May 23, 2014 Current Affairs / General Interest
Note: This set of haiku below was inspired by an image of a sculpture by Isaac Cordal that I saw online, which was titled “Politicians Discussing Climate Change.” If you want to see the image, please note that I didn’t ask for permission to show it here, but you can find it on this site:
Four Haiku About Climate Change (Inspired By Isaac Cordal’s Tiny Sculptures)
Drowning in Denial (The Nile)
©May 23rd, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
Seawater arose
Around us, as we posed
Questions in the rain.
Did we do this, or
Was it a freak of nature?
Our questions gurgled.
We argued, as we
Asked our questions, which bubbled
Up from drowning lips
And as we argued
The last one yelled, “It’s not us!”
And then, we vanished.
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P.S.
Please visit and check out my husband’s website, theclimatemessage.com, wherein he provides information, and hosts essays, music messages and poems relating to Climate Change and other related issues. These musical and poetic messages are coming in from all over the world. The numbers grow daily. My husband, Warren Senders, says that “Music is a Climate Issue,” and goes on to show us how. Please visit, and leave comments or your own musical or poetic Climate Messages on his page, if you feel that our earth is something worth fighting for.
Tags: #Original Poetry, Climate Change, Climate Change Denial, Four Haiku, Isaac Cordal's Tiny Sculptures, the climate message.com
Oct 27, 2013 Teaching and Learning
When the last tree falls and the sky is ashen, will we all say,
“It was worth it, because we are now evolved
And enlightenment has come.”
May 14, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Current Affairs / General Interest
Fiddling? Or Eating Bread in Circuses?
©By Vijaya Sundaram
May 14th, 2013
The planet is burning, and Emperor Nero is fiddling away.
Bees are dying off, and the company that was doing important work studying and protecting bees was bought by the company which made the very products which probably contributed to CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder). Whole species of animals and birds are dying off. Monsanto is today’s Satan, along with all the politicians who support it.
Meanwhile, on another plane, war-mongers and manufacturers of weapons rule the world and promote more war to line their bank accounts. Drone aircraft destroy villages, and no one person can feel guilty, because, after all, those are drones, and the people being killed aren’t white people from the Western world! Now, drones are being developed for domestic surveillance — it will be the beginning of a far worse global Big Brother which will be far more insidious than 1984.
And then, in the sphere of daily life, in all the developed countries, people drive gas-guzzlers. Alternative modes of travel are not happening quickly enough, and the rich travel here and there on private jets with impunity. Nobody really thinks it shameful. Nobody calls anyone out on anything. It wouldn’t be polite, don’t you know!
Forests are being cut down, the deserts and arid lands are advancing, and the wilderness is NOT paradise anymore. Floods do damage in some places, while drought takes care of the rest in others.
The planet is collapsing.
And we continue to shop, go to school, buy electronics, eat plenty, waste food and water, and watch movies. I do some of the above, too (except that I use older versions of computers and am probably one of the few people I know with an old flip-up cell phone, something which I avoided buying for years, anyway). I don’t indulge in some of the fancier technological devices used by the people all around me — but who knows? I soon might, tempted by the lure of their easy availability. No, I won’t. I shudder at the thought of adding more misery to the lives of those who toil away in places like China, or have to deal with the consequences of coltan-mining in the Congo).
Perhaps, for those of us consuming away in our frenetic fashion, it’s too frightening to look reality in the eye. Perhaps reality is really one of those monster flame-creatures that J.K. Rowling conjured up in “Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows.” What’s it called? Ah yes, Fiendfyre.
And so, we fiddle, while being burned up, along with the rest of those in power who set all this in motion in the first place.
Or perhaps, we are not the fiddlers, after all. The fiddlers are the makers of all those things we consume. Who are we, then?
We are the frightened populace who nervously eat the bread we are thrown in the circuses where we sit, maddened by fear and hunger, while watching some of the worse-off among us be killed off. After all, many of us don’t have economic power, and lack the wherewithal to assume power, so we take whatever handouts that those who DO have the power toss our way.
The problem is: We might be lion-fodder next.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: Bread and Circuses, Climate Change, Collapsing Planet, coltan-mining in the Congo, Emperor Nero, Fiddling While Rome Burns, Fiendfyre, Harry Potter reference
Feb 22, 2013 Original Short Stories
The End and the Beginning – A Narrative of a New Race ©By Vijaya Sundaram January 24, 2012
The planet swung around on its appointed course around the sun, dutifully, tiredly, imperceptibly tilting ever more to the right. Lands grew cold and hot and cold and hot again. Forests died, and mountains grew taller. Tsunamis rose up and islands sank. The desert blazed unmercifully. Birds fell out of the sky. Quietly, entire species died, as the decades drifted by like seaweed on dead oceans. The polar caps melted, and methane clouds rose into the air like ghosts promising a holocaust of fire, ready to ignite, ready to unleash their fierce tendrils of blazing death on the straggling populations of weary humans who eked out their lives in the few safe places on earth.
It was into such a world that the Stranger came drifting through the clouds in her vehicle from a faraway universe.
The Stranger stood, light as air on her feet, straddling continents, and gazing hopelessly around, while the vehicle blended into the very air, so as not to set off any methane into instability. Fire-power was not what propelled her vehicle. What propelled her vehicle was a substance which had no name, and would never be discovered by humans.
Sorrow filled her face as she looked at the tiny dwellings of the people huddled in the mountains, the history of the rise and fall of the human race in their eyes, as they gazed about them at the increasingly hostile world they had inherited from their rapacious forbears. Clad in their animal skins, in shelters of scrub and brush, they gazed around, their scarred visages showing apathy and absolute despair. Scattered around them were the bones of animals, and small straggling fields of corn. There was no evidence of fire.
I should never have seeded this planet, she thought to herself. I should have gone to another star system. This very planet is fighting my descendants. The planet hates them. The planet wants to shake them off like fleas. What shall I do?
And an idea came to her. To make it all happen, she needed a hundred years or two. Time passed, as time does. Eventually, what she wanted, willed, worked for, happened. The planet straightened itself to the exact tilt necessary for life to sustain itself. All the methane released from the melting of snows on polar caps was gathered up into her spacecraft, excess carbon dioxide powered it, and fresh, oxygen-rich air swirled hopefully around the planet. Rains fell, tides rose and ebbed in predictable patterns, and new, green forests sprang up where they hadn’t been for a while.
Humans in the tropics looked around them, and saw fresh green where there hadn’t been any for decades. Polar caps began to freeze again. Others on the far northern ends of continents looked up and felt snowflakes falling. Nobody knew what it was, but it felt good.
And the migrations began. But this time, things were different. This time, the earth purred. Humans weren’t fleas. Humans were benign extensions of earth’s self. They lived with nature, freely, joyously. Then, they discovered the use of fire. This time, something held them back. They looked up. The sun smiled down.
And though it all started all over again, humans had evolved. Their bodies held all the heat and light, air and water they needed. A new race began, straightened its shoulders and rose up into the air.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The Beginning~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Hope, Aliens, Beginnings, Climate Change, Endings, Evolution, Human Life, Planet Earth, Strangeres
Feb 14, 2013 THE STORIES
Almost the Day of Reckoning – An Atheist’s Allegory
©February 13th, 2013
By Vijaya Sundaram
There was a hush.
It settled over the land, a vagueness that brought a disquieting sense of menace. A message emerged from the hush, cloaked in scarlet, masked in secrecy, outlined in ice.
The birds carried the message to creatures across the land. The trees leaned closer to listen, and dropped the message into their acorns.
The squirrels which picked up the acorns held them to their little furry ears and listened with alarm widening their eyes, and making their breath whistle in their tiny nostrils. They dropped the acorns and ran.
The message burst out of the acorns, and blossomed into a cloud of pestilence, which bore these unmistakable words in every known human language: Death is coming to the land. Make haste and flee. You will not escape it, but you can buy time.
Those who heard the message made haste and fled.
They rode in silver ships into the depths of the galaxy.
They dived in silver ships into the deepest abysses of the oceans.
They dug their way deep into burrows and build colonies, and lived hidden from view.
A few put on their best raiment, wrote songs and stories and poems, planted seeds in the ground, planted trees, and waited with open eyes and unafraid hearts.
Death came, soon enough.
Arrayed in the blackest night with nary a star to show the way, she stood, tall and terrible, and her smoky voice filled the air.
I have come, she said, for I have a mission to fulfill. I see that the others have gone. I shall find them soon enough. But why and wherefore did you stay? I do not spare souls. It is time for all humans to be wiped out. You are the pestilence. You have bled the earth, and choked the air with your noxious vapors and made the mountains tremble with the sounds of war. Why are you still here? Why did you not buy some time, and flee from me?
A silence fell like soft fog.
Then, the oldest stepped forward. Ancient wrinkles creased her face, and her smile shone like the moon through the clouds, for though she was afraid, she was prepared. Her heart was blameless, and she had borne the burden of her days with calm stoicism. With hair like spun silver, and a voice like the sighing of the trees, she spoke:
You may take us, but our songs fill the air. The birds have learned them. Our plants are growing to the rhythm of our work and our songs. Our trees are breathing in the breath we weave into these notes. The earth is calming herself. For you see, we read a message within your message that blossomed scarlet and terrible from the acorns. So, while the others fled, we knew we had a sliver of time in which we could leave behind something beyond our horrible deeds. So, take us now. We are not afraid. But mind, without our songs and our working hands, the earth will forget herself and the beauty she wrought when she made us.
The earth regrets you! spake Death, her voice shivering the air into ice, making it tremble. She blames herself. She rues the day that you were made. I am her sole hope. I will have to slay you all.
We are not afraid, murmured the assembled people, although their hearts were frozen with fear.
Death was quiet for a moment, then spoke again:
You have broken the fundamental laws of nature. You have bled the rocks and smashed the atom for gain. You have burned your plastics and trashed the oceans. You have not been good stewards of the land. You have left nothing for the generations to follow. The daughters of your daughters of your daughters unto the seventh generation will inherit a land that is dessicated and stunted. The sons of your sons of your, sons unto the seventh generation will breathe (if they can still breathe) noxious vapors, and their DNA will shift and re-form into that which deforms humankind. The birds will bear their kind with two heads, and the beasts of the field will bloat and bear monstrosities. I shall have to slay you all.
We are not afraid, murmured the assembled people, although their souls swelled with terror.
Death looked at them, admiring the puny humans assembled, humble and unafraid of her might.
And she spake yet again, for though she was terrible, yet was she merciful. If I let you stay a little longer, and come for you not all at once, but in stages, (for I have to come), will you restore this earth, who is my sister and your mother? she asked, and this time, her voice was the merest whisper, gentler, kinder, so that the people ceased to quake and tremble within. Will you sing her songs? Will you turn those swords into plough-shares, and those guns into instruments that make music? Will you treat the animals of the land and sea, and the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea as your brethren and your sisters? And Death paused, for she had surprised herself, and wondered at herself.
And the youngest stepped forward. Her hair stood stiffly around her head like a halo, and her eyes were stars. Her skin shone like copper, and her smile was radiant like the sun. Her voice was like a bell of purest silver, and her heart was the heart of a lioness.
We shall, she said. You must keep your promise, dear Death. Do not strike us down in haste. For we shall welcome you when you come in good time. We shall not resist, as we do not resist now.
Death spake again, and she said, This shall I do for my sister, your mother, the Earth. And this I do also, for you, unto you, that you may live and bear your children, and bring peace unto this earth.
The people murmured among themselves, and started to chant the song of peace. And the chant swelled into a chorus that flew on the wings of birds and wafted on the waves of the seas.
And silence spread her wings and carried that song to the far reaches of the earth.
Seeing this, Death took her leave and went to find the others, for she still had a mission to fulfill, although her heart was not in it. Yet, for all that, she was happy.
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Note: This was, at the time, an unconscious tip of the hat to Oscar Wilde’s style of writing new parables in the style of Biblical parables. So, this is a cousin once removed (or something) in terms of style.
Tags: #Death, #Life, #Peace, allegory, Climate Change, Green Earth, humanism, Original Short Stories, parable, Restoring the Planet, Seventh Generation, Stewards of the land, War