballet, where her parents took you and her afterwards.
Why should I write? moans the child, again.
The mother, sympathetic but strict, says, Because it’s good to remember it. It’s good to describe it all. It’s good to reinvent it. Don’t you enjoy reading? Writing is the same thing, except you’re making it happen. Write what happened today. That’s all. Write about your fun day. That’s how you’ll remember it.
I do remember it. I don’t need to write it down, says the child, stubborn, but still obedient, pencil poised reluctantly in hand.
Well, you describe everything so vividly when you tell me, so just write it all down, and then we’ll both be able to remember it, says her mother, kind, but firm, unyielding.
I do remember it. I don’t need to write it down, repeats the child.
But not seven or ten years from now, says her mother.
The girl pouts, But I will. How do you know I won’t?
The mother sighs.
Just write, darling, she says. It’s the doing and the practice that makes us get better at it, and we will look back on it, and enjoy it … later, when we’re older,
And she bends over her students’ papers. Several years of grading practice haven’t made her any faster, she thinks. Then, she thinks of the book she hasn’t finished writing.
A vast sigh fills the room.
Silence reigns.
~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Mother and Daughter, practice, why should I write?, Writing, writing rationales
Dec 7, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries
… is forthcoming.
I’m disappointed, because I wanted to post a poem a day, but didn’t do so yesterday, because, alas! I left it on my computer at school, where I had written it, during my off-hours.
There will be a new one today, at some point.
I’ll try to be light, I promise.
Dreamer of Dreams
Tags: new poem forthcoming
Dec 5, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Current Affairs / General Interest, Reading, Writing, Thinking, Teaching and Learning
Nelson Mandela was a Mahatma, a Great Soul.
The world is bereft, even if it doesn’t know it.
There are only a few giants among us, and he was one. The power of an idea that is bigger than a man carried him on its irrepressible tide, but it was he who steered the boat.
Twenty-seven years in prison did not diminish this man’s resolve–rather, he grew stronger.
One can argue with falsehood, with faulty premises, with those who are prejudiced, with stubbornness, with pride and prejudice.
One cannot argue with Truth and Right, with someone who is truly committed to Equality, to Justice, to Goodness. Mr. Mandela changed the face of discourse and race relations in South Africa with his indomitable spirit and passion for Civil Rights and his Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The world is a sadder, colder place for his passing. We have to, all of us, speak truth to power any chance we get. Mr. Mandela taught us how.
May he rest in peace.
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Tags: Civil Rights in South Africa, Mahatma, Nelson Mandela, Speaking truth to powe, Truth and Reconciliation
Dec 3, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Reading, Writing, Thinking
So, you want to write?
What’s stopping you? The dirty dishes, the laundry, the papers you need to grade, the rooms that need to be picked up, the people you’ve to get along with or work with, the children you need to wake up and off to school with a good lunch and change of clothes, the spouse you’ve got to make feel valued, the backlog of books that wink in your direction, then whistle and look away when you turn to gaze back at them, the dust balls reproducing quietly in corners when your back is turned, the instruments you used to play, but you cannot, because you’ve got work to do, anyway, the dog or cat that clamors for your attention, that cup of cappuccino that you’ve got to have at 5:00 p.m. when the muse is knocking at your window, semaphoring madly, but you’re too tired to answer, and what good would it do, anyway, because, even if you were to let it in, you’d pass out from everything you’ve been doing, or not been doing?
Oh. Well. Surely *that’s* not what’s stopping you, is it?!
You’d better get on it, hadn’t you? Pick up your pencil, your pen, your tablet, your laptop, your languishing spirit and WRITE, dammit!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dreamer of Dreams ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: being anything except a writer, being busy, being domestic, feeling guilty about not writing, making excuses for not writing, not writing, wasting time, Writing
Oct 27, 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
So very sleepy. Falling, falling, falling into sleep … drifting into somnolence. That’s right. Now in a state of sleepitude. Those delicious yawns. How sweet and welcome and tear-filled those yawns are! It’s good to sleep when you’re fed, when you’re warm and housed.
Am grateful, O Forces that Govern the Things that Are.
See you in a while!
~Dreamer of Dreams
Tags: #Sleepiness, somnolence
Oct 27, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries
If the arrow of the trajectory that we’re on at this time, had been released at the moment that humans learned to use their hands, was our fate sealed, and can we do anything to avert what looms ahead?
And is part of our fate a matter of questioning it, and trying to avert it and making small adjustments? Does that still fit into the general field of vibration around the trajectory of that arrow?
In which case, does taking action matter?
Does inaction matter?
Does interaction matter?
Does reaction matter?
Ah, yes, weighty matters. Just some ruminations after sitting wiht my daughter in front of the i-Pad, and watching some My Little Pony episodes, none of which had to do with the above thoughts.
By Dreamer of Dreams
Tags: #Fate, human evolution, human intervention in world events, individual responsibility, predetermination
Oct 27, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
October 26th, 2013
My daughter did nothing of note today.
She is radiant with life.
I love her madly.
~~~~~~~~~~ That’s all for now, folks!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~Dreamer of Dreams
Tags: #Mother and Daughter
Oct 16, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Teaching and Learning
There’s a sweetness to children who care about other children, without feeling the need to be “cool.”
When I see a lack of such caring, I suspect it as being the result of too much exposure to popular culture, or too much knowledge of the world, or too little exposure to what simple affection, sans expectation, might look like. Lack of this simple connectedness is detrimental to our humanity as a whole — when one person behaves indifferently, and that person has some clout, indifference spreads. (Witness the increased lack of empathy in so many parts of our political and social culture.)
I have had, over the years, some teenaged students with special needs of one sort or another, or children who may have issues with learning because of emotional needs. Many times, there’s a vulnerability and a gentleness about those students that grabs my heart more than any other children I’ve taught.
Today, there was a young teenager who held the hand of another throughout the field trip we took to a museum. The other is on the spectrum, while the hand-holder is a kid with emotional and learning issues, although perfectly functional and able to communicate easily. They were happy. They sat on the bus together. They had a closeness that didn’t have anything to do with words. Both knew that the other cared. All artifice was stripped away. There was no issue of ambiguity. There was no sense of “You’re my friend today, because it’s convenient for me to have a friend.” There was a calmness, a surety, a sense of having a place in the world.
What’s happened to so many of the rest of us? Are we so heartless that gentleness and kindness take a backseat?
My heart was so moved by those two students, that I was close to tears. I couldn’t explain it.
They may have challenges in terms of academics, but they are always my true teachers.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Communication, autism, caring, field trip, nurturing friends, special needs, teaching really special students