Alexandersmap

    Month: March 2025

    • To Be In This World

      Bless the notebook that I always carry in my pocket.
      And the pen.
      Bless the words with which I try to say what I see, think, or feel. With gratitude for the grace of the earth.
      The expected and the exception, both.
      For all the hours I have been given to be in this world.
      — Mary Oliver, Good Morning

      When the world turns us brittle, a bit of Mary Oliver poetry helps make the soul pliable once again. The poem quoted above is the same one that brought us the lines, “Stay young, always, in the theater of your mind.” and “It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.” I can’t very well put every line she ever wrote in this blog, but surely I’ve covered a lot of them. For all the exceptional lines, the one that resonates for me is action-oriented: To be in this world.

      A couple of nights ago I walked out at dusk and looked at Venus, Jupiter and Mars marching in a neat line across the sky. Orion, ever the hunter, stood ready to release his arrow. These are days we’ll remember until they scrub the hard drives and burn the books, but the infinite remains indifferent to the drama unfolding here. Knowing it’s a short run, we must return our focus to our own verse, whatever it might be for us. A creative, productive life demands our full participation.

      Perhaps it’s the poet in me, but I believe that gratitude and wonder are the two key ingredients to a meaningful day. When we look at the whole hot mess that is our lives in this moment, we must accept the miracle that we’re here at all. We cannot be forever distracted by the fools on the hill, letting our precious life slip away. Be here, now. And perhaps, like Mary Oliver, have the audacity to do something exceptional with the opportunity.

    • 38 Years of Joshua Tree

      And in the world
      A heart of darkness
      A fire zone
      Where poets speak their heart
      Then bleed for it
      — U2, One Tree Hill

      In one of those time warp moments, I realized that U2’s Joshua Tree was released 38 years ago yesterday. That resonates deeply when you’re of a certain age. We all have our cornerstones of influence. We all have our soundtrack of life, anchored in moments that are forever brought back by the song playing in the background, bringing it all back to us once again. For me, U2 has been the anchor, laying down milestone moments for much of my life.

      The first song I heard from Joshua Tree was With or Without You, played as a single on WBCN, one of Boston’s great radio stations back in the day. They played it late in the afternoon, after a team workout, and I sat in my pickup truck in front of my apartment to hear it that first time. Music is like Kurt Vonnegut’s amber of the moment: It’s a powerful resin that holds memory to place and time. This is who we once were. This is still a part of us, even after so much has changed since that first spark of awareness of what we were hearing.

      Many might say that U2 peaked in their Super Bowl performance in February 2002, when the world was still reeling from 9/11 and seeing the names of the victims of that day scroll upwards while the band performed MLK (from The Unforgettable Fire) and one of the big songs from Joshua Tree, Where the Streets Have No Name. That performance forever transformed the latter song in my mind from an overplayed song of the late 80’s to a spiritual anchor in a storm of emotions leading up to that evening. I don’t believe one performance represented a peak for a band as big as U2, I believe they sustained excellence for three decades and we can debate which albums were their best from the bar set by Joshua Tree.

      The music industry has forever changed, and albums as a work of art are not what they once were for popular music. The music industry can pound sand. Music is more than a hit song, it’s a part of our identity. Like a great novel, a great album has the power to transform lives. U2 has their fair share of great albums, and they’ve carried the torch for rock music from vinyl to streaming as well as any band. In a culture that digests information in sound bites, the concept of an album is perhaps a bridge too far. But a great album still has a place in this world.

      For all the hits on Joshua Tree, One Tree Hill is the song I most associate with that moment in the late 1980’s when U2 ruled the airwaves. It’s a deep cut and one of the last songs on the album. One has to be invested in the listening experience to reach it. And there’s the value of a great album: finding the hidden gems amongst the hits.

      One Tree Hill whispers seductively across time. And like time itself, we are all running like a river, running to the sea. We didn’t know what that meant back then, until time flew by, until that tight circle of people we once clung to ran from our lives and others flowed in to replace them. Until time ran out for some people who meant a great deal to us, people who had their final run to the sea. We’re closer now ourselves, aren’t we? Yet still we run. So by all means, turn up the music and enjoy it once again.

    • Inhabited by Heroes

      “On whatever side I look off I am reminded of the mean and narrow-minded men whom I have lately met there. What can be uglier than a country occupied by grovelling, coarse, and low-lived men? No scenery will redeem it. What can be more beautiful than any scenery inhabited by heroes? Any landscape would be glorious to me, if I were assured that its sky was arched over a single hero.” — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      There’s always been two sides to America. Those who build on the foundation of freedom and liberty for all and those who would tear it all down and watch it burn. The thing is, we all believe we’re on the side of freedom and liberty—it’s all in how those words are interpreted. And so we all believe our cause is just and dig in for a fight. We aren’t fighting a Civil War in the traditional sense, but a manufactured war stirred up by profiteers and agents of destruction. The country has always had an abundance of grovelling, coarse, and low-lived men (and women!) on both sides who serve themselves first and foremost. Thoreau wrote this entry in 1851, and he would recognize the characters today as descendants in spirit of those he encountered.

      The real heroes strive for consensus and unification. Inclusiveness isn’t woke, it’s a shared vision that those “unalienable Rights” of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness apply to all of us. This is a dream that extends from sea to shining sea, and yes, across borders—autocrats and oligarchs, racists and “bro culture” be damned.

      These are dark days, and they will grow darker still. We all look around looking for heroes to unite us once again. Look in the mirror, friend. The strength of this country has always resided in our core, where reasonable people with common hopes and dreams reside. And here is where the heroes of the moral core must rise up and seize control of reason and dignity once again. We can’t simply wait it out hoping for better days.

    • All of It

      “Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it.” — Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

      To expect answers is to assume that there’s order in the universe. That’s a wide lens that comes in handy when the world embraces chaos and throws order on the bonfires. To discuss the matter with the agents of chaos is futile. They only want heated debates, mic drop dismissals and wild conspiracy theories. There is no peace or consensus in their world, only outrage. Nor is there peace amongst those outraged by those being outrageous. Shared resolve, possibly, but there is no stillness when the pot is constantly being stirred.

      And so we must find quiet resolve in the company of timeless ideas and principles. Nature and the classics, poetry and song, and the rituals of routine that quiet the mind and clarify our purpose. We’ll be the better for having walked away from the loud talkers. When they run out of reasonable people to debate they’ll simply turn on each other. To find stillness, steer clear of all of it. The quiet resolve that develops within will be more essential than ever soon enough.

    • Light, Sand, Wind and Water

      The wind is howling today, and the pup and I duck our heads to protect against the beach sand hurling through space at 50 knots looking for a hard landing. I’m tired of words today, and so we risk the sandblasting beach in search of magical light. This will do.

    • Limitations and Openings

      Any framework, method, or label
      you impose on yourself
      is just as likely to be a limitation
      as an opening.
      — Rick Ruben, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

      Every morning I wake up and start to think about what I’m going to write about. Routine has brought me to this place, and even if the entire day turns to crap, even if I’m distracted and frustrated by the world around me, even if it feels like this will be the last blog I ever write because I’m just done with the entire process, my mind settles into the rhythm of writing just as soon as my fingers begin to keep up with where my mind is taking them. And here we are again.

      This blog is not taking the world by storm. I’m under no illusion of grandeur about my place in the lives of its readers, or the number of ripples these thoughts and words will carry across space and time. I write because I fancy myself both a thinker and a writer, and it follows that one ought to jot down what one is thinking about, if only to see where it takes us.

      The question is, does the process take us to a breakthrough, or are we simply going around in circles? Is the very act of blogging a limitation on other writing that isn’t being done because the mind is satiated every morning at around this time? And what other habits and routines would take the place of writing, should it be relegated to later in the day? Would the writing slip like workouts slip?

      We’re caught in a trap
      I can’t walk out
      Because I love you too much, baby
      — Elvis Presley, Suspicious Minds

      We know when it’s time for a change. But how often does knowing lead to doing? Identity is built on the habits and routines we create our days with. And our days in turn become our lives. We ought to ask ourselves when we’ve finished writing and click publish, is this process a limitation for me or an opening? Just where are we going anyway?

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    • Let the Thunder Rumble

      “Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played. Grow wild according to thy nature, like these sedges and brakes, which will never become English bay. Let the thunder rumble; what if it threaten ruin to farmers’ crops? That is not its errand to thee. Take shelter under the cloud, while they flee to carts and sheds. Let not to get a living be thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but own it not. Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs.”
      — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      In a free society, living like a serf is mostly a lifestyle choice. It’s falling in line, or being outraged by those who sip the Kool-Aid. It’s getting trapped in a bad routine, with habits that whittle away our time and quietly strangle us. It’s living in an echo chamber of like-minded outrage while life slips away and opportunities are lost. It’s giving up our agency to move our lives in the direction we want to go in because it never seems like the right time, with all that’s happening right now. We must know that it’s never going to be the right time.

      The current state of the world suggests chaos, and surely there is plenty of chaos in the world, but mostly it’s abrupt and ugly change and the reaction to that change. This hyper-focused echo chamber isn’t helping us get through our days in productive, compelling ways, even if it feels essential that we react to every damned thing the news cycle and our spun up circle of family and friends throw at us. We must learn to focus only on what we can control, and more, to be bold with our days.

      “Shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just going to live in it, versus embrace it. Change it. Improve it. Make your mark upon it.” — Steve Jobs, from the 1994 Santa Clara Valley Historical Association interview

      I had some bold plans for 2025. Started down the path, excitement growing, and then things went south and I found myself with cancelled plans and a closet full of adventure gear. The thing is, it wasn’t anything I hadn’t fully expected, because plans blow in the wind. We can either shrug and give up when the world has other plans or we can move on to other plans within our control.

      Identity is honed by experience. Experiences build upon each other and give us the confidence to be bolder still. Don’t simply live this life based on what other people expect of us; fully embrace it. Let the thunder rumble. Live the kind of life that others aspire to live themselves.

    • Accepting the Path

      Before I′m pushin’ up daisies
      Give me a long, heady summer
      With arms open wide
      I won′t take this world for granted
      I’ll become what I′ve been askin’
      I′ll accept the path that lays before my eyes
      — Sam Fender, Nostalgia’s Lie

      In order to chase the dream, we must first decide to launch ourselves in that direction. The launch is nothing but the first step in a series of steps, and anyone wondering what happened to their New Years resolutions knows the score on first steps. It’s the ones after the first that really count, because we’re gradually trying on a new identity, one step at a time, accepting the path that we’ve determined for ourselves as ours.

      Decide what to be and go be it, as the Avett Brothers song demands of us, and surely it must be so for us to reach our creative potential, for us to get closer to our version of personal excellence, to realize the dream. Don’t be that person on their death bed wondering what happened. What happened was forever deferring the path in favor of the maze. Once we step into a maze the path is no longer clear, and what feels like progress is often nothing but a dead end.

      We don’t always know a maze until we’re in it, but hit enough dead ends and it becomes evident eventually. The answer, of course, is to get the hell out of the maze and back on the path. To become what we’ve been asking of ourselves. Where each step makes the path clearer than it was before. Knowing deep down that whatever the path, the clock is ticking.

    • Our Many Short Races

      “Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” — Walter Elliot

      Fortitudine vincimus (by endurance we conquer) — the family motto of Sir Ernest Shackleton

      When we look back on our lives thus far, we often gloss over the small, daily challenges that we had to overcome just to get through the day and only remember the good times we had. Sure, we remember the big setbacks and the losses (it’s hard to ever forget a gut punch). But each small challenge conquered honed and shaped who we are. The race was won, at least that day’s race, and we moved on to the next.

      My favorite rowing workout is an interval workout of 10×500 meters. It’s an intense burst of energy applied to a relatively short distance, and then a brief rest period before doing it all over again. I’m still covering 5000 meters, but there’s no time to settle in to a lower standard of performance or to get bored. Work, rest, work again until the work is done.

      So why not apply this process to our creative work? Write quickly, take a minute or two minute walk away from the work and then jump right back into it again. It adds up to more work, but often better work too. There’s no time for distraction, no time for anything but producing our best in that short burst of time before we earn another break.

      Every day is a series of challenges that must be overcome for us to earn the knowledge, skills or nerve to move on to the next. We climb ever higher, we get pushed back, adjust and push forward again. It’s not a long slog into infinity, it’s simply today’s short race. When we focus on the short race we’re currently working through, we think less about the short break someone else may be posting pictures about on social media, or the work someone we admire just published that feels out of reach for our current ability. We’re in a different race, after all, and our task is simply to finish this micro burst with focus and intensity.

      Zoom back out, and we see seismic shifts happening politically, economically, culturally… and it feels like this race may be too overwhelming for us to be in. But we’re in it just the same. We forget that that larger game at play isn’t our weight to bear alone. Don’t let the bastards grind you down (that’s what they want us to feel—ground down and powerless). Focus on the race we’re running and chase personal excellence in the things we alone are doing with our time. Life may indeed be a marathon and not a sprint, but all races are completed one stride at a time.

    • What Carries the Day

      I went on a lunch date with my bride Saturday. We didn’t talk politics, we talked about new dinner plates and the house and things like that. Sometimes the present is both beautiful and awful, and the only thing that determines which wins the moment is what we choose to focus on.

      There are plenty of reasons to feel down about the state of the world. There are plenty of reasons to feel joyful. As reasonable people, it’s possible to feel both at the same time. But we ought to be asking ourselves, which carry the day? A poem by Charles Bukowski, formatted in that Charles Bukowski way, comes to mind:

      some people
      grind away
      making their
      unhappiness
      the ultimate
      factor
      of their
      existence
      until
      finally
      they are
      just
      automatically
      unhappy,
      their
      suspicious
      upset
      snarling
      selves
      gringing

      on
      and
      at
      and
      for
      and
      through

      their only
      relief
      being

      to meet
      another
      unhappy
      person

      or
      to
      create
      one.
      — Charles Bukowski, downers

      When we get so distracted by the state of things, we sometimes forget to do the joyful things that make living an event worthy of our time. We can create a wake of misery behind us, or we can leave a ripple of joy. We should ask, just how do we want to be remembered? But let’s get right to the heart of the matter: just how do we want to move through this one go at life?