Jan 8, 2016 Uncategorized

Advice
©January 8th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

This you shall do*:

 

 

Tags: #Life, #Love, #Original Poetry, Advice, generosity, Living

Dec 20, 2014 Teaching and Learning

When one reaches the end of something, and is at the start of something else, a strange thing happens, and it goes like this:

One doesn’t really care (well, not too much) about what people think.

One stops worrying about things.

One is more charitable.

One does not judge too harshly the things one judged before.

One lets go more easily.

One is more loving.

One is more detached.

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Tags: Changing jobs, Dying, letting go, Living, Moving

Sep 22, 2014 Original Poetry

What Words?

©September 22^nd, 2014

By Vijaya Sundaram

What words can we say

When a young person dies,

When anyone dies?

 

I’m so sorry doesn’t cut it.

Deep sympathies doesn’t, either.

 

The world rushes by, myopic

And meaningless,

While a mother and a father,

And a sibling or two

Stand, bewildered, static

Amidst a whirl of meaningless

Heartfelt chatter, while

The patter of feet

Come in and out,

And death stands

Eternally by their side,

Silent, spare, sorrowing.

 

Death comes with quiet foot

Or a skid of tyres

Death comes with a twist of fate

Or the twist of a knife

Death creeps up and stings

Or bites down hard

On a fatal vein.

Death blooms, red and angry

In one’s blood and slashes

Left and right, clearing a

Path only it knows.

Sometimes, there’s pain,

Sometimes, a flash,

Then, nothingness.

So, I imagine it.

 

What if it isn’t any of these?

What if it’s the eternal squeeze

Of life, oozing out toothpaste-like,

Pain so piercing

There are no words,

Just living it, crying,

Living the dying:

THAT has to be

The apex of agony.

 

Would dying be easy?

Would I want to go, unresisting?

No!  I’d say, give me one more chance

Just one more!

I promise I’ll do it right this time.

And a remorseless Judge

Would say, Yea or Nay.

 

Of course, that’s if you believe.

What if you don’t?

What would you say, then?

 

Better to be scattered

Atoms of one’s self

Entering into the inmost

Secrets of existence.

I’d say.

 

Better to be photons

Better to become

Lighter than air

And ascend.

And descend,

And ascend again

And again, that ladder

From DNA to Death.

 

To feel is a curse.

Lift that curse,

I want to say, and yet,

I cling to it, for it

Is all I know, for it

Is all that any of us

Will ever know we know.

 

And so, we say,

I’m so sorry

Because, somewhere, hidden,

Our blood-cells know

About this remorseless

Yet familiar stranger,

Death.

 

And we grieve

For the living,

For ourselves,

Once the dead

Have fled.

 

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Tags: #Life, #Loss, DNA, Dying, Living, photons, Words in the face of Death

Jun 11, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries

Dread and Fatigue
©By Vijaya Sundaram
June 11th, 2013

Two words that sum up what made up much of my past week — and I know it isn’t over yet.

In fact, it won’t be over until I’m dead.

Meanwhile, I have to keep going, pushing on, like a diver plunging into the trenches.  And you know what they say, the pressure in those depths can kill you.

Oh yes, there are always moments of joy — many moments, in fact.  Moments of pleasure abound (as they do when I’m reading a book, and eating a nice snack, or seeing my daughter bound about happily, or when we watch “Red Dwarf” together, in companionable silliness, or hang out with my funny, but equally tired husband) — so, don’t worry.  It’s not depression.  Nor is it some treatable thing.

It’s bone-deep.  It’s surface-physical, too, but that’s just sleep-deprivation and encroaching age, I suspect. 

It’s soul-deep — because I see what the world is doing to its dreamers, its poets, its singers, its healers, its teachers, its truth-tellers — and I am scared for the future of us all.

I see the venality of people in power, and much worse, the greed for power in those who already have it. 

When do such people choose to allow their humanity to be smothered?  At what point do they say, “That’s it!  I’m selling out!”  Or:  “The hell with everyone else.  I want what’s mine!” 

Or, more scary still:  Did they ever have it?

I see the disrespect that people who know nothing about education show to the teachers in their midst.  And when I see this, I want to curse those people to a lifetime of ignorance, and make them suffer for it.  However, I cannot.  I will not.  The teacher in me says, “Teach them.”

That’s what I shall have to do.

And that goes as deep as living itself.

 

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

Tags: #humanity, Living, Students, teach, Teachers and teaching, venality