Oct 16, 2015 Original Poetry, Writing 201

Immortality, OR:  Art Causes Pain and Pleasure

©October 16th, 2015

By Vijaya Sundaram

It’s You of whom (sometimes) I think when I

See people work at art or song or verse

While making beauty with their minds, traverse

The lands invisible that touch the sky.

 

Your shadows lurk so menacingly stark

For ’tis a place of light and shade, this land

Where dreamers, poets, artists, singers band;

In vain, we seek our songs in brooding dark

 

We seek You, Immortality, and roam,

Our paintbrush, flute, guitar or pen in hand

And (vagabonds so far away from home),

We spread across these vast, uncharted lands

And hacking ‘cross the tangled brush, we come*

To You, whom now, at last, we understand.

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*Okay, so I took some liberty with the rhyme there, don’t razz me!

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Our Day 10 (FINAL DAY!)’s prompt was: Write a Sonnet, about pleasure, using Apostrophe as your device.

Our esteemed host and Muse @benhuberman had this parting gem:

If you happen to be one of those who find sonnets easy, have no fear — you can still challenge yourself further. How about going for a crown of sonnets? Or branching out to the sestina, another structurally difficult form?

I’ll have my readers know that this sonnet (my first, my first!), which took me TWO FULL hours exactly, I used a Petrachan sonnet form, with a couple of exceptions.  So, instead of abba, abba, cd, cd, cd rhyme scheme, I used an abba, cddc, ed, ed, ed rhyme scheme.  I also tried, desperately, to use iambic pentameter, reading it aloud to myself as it went, tweaking a word here, or rearranging some words there.

Note:  There is another Petrarchan form is abba, abba, cde, cde, which I did not even want to attempt.

(Now, I shall go and lick my wounds, and sorrow over my terrible poem!)

Hats off to those who can do a “Crown” of Sonnets, and Sestinas, to boot!  (I’m thinking of you, Melinda Kucsera!)

Anyway, I’m done.

And no, I’m NOT going to attempt a Sestina today.  Too much else going on in my life, and writing a meaningful Sestina will take up more time, no doubt.

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Tags: #Immortality, #Pleasure, #sonnet, #Writing 201, Art, Artists, Final Day, Pain, Seekers, uncharted lands, vagabonds

Aug 20, 2015 Friday Fictioneers

Photo-Prompt: ©C.E. Ayr

Word Count:  100 words (sans title, name, etc.)

Genre: Realistic Fiction

A Different Kind of Air

©August 20th, 2015

By Vijaya Sundaram

Living in a concrete jungle is not for the weak.  Rage makes you strong.  You forget sadness.

So, when the demolition-men gutted our neighborhood, we snapped and organized ourselves.  Walking the streets in our skins spelled an early death, anyway.  What did it matter what we did?

Today mattered.  We were armed, ready.  We’d robbed the local store for our supplies, ’cause we were badass.

“Let’s git to work!” yelled Duane.

And we did.  A seascape, with killer whales swarming into our city, was born in demolition dust.

When we were done, we breathed a new kind of air.

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Tags: Art, Inner City, Rebellion

May 7, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Reading, Writing, Thinking, Teaching and Learning

Ruminations
(Not too earth-shattering or terribly original, but what I thought of today)
©Vijaya Sundaram
May 7th, 2013

It seems so obvious, somehow, when one puts it baldly, thus: One has to have a meaning, a purpose in life.  If there isn’t one, find one.  If we cannot find one, look elsewhere.  If we still cannot find one, create it. That’s it. 

If the meaning and purpose come from a place of emptiness, then one’s actions are empty at best, and harmful at worst.  That’s where we get the Dzhokhars and the Tamerlans.  That’s where we get empty men with hungry souls emptying their weapons into innocent and hapless people.  Adrift without meaning and purpose, the empty ones fill their emptiness with rage, religion and false notions of honor.  Killing is the ultimate worst expression of that emptiness.

If we act with mixed motives, our lives will crumble, and we will create confusion in the lives of those around us.  No one will benefit in the end, and all of us will be unhappy.  I did all this for them, how come they don’t appreciate what I do? is the question that haunt those who act with mixed motives.  Or: I don’t mind sacrificing my needs for others.  Really!  Confusion and anger come from these, and ultimately, disappointment and bitterness. 

If our motives are clear and obvious, and we are not working only for our own benefit, but for the benefit for all, our lives will be the richer.  As a great soul once purportedly said, “What you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me.”  Interconnectedness is everything in the web of our lives.  Self-expression and service to others work only if both come from a place of joy and love.  Clarity is the result.

If we work with purpose and true motivation, and we are doing it from interest and a willingness to learn, and a willingness to be vulnerable to failure, our lives will be the richer, and so will the lives of those around us.

If we act from moral strength and purpose, and our actions are real and obvious extensions of our intentions, and there is no self-aggrandizement detectable in our actions, our lives will reflect that.  And inexplicably, others’ lives will be affected — positively.

Meaning and purpose germinate in such grounds as these. 

It is the job of teachers and parents, and of the policy-makers to help create a world with meaning and purpose.  If, instead, we create a generation devoid of true self-hood, but made up of selfishness instead, we are committing societal suicide.

Create meaning.  Help and hold each other as we cross the treacherous terrain of existence.  It’s in the reaching out and the holding that we find the poetry of living, the art in life.

Ultimately, a true artist or poet does art or writes poetry for its own sake,  because it’s beautiful and because it makes her or him happy.  Artists or poets don’t look for rewards or recognition (although they wouldn’t refuse it if it came their way).  They bring others pleasure, but they do it unintentionally.  They come from a place of truth.

Make your life a work of art.  Make poetry.  Make truth.  Make love happen.  Make the act of living, both for yourself and for others, a beautiful thing.

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

Tags: #Clarity, #Life, #Love, #Poetry, #Truth, Art, Beauty, honor, interconnectedness, meaning, self-expression, self-hood vs. selfishness, service, Teaching the young

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
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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