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 3, 2015 Original Flash Fiction

Dolphinium

©June 3rd, 2015

By Vijaya Sundaram

The last time the dolphins came for me, they didn’t fare well.  I persuaded the rest not to beach themselves.  They obeyed, but reluctantly.

I spoke their tongue.  I couldn’t help it.  Sometime after my fourteenth birthday, I found this out.  When I walked the lonely two-mile stretch of beach where I spent my summer that year, I would sing loudly without fear of people laughing at me.  I loved singing, but even I had to admit that I didn’t sound remotely human.  Anyway, I saw them swimming closer and closer to the beach, so I got alarmed, and stopped.  Later that summer, I tried again, and two of them beached themselves in their eagerness to hear me better.  I managed to push them into the waves with the help of a passerby, who was much taller and stronger than I.

I tried to thank her, but she scolded me, saying, “What are you doing here all by yourself?  You should know better than to walk on a beach alone, and you, a girl!”

That made me mad.  I said, “Well, you’re a fine one to talk, aren’t you?  Or is it just that you’re so tough and muscular that no one will mess with you?”

That didn’t go over well.  She gave me a dirty look, and went her way, muttering dark things.

People didn’t really like me.  I was told at school that I was “weird” and “strange,” but I didn’t think it was weird to close my eyes in maths class and make clicking sounds and long hoots.  I felt lonely, sometimes, but mostly, I liked being alone.

In time, I learned to hide well.  I passed for normal.

But my life was barren.

So, this time, when I was at the beach, I let myself go.  And I saw them cresting the waves.  I knew what would happen, and I was overcome with remorse.

No, no, I said, please go.

They kept coming towards me.  We want to be with you they whistled.

What could I do?  I jumped into the sea, and swam far from the shore, whistling and squeaking.  They turned and followed me.

It was the last time I saw the shore.  I barely gave a thought to my mom and dad.  They wouldn’t miss me.  In any case, they had my more normal brother, who played baseball and football, and had many friends, and they could keep him.

And as I swam farther out to sea, with a whole pod of dolphins behind and alongside me, I clicked and whistled, and the air filled my lungs, and the sea sang in my blood, and my heartbeat felt warm and sweet.

I was home at last.

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Tags: #Magic Realism, Dolphin story

Nov 29, 2013 Teaching and Learning

Composed on Dec. 31st, 1992, in Arlington, Massachusetts, USA.
Performed by Vijaya Sundaram and Antigravity (with Vijaya Sundaram, vocals and guitar, Warren Senders, bass, Phil Scarff, saxaphone, Bob Pilkington, trombone, Jerry Leake, drums)
Recorded in 1993.

Tags: #Magic Realism, Dreams, myth, original song, remedios varo