Alexandersmap

    Month: May 2021

    • The Sleeping Compass

      You go through life thinking you’ve got things pretty well figured out (while knowing deep down that nobody does), and suddenly you trip over something you never thought of before. That’s the beauty of travel and expanded reading – you discover things that challenge the way you think. When you consume the same information every day that shell you crawl into gets pretty thick. ’tis better to get out and swim in new currents to see where it takes you.

      Many people know of Feng Shui and Vastu Shastra and this business of designing your dwelling to optimize living. Honestly, this isn’t an area where I’ve applied significant mental capacity. But lately I’ve read a bit more about Vastu Shastra and the direction you sleep in. Generally I spend about as much time figuring out which direction to sleep in as it takes to see where the headboard is. Perhaps I should have thought about it a little more.

      There are sleep compass headings developed over billions of lifetimes. The ideal sleep position for restful, restorative sleep is south. Those seeking knowledge should point east. If you’re seeking success, point west. And north? That seems to be reserved for the walking dead. Like sticking your head in a freezer.

      It seems I’ve been sleeping with my head pointing towards the west for the last 22 years. This is much better than my previous home, where I slept with my head pointing north. I’m sure glad we got out of there! Would my life have turned out differently had I simply stuck the headboard on the south-facing wall? Has facing west made that much of a difference in my success? What might have been?

      The thing is, I’m not sure I’m going to start moving the furniture around in the bedroom, or bringing a compass with me when I start staying in hotels again, but I see the merit of knowing where you are and how you’re positioned. I do believe the next overnight hiking trip might involve a quick consultation with the compass before setting up the tent and sleeping pad. After a long day of hiking a restful, restorative sleep would be most welcome.

      Living a fully optimized life begins with evaluating the best practices of our billions of fellow humans and seeing what works for you. That last bit, seeing what works for you, requires an open mind and the willingness to try something new. Maybe pointing your sleepy head to the south is worth a try.

    • The Navigator’s Station

      “The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.” – Edward Gibbon

      Some days everything clicks, and some days it pours stress over you like an ice bucket challenge run amuck. In general we try to steer our lives in the right direction, even when we drift off course now and then. The trick is to know where you want to be go and how to change course to get there. That often starts with sitting in your navigation station and sorting through where you are, where you’re going and what needs to happen to bring you there.

      The writing desk is my navigation station. I normally write at the same time every day, and I’m out of sorts if I don’t do it at that time. The last two days I’ve been out of sorts, writing late in the afternoon instead of with my first mug of coffee for the day. And that makes me feel largely off course for the entire day. This is the combined power of routine and the state change achieved through the flow of writing.

      Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to be challenging that routine trying new habits out for size. I’m also beginning to get out of the house and feeling out the new normal of work away from a computer screen. These forces are already disrupting my state, and I can feel the need to spend a bit more time at the old navigation station to fully absorb the changes.

      Changes are inevitable in life. Really, life is change. Life isn’t all about blind luck and chance encounters, there’s a healthy dose of magic when it’s done well. And that requires execution at a high level and embracing the role of navigator instead of merely being a passenger along for the ride.

      Where do you go from here? Have a seat and sort it out. Invest time where it will help the most – at the navigator’s station.

    • An Open Mind and a Closed Mouth

      “Many fail to grasp what they have seen, and cannot judge what they have learned, although they tell themselves they know.” – Heraclitus

      If I’ve learned anything in my time on this planet it’s that I don’t know much of anything about most things. But I know a lot about a few things. Very few things, really. The rest is just general knowledge mixed with opinion and occasional bluffing. But even here, I’ve learned to just say what I know and don’t know. The truth shall set you free.

      Knowing what you don’t know, you learn to recognize what other people don’t know. No matter what they say. And sometimes specifically because of what and how they say it. If we are the average of the five people we hang around with the most, do we really want to be a mix of ill-informed opinion and gossip? I should think not.

      Too many are quick to weigh in with advice and commentary on things they’re clearly not experts in. Knowing something well generally means being able to explain it in terms a child might understand. Given this, it seems that most people are bluffing. For all the information readily available in the world, most people just take something they heard at face value and parrot it back at you like it’s gospel.

      Learning begins with first seek to understand. That requires a healthy dose of humility and knowing what you don’t know. When you approach the world with an open mind and a closed mouth you can learn all kinds of things. Like what kind of person you want to become. That seems to be a good starting point.

    • The Ones That Got Away

      Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
      Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
      transparent scarlet paper,
      sizzle like moth wings,
      marry the air.

      We’re into the long days now in New England. Days of early light and lingering twilight well into the evening. I wake to the sound of fishermen racing to seize their moment, wondering at the urgency of a favorite fishing spot when the entire bay is full of fish. They fish with purpose. Purpose brings intensity and competition. I know these things, even if I don’t share their commitment to fishing before the sun rises. I use that time for other things.

      So much of any year is flammable,
      lists of vegetables, partial poems.
      Orange swirling flame of days,
      so little is a stone.

      I don’t understand the lure of fishing but I understand the pull of the open water. I know the call of the early morning air. I imagine the Striper are running just below the surface as I watch the water. The lilacs are out and so they must be too. Lilacs come and go so quickly, don’t they? So, it seems, do the Striper.

      Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
      an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
      I begin again with the smallest numbers.

      Every year we go through this, these fishermen and women out on the water and me watching from shore. The boats change and so do the characters in them, but still the fish run with the tides. This year feels more optimistic than last year. We’ve all come through something together, even if we aren’t quite there yet. But the Striper don’t care a lick what we’ve been through.

      Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
      only the things I didn’t do
      crackle after the blazing dies.
      -Naomi Shihab Nye, Burning the Old Year

      So many of these moments disappear like sparks into the night sky. We burn through days like firewood, and make the most of so few of them. So much of our time burns away, and we’re left holding on to scraps of memorable. While contemplating the ones that got away.

    • The Battle of Timidity and Boldness

      “Focus your attention on the link between you and your death, without remorse or sadness or worrying. Focus your attention on the fact you don’t have time and let your acts flow accordingly. Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will your acts have their rightful power. Otherwise they will be, for as long as you live, the acts of a timid man…. Being timid prevents us from examining and exploiting our lot as men.” – Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan

      I did the math, mentally adding 25 years to my current age and toyed with the idea of being that later age. There are no guarantees that I’ll ever reach that point in my life, of course. No guarantees for any of us marching through time on our annual trip around the sun. But I toyed with the idea of being an old man and wondered at the state of my mind and body. I wondered at the experiences I’d had in the interim, these years between now and then.

      This long sleep we have in store for ourselves is our future, whether a quarter century away or this afternoon, and we ought to live boldly instead of merely timidly existing. I won’t say I’ve mastered this, but I live a better life knowing that the whole dance could end on the next drum beat. But we can do so much more. Simply by living with urgency.

      This theme, the constant reminder of our imminent death, runs through Stoic philosophy. And it runs through this blog. I try, not always successfully, to use it as a cattle prod to my backside. A jolt of awareness that this could all end at any moment, so break free of that routine, break away from the timid existence and live a life of adventure and boldness. It’s the underlying theme of this blog, beginning on the home page with Thoreau’s call to action:

      “Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventures.” – Henry David Thoreau

      If we accept that we must die, and as improbable as it might seem, at any moment, what might we do to live now? If this is our final act, what will it be? And, if blessed with another, what of the act to follow?

      The answer clearly must be to live the moment with urgency. Say what must be said. Do what must be done. Get out there and live boldly! Pursue the magic in the moment with vigor and a profound lust for life.

    • Links in a Chain

      The latest outdoor workout was renting a chainsaw and cutting up oak and maple tree logs into smaller bits that I will eventually split on some cold winter day. Or perhaps it will be someone else doing the splitting and enjoying the fruits of this labor. Yesterday I was just a link in the chain between tree and fire.

      The thing is, I don’t particularly care if I’m the one burning the wood. I’ll savor it should it be me, but the whole point was to embrace the task of taking a pile of logs and transforming them into a neat pile of firewood. To complete the task at hand was all that mattered. Chopping up firewood on a warm day is a workout, has an element of danger, and requires focused concentration on the elements of the work that can badly injure you. Done well, it’s a joyful expression of being alive.

      “Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.” – Zen Kōan

      I finished the task and see the next one in line, awaiting my applied labor. And all of this is both satisfying and futile. The projects are endless, the output of money is constant, and the rewards are never guaranteed. But we do what we must to keep things going.

      The noise of the chainsaw doesn’t fully drown out the call of the road, the call of the mountains, or the call of the ocean. I’m fully aware of what I trade off in experience for this one. But I’m at peace with my choices. The work must be done. And what are we but links in a chain?

    • Delightfully Awkward

      We all remember that awkward phase of wearing a mask in public for the first time last year, as the pandemic was forcing our hand and people slowly woke up to the reality of the danger of COVID-19. The first time I walked into a box store before they required masks on everyone I heard someone talking on their phone, irritated, saying “Everyone is wearing a mask” as he looked squarely at me. As you might have guessed, he wasn’t. Awkward.

      Walking into stores and meeting people I knew before the pandemic for the first time when we were all masked was also a bit awkward. But then it became commonplace. You just wore the damned mask. Not for your own safety but for your regard for others. Those outliers who didn’t wear them were the odd ducks, not us.

      Fast forward to now, and where do we stand? Pockets of this world are in a COVID crisis, other pockets are vaccinated and cases are declining. And now the CDC says you can go out without a mask on if you’re vaccinated. So what’s a vaccinated mask-wearer to do? I haven’t had a cold in over a year. Do I embrace the winds of chance and unmask?

      I suppose I will, slowly at first, but more and more. But the mask thing got weird again, just as we were hitting our masked stride. Awkward.

      I walked into a butcher shop to buy some overpriced meat. I mean 3x what it was a year ago overpriced, and half the people in there were masked and half were unmasked. I’m fully vaccinated and technically don’t have to wear it anymore if I don’t want to. But I’d already put it on to walk in the store – take it off now? I should think not.

      I remembered in the moment why I’d put it on the first time last year. It’s not for me, it’s for those around me. And the people in that store don’t know if I’m vaccinated or not, they just know that I respected them enough to wear a mask for just a bit longer. Or they think I’m a masked nut job, but really, who cares what they think?

      Tomorrow will sort itself out. There will be more awkward moments of mask uncertainty. For this, friends, is what the light at the end of the tunnel looks like.

      Delightfully awkward.

    • Ignoring That Other Urge to Merge

      “Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you’re about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you’re wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, ‘I haven’t touched you yet.” – Carlos Castaneda, Journey To Ixtlan

      If the measure of a life is our contribution to the larger world around us, should we work harder, or focus on what moves the world through us? Shouldn’t we rejoice in the wonder of waking up this morning, feel the vibration of the world around us (such that it is), and make the most of this one more day? Moving the world through us takes imagination, vigor and commitment to our calling.

      It feels easier to just grind it out, making the most of the path we choose, than to step off that path and try another. It feels easier to just turn on the television and immerse ourselves in something outside ourselves. To meet expectations and be a part of the way things are. Instead of moving the world through us we move through the world as everyone else does.

      And there’s the trap. When we surrender to the world we lose our essence – we lose our autonomy. And, I hate to do it, but I’m going to use the same quote that Jeff Bezos used in his final letter to Amazon shareholders because it hasn’t left me since I read it:

      “Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at. Left to itself — and that is what it is when it dies — the body tends to revert to a state of equilibrium with its environment. If you measure some quantity such as the temperature, the acidity, the water content or the electrical potential in a living body, you will typically find that it is markedly different from the corresponding measure in the surroundings. Our bodies, for instance, are usually hotter than our surroundings, and in cold climates they have to work hard to maintain the differential. When we die the work stops, the temperature differential starts to disappear, and we end up the same temperature as our surroundings… More generally, if living things didn’t work actively to prevent it, they would eventually merge into their surroundings, and cease to exist as autonomous beings. That is what happens when they die.” – Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker

      Which reminds me of the most famous episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation:

      “We are the Borg. Existence, as you know it, is over. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile.” – The Borg, from Star Trek, The Next Generation

      You and I, we aren’t ready to merge into our surroundings, are we? We aren’t ready to be assimilated. No, death hasn’t touched us yet, not today. And so we must remain autonomous. We must hear the call of our own heartbeat and somehow resist the temptation to just go with the flow. We must learn to move the world through us. To be unique.

      None of this is easy. I struggle with autonomy, influenced as heavily as you might be by family and friends, quarterly numbers that demand attention and the occasional soundbite or affront to humanity making the rounds on social media. It’s hard to remember sometimes that all that is outside of us. All that wants us to merge with it and amplify the chorus with our voice. It takes courage to turn away, see a different path and start down it.

      Your death will tell you that you’re wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch.

      Ignore the urge to merge. Move through this world in your own way. Down your own path. While there’s still time.

    • The Muse

      There’s a ghost in my head. A story that won’t go away. Compelling and screaming to be written. The boy in the story died over 300 years ago, and he didn’t live much of a life at all. A life of lost freedom and sadness. But his story is screaming out for someone to tell the world about him.

      So the muse taps my shoulder, asking when I’m going to get around to it. Threatening to leave me and take the boy elsewhere. And I feel the guilt of ignoring the call of the dead boy for the obligations of the living. Your story must be told… but not just yet. And the muse grows restless.

      I suppose I could just write about him in the blog. It would serve to tell his story. But I’ve held on to his life as the kernel of a novel that could grow around him. It seems selfish when I write that, holding a ghost boy hostage while I procrastinate on writing his story. Yet here we are.

      The confession serves as a concession to the muse. I’ll get to the boy, one of these days. I’ll write his story as best I can. This year? Yes, absolutely. This year. Just after I finish these other things…

      And the muse grows more restless.

    • Each Leap

      It’s funny how things cluster together. Bursts of activity that lump together depending on the place that you’re in emotionally, physically, developmentally. Like jumping rock-to-rock to cross a stream, these places are where we land at a given moment in our lives.

      Some are easy to identify: “student” to “early career” to “committed relationship” to “parent” are all leaps we’re familiar with. But there are other, smaller leaps that come to mind. Over the last year I’ve had clusters of activity – hiking, chasing waterfalls, devouring poetry, home improvement projects, etc. that consumed me for a time and then I was on to the next thing for a while. Those waterfalls are still calling, just as mountain peaks are, it’s just not their time right now.

      Each leap lands you in another place in your life. Each leap changes you forever. I’ll never be who I was before I had children, nor will I ever be the same person as I was before I read The Summer Day or saw a snowshoe hare sprinting through the snow on the summit of Mount Moosilauke or a hundred other leaps large and small that have brought me to this particular landing spot.

      Each leap brings us further across the stream, further from who we once were while closer to what we might be. Knowing we’ve changed, and fully aware of the risks, we must choose which leap to take next. Sometimes we get wet, sometimes we reach a dead end, and sometimes we reach a landing spot we never dreamed of getting to. There are lessons in each.

      At the moment I’ve landed on a series of home improvement projects that demand the usual investment of time and money. But I’m already plotting my next leap, and have an eye on the one after that too. All while the characters in my life are making their own leaps, some drawing closer, others moving further away. And this is as it should be. The stream keeps flowing, even as we leap from stone to stone.

      Nothing ever has been or ever will be the same. You can’t just sit on a rock in the middle of the stream forever. You’ve got to leap again. So make it a good one.