Mar 17, 2016 Daily Life, The Daily Post
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Shelf
On one of the bookshelves in my study / work-space (made of mahogany by my amazing husband) are the following:
- A metal bird hanging on the side of it
- Some dust on the very top, along with:
A tone drum, very beautifully carved
A pair of clay and goatskin bongos from Turkey (I think)
A handmade (by my husband) Kora
A fish scraper (percussion, that is)
An Asante (or Ashanti) kete bell for kids - Books by women
- Books by men
- Books on language
- Books on education
- Some Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and Isabel Allende
- P.G. Wodehouse (the best humor writer in the world, for those who haven’t heard of him – the best, that is, along with James Thurber and Donald E. Westlake! )
- The Joy of Lex
- Six Plays of the Modern Theater
- Prego – Italian textbook which I got back in 1996, when I took six months of Italian, simply because I love the language.
- Accent – French textbook (used, simply because it made me happy to have it; I’d already studied French for four years – two in school, and two in college).
- Children’s books
- A book on Rock n’ Roll
- A book on Ancient Egypt
- A photograph album
- A book titled Stuntology
- The Italian translation of Gibran’s The Prophet
- Some Margaret Atwood
- Some Anne Tyler
- Some Jonathan Kozol
- A book about Gauguin
- A couple of Marion Zimmer-Bradley books, which I don’t much like (I loved The Mists of Avalon, but that’s on another shelf)
- A couple of Cynthia Voigt books
- A book about Twyla Tharp
- A book about Shakespeare’s Flowers
- The Book of Psalms
- Some Ray Bradbury
- Some D.H. Lawrence
- Some Toni Morrison
- Some Barbara Kingsolver
- Some Gil-Scott Heron
- A book about Astronomy
- Spider Robinson Stardance
- Tracy Kidder Mountains Beyond Mountains
- Herbert Kohl 36 Children
- Nikos Kazantzakis – The Last Temptation of Christ, and Zorba the Greek
- A Short Treasury of American Humor
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (all of my other Gaiman books are on another shelf)
- Virgil’s Aeneid
- Tim’O’Brien – The Things They Carried
- Spider Robinson – Stardance
- A book about Oscar Wilde (all my other Oscar Wilde books – and I have MANY – are on another shelf)
- Some Graphic novels, including Beowulf illustrated and reworked by Gareth Hinds, who has done some amazing work, especially his graphic novel versions of King Lear, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and The Odyssey)
- The inimitable, but misanthropic, James Thurber
- The recently-deceased Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum
Ulysses (which I call somewhat grumpily The Great Unread) by James Joyce
A book on jazz - A book by Neil Young
A couple of books by Noam Chomsky - Several books by Jonathan Stroud and Philip Pullman
- A beautiful book that my Parsee friend Perin Pudumjee (now Coyajee) made of her calligraphic art
- An amazing and moving book called Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
- Journals which are mostly empty, save for a few pages here and there (I’m not great about writing in journals nowadays, unlike how I used to be when I was young)
- Books on language – Italian, French and Russian, which I don’t need anymore, but I loved them when I bought them. I had visions of learning Russian. Perhaps, I still might – you never know!
- An English-Portuguese dictionary given as a gift by my husband when I was in love with Samba Bossa Nova songs.
- Oxford English Dictionaries
There are MANY more bookshelves in the house. We quip that our house is held together and held up by its bookshelves. We also quip that we’ll never ever move again, because the books were so heavy to carry up our 42 steps leading to the house on a sharp incline, that I sprained both my arms back in 2001, when we moved. We joke that the only way we’ll ever leave our home is feet first. (Sorry to sound so morbid here!)
I love our books! I love being at home!
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Tags: #Books, #Humor, #Languages, #Magic Realism, #Shelf
Jun 6, 2014 Original Poetry
Being Prepared (Or: Fiddling, While …)
©June 6th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
Plunged in reality,
I discussed mundane,
But important, things
Like, “Educational Testing.”
“Why do grownups
Discuss dark matters?”
Asked my nine-year old.
I paused, hand on receiver
Suspended my tirade
About the Privatization
Of Education, looked at her,
And admired her
For her straightness
And her crystalline mind.
“Because,” I said,
Choosing my words
Like a person stepping
On shards of glass
On a tile floor,
“Because, if we don’t,
They come upon us
Suddenly, when we
Are unprepared,
And we need to be.”
“But why do you need to
Discuss it?” she persisted,
“Because, though I hate it,
I need to talk about it with others.
Think about it, be able to fight it.
It’s important, though awful,”
I said, feeling the weight
Of it dragging my voice,
And my internal voice
Asking, Why, indeed?
And I thought,
Because, I need to
Find arguments against it,
Look at it, discuss it.
Because, I need
To know my enemy,
And size it up,
Before it comes at me.
But I didn’t say it.
I think she already
Understood my world.
She looked thoughtful.
“I know it’s important,
But I prefer books,” she said,
And went back to hers.
So do I, I thought, and
Returned to my
Telephonic exchange,
Then hung up.
Outside, the coolness
Hung in dewy curtains,
Exquisitely damp,
Promising sweet rain.
Oblivious, my pup pawed,
At the kitchen door,
Impatient, eager to drink the
Evening air, dance in dew,
Pounce on a harmless stick.
And, somewhere,
Bubbles of methane
Arose to swampy
Siberian surfaces.
And animals fled,
Or curled up and died.
(But … we’ll have
No more talk of
Dark matters, shall we?)
So, I took my dog out,
Let her taste the
Beautiful evening,
Brought her back in.
Then, with a sigh,
I opened my book.
Reality receded.
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Tags: #Books, #Mother and Daughter, Being Grownups, Climate Change, dark topics, Educational testing, escape into stories, Fiddling While Rome Burns, Privatization of Education