Mar 16, 2013 Awake in Dream Time - Journal Entries about the almost real, the surreal and the unreal, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
On the Road, in Kerala
©A Short Poem by Vijaya Sundaram
March 16th, 2013
____________________________________________________
It whispers in like mist
Swirls softly around the edges
Of a tired consciousness,
Descends, in folds of subtle silk.
The moving scenes outside
Drift away in Dopplerian shifts:
Hills clad in ecstatic green,
Small dwellings on the roadside,
Palm trees and flowering plants
Whoosh away in bursts of color.
Dogs, curious and incurious,
On the sides of roads, and hills
Roosters and chickens, pigs and cows
Cluttering the fringes of things.
As eyes close, and breath settles
Into a pattern, calm, rhythmic.
And, full of purpose and beauty,
My child slips quietly into sleep.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Original Poetry, India, Kerala, On the Road in Car
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 3, 2013 Essays on Music and Musicians, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes, Reading, Writing, Thinking, Teaching and Learning
Saturday is My Day of Rest
©By Vijaya Sundaram
March 2nd 2013
It’s Saturday, March 2nd, and I am in a foggy, unspecified place in my body and mind.
Having (as usual) slept only a few hours every day of this week, while beaming out energy and enthusiasm at school in a tightly focused way every single day of this past whole week, which had come hot on the heels of a semi-lazy, semi-busy vacation week, I am now a hollow shell.
I dealt with curriculum.
Gave a test.
Assigned a complicated and (I think) interesting project based on John Steinbeck’s book The Pearl, facilitated class discussion, finished up that book (begun well before vacation week), then taught verbs, participles and perfect verb tenses, and began to teach the Holocaust unit. Assigned and began teaching Friedrich by Hans Peter Richter.
Teaching the Holocaust Unit is the hardest thing I do every year. I use the Facing History and Ourselves curriculum and ideas as some of my resources. I have read an enormous amount on this subject and immersed myself in it for over fifteen years. Yet, I cannot bring myself to remember every single detail. I have to re-read some of it. It’s too much for me. I know all the numbers, and have read the books of several of the famous writers. I know all about the different concentration camps, the infamous Nazis who conducted their horrible experiments, the leaders of the Third Reich, the euphemisms adopted by the Nazis for their terrible practices. I know all about the Nuremberg Trials, the huge disaster that was WWII and the burden of collective guilt, not only in Germany, but several other European nations. And I know about the brave souls who individually (Schindler, Irena Sendler, the Bielski brothers, Miep Gies, others) and collectively saved several thousand Jews (the village of Le Chambon in France, and an entire country — Denmark). It’s all too much to comprehend or internalize. So, I map out the unit into perpetrators, bystanders, victims, resisters, rescuers and survivors. Because we read about it, and discuss it all from this perspective, it helps me and my students deal with the enormity and mindless nature of a whole era as revealed in Friedrich and Night. I show clips of interviews with survivors and rescuers/resisters. I show non R-rated movies and several scenes from the less-horrifying but eye-opening parts from R-rated movies. We read moving excerpts from Primo Levi’s books. We read poems. We discuss weighty matters of morality and philosophy as well. We inquire into the nature of evil. We look into Hannah Arendt’s statement about “the banality of evil.”
And each teenager in my class comes away from this experience a “sadder and wiser” person, arising the “morrow morn.”
But all that hasn’t happened for the classes yet. The students are still at the beginning of the unit.
So, where was I? Ah yes, I was still dwelling on this past week of work which assailed my senses and my soul.
I facilitated a meeting with Green Team members at my school on Monday, and with the Executive Director of a local organic farm, as well as with the Recycling Co-ordinator for the town in which I teach. We discussed how we would begin composting wasted cafeteria food in our school (and transport it to the local farm for the soil and chickens). It was a good meeting, despite all the difficulties we were sure to experience when we did begin to follow through on this idea.
After the meeting, the kids, the other teacher and I did our usual, mad, panting, breathless, crazy-whirly recycling for the whole school — dragging the huge, blue recycle bins down the hallways of all five floors to the South Parking Lot, where the giant Casella recycling dumpster stood, and emptying out all those bins, for the Casella people to deal with on Wednesday.
Note: We are all of us girls (well, two women teachers and the rest of them were girls. Our one boy was absent)!
Where are the schoolboys in any worthwhile effort, like saving the planet? The girls informed me that some of the boys laugh at the school’s recycling efforts (although our bins are full!).
Makes one despair.
Mothers and Fathers: Please teach your sons (and daughters) that the planet is not for pillaging and plundering, despoiling and tossing away. There’s only one planet.
I guess it’s time for me to give another rousing speech at lunchtime over the mike. Every time I did that in the fall, I got a few more volunteers, some of them boys, but then they faded away.
What else?
Went to a Baby Shower for a friend/colleague at school on Thursday, and that was beautiful — such events are always moving, especially for those who are already mothers, but for everyone else too, because one sees a different side of all these harassed and harried school-teachers, who take the time to be together. Everyone brings something good to eat. There are all these lovely platters of (mostly) healthy, nutritious food, veggie platters, the healthier variety of chips and yummy dips, fruit, and of course the obligatory dreadfully frosted carb-heavy cakes and cookies. There are piled-up presents, streamers and pretty tassels. We clear up a space in the school library, set out the food on pretty table-cloths, put up streamers, and shower the star of the afternoon, the new mother-to-be with love. And she is always tender, radiant and full of hope and beauty. I wrote a poem, after being urged to do so by some of the teachers there. And I posted it on this blog-site on Thursday, which eased my sense of guilt with not writing something the previous day (at least, I think I didn’t write something. Perhaps I did).
On Friday, after the regular, exhausting, unending round of classes which I taught (I teach one hundred and seven students a DAY, and that’s nothing! It was one hundred and twenty-five a day last year, which nearly killed me and the other English teachers on the other two teams — math, science and history teachers don’t have it so bad, although everyone reported being exhausted last year!), I ran my Poetry Club, put out food for the kids, made hot chocolate for them, and we wrote. Well, they wrote. I usually do, but yesterday, I was busy facilitating. I didn’t have time. So, that was a wasted chance.
Then, dinner at The Punjab in Arlington with my family. That’s always very nice, and we three are VERY goofy and silly together. Then, there was music at night with daughter and husband, after which, I fell, exhausted, into a species of sleep.
All of today was spent in a strange, cocooned state. Tired beyond imagining, feeling the weight of the ages press down upon my shoulder-blades, and with feet that alternately felt numb and tingling with tiredness, I did nothing at all, not even fun things.
I didn’t write anything yesterday, and nothing much today. At least I wrote a poem on Thursday, I console myself. Yes, it made me happy, but it doesn’t satisfy me. I want the high that comes with writing stories every day, writing poems every day, having interesting and inspired thoughts.
I’ve been reading Alexander McCall Smith books. When mindlessness strikes, I turn to mental comfort food, and McCall Smith’s books and P.G. Wodehouse’s books are for good vibes and good prose. Dick Francis books, and occasionally the less grisly Robert Parker, Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky books are for a sense of life lived in danger (compared to my tame and happy existence). Of course, there are the usual J.K. Rowling books, some grab-me sci-fi for sheer pleasure, or an Oliver Sacks book at hand for sheer pleasure or familiar, but in-depth, moving humanistic science . Mind you, I’m not talking about my other literary loves. This is the daily fare for someone who can read unfamiliar or weightier books only during school breaks, and during the summer.
Watched a TED video showcasing Amanda Fucking Palmer, which was very moving in a strange way, especially because I don’t actually like her music or her face, although it is extremely compelling. I am able to separate my personal likes and dislikes from my respect for artists (musical artists or artists who do performance art) who do what they are compelled to do. I like John Cage, for example, but am not moved in the least by his music (or lack thereof). I LOVE Yoko Ono, but her actual art does nothing for me. We need such artists. They challenge our preconceived notions and push us to think beyond our “comfort zone.”
And of course, I love, love, love Neil Gaiman (and have done so well before his rise to fame and fortune, since the early 90s, when his Sandman books came out), so if he loves Amanda Palmer, I am prepared to love her too.
So, this was my past week.
Right now, while I type all this, my husband is making fritters. I hear my daughter singing upstairs, and I need to help her with her guitar practice.
On that note, I bid you all adieu.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Recycling, Alexander McCall Smith, Amanda Fucking Palmer, Baby Showers, Elie Wiesel, English Teachers, Facing History and Ourselves, Green initiatives in school, John Steinbeck, Neil Gaiman, P.G. Wodehouse, Poetry Club, Primo Levi, Teaching the Holocaust, Yoko Ono
Mar 1, 2013 Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
Today, I attended a dear colleague/friend’s baby shower. This made me quite sentimental, and I remembered my own, given by colleagues and friends at school. When people reminded me to write a poem for her, after she read out my (non-poetic) card, I said I would do so. And I did. Right away! (Wish I could say that for everything else I say I’ll do!)
In any case, here it is:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For Joanna, With Love
As Promised, A Mom-Babe Poem!
©By Vijaya Sundaram
Feb. 28th 2013
Deep within, life is shaping itself
Into a little, magic being,
Perfect, because she’s yours,
Beautiful, because you are bearing her,
Complete in herself, and
Completing you and your true love.
And you, the mother, will watch
And learn how to be a new you.
You’ll count her fingers and toes,
Touch her little nose,
Kiss her cheeks of rose,
As the hours come and go.
You’ll trace the down on her cheeks
While you read Goodnight Moon.
You’ll try every ruse and trick
To lull her to sleep.
Time enough for that!
Her bright eyes will seem to say.
You’ll jerk awake at the least cry,
Or gurgle, or sigh, or changed breath.
Alert, ready to face insomnia,
You’ll nurse and nod wearily,
Actions automatic and altruistic,
While you drown in somnolence.
At three a.m., you’ll unwrap
A popsicle, driven mad by thirst,
Eat a sandwich, with her in your baby-wrap.
Knowing *every breath you take
And every move you make
She’ll be watching you.*
Glaring maniacally at the clock
Rocking the baby in your arms,
You’ll mutter all the rhymes
From all the baby books you have
And your voice will lull you to sleep,
While she smiles at nothing at all.
And she’ll gurgle and wave her arms
Tracking, with attentive eyes,
Those sweet, strange bubbles of light
Which she alone will see.
And then you’ll see with your intent gaze.
The light of all her baby-days.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(* with apologies to The Police / Sting, for stealing some of Sting’s words there!)
Tags: #Original Poetry, Baby shower, Mother-to-be, Sting
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
Feb 11, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
My daughter is happily singing this song by They Might be Giants while making her bed in her room (she’s now used to doing it, and I’m mighty pleased about that). She’s a happy child, and I love the occasional up-shifts in key, so carefree, so unself-conscious! I know she revels in the strangeness of the lyrics (she knows about the Mesopotamians, because her mom, unable to let a teaching moment go waste, told her all about them a couple of years ago. To her credit, she wanted to know).
And as I hear this song about Hammurabi, Ashurbanipal, Gilgamesh and Sargon, I remember “Ozymandias” by P.B. Shelley, and remember “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair,” and imagine how, behind the “vast and trunkless legs of stone” in that poetic desert, the “lone and level sands” stretch far away. Then, I look at my calamitous clutter of corrected and uncorrected student papers, and feel a moment’s spasm of rebellion: Why work? Nothing survives.
Of course, I know why. It’s work, silly!
I have a Snow Day today. Like a child, I rejoice, but then soberly contemplate the gritty pile of student writing that I have yet to plough through. Work!!
Still, there’s play, and raccoons in our backyard in the summer, and love, and laughter, lots of good food, great music to play, a child who gets jokes and profound ideas, who laughs and spins and reads and thinks, and loves us unconditionally, and who’s kind to everyone, and a loving husband, who’s kind and hard-working and funny and creative beyond all imagining, and students who are wonderful, hard-working and thoughtful, and friends who are kindred spirits, and my mother who is the well-spring of love and devotion and the epitome of hard-work, and a sister and bother who are good and loyal and hard-working and fearless, and I have all those unwritten stories and poems, and finally, all those dreams waiting me on the far shores of sleep.
Looking back on this run-on sentence, I see one hyphenated word that jumps out at me, like a monkey from a tree (just felt like using that simile. You don’t like it? Ah, well. Better luck next time). What word? You guessed it: Hard-working!
Work! Work! Work! says the monkey on my back.
I’d better get back to working hard. I’ve not much time to waste.
So much to be happy about in the midst of so much work in the world!
Tags: Ashurbanipal, Gilgamesh, Grading Papers, Hammurabi, Ozymandias, Sargon, Snow Days, Thankfulness, They Might Be Giants, We're the Mesopotamians, Work
Feb 10, 2013 Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
I am, first and forever, a dreamer of dreams.
In the real world, I am a teacher of eighth-graders.
I am a wife and a mother.
I am a musician, a singer-songwriter, a guitarist, a sitarist, a poet and writer, a keeper of beats, a tapper of taps on the side of objects.
I wander in dreams a lot, except that now, I have to be practical and proper, a mother and a teacher in the real world. Leaves little time for dreaming, but I persevere, I persevere.
If I had my way, I would never wake up. Never. I love sleep, as one would love a lover. I never get enough sleep. This is a crazy world we live in.
I would love to find my way back to the stars, whence my atoms formed themselves. I would love to curl up inside the tiny compressed state of mind known as the darkness before the Big Bang.
But enough! Welcome to my blog. Leave me a note letting me know who you are, if you feel so inclined. Be gentle.
~Vijaya
Tags: Big Bang, dreamer, mother, musician, poet, Sleep, teacher, writer
Feb 10, 2013 Essays on Music and Musicians, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
We love to sing together. As we do so, we create a shared history of memories.
Because by The Beatles; Things We Said Today by The Beatles; Sweet Sunny South; Sunny Tennessee; Five Hundred Miles, Indian songs from the Hindustani tradition, old movie songs from Tamil and Hindi movies that I’ve sung to her since she was very little, French folks songs for children from a CD, Samba Bossa Nova songs …
So many songs, so much music in the world! It makes us happy. Keeps the darkness at bay for the two grown-ups in the room, for whom deep worry about the state of the world swirls around the edges of our conscious mind, always. It is our child, that happy spirit, that pure, unalloyed magical being who knits together those unraveled parts of our scattered, tired selves. She laughs, twirls around the room, makes foolish repetitive remarks that make us grit our teeth in mock annoyance, makes deep, wise observations about people and characters in books, herself and her learning processes, and animals … she enchants me, and makes me remember that way beyond our puny selves, there is a deep, deep place of creativity, whence we all come.
Our daughter reminds me of all that the beauty that ever was and will ever be.
And the music we make comes from that place.