Mar 28, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries
Lilies and Poppies ©By Vijaya Sundaram March 28th, 2013
Tomorrow is Good Friday.
It means nothing to me, in the religious sense. I am an atheist Hindu, with a mystical, spiritual leaning. Oh, and I went to a convent school in India, while coming from a somewhat orthodox Tamilian Brahmin family (our parents chose the route of “convent school education” for their two daughters for various reasons).
However, I do sometimes feel as if I’m carrying a cross up a hill, and being buried in a cave that’s shut with a boulder.
I’m still waiting for that angel to remove the boulder, so I can ascend on Easter Sunday.
Will I be done with the work that’s weighing on me? Everything depends on that. Work takes precedence over everything in this country. So, there’s an extra-delicious sense of guilt when one is playing hooky, even if is for an hour or two.
See what I mean? I used the phrase “playing hooky” so casually, thinking that if I don’t do my schoolwork immediately upon getting home, then it’s “playing hooky.” I mean, my time is supposed to be MY time, and yet, I have to do work well into the wee hours, frequently. And my so-called “Prep Time” at school is taken up with menial tasks. It never ends.
Work is over-rated, I think.
What was it that the Christ said about the lilies of the field?
Forget Ascension. I want to be one of those lilies. Better still, a poppy, so that I can embrace blissful oblivion.
——————————–The End ————————————
P.S. if anyone is a devout Christian and is reading my blog, please know that I mean no offense in using the metaphor of carrying a cross or wanting to ascend. It is a metaphor.
P.P.S. For those who might be worried about my mention of “poppy” and “oblivion,” please note that, again, I am being metaphorical.
Tags: Idleness, Leisure, Lilies of the field, Oblivion, Work
Mar 26, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries
I don’t have an original poem or story today. Instead, I have some favorite poems to share with you:
The World is Too Much With Us, by William Wordsworth
Picnic, Lightning, by Billy Collins
Here’s a painting that always moves me, because the painter, Peter Brueghel (one of my favorites) depicts the fall of Icarus in the most undramatic (and because of the understated nature of the image, doubly dramatic), and bucolic setting possible.
Of all the Greek myths, I find the myths of Icarus and Daedalus, of Orpheus and Eurydice, and of Eros and Psyche to be among the most compelling. They captured my heart when I was a pre-teen. As an adult, I wrote the lyrics and composed the music for two songs about Icarus and Daedalus back in the 1990s, and recorded them. (I still rather enjoy listening to them, after all these years — one of these days, I’ll put it on YouTube, and provide a link on my blog.)
Back to Icarus and Daedalus. Here’s the poem Musee Des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden which is about the Brueghel painting and the story of Icarus. Then, there’s Landscape With The Fall of Icarus by William Carlos Williams about the same painting.
So, this is what I’ll do on the days I have too much other work. I’ll share the works of my favorite poets and painters, and musicians and thinkers with you.
On days when I have time, I might actually write some essays about artists, musicians, writers, et al. Those are yet to come.
Thanks for looking in!
Love,
Dreamer of Dreams
Tags: Icarus and Daedalus, Kubla Khan by Coleridge, Landscape of the Fall of Icarus by William Carlos Williams, Lightning by Billy Collins, Musee Des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden, Peter Brueghel, Picnic, William Wordsworth
Mar 24, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
Ramblings about Courage and Fear
©Vijaya Sundaram
March 24th 2013
My daughter is in the next room, playing “My Grandfather’s Clock,” which my husband is teaching her on the guitar, and it’s sweet to hear her trying to keep her composure while learning something new. She’s sounds good, very good, but she doubts herself at times, and that’s part of what she is learning to figure out.
This is because learning anything new is an unnerving thing for her in some ways, as it is for many of us, although we grown-ups have, through years of practice, managed to stifle that feeling.
Or, should I just speak for myself and my daughter?
Oddly enough, this is what makes her (and me) try new things, almost with a defiant upthrust chin, as if to say, “Well, so what if I’m afraid to fail at this? It doesn’t matter! I’m going to try it (although I might protest, weep and moan along the way)!”
So, she sails into new things now, with a much more cheerful, confident air than in the past, because the past informs the present, and the present gears itself up for the future. So, she is able to look back, when I remind her, and see how she’s changed and grown in all the things that used to cause her nervousness or outright dread. Children always want to triumph over their younger selves. That’s the only form of competition worth pursuing.
And I can try and give her a little bit of the wisdom I’ve gleaned from my own personal learning experiences.
Teaching myself guitar, finding a sitar teacher, applying to college in a city where I knew no one, except my family … all of these were things I felt proud of accomplishing, because I had conquered an unnamed, deeply buried fear (and I won’t bother analyzing why that might be — it might just be encoded in my DNA).
Flying solo to America only twenty days after having married my husband, who had had to return a day earlier on an already booked ticket (from having come to stay for a year in India) — that felt like an act of courage. Leaving behind my family and everything I had ever known, and flying far away to greet an unknown future in a new land where a whole new life awaited me was exciting, yes, and caused me a pang of pain, yes, but I felt quite valorous beyond all that.
Finding work in a place where I knew no one and nothing — that felt like a leap in the dark. Sure, I spoke English and knew rock n’ roll, jazz and folks songs, but that had nothing to do with the real America I met, so different from the America I read about. I remember I seemed and felt confident, but had nightmares those first couple of years. Here was a recurring dream: A faceless beast chased me up and down a nightmare house in my dreams, caused me the utmost terror for several nights, but one night, I had had enough. In my dream, I said, “Enough! Time to actually see this beast.” I turned around, and to my astonishment, the beast melted away. There was nothing to face. (How clichéd and symbolic was that?! That was quite a good nightmare, come to think of it!)
When I played music on the streets of Cambridge and in the subways of Cambridge and Boston in the 90s, and performed music with my husband in concerts, I felt brave.
Leaving my job after nearly ten years, and enrolling at a nearby well-known college for an M.Ed. in Middle School English was a leap in the dark. I had no idea whether the job market was good or not. Applying for a job immediately afterwards, learning to learn from, listen to, and teach, American teenagers, so different from any I had encountered in my own country — all of these acts were like falling out of a blue void, with a parachute, yes, but one that I wasn’t quite sure would work. It did work, of course, but I had to work harder than I’d ever done in my life.
Looking back, I remember feeling suffused with a blend of immortal strength and mortal terror. This new world, this new life was strangely scary and quite absorbing. I was fascinated and confident, nervous and diffident. I immersed myself completely in whatever I took on. And I felt strong and invincible through all the fears that seemed to dog my footsteps like that dreaded beast in my nightmares.
(Taking on new things does not extend to certain kinds of activities, however. I draw the line at skiing, snowboarding, skydiving, swimming and surfing. In fact, I will eschew many dangerous physical activities, because, for some unfathomable reason, strange as it might seem, I like being alive.)
Courage comes in many forms. We know that.
My daughter is brave. She learned swimming (which I can barely do), and went through it all, even though she absolutely hated it at first. She likes it now and swims quite well. She was nervous about learning to bike. She bikes well now. She was frightened of stilting. Now, she absolutely adores it.
She was nervous about learning to read, but she has loved to be read to since she was a baby. I read to her endlessly, patiently, lovingly. Suddenly, between five and a half and six years of age, she became an inveterate and passionate reader on her own. Now, she reads Asterix, Tintin, the first Harry Potter book (I’m not allowing her to read the others on her own yet, although she can), James Thurber’s short essays, A.A. Milne and Enid Blyton books, the Wizard of Oz, Heidi, and so on, apart from reading books about the elements, American history, astronomy, dinosaurs.
She was hesitant about learning Indian dance, but didn’t want to give up when she began. She is devoted to it now. She didn’t want to join the local Drama / Theater place (I don’t know anything about acting, Mom, Dad! she said. Try it. If you don’t like it, we’ll stop, was our response.) The result, of course, was predictable. She really enjoys her Drama Club. She didn’t want to learn guitar, although she has always been highly musical, and sings beautifully. She loves guitar now, and plays it well.
So you see, a pattern emerges. It sounds trite, I know, but seeing my daughter take on new things (with our encouragement) brings it home afresh to me: Face your fears. Don’t give up. Who cares what the world thinks? It’s what you think of yourself that matters most. Learning to love learning, and loving life matters most of all.
My daughter doesn’t like to quit, and neither do I. We hate to think of ourselves as quitters. We love to learn. We love life.
And she will go on to face more complicated fears than the ones I faced, because the world tilts always in that direction.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Daughter, #Learning, Face your fears, home-schooling, mother, parenting, struggling
Mar 24, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries
Hey, people!
Do you like my stories?
My poems?
My musings and ramblings?
My rants (such as they are)?
Well, then, toss me a “like.” See that thing called “Permalink” at the bottom of each post? Click on that. Yes, that’s right. Go ahead, share them on FB (not twitter, yet — twitter makes me nervous). Reblog them, like one kind soul has done. (Give me credit, of course!)
Write me a note, a comment, if you feel so moved.
Don’t just view them, and go away. I see that people go there and read them (that’s what site stats are for to let us poor souls know that we’re actually being read), but there are no comments. Makes me feel somewhat jilted.
Right. Now I’ve played upon your sympathies, and you might, just might take a moment to click or write a note. No? Too much work for hands? You don’t like them enough?
Damn!
Well, I tried, anyway!
Tags: " minor kvetching and moaning, "Comment on blog, "Like" on blog, Mild rant
Mar 23, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Reading, Writing, Thinking, Teaching and Learning
A Thirst for Human Knowledge
©By Vijaya Sundaram
March 23rd, 2013
When I was very young, it was very hard to imagine a past without me in it.
As I grew a little older, I got it, and loved reading history books. The past was an amazing panorama of stories blending into each other, misted with mythology and moistened with tears for some of the great ones. All around me, growing up, were the ghosts of India’s past, swirling up through the books and prowling around my consciousness.
I wept over Asoka (Ashoka) the Great, Harsha Vardhana, Shivaji the Great, Akbar, Shah Jahan, Gautama, who became the Buddha, Mahavira. I struggled over the names of the Chera, Chola and Pandya kings. I wondered where the women of those times were, and how they endured all this. I was pleased with the story of Rani of Jhansi, although I hated, absolutely hated the practice of Sati, which reduced the power of women to ashes. I was put off by the great battles, the greed and small-mindedness of some of the Emperors and Kings, enshrined in their own mythologies.
And then, there was “world history.” How I loved it all! I pored over my history books, soaking up stories and facts about Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, China, and all of the ancient kingdoms. The middle ages did nothing for me, and I found stories about the people’s dirt, dumb superstitions and squalor to be VERY upsetting, but not more so than the rank avarice and shameless exploitation of the masters who ruled the people. Similar kinds of movements (feudalism, etc.) were cropping up everywhere in the world. (One has to wonder about how all historical movements around the world paralleled each other — the rise of hunter-gatherers, agriculturists, kingdoms, tyrannies, feudalism, the rise of organized religion, the movements in art, literature, science, as well as the constant wars, dictatorships, democracy, all cycling each other.)
The Medieval period might have been stinking, superstitious and stuffy, but there were some bright spots. As a forerunner of the Renaissance, Dante’s vision of the Inferno and Il Paradiso bloomed in people’s minds, forcing new metaphors into their conceptions of heaven and hell . While I disliked Dante’s sadistic visions, he made hell sound much more interesting than dull old Heaven. And I am forced to consider that, while Dante over-indulged in his descriptions of the horrors of the nine circles of Hell, and all of the different types of damnation, there was some sense of the metaphorical aspects of all this, and that people’s minds were evolving.
Hieronymus Bosch, medieval-surrealist supreme, the artistic forefather of Salvador Dali (in my mind), exemplified similar ideas in his paintings. Carl Gustav Jung (one of my favorite psychologists, whose book, “Memories, Dreams and Recollections I would re-read with an unquenchable thirst during my teen years) called Bosch, “The Master of the Monstrous, the Discoverer of the Unconscious.” So, the Medieval Period wasn’t a total loss. There were artists dealing with the monsters thrown up by humanity’s unconscious mind. There were writers and theologians, and scientists who tried to separate the strands, but they were all creatures of their time, as are we all.
Along came the Renaissance, and that thrilled me. Dante gave way to Petrarch, and Boccaccio commented on everything. Humanism seemed to be on the rise. Over and over again, I read about the Italians, their art, architecture, science, and religion. Leonardo Da Vinci fascinated me, as did Michelangelo. The Renaissance must have seemed like a kaleidoscopic time after the stinking stuffiness of the previous age.
Then, the Age of Reason, of Enlightenment bloomed, but it was incomplete. The earlier ideas of Ptolemy had given way to Copernicus, then to Galileo, then Newton (I’m sure I shall be corrected, but this is all just memory surfacing), then all of the great scientists of the modern age.
Now, we’re in the age of Doubt and Skepticism. If there weren’t so much ignorance, superstition, blood and gore, we’d be in a good place. Alas, there are those in power who seem not to have learned the lessons that history offers, or if they did, they learned the wrong things from those lessons. And so, we have the terrible wars of the 20th and 21st Century. Our rulers play by different rules than the ones they want other rulers to follow. Such rank and absurdly frightening hypocrisy. How can people NOT see this? How do we tolerate this? In order to seize enough power to influence the masses to one’s (correct!) way of thinking, one has to want power. And the danger, as we know, is that, as Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
All this, I guess, is a separate set of ruminations about the ruination of us all. I don’t feel like meditating on that yet.
Alas, the details of all that I’ve learned are fading away. I shall have to start re-reading history, because, as we all know, “Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it,” and I do not want to replay all those scenes of ignorance, superstition, blood and gore, even metaphorically, in my mind or my life.
The decades have rolled by, and I’m in my middle years, and comfortably ensconced in my life. Soon, perhaps, Enlightenment and the Age of Reason will come. Then, the end will come. I sort of get it.
What I will miss is reading about it.
I see this thirst for history in my daughter as well. When she was younger, she’d ask us about life before she began. She still does, but with less urgency, just intense curiosity. Now, she loves history, and wants to know more about it. I hope that I shall do justice to her thirst for this knowledge. I hope we can discuss those difficult matters without losing our way, or being heartbroken, or nauseated to such an extent that we stop studying.
Somehow, I think that we will continue to study, and can do so without losing our way.
Thanks for reading!
~ Vijaya Sundaram
(I will insert pictures soon, but don’t have time right now!)
Tags: Carl Gustav Jung, Dante, European History, Hieronymus Bosch, History, Indian History, Love of History, the Renaissance
Mar 20, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries
Food is Good — A Meditation Upon Humanity
©By Vijaya Sundaram
Published on March 20th, 2013
I am always amazed and grateful that there is so much good food in the world, and yet people starve. Soul-crushing tyrannies, rampant capitalism, war, famine, flood, indifference … All of the hatefulness of humans conspire to keep people hungry in so many parts of the world — it’s a matter of intense shame to me.
If you have food, share it.
If you have the time, feed people.
If you have the money to spare, give it to the starving, the weak, the poor.
There is no excuse for indifference.
Don’t moralize piously about how the poor, the weak and the hungry should work for food.
Give them food FIRST!
Try working on an empty stomach — after many days of not eating.
How easy it is for you to prate on and on about how the poor expect handouts! What about you? You got plenty, only it came in the form of unquestioned privilege.
It is as simple as this: Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, tend to the sick, offer love to all living creatures. Leave, don’t take.
You don’t need religion to tell you this–you need what my mother would term “manusha thanmai” — a sense of humanity.
It is this, and only this which will save us all.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #humanity, #Ishmael, #Love, Daniel Quinn, Feed the Poor, Food, Gandhian Socialism, Sharing
Mar 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
Snow Day–A Poem
©By Vijaya Sundaram
March 19th, 2013
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Woke up today to snow!
No school!
Feel like a child …
Alas, the feeling ends there.
Work calls.
I cover my ears
Pretend not to hear.
Nope. It’s insistent,
Like an unwanted visitor
Leaning on the doorbell.
Silence in the house.
No pulse stirs the walls,
Breath is suspended.
Lips parted, couched in bed, I wait,
Willing my intruder to vanish
Into the snow whence it came,
But it waits. It is patient.
I grumble and grouse.
I stop my ears with my fingers.
I go, la, la, la, la, la.
I arise, drink coffee, look out
See all that piled up snow.
I tend to my child,
Listen to my husband playing guitar.
But work always waits.
Quiet, brutally determined,
Work waits, arms crossed,
Infinitely aged and weary.
And I long for the quietude
Of my final rest.
I yearn, I yearn, I yearn
For my final rest.
Alas, I know my work
Will follow me there.
It is not to be spurned, rejected
Cast aside. It is wedded to me.
Sighing, I get up, allow my breath
To resume its rise and fall
And, with rueful smile,
I open the door.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Original Poetry, #Procrastination, Snow Day, Work
Mar 16, 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
I wondered whether to use the “rate this” widget, tried it, felt embarrassed, and took it down again.
I guess I’ll never be a hugely popular blogger!
Ah well! I write because I love to write. If you like my blogs, please be sure to let me know. This is a strangely connected-and-disconnected world — the world of the blogger!
Thanks for reading!
More coming soon.
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Mar 10, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
A Winter Walk in Sun and Snow
©By Vijaya Sundaram
Sunday, March 10th, 2013
Today, S and I went for an hour and a half walk through the woods near our house. It was a stunningly beautiful day — the sky was a freshly washed cerulean, and the white of the snow from the recent snowstorm overlay everything, fresh and soft, crunchy in parts, and pillowy in parts, always alluring, always leading us on to the next slope, the next outcropping of rock, the next tenderly nestled valley.
The woods near our house are almost improbable. On both sides, there are busy highways and roads, and all around, there are human dwellings. One does not expect to get lost in the woods. One does not expect to climb up snowy slopes, and look out on acres of trees, hills and valleys, little rivulets, streams and ponds. One does not expect such a dense quietude like the one we experienced, with the silence of sunlight pouring down on our upturned meditating faces, as we sat on a rock, tired from walking, catching our breath, holding hands, smiling into the empty sky.
Walk into these woods, and all that is human-made disappears. The trees and stumps look mysterious, inviting, the stuff of poems and dreams. Because it’s still winter, there are no animals to be seen, and no birds warbling in the trees to break the tightly-woven fabric of silence, which is punctuated only by the startling crunch of our shoes. There is an imperceptible hush of traffic in the distance, but it disappears like a sigh, once one is deep within the woods.
This afternoon, as we walked further and further in, S and I imagined that hidden in the broken stumps and hollow fallen trees might lurk small families of shy, nocturnal, scurrying creatures. No sign of ducks, squirrels, snakes or frogs yet — that might take another month or more. I haven’t seen foxes or coyotes here. And there are no bears in these woods — not yet, anyway!
She is only eight, this child of mine, and she is magical, filled with a deep, abiding love for the earth, its creatures, and for these special woods so close to home. We talked about how beautiful it was to sit on the rocks, to walk together, to see the untrodden snow. She wanted me to take the day off on this coming Tuesday, so we could go to the woods again together on my birthday. She was excited that my birthday was approaching. I realized that I should rein in my rather blasé attitude towards my “special day.” To her, it was an event of major import — the day I was born, lo! those many years ago! I tried to muster up some enthusiasm for it, and found it was easy. All it takes is the company of a loving child, and we are reborn from the ashes of our daily drudgery.
We strayed from the beaten path occasionally, and stayed on the trodden parts frequently (a lesson in there, somewhere? I think not! One must avoid reading too much into everything!). We held hands, and skipped over small streams, stopped to talk to a passing dog, whose owner smiled and allowed us to befriend his four-footed companion. We saw a solitary cross-country skier, walk towards us, thin and translucent in the light. “Hello!” we said to her, and she said, “Hello!” back. An occasional human in the woods is a cheering sight.
My child is a mountain-goat. I remember when she was barely twenty months old, she raced up the steep slopes of the very same woods, and I couldn’t stop her. She was sure-footed, and very interested in the steeper paths. Today, she laughed at my naked fear when she raced up steep slopes, and said, “Don’t be so scared, Mom! I wonder why grown-ups are always so nervous about everything!” I bristled in mock-indignation, and zigzagged up and down slopes from time to time (I was nervous that I might twist an ankle, and then be forced to hobble home), just to prove her wrong.
We walked for a long time, and in the end, we found ourselves at the very end of the trail, on the other side. We were jubilant! We’d never seen the other side before. We had strayed quite far. With unerring instinct, we found our way back to the main trail, and doggedly went on that, because now, we were feeling a little tired, happily so.
And one other thing. My feet squelched. The snow had been really deep in parts, and I was too busy enjoying it to care at the time. Now, it was all about “Ugh! I’ve got to get home now!” It wasn’t so bad, really, until we reached the main road, and went towards our house. Then, it got really uncomfortable.
We picked up trash along the way. My daughter started it, and I followed. She was indignant at the trash left near the side of the woods, along the road, and so was I. “Silly people!” she fumed. I agreed with her. We resolved that next time, we would take two large trash bags with us, and pick up trash on our way back. I thought, perhaps, we would even make a large sign and carry it! Perhaps, we could start a neighborhood trend. Nothing like a little positive action to breed more positive action (one hopes)!
We made it home, and I needed help from W to get my shoes off. I sat down on the mudroom bench. He pulled hard at my boot. I fell! (I’m afraid I wasn’t gracious there for a second. We shall gloss over the scene, shall we?) After recovering my poise and gravity, I thanked him. We laughed. There was a puddle of water and snow in both boots. Thank goodness for home!
S and I stood in the shower, aiming the shower nozzle that poured hot, hot water over our unsocked feet. What luxury!
Then, we had a lovely snack, some hot tea and plenty of downtime away from each other. This is the stuff of happy living.
When I reflect on my homecoming, I realize that it’s far harder to enjoy the woods and the cold, if one has no food or hot water, or love or kindness to come home to.
And when I think, “God! I’ve got to go back to work tomorrow!” I realize that that is the price I pay for this.
And I am truly grateful.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Mother and Daughter, A Walk in the Snowy Woods, Gratitude, Green Earth, Silence and Sunlight
Mar 5, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries
Time, that is.
I know I do it. Shamelessly, ashamedly, confidently, diffidently, sheepishly, daily.
I should be mocked, put in stocks. There she stands, that bad thing, they would jeer. Look how she stares into the middle distance.
I hear them, and pretend not to.
Don’t reinvent the wheel! says an earnest well-wisher.
Oh no, I never do that! I hasten to reassure her, myself, and anyone who might be listening.
Beside me, invisible to all, stands my prisoner, who smiles grimly. The stocks and manacles seem to tighten.
Thief! Thief! Thief! whispers the voice remorselessly.
I am silent.
The aeons whirl around my head. Eternity waits.
————————–The End—————————
Tags: #Time, original short, prisoner, short short story, Thief