Apr 7, 2014 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries

Pinecone and Stick
©April 6th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram

Walking, I gaze at the passing of things.
Inexplicably sad.
The sun shines.
A hollow gong sounds.
Heart beats
Dully, solidly.
Birds carol loudly.
Children play.
Dogs cavort.
Springtime blooms.
Silence reigns.
My mind listens with
Half an ear.
Beside me, a tail wags.
A smile curves the air.
A brief “woof” startles.
A stick becomes
A thing of desire.
A pine cone the apex
Of beauty, pride in possession.
A run home, two hearts pounding.
Two sets of legs, one biped
The other, quadruped
Fly over cement sidewalks
Race up the flight
Of stairs, all the way
Home.
Water lapped.
Water sipped.
Things settle.

Sadness meanders away,
Replaced by a pinecone and a stick
In the mouth of my pup.

_______________________________________________________________________________

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Tags: #NaPoWriMo, Holly, pinecones and sticks, Puppy, sadness, springtime, Walk in the park

Apr 30, 2013 Teaching and Learning

A Final Judgement
©By Vijaya Sundaram
April 30th, 2013

It’s always about the hierarchy —
Who’s above whom, and who’s below
And who’s stacked at the top
And who’s down at the bottom.

But who am I to approve or not,
If I am not, myself, perfect?
So, if I judge them or evaluate them,
Should they not judge and evaluate me?

And won’t the judging stand in our way?
And is not all this an artifice, a construct,
A means to justify ourselves to each other?
A means to prove our worth and our realness?

And perception of power and position
And the dull echo of a lack of power
Give a false sense of place
To the judge and the judged —
One seated above, the other
Waiting, humbly at the lower step.
One looking down, kindly or not,
And the other looking up, grateful but resentful.

At other times, it’s about the
Mutual acceptance of a smiling,
Shared understanding, where
One bows to the other, and asks
For judgement, and sometimes,
For praise, and sometimes,
For forgiveness, the one submitting
To the will of the other, willingly.

And would the judgement
Stop us from seeing the true face
Of our humanity, and our
Shared fates?  Could we judge
Without judgement, without harshness?
Could we judge with love and kindness?

Would that be judgement?  Could we judge,
And let go of our judgement?
We are not God, except that we are.
And the only being who could
Ever judge, and from whom we
Could hope for understanding, is
Our downcast, sorry selves, not a figment.
It is we who hold in our hands the key to
That final forgiveness and that
Final Judgement.

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

Tags: #Forgiveness, #NaPoWriMo, #Original Poetry, #Understanding, Final Judgement, Hierarchy, Lack of Power, Mutual acceptance, Power

Apr 27, 2013 Character Vignettes for Possible Novels, Original Poetry

Birthed / Breathed / Bridged
©By Vijaya Sundaram
April 27th, 2013

The question always remains:
Am I truly their child?
They brought me into their home
Poured love into my being
Gave me roots to dig deep into
Gave me sunlight to grow in
Breathed life into my struggling lungs
Held me and loved me
Stood vigil by my bed
While I, asthma-racked and
In the grip of death,
Nearly toppled headlong
Into oblivion.
They pulled me back
From the brink,
And kissed me awake.

They are my parents.
I shall always love them.

And yet, and yet,
There’s a faint echo
Of that other mother
Of that other father
The ones who stand forever
In the shadows of my past
Who remain forever and always
Enigmatic and tongue-tied.
Whose profiles, half-turned from me
Reveal … indifference?
Disgust?  Rage?  Sorrow?  Regret?
Was there love there, somewhere?
Or was I begotten in haste,
And mourned since?

I look yearningly into the shadows
See an emptiness in there
Bridged with a bridge of steel
And silk, which brought me
Safely into my parents’ arms.
Terror opens a chasm within me.
My breath fails me.  
My pulse stumbles.
I cannot help it — I yearn
To topple into that gulf and
Seek the bottom of a grief
With no name.

I force myself to look up,
Ahead, not down, and see,
In wonder and understanding.
Across that gulf, beyond those dim profiles
I glimpse the outline of another one —
A Someone who beamed
Me into being, who breathed me out.
She held me across the span of Time
And tided me through the fjords
That might have stopped me
She wanted me to be.
She wanted me to be me.
And I am.

That bridge of steel and silk
Brought me safely to shore.

And my parents will stand guard
Right there, at that bridge
And they will deny that chasm
Its greedy need.
And they will spread a net
under the bridge
And they will fight the ogres
That dwell beneath.
And I want them to.

And though I shall always wonder
About the bottom of that chasm
And yearn for the shadow-parents
I will not yield to temptation.
For nothing is more tempting than
Grief and yearning,
And nothing more dangerous.
So, I shall step forth
With light step and light heart,
Knowing my bridge of silk and steel
Will remain for all time.

And I shall go forth to build
My own bridge, and stand guard there.

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

Tags: #Chasm, #Love, #NaPoWriMo, #Original Poem, Adopted child, bridges and birth, character vignette, fiction, Fictional character, silk and steel, vigil, Yearning

Apr 26, 2013 Uncategorized

Listening to Poetry
©By Vijaya Sundaram
April 26th, 2013

The children listen, in a spell
As the words of the poem we
Read aloud together in class,
Unreel and hook them, unawares.

Poetry, that smiling looter
That thief of all cynical hearts
That bandit of their mundane minds
Captures them, binds them all, tightly.

For a moment, cynicism
Is suspended, pushed, held at bay
By words, written quite long ago
Among differently moulded minds.

Then, mundane memory floods back
And, unwilling to be found out,
They replace their masks and move on
To the next silly or sublime sphere.

If I could capture their quiet
Concentration, their absorption,
I’d create an essential oil
With which to make a sweet perfume.

I’d keep it at my lonely desk
Spray it into the air near me,
And inhale deeply when sudden
Unexpected despair grabs me.

I’d forget my ache, then, and smile
I’d remind myself that this is
Why I love to teach and why I stay:
Concentration concentrated,

The shared delight, the rich shaping
Of our mutual enjoyment:
Pleasure  distilled and stoppered in time
And fragrant in our memory.

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

Tags: #NaPoWriMo, #Original Poetry, Concentration, Pleasure in poetry, students and teacher, Teaching and Learning, Teaching Poetry, Writing

Apr 25, 2013 Original Poetry

Abandoning
©By Vijaya Sundaram
April 25th, 2013

At the moment of abandoning all,
One feels relief.
Like dropping one’s backpack
And troubles at the door
When one comes home from school.
Or unhooking that bra
And tossing it over a chair
And sinking, boneless
Into the same chair,
Staring, slack-jawed
And unambitiously into
A happy space.

Or like dumping a job that
Has grown like a forest
All around one’s body,
With clinging vines and
Dark underbrush, with
Snakes crawling about.

At the moment of abandoning all,
One feels relief.
If only that feeling
Could sustain itself over the ache
And terror, or weariness
And more tasks
That are sure
To follow!

It’s a sister to that other feeling:
Falling in love.
Dizzying and breathless
Heart-bursting and
Empty-stomached,
Weightless, feathery
In a buffeting wind.
Or like a blazing fire
That starts with a little match
Match-making!

If only that feeling
Could sustain its white-hot
Fire, over the cooling winds
That follow!

It’s a brother to that other feeling:
That of letting go of life,
And whirling, leaf-like
Into blackness.
Weightless again,
Whirling, wind-tossed
Orphaned by life,
Plummeting slowly
And leisurely into death.

If only one could sustain
That mad, exhilaration
That onrush of breathless
Heart-extinguishing
Joy over the vast
Unending desolation
That is sure to follow!

Perhaps, I just need
Some sunlight right now —
A light-hearted stepping out
Into the luminescent evening —
And chase away the shadows.
I know the shadows will wait.
That’s all right — I’m clever.
I can out-wait them.

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

Tags: #Death, #Life, #Love, #NaPoWriMo, #Waiting, Abandoning, letting go, patience, relief, sustain

Apr 23, 2013 Original Poetry

Mute
©By Vijaya Sundaram
April 23rd. 2013

It’s hard to write when you’re sad.
It’s hard to write when you’re mad.
It’s hard to write when you’re sleepy.
It’s hard to write when you’re weepy.
It is hard to write when you’re working.
It’s hard to write when you’re shirking.
It’s hard to write when you’re alone.
It’s hard to write when you’re a stone.

I have nothing to say.
Nothing to say.  Not today.
Nothing to say.  Can’t stay.
Nothing to say.  Can’t play.
Nothing to say.  Going gray.
Nothing to say.  Start to sway.
Nothing to say.  Take me away!

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

Tags: #NaPoWriMo, creative aridity, gray day, poem about not being able to write a poem, sadness, uninspired day

Apr 22, 2013 Original Poetry, Reading, Writing, Thinking, Teaching and Learning

Daily-ness and Disaster
©By Vijaya Sundaram
April 22nd, 2013

How banal, how mundane
How silly, how pointless
Our lives seem!

Sitting in class, pencils in hand
Trying to be good, while
The teacher gazes on.

Stern she looks, and somber
Trying to be vigilant
Wasting time on gum-chewers
And time-wasters.

When elsewhere, lives end
Abruptly, pointlessly.
Grief and loss bloom
Like a mushroom cloud

Over a teeming populace
Wiped out by violence,
Riven by famine and flood.

And children torn from the arms of love,
Watch as parents are afloat on a sea
Of uncertainty.

Where food comes from
Hardly matters, when
They worry about whether
It comes, at all.

Whether school is up and running
Seems to matter so little, and yet
Someone is shot at brutally,
Risking her all, to reach school.

Elsewhere, in the city, last week
A child of eight died, in mid-cheer
Abruptly, pointlessly, painfully.
A shining being, ready for greatness.

And here, in the humming peace
The strumming quiet
The numbing apathy of daily life
We sit, pretending what we do matters.

It may all seem pointless now,
In the aftermath of recent tragedy.
And I might be right.

But I’d like to be hopeful
I’d like to say it matters
I’d like to say, “Everything,
But everything matters.”

Writing matters, reading matters,
Being hopeful matters, being good
Matters a whole lot.

And I would be right.

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

Tags: #Hope, #Learning, #NaPoWriMo, #Teaching, Boston Marathon Bombing, classroom, famines, floods, global disasters, Goodness, Malala, reading, Students, wars

Apr 21, 2013 Uncategorized

Adam
©By Vijaya Sundaram
April 21st, 2013

The world tilts dizzily
And I lie here, with you waiting
For me to speak.
My tongue is curled
I’m on the edge of things.
On the edge of my life on this
Planet which took so much
And gave so much
And from which I got
The rich milk of my
Soul’s sustenance.
And which curdled in my stomach.

For I allowed myself
To taste of the fruit
Of evil.  I was tempted.
And you were loyal. 
I offered it to you,
Then blamed you for it all.

And I ask your forgiveness
For all that I did
For all that I did not do
For all that I said
For all that I did not say
For all that I’ve been
And for all that I was not.

For through me, not you
Came this sorrow, this rage
You tried to put it back,
But one cannot ever undo
Only do.

Forgive me,
For I have sinned.
And my sin is beyond name
And beyond recall
And before memory
And after my death.
And if I could have
Another chance, I would take it.

But now, I shall fade
Forever away, into the mists
Of memory, and no one will
Care to name me
Or what I did.
But I will prevail,
And you will sorrow.

I’m sorry.

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

Tags: #NaPoWriMo, #Original Poetry, Adam to Eve, Evil, Fruit, The Apology

Apr 20, 2013 Awake in Dream Time - Journal Entries about the almost real, the surreal and the unreal, Original Poetry

Djinn
©By Vijaya Sundaram
April 20th, 2013

Today, an imp found residence
in a strange place: my lamp-mind,
which needs polishing.

And it chatters, natters, patters
ceaselessly, unceasingly, incessantly,
because it wants out.

It wants to be let out, it says.
Out it wants to be.
Can’t you see? it says.
I need to be.
If you let me out,
I will be your slave.

For my mind is the lamp that
holds it captive, and all I ask
from it is three wishes.

But that tosses me
On the precipice
Of my conundrum,
Which yawns open below me:

How can the container
ask a wish of the thing
 It created, and which is
contained in it?

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

Tags: #NaPoWriMo, conundrum, creation, Creativity, Djinn, Imp, Magic, magic lamp, mind-chatter

Apr 20, 2013 Current Affairs / General Interest, Original Poetry

The Place I’ve Come to Live
©By Vijaya Sundaram
April 20th, 2013

I wish I knew more about everything
And I wish I didn’t.
I’d love to know the names
Of those little blue-edged white flowers
Growing close to the soil amidst ferns
Which we planted years ago,
Probably memorizing their name.

I’d love to know the names of the trees
Pushing their way into Spring,
In all kinds of weather
In the woods close by, where
Invisible animals come out to play
In the moonlight, and small snakes
Slither away in April.

I wish I knew why music moves me so much,
And has taken residence in my body
So that I cannot move without
A beat or a song pulsing in my blood.
I wish I could tell you why the face
Of my daughter, or of all children
Fills me with the greatest urge
To protect, to cherish, to save.

I wish I could say that I would
Have run, without a thought
Towards that explosion, despite
My fear of what it could do,
But I do not know whether
I would have been a heroine.
(We’ll never know, will we?)

I wish I could tell you that
I would have been the first
To rush up and pinch a bloody
Artery or vein of a man in shock,
Who, having lost both legs,
Managed to write the words:
Bag.  Saw the guy.  Looked right at me.

I wish I could tell you that
I’d know exactly what words to say
To those who lost their legs:
I know how you feel?  I feel your pain?
My father lost his left leg
And some toes on his right?

I wish I could say: Kill the man
Who did this crime, maim him,
Torture him, make him scream.
But something doesn’t let me,
Like a hand, pulling me back, putting
A calming palm on a fevered
Forehead, making it cool down.

And, meanwhile, elsewhere,
Millions live their lives
In fear, unplumbable sorrow,
Unfathomable hunger and rage.
I wish I could say something
To everyone, be everywhere,
Do something useful.

But I sit here, paralyzed, mute
Looking out at a quiet, peaceful
Backyard, with those little
Blue-edged white flowers,
Growing close to the soil,
Which I planted years ago,
And whose name I’ve forgotten.

I wish I could say something
About more what happened this week.
All I can say is I’m glad it’s over.
But it’s never over, is it?
Knowing more doesn’t help.
Not knowing is unbearable.
But I have to accept this, for
This is the place I’ve come
Finally, to live.

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

Tags: #NaPoWriMo, #Spring, Boston after the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Heroism, I wish I knew, sorrow