Alexandersmap

    Month: December 2021

    • Memorable Moments

      Mingling at a gathering of the vaccinated recently, I got into a conversation with a person of a certain age similar to mine about the art of living. It began with the talk of regional travel and places we’d each been in the northeast—a topic I can get behind—and eventually moved on to what you do when you’re in those random places. And I brought up the one line a day journal and my habit of searching for waterfalls and other such beautiful or historically relevant places nearby. The land whispers, if we only learn to listen. Life is richer when you become a good listener.

      This act of writing one line per day has served me well, and I can stray towards evangelism on the topic when I’m not careful. Not everyone wants to be reminded to find something memorable in their daily lives. In those moments you can either revert back to being a good listener with a few neutral life questions and wait for the coffee to be served or find something interesting to mine from that conversation. Every soul has a story to tell should you listen for it.

      Life is more interesting when you’re a collector of memorable moments. Finding something unique in every waking day is one way to saunter through life with the blinders off. What shall that one line be? Four meetings and chicken for dinner? Or changing into your boots and walking down a snowy gorge to find falling water using minutes brazenly stolen from the ordinary?

      Everyone has their own idea of what makes a moment memorable. It’s our responsibility to ourselves to make something of our time. Why waste it doing the same thing we did yesterday? Make it stand out from the rest in some meaningful way. Small talk at a cocktail party offers its own opportunity to expand beyond the ordinary, if done well.

      It’s entirely possible that I bored my audience to tears at that party. Then again, they might have been inspired to begin their own daily habit of writing down one memorable moment that very day… beginning with an entry about the odd character who inspired a small change before disappearing into the line for coffee, never to be seen again.

    • Stop… Look Around

      “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller

      We charge through life honoring commitments and chasing dreams. Yet nothing is more urgent than the need to pause now and then to look around at what the world presents to you. The generations whose collective imaginations were captured by Ferris Bueller living in the moment often forget to do the same now and then, if only for a moment.

      Yesterday I managed to shoehorn in a visit to a waterfall between business travel and six meetings and conference calls. What makes the day worth living is subjective, but few argue that a little balance in our mad dash through our careers is essential to our well-being. So stop now and then to see what you’ve been missing. The work will still be there when you turn back to it. But you might look at it differently.

    • Visiting the Cascades of Attica

      You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
      Know when to fold ’em
      Know when to walk away
      And know when to run      …

      Every gambler knows
      That the secret to survivin’
      Is knowin’ what to throw away
      And knowin’ what to keep
      ‘Cause every hand’s a winner
      And every hand’s a loser
      And the best that you can hope for
      Is to die in your sleep
      —Kenny Rogers, The Gambler

      When you find a few minutes in your day, googling “waterfalls near me” can net some great micro adventures. Today’s search brought me to a pristine 60 foot waterfall just five minutes down the road from a famous prison that looks like a castle in the cornfields. The waterfall felt like you were in another universe. And it was just where I needed to be between my second and third meetings on a busy day in Upstate New York.

      There are a few web sites that describe the cascades. I found this one helpful for understanding what I was walking into. Private property, three cascades within a few hundred meters of the road, well defined path… got it. Of course, it didn’t mention the slippery layer cake hazard of fresh snow on wet leaves on gooey mud that a visitor in December might confront, but things change and we must adjust to whatever we’re presented with. I attempted to reach the 60 foot plunge from both shores, recognizing both offered potential views but also potential for an untimely end to my time on this earth. There was no one to hear me scream as I slipped down the path, over the cliff and down the ice cold river. So why tempt fate? The secret to survivin’ is knowin’ what to throw away. And knowin’ what to keep.

      But I couldn’t walk away without getting a “close enough” picture. I slipped on the micro spikes, grabbed hold of the rope someone generously left for just such foolhardy acts and made my way down to the top of the falls. Not the dangerous part, mind you, but the part some folks in my life would question my sanity for getting anywhere near. Daring, but not reckless… Hey that’s me!. Maybe someday I’ll be back and conditions will be perfect for a walk downstream and then up the river bed for that classic waterfall shot. This wasn’t that day. But it was still an adventure. If only a small one.

      Cascades from as close as I could safely get
      The other shore was even more daunting

    • Reaching Your Creative State

      “Do you want to do intellectual work? Begin by creating within you a zone of silence, a habit of recollection, a will to renunciation and detachment which puts you entirely at the disposal of the work; acquire that state of soul unburdened by desire and self-will which is the state of grace of the intellectual worker. Without that you will do nothing, at least nothing worth while.”
      – A.G. Sertillanges, O.P. The Intellectual Life

      Every day is a reinvention, a chance to be reborn into whatever you wish to become in this life. For me, this becoming is the whole point of living. But it begs the question—becoming what? Not an easy question, one most people immerse themselves in distraction to avoid answering (present company accepted). Blogging is a public sorting of this becoming bit. The messier work happens behind the scenes.

      When you have a general idea where your compass is pointing, you must put yourself in a state where you might execute on that vision for yourself. And this is where it gets tricky. All those skills you’ve learned to distract yourself from figuring out what you want to be when you grow up work equally well at keeping you from getting things done.

      “Creative people organize their lives according to repetitive, disciplined routines. They think like artists but work like accountants.” – David Brooks, “The Good Order” The New York Times

      And there lies the secret sauce to doing anything worthwhile: Repetitive, disciplined routines applied daily from now until… ad infinitum. Sertillanges calls this productive place your state of soul. A place where we can actualize the spirit of our deepest work and bring it to the world. What a gift. When you’re in this state, why would you ever want it to end?

      The trick to reaching this state of soul is hidden in plain sight: Establish routines and have the discipline to stick with them. Repeat. None of this is revelatory, what’s required is consistency of effort. So get to it. The world awaits your best work.

    • Fat Squirrel Haiku and Much Work to Do

      I watched a squirrel, fat for winter, dig in the garden for who knows what. The squirrel wasn’t welcome, but invited itself to this place I’ve called my own. Its ancestors might say the same of me, for one day generations ago there was a stand of trees, the next day someone laid a foundation and a house rose where the maples and oaks once stood and squirrels foraged in the wood. Who encroached on who?

      December cold and the bird feeders are filled once again. We’re told to hold off on filling them until the bears hibernate, lest they’re drawn to the neighborhood seeking food. The bears are always here, friend, but why invite trouble? I let the feeders run out and kept them empty until the 5th of December. But trouble arrived anyway–not as bears, mind you, but squirrels. They quickly got the memo that the buffet was open once again.

      The air is cold, reminding me of things left undone in the yard while I was busy doing other things. The list is longer than I’d like it to be, but I dream of escaping to faraway places anyway. Best to turn my attention back towards the nest. The squirrels are boldly circling back, ever closer, thinking, “If he’s not going to use it, we’ll grab it back for ourselves.”

      Fat squirrel digs for food
      Is the garden his or mine?
      Today, the rodent

    • What Shapes Us

      All that passes descends,
      and ascends again unseen
      into the light: the river
      coming down from sky
      to hills, from hills to sea,
      and carving as it moves,
      to rise invisible,
      gathered to light, to return
      again. “The river’s injury
      is its shape.” I’ve learned no more.
      We are what we are given
      and what is taken away;
      blessed be the name
      of the giver and taker.
      For everything that comes
      is a gift, the meaning always
      carried out of sight
      to renew our whereabouts,
      always a starting place.
      And every gift is perfect
      in its beginning, for it
      is “from above, and cometh down
      from the Father of lights.”
      Gravity is grace.
      – Wendell Berry, The Gift of Gravity

      Splitting firewood over the weekend, I swung the axe down upon a log with a previous split running partially down the oak fibers. The axe shattered the log into three pieces, one of which flew directly into my shin just below my right knee. Ouch! Of course it was the right leg–its never the left leg that gets injured. The list of “gifts” is long: Broken leg (car), sprained ankle (basalt), bruised heel (beach), torn calf (crosswalk) and a previous shin injury (steel pole on a wet deck) that looked like a second knee all assaulted the right leg. The left? Blissfully spared such assaults. By comparison this latest incident was just a small bruise and another story to tell.

      We all work to make sense of the gifts we’re given, welcome or not, they shape us. We’re molded by the world, branded by others, given a big break now and again, twisted by fate, fallen in love and gutted by loss. Our shape is our injury, accumulated over a lifetime.

      It’s not just injuries that shape us, but travel and poetry and great books and a song at just the right moment, by quiet persistence and chance encounters and dumb luck. In quiet moments I linger on conversations I had years ago with people I haven’t spoken with since. The way I see the world, phrases that I use to this day, all came as a gift from a place long ago, silt and debris carried in the current of my life and washing over others before continuing onward to eternity. We carry more than we ever realize, and reveal it to the world one small splash at a time.

      A blog is accretive. We observe the world and the gifts we receive–like a snippet from a long Wendell Berry poem–turn them in our minds and release them to wash over others. Some make an impact, most flow unobserved to eternity. Such is the way.

    • Night Dies For Day

      Day’s sweetest moments are at dawn;
      Refreshed by his long sleep, the Light
      Kisses the languid lips of Night,
      Ere she can rise and hasten on.
      All glowing from his dreamless rest
      He holds her closely to his breast,
      Warm lip to lip and limb to limb,
      Until she dies for love of him.
      – Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Dawn

      Sleeping in is relative to when you normally wake up. For me, 7 AM qualifies. I long ago stopped setting alarm clocks (except for those first flights of the day moments you can’t miss), mostly because I long ago stopped trying to burn the candle at both ends. When you go to bed at a decent hour, you wake up for the magic hours.

      This idea of sleeping in is seductive, but I know when I do it I’ll feel like I’ve missed out on something special—that lingering bliss of the world waking up around you, while you take stock of all that you’ve done with the day already. Call it satisfaction, maybe, or perhaps merely the confidence that comes with being ahead of the game.

      Then again, maybe you can call it overconfidence. Are we ever really ahead of the game? No, we do what we can to stay in the game in the best position possible. I used to wake up and check work email first thing in the morning, to be perceived as hustling because I was answering an email before 6 AM. That’s a game I don’t play now, a fool’s game of posturing and positioning. When you wake up to the world you see that we have no time for games, only living. Remember night gets her revenge on day all too soon.

      There was a time when I wouldn’t linger with a poem like Dawn. Feeling it frivolous and romantic, almost soft porn in its wordplay. Have I become frivolous and romantic? It’s not like I’m watching Hallmark movies here, just lingering in early light. The dawn brightens, and the world becomes more clear. Or maybe I just stopped looking inward enough to notice.

      All glowing from dreamless rest

    • Eudaimonia: The Act of Living Well

      There’s an ancient Greek word, frequently associated with Aristotle, called eudaimonia. Aristotle meant it as living virtuously. It’s best translated in modern English not as “happiness”, but as “flourishing” or “living well”. Let’s face it, chasing happiness is a fools game (for happiness is an evasive and subjective pursuit, and without purpose, empty), but pursuing eudaimonia—living well—is a lifestyle choice. And it begins with knowing what living well means to you.

      The spirit of eudaimonia, going back to Aristotle, is to make the most of yourself in your short time here. That making the most of yourself business is what you and I have been chasing for a long time, isn’t it? To live virtuously, to flourish in the art of living, to learn and grow and travel and build something better of yourself. To be fit and vibrant and sharp as a tack. To be articulate and passionate and the eager student in this master class of living.

      We are all in the pursuit of eudaimonia, we just don’t use that particular word to describe our objective. Maybe we should. There’s another Greek word, Arete, meaning excellence, that comes to mind. If Arete is the ultimate goal, eudaimonia is the path to get us closer to it. We may never reach the former, but we can certainly flourish and live well and strive to maximize our potential. And isn’t that the point of living in the first place?

    • Creating Something, Daily

      “All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.” – John Ruskin

      The great thing about writing every morning is that feeling of creating something out of nothing. Reinforcing long term habits you once told yourself you ought to have with a little discipline. Discovering new things and figuring out a bit of yourself one post at a time. Blogging is similar to painting every day and sticking the finished work in the barn. Every now and then someone actually sees what you produced, but mostly you do it for yourself.

      When you think about it, could it be any other way? We are all in the business of creating our better selves. Bloggers just document it for the world to see.

      There are other “ought to” habits I should get better at. I ought to optimize the site to make it easier for people to follow. I ought to be more active in following and liking the work of the wonderful people who follow me. I ought to stick with popular topics that get a lot of attention, things like fitness and travel. But it’s more likely that I’ll continue to write about whatever strikes my fancy, which lends itself to finding more interesting things in this world through travel and reading and putting myself out there a bit more than I might have otherwise.

      Writing became my most consistent habit over the last four years. That pleases me, but no more than the artist who places those paintings in the barn. You might look back on them now and then, but you move on to making new babies. The act of creating every day, and seeing where you might bring yourself next, is why we write. Maybe one day you’ll take all that art out of the barn and do something with it, but the analogy stops there. In blogging you’ve already let it fly.

    • Right Where You Are

      The sun set in the sea; the same odd sun
      rose from the sea,
      and there was one of it and one of me.
      – Elizabeth Bishop, Crusoe in England

      An old work acquaintance moved to the city, and walks to an embarrassment of great restaurants just down the street. I asked her about the noise and such things, being a country mouse like me. But all she talked of was the thrill of being in the heart of it. She was right where she wanted to be. And isn’t that a thrill?

      I walked the short beach twice yesterday, to see what I was missing working with my back turned to it. I feel gratitude for the beach, but mostly for the bay that opens up the sky and the universe beyond. You don’t get quite so spun up about projects when you look at salt water. And I wondered again why I don’t live in such a place as this. Do you get tired of the infinite? I should think not. But our time with the infinite will come soon enough. Now we wrestle with deadlines and commitments and trivial pursuits.

      It’s different for each of us, this right where you ought to be feeling. The question might not be where you are at all, but what you’re doing that ought to be confronted. If you feel you’re right where you want to be in your work, in your life, then the world you walk out to meet will feel right no matter where you are. And when it’s not, well, even the divine feels a bit off.

      We are where we are, there’s no getting around that. We only have this one go around before the universe moves on to those who come after us. It’s not the place so much as how you fill it that matters. Otherwise it’s just a void, isn’t it?