Mar 28, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries
Lilies and Poppies ©By Vijaya Sundaram March 28th, 2013
Tomorrow is Good Friday.
It means nothing to me, in the religious sense. I am an atheist Hindu, with a mystical, spiritual leaning. Oh, and I went to a convent school in India, while coming from a somewhat orthodox Tamilian Brahmin family (our parents chose the route of “convent school education” for their two daughters for various reasons).
However, I do sometimes feel as if I’m carrying a cross up a hill, and being buried in a cave that’s shut with a boulder.
I’m still waiting for that angel to remove the boulder, so I can ascend on Easter Sunday.
Will I be done with the work that’s weighing on me? Everything depends on that. Work takes precedence over everything in this country. So, there’s an extra-delicious sense of guilt when one is playing hooky, even if is for an hour or two.
See what I mean? I used the phrase “playing hooky” so casually, thinking that if I don’t do my schoolwork immediately upon getting home, then it’s “playing hooky.” I mean, my time is supposed to be MY time, and yet, I have to do work well into the wee hours, frequently. And my so-called “Prep Time” at school is taken up with menial tasks. It never ends.
Work is over-rated, I think.
What was it that the Christ said about the lilies of the field?
Forget Ascension. I want to be one of those lilies. Better still, a poppy, so that I can embrace blissful oblivion.
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P.S. if anyone is a devout Christian and is reading my blog, please know that I mean no offense in using the metaphor of carrying a cross or wanting to ascend. It is a metaphor.
P.P.S. For those who might be worried about my mention of “poppy” and “oblivion,” please note that, again, I am being metaphorical.
Tags: Idleness, Leisure, Lilies of the field, Oblivion, Work
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.
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Tags: #Family, #Oscar Wilde, Gratitude, Idleness, Journal