Mar 22, 2016 Climate Change is Real!, Daily Life
Climate Change is Real: Day 4 of my Lone Vigil
©March 22nd, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
So, today:
Woke up at the sound of the alarm. Groaned. Hit the snooze. Woke up ten minutes later. Didn’t make coffee. Made chai instead. Let the dog out, then back in. Reached the Warren Intersection at 7:44. Not bad. Perhaps, I’ll actually make it there by 7:30 by the time Friday rolls around. All I have to do is stay up all night. Right! Oh, for the fashion-watchers out there, I wore old, baggy sweat pants over leggings, two pairs of old socks, purple T-Shirt, blue sweater, pale blue jacket, and an unnaturally bright purple beach hat. I even found a minute to slash on a smear of lipstick and streak some eye-black on. Got to give the commuters a little colour, at least!
The sun was a beautiful lemon, the sky shone a blazing blue, the clouds looked nonplussed by all this cheerfulness, and stayed away. The drivers drove by, looking stolidly ahead, unwilling to make eye-contact. I didn’t want to look at them, anyway, since I was fussing with ear-buds (I hate those things!), and adjusting them. Then, sipping my chai, I sang with our beloved teacher’s voice, an echo from 1994, when he was alive. Raga Bhatiyar was on today’s menu. I’ve adored Bhatiyar since the first time I heard it on a Ravi Shankar record, when I was a teenager, and studying the sitar. It’s a grand raga – I picture it as a Being dressed in deep gold-fringed purple raiment, moving solemnly on the horizon, lighting lamps. I love the leap from Sa to shuddha Ma, and the turnaround from Pa to Ga, and then that inevitable Pa Ga re Sa, and then that haunting, eerie Ma theevra taking us through Dha, Ni, and high re, misleading us into thinking we’re in wilds of Marwa land, then deftly taking us back to the paved roads of the Bilawal thaat.
Sargams, aakar, gamak taans, and then, Hari, Hari Nam, Le Tu Mana Mere, a beautiful composition urging the listener to “Say the name of God, and in so doing, cut away all the accumulated sins of a lifetime. While taking God’s name, cross the ocean of life. Tell your heart to take this advice.” Transliterated from Hindi, it reads:
Hari hari nama le tu mana mere
Ja su katata saba paapa ghanere
Nama leta bhava paara utarata
Yaha updesha kara hirade tere
Hearing my Guru (Shreeram G. Devasthali)’s voice steadied mine. It’s uncanny. I started out with a horrid, raspy voice, not much improved by a few weeks of poor sleep. By the time half an hour passed, my voice rang like a bell, and I could feel the restraints falling off. He’s still teaching me, though he’s been gone for fourteen years. Thank you, Guruji.
By now, the cars were slowing down, as more and more of them clogged the roads. Now, I got a few smiles, nods, waves. Nice. It’s nice to be acknowledged. I saw a small van go by which proclaimed that it was a “White Glove Domestic Services” vehicle. White Glove, indeed! If anyone worked at growing food, or cleaning up the mess of the world, they’d need millions of those. Instead, why not just get dirty while cleaning up, then wash up? I saw another small truck that said it was some sort of plumbing and drain company thingy. I’m afraid my morning mental fog hadn’t dissipated, and I read it as “dumbing and brain.”
I could relate for a brief moment.
Then, I’m embarrassed to say, a man drove by in an SUV, rolled down his window, and said something. At first, I didn’t catch it, because I was singing, then I realized that he’d asked, “What’s that for?” To my horror, I couldn’t explain it in the second or two I had, because he was still driving, so I said, “It’s hard to explain it now!” And he drove on. Damn! I lost the chance to say, “Look it up,” or “Our actions as humans are contributing to a climate catastrophe, and we need to change our way of life, and our habits as consumers,” or, “Do some research on Global Warming, and find out how scientists are predicting terrible consequences of our human activity not just a hundred years in the future, but in a few decades,” or …
But no, I stood there, and lost the chance to speak! (I hope he comes by tomorrow – I’ll have a response prepared. I’m still new at this. Wish Warren had been there!)
Another man drove by, gestured to me, rolled down his window, and tossed out … YES! A CHICK TRACT! Hurray! Having heard Warren’s account of this chap, I’d been hoping to see him, and lo, here he was! He was sent my way to prevent me from going to hell (snark!) Yay! I restrained myself from pouncing on it with unseemly eagerness, and picked it up after he’d driven off. I put it in my pocket, to read it later. Am going to take a look now. Hang on a moment …
… Wait! It’s GONE! Where did it go? I swear I put it in my pocket! Now, I’m doomed. (Sigh! I hope he throws me another one soon.)
Another fat car rolled by, with a large man chewing on, get this, a CIGAR! An apt analogy for our dying planet.
Almost every car that went by had someone looking at, or speaking into, or fumbling with, a cell phone. Yes, we are profoundly distracted, but many are all also profoundly lonely. I had a brief vision of how different it would be if our dwellings looked something like this:
A town surrounded by trees, and surrounding a vast farmland and meadows, with a school and a big playground at the edge of the fields. Bicycles and electric cars. Children playing, and grown-ups and children working on the farms, or tending to animals. A potters’ row, a builders’ row, some smithies, a cooper’s row, a gymnasium, a hospital. Solar panels on all the roofs of all the houses. An outdoor performance stage which can convert into an indoor one with movable walls and tent. A lake nearby, or a big, singing stream of clear water. I picture something that would look like Sturbridge Village, combined with modern eco-friendly innovations. A highway connecting the different towns. Trading in kind, not cash. A little TOO Utopian? Ah well, one can dream, can’t one?
Okay, I’ll stop dreaming.
So, the cars went by, and I sang on at the top of my voice, and then, like a vision from a dream, two cardinals swooped around and around an oval space of trees, like flashes of scarlet, singing all the while. While it might have been young love, or lust in springtime, I’d like to think of them as hope. I continued to listen to the honey-and-gold voice of our teacher, and felt at peace.
It was time to go. Still singing, I picked up the sign, my travel mug, and my visions of the future at 8:44 precisely. I made my way back home, and then, the day’s work and my daughter’s schedule claimed me until now, at 6:40 in the evening.
This music, as Warren says, connects the past with the present. We’d love to make a bridge for it into the future. Music is not a luxury, even though it can be considered so, especially when we know that those who toil day and night can ill afford to spend it on practising music. But singing is for EVERYONE – no one should feel it’s the prerogative of a privileged few. Singing is breath. And breath should be free.
Thanks for reading! Peace out, as OPOL of DailyKos would say.
P.S. I FOUND my Chick Tract! Yay!
P.P.S. realized after my exchange with someone on FB that I must clarify that I actually DO know what a “White Glove Domestic” is – and the concept behind that (having encountered it for the first time my former school in some discussion that someone had about wanting to form a committee to ensure spotlessly clean classrooms, so clean that a white glove swiping at a counter would not pick up any dirt). I just wanted to put my own tangential interpretation on it in this piece.
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Tags: #ClimateChangeisReal, #ClimateVigil, #Hindustani classical vocal music, #Music as a bridge, #Pandit S.G.Devasthali, #Warren Senders
Mar 21, 2016 Climate Change is Real!, Daily Life
Climate Change is Real: Day 3 of my Lone Vigil
©March 21st, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
©March 21st, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
6:58 a.m.: I awoke BEFORE the alarm on my i-Phone went off (yes, yes, I’ve succumbed completely to the many enticing temptations of this instrument from Hell, including using the Record function, checking the weather, checking how many miles I’ve walked, looking up abstruse things on the Internet, and so on, but I AM a responsible driver, please note).
I did not groan or moan. No, sir! I was wide awake, and ready to face the elements. I WAS going to be on time, dammit! I was!
Heated up yesterday’s coffee (I know, apostasy for a true connoisseur of coffee), poured it into one of the three trusty travel mugs which I’d bought from that Satan company, Starbucks, three or four years ago, and which has stood me (and us) in good stead over that period, let the dog out, wiped her snow-clogged paws when she returned, got abluted, got dressed, and ready to go out at 7:30 a.m..
Then, I realized that I needed this and that and the other, and when I had found the gloves, put on extra socks, taken out the unused ear-buds for my i-Phone, and headed out, it was 7:47. (Warren, I need more practice being there on time at 7:30. What did your devotees on the road think when they saw that there was no one there for the last two days of last week, and the first day of this week at 7:30 a.m.? They’ll think you’ve abandoned the cause. So sorry! I shall do better tomorrow!)
It was 28 degrees, and the snow blanketed everything. The sky was white, and the ground was white, and my coat was a chillingly pale ice-blue, my scarf a beautiful indigo ikat one, just for contrast, and my cloche hat was a dark forest green (this is for those who care about fashion and such things, you understand). Thus attired, your fashion icon (NOT) stood at Warren’s intersection, and, checking her time, noted that it was 7:53 a.m. Pah!
As soon as I got there, the first car that went by gave me the universal sign of approbation (or, rather, the passenger did): The thumbs-up. Yay!
I began to sing, first in Bhairav thaat Vibhas, one of my absolute favorites, and meandered up and down the aroha and avaroha, then doing several slow gamak taans, and then some paltas. The tamboura drone mysteriously switched from E to F drone. I think it must have been on shuffle. Not to be deterred, I went along with the shift. I sang Miyan ki Todi. Todi is a late morning raga and its mournful tones suited the mood of the snow drifting down steadily, increasing in speed as time went on …
… as did the cars, although they were somewhat slower than usual. I got nothing but smiles, waves and thumbs-up signs for the first fifteen minutes from several people. After that, it was just grim-faced commuters too focused on the weather to think about the Climate, or my husband’s “Climate Change is Real” sign. Draw your conclusions, folks!
I drifted into thinking about the Fibonacci series, for no particular reason, except that I got tired of singing aimless paltas in Todi (this vigil is certainly causing me to discipline my singing) – so, I tried singing sargams going up and down the scale, using 1, 12, 123, 12345, 12345678, 12345678910-11-12-13, and back again, up and down the scale. The nice thing, of course, it that it comes to 32, so it fits neatly into two cycles of teental (a 16-beat rhythmic cycle in Hindustani classical music). I could develop this as an improvisational diving board, I suppose. I communed with this for a while, and enjoyed myself. (And no, I am not some mathematical whiz, far from it, actually!)
The snow drifted steadily down, and the landscape was beautiful around me. I wondered about the two geese I’d seen taking off from the Fells from right behind me on Friday. I wondered if they’d made it. I’m sad about the birds, very, very sad. Just read about Adélie Penguins at a colony in Cape Denison being decimated. I also read a more optimistic report that they might have just picked up and moved one. Whatever the case might be, I fear for all animals, and for people everywhere. I also feared for the beautiful bulbs I’d planted in the fall, and which had just begun to come up. I was sad.
Sadness did not possess me, however. There’s something lovely about standing there, defying the elements, or celebrating them, rather, and singing in the snow. I recommend it, especially the getting up early part (no, seriously! I might be turning into a morning person, heavens forfend)!
A Confession: I must admit that I haven’t been as good as my husband is about using resources. I found I was more wasteful with water than I liked It’s only more recently that I’ve become less so. I used to be impatient about composting (although I WANTED to compost), so I let him take care of it. Now, I do the composting. It took me a few years (about eight years ago) to stop buying bottled water, and remember to take my own to work. Now, we never go anywhere without carrying our own water. I recycle that which needs to be recycled, but I need to stop buying things in packaging, period! So, I’m going to sew little cloth bags in which to put perishable vegetables, and take those to the market when I shop, instead of using the “recyclable” plastic bags they provide.
And I think: If it takes me, an informed person, SO LONG to get going on doing the right thing, how can I judge those who don’t even try? Those who live in glass houses, and so on.
And YET, try we must.
That is why Warren’s vigil matters. That is why we must keep on repeating its message. If the GOP likes to invent facts and hammer away at them so much that people believe them to be true, why should it be harder for us to speak the TRUTH? All we have to do is repeat true facts, and THIS mantra over and over and over:
Climate Change IS real!
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Tags: #ClimateChangeisReal, #ClimateVigil, #Recycling, #Saving the Planet, #using the Fibonacci series to create patterns Hindustani vocal music