Alexandersmap

    Author: nhcarmichael

    • The Wind Always Speaks

      “If there seems to be no communication between you and the people around you, try to draw close to those things that will not ever leave you. The nights are still there and the winds that roam through the trees and over many lands.” — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

      We’re often alone in this world, but alone doesn’t require loneliness. These days gifted to us are full of routine and ritual, from how we wake up in the morning to where we sit and what we eat. Who we interact with is often our choice, but alas, not always. How we react to everything and everyone we interact with—or don’t interact with—is always our choice.

      Stepping outside on a spring day in New Hampshire, the world is alive in chatter. Birds and squirrels debate nest design or which yard has the best feeders today. A light wind might stir the tree tops like a hand brushing over tall grass, while a heavier wind might offer a gusty, heartfelt shake. No, there is no loneliness outside—the world is always present.

      The garden begins to awaken. Rabbits have nibbled the tops off of some early bulbs, inspiring a silent curse and a fence resurrected to stake a claim for beauty. Days are longer now and there’s more to see, but for the stars as they concede more and more to the sun. Every day brings a new voice to the yard as the migration continues northward. Flashes of blue are a regular part of the days now as the Bluebirds, present all winter at the feeder, decided to make the birdhouse their own once again.

      Every day is a poem. Every day offers an embrace when you step out to greet it. Even on the quietest of days, the wind always speaks.

    • Breaking Through the Anonymous Line of Orders

      There’s a common practice in fast food and coffee chains where you place your order on an app and then either pick it up at the counter or have some random stranger deliver it to you. It seems super convenient and eliminates waiting for someone to prepare your order. In a way it probably feels like cutting in line in that you’re the hot shot who ordered ahead and simply need to pick up your order on the fly, or have that random stranger drop it right at the door. No human contact required. No small talk. No uncomfortable wait amongst the crowd. Grab and go!

      When I see that counter full of anonymous cups and bags lined up neatly I view it for what it is: the lost opportunity for two humans to interact in a world increasingly ruled by convenience and disengagement. No wonder it’s so easy to demonize people with different world views–if we don’t ever talk to them they can’t possibly be otherwise just like us. Is it any shock that the only way young people can meet others now is through an app?

      Not for me. Even if I’m the only sucker who stands there to place an order, I’ll take the eye contact and interaction. I’ll take the clarifying questions, the banter, the brief spark of life between two humans before we both move on with our busy lives. Call me the lone hold-out if you’d like, but I prefer to think of it as being a bridge between the isolated and the engaged. Bringing people together, one order at a time.

    • Learning a Language With Apps, Habits and a Deadline

      With a bit of travel coming up and a keen desire to be able to hold up my end of the bargain in a conversation, I’ve doubled down on my use of language learning apps recently. My primary method of learning to this point was Duolingo, which aims to make learning a language fun with a game-like structure, characters who you either learn to love or do your best to ignore, and a methodology that “align[s] with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), which describes what learners can do with the language at different proficiency levels.” Nice.

      Duolingo advertises themselves as a free app, and you can definitely use the app free so long as you don’t mind putting up with the advertising. It didn’t take long for me to find the ads frustrating and just pay for the add-free version (mission accomplished). If you’re going to spend any amount of time on the app it’s worth the $60 USD per year for the Duolingo Plus Individual Plan. If you use it every day it works out to $.16 cents per day. Manageable.

      I’ve managed a streak of 767 days sprinkled with the help of a few “streak freeze”protections along the way when I’ve been traveling or simply didn’t get to it. I’m a big believer in maintaining streaks for habit formation, and have tried to check the language learning box every day for a couple of years now. What I’ve found is that as learning has become more habitualized in my routine using the app just takes care of itself.

      I feel that Duolingo does well in teaching reading comprehension, but I’ve found myself lost in rapid-fire conversations with native French, German and Portuguese speakers (the three languages I’ve focused on with this app). I felt like something was missing with Duolingo, and began looking around at other apps to supplement my daily learning. And that’s when I came across Pimsleur. If Duolingo falls short in one area, it’s in keeping up in conversation with native speakers. Pimsleur uses a couple of tricks to help with this. First, they structure learning modules around a specific conversation, using four tricks to help you understand a conversation that might have overwhelmed you when you first heard it:

      “Graduated Interval Recall — a scientifically-sequenced and proven schedule which moves the items you learn from short-term to long-term memory.
      Anticipation — by “anticipating” the answer to each question, your brain is actively learning and developing new neural connections.
      Core Vocabulary — The Pimsleur Method teaches the most common words and grammatical structures so you can start speaking immediately … in a meaningful way.
      Organic Learning — you learn grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation in context using conversational exchanges — just as you learned your first language, but with the added benefit of a method scientifically-proven to accelerate learning in the adult brain.”

      I’m still using the unpaid version of Pimsleur, focusing specifically on German with it, and I find it beneficial. The graduated interval recall and anticipation jump out at me as being really helpful. I found myself inserting the right word or phrase more often than not, and the way they break down the phrase for you makes it easier to leap forward conversationally. But it is a conversation, so you can’t just quietly sit in a room with others while using the app if you want to learn to speak, you’ve got to talk. This is powerful, but it also requires that you carve out a time and place for it (I don’t anticipate using Pimsleur on my next flight, but I’ll surely use it while driving).

      When combining Pimsleur with Duolingo, you can effectively “immerse” yourself in a language if you put enough time into it. Sure, nothing beats true immersion for learning anything, but let’s face it: most of us have day jobs. Combining the two competing apps seems to be the right formula for me.

      The essential ingredient in any learning tool is focus and commitment—actually using the tools to learn. That’s where habit streaks and deadlines help you become focused. I’m happy just to keep the streak going every day, but I really feel more urgency to learn German knowing I have a trip to Austria and Germany locked in. And French doesn’t get a pass now—I’m sticking with the routine of learning both French and German (sorry Portuguese), and plan to book some time in either France or Quebec soon to dial up the urgency with French too.

      The Holy Trinity of habits, the right tools and the urgency of a deadline bring focus to the task. For nothing focuses the mind like the possibility of being hopelessly lost in conversation. We ought to hold up our end of it instead of expecting the world to just switch to English. Êtes-vous d’accord? (Ja, ich stimme zu)

    • What Do We Make Of This Texture?

      “What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek… The texture of space is a condition of time. Time is the warp and matter the weft of the woven texture of beauty in space, and death is the hurtling shuttle.”
      — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

      “Every religion that does not affirm that God is hidden,” said Pascal flatly, “is not true.” What is man, that thou art mindful of him? This is where the great modern religions are so unthinkably radical: the love of God! For we can see that we are as many as the leaves of trees. But it could be that our faithlessness is a cowering cowardice born of our very smallness, a massive failure of imagination. Certainly nature seems to exult in abounding radicality, extremism, anarchy. If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn’t believe the world existed. In nature, improbabilites are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe. If creation had been left up to me, I’m sure I wouldn’t have had the imagination or courage to do more than shape a single, reasonably sized atom, smooth as a snowball, and let it go at that. No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe. The question from agnosticism is, Who turned on the lights? The question from faith is, Whatever for?” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

      At some point a month or two ago I gently put aside Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. It was right around when things got very busy, when bad news began to stack up around me like junk mail, when processing the deeper concepts behind Annie Dillard’s words became a bit more than I wanted to tackle at the moment. Everything has its time.

      Yet the questions remained.

      What do we make of all this texture? Every ridge line traversed, every waterfall’s mist tickling our skin, every deep conversation with another, every swim in a salty bay, and every sunrise glimpsed are but texture to our lives. But then again, so is every mosquito bite. It’s all so damned far-fetched, and yet here we are.

      I have a sister who is firmly in the God camp. I’m more skeptical of the Hallmark version of a loving God moving the world around like so many chess pieces. We both know life isn’t fair and throws you a curveball now and then to keep you on your toes. We just happen to disagree about “who” is winding up to throw it. And yet we peacefully coexist in both the universe and family dinners—we just don’t question each other’s beliefs.

      It’s easy to be outraged by the other side of the coin. They’re tossing around beliefs that just don’t jibe with our world views. Yet we’re the same coin. It’s fair to ask both “Who turned on the lights?” and “Whatever for?” We’re all asking our version of What’s It All About Alfie? Who said that we are ever meant to know the answers?

      Thankfully, we aren’t alone in pondering the imponderables; as with Dillard and Bacharach framing the questions in this post, we may draw on the wisdom of the ages at any time. Philosophy doesn’t answer the questions for you, but it does help you structure those questions better. We only have our short time to dance with the mysteries of the universe, and will never have all the answers.

      And yet… we get so caught up in the “who, what and why” questions that we forget to ask: How do we make the most of our present condition? For the universe only asks us to live in our time. You come to appreciate the tapestry of life a lot more when you learn to weave yourself into it and let the questions fall away.

    • The Late Night Star Run

      “The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

      Last night offered a small chance to see the northern lights as the skies cleared just enough to open up the universe. What are you to do with an opportunity like that but chase after it? With son and daughter as my two co-conspirators we jumped in the truck and drove northward over twisting country roads. Higher elevations, darker skies, reason for hope to witness that elusive sky dance.

      We never did find the northern lights. Instead we found the starry dome, the wind whispering a chilly welcome, and time to catch up with each other in a random field far from home. The sky above didn’t disappoint, even as we recognized that it wasn’t going to show all its cards to our power trio. As the clouds rolled back in, we jumped back in the truck for the drive home. We agreed the chase was worthwhile, if only for the billion stars dancing infinitely above and for locking us in the amber of the moment in revelatory quiet below.

      We don’t just stumble upon revelation, we must seek it out. Having a spirit of adventure mixed with a sense of place may seem contradictory, as if chasing dreams means leaving home. But the spirit that calls is the universe, and it in turn is our place. You see it more clearly when you get away from the ambient light.

    • April Showers

      We are the first double-leaf sprout, two inches out of the ground.
      We need rain, or we may not grow more than this.
      — Rumi

      The rain rolled in right on schedule, really, timed to mask the Aurora Borealis thoroughly and keep my mind from wandering north. Quietly scheming to drop everything and drive as far north as necessary to be under the northern lights, it became a blessing when I saw there was no point in trying this time. Even as the geomagnetic activity caused a stir of excitement in the aurora community, Mother Nature mocked the audacity of those of us waiting for our turn in New Hampshire.

      April is the second month of the Roman calendar. Depending on the sources you believe, the name is derived from the Roman word Aprillis, for second, or aperio, which means to open up as a flower does. I’ll stick with the former, even as I recognize the world opening up around me. April showers help this process, even as it masks the magic in the universe.

      So be it. We need the rain. More importantly, I need to be present here and now, focused on things beyond my control. Let it rain. April showers wash away the last of winter and coax the earth to awaken in the gun-shy way annuals always approach April in New England. Stick your head up too quickly and you’ll end up freezing it off. Yet one day at a time the world begins to green once again.

      We asked the universe for clear skies, we received days of steady rain. These are the gifts we don’t always welcome in the moment, but come to appreciate some time down the path. For now we must be rooted, and using the stormy days for growth.

    • Centered

      The knight and the castle move jaggedly across the chessboard,
      but they are actually centered on the king. They circle.

      If love is your center, a ring gets put on your finger.
      Something inside the moth is made of fire.
      — Rumi, A Mystic and a Drunk

      We wrap our lives around certain customs and communities, we pursue certain career paths and devote ourselves to certain people. But what is it that centers us there? Are we attracted to comfort and familiarity, or is it something more? When we get a sense of place, from where inside of us do we hear the siren?

      If we are the average of the people we spend the most time with, what in turn draws them to us? What energy are we bringing to the universe aside from a refrigerator full of beer? When friends grow old and drift away, when family is busy and distracted by life and the days grow silent, how do you fill the void? What is your fire that warms you in the dark?

      Our center is not the frenzied world we surround ourselves with. The problem with finding purpose and identity in a world full of noise is that we don’t hear our own voice. For all the talk of finding a burning purpose and following your heart, most people keep looking the wrong way. Instead of throwing more wood on the fire sometimes you’ve got to let things burn down to their essence. Our answers lie deep in the embers.

    • Good People

      “They’ll never be any shortage of good people in the world. All you got to do is seek them out and get as many of them as possible into your life. Keep the rest the hell out.” — Charlie Munger

      “You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” — Jim Rohn

      I’ve tried to live this “no assholes” philosophy in every aspect of my life. We are who we continually surround ourselves with. It’s one reason you’ll never find me on the extreme edges of politics, fighting for every dollar in certain business cultures, or spending any significant amount of time on Facebook. I enjoy living a happy, trusting life surrounded by wonderful people. Call me crazy.

      We’ve seen what a toxic culture can do. The world of assholes has an awful stink. Find the good people where the air is clear. Where the building of bridges happens. Where there’s hope for the future and an earnestness to contribute to it.

      When you find a company that is filled with good people, trying earnestly to make a positive difference, you want to try a little harder to measure up. When you join a company filled with people trying to step on you to climb a notch ahead, you either kick them back or immediately find another company. Seems an easy choice to me.

      Where did all the good people go,
      I’ve been changing channels I don’t see them
      On the TV shows
      Where did all the good people go,
      We got heaps and heaps of what we sow
      — Jack Johnson, Good People

      Sometimes I surprise people when I tell them I don’t watch a lot of television, and definitely don’t watch a lot of news. Talking heads on a program, no matter how earnest they might seem, aren’t there to serve you and me. They’re there to amplify and draw you in. There are surely good people swimming in the red ocean of news programming, but why risk getting eaten alive trying to find them? Swim in the tranquil sea instead. The water’s great, come on in.

      If all this seems rather utopian, well, it’s not a determined ignorance of the dark side of humanity. No head in the sand here, thank you. Rather, it’s an informed decision to associate with the best people you can find, people who will lend a hand. People who make you want to be a better person yourself.

      That kind of good vibe builds on itself. That’s how communities are formed. It’s how families stay together. How marriages last a lifetime. Find the good people and earn a place at the table. You might even discover happiness was right there, waiting for you to stop paying attention to the not very good people.

    • The Rhizome Remains

      “We do not know how life is going to turn out. Therefore the story has no beginning, and the end can only be vaguely hinted at. The life of man is a dubious experiment. It is a tremendous phenomenon only in numerical terms. Individually, it is so fleeting, so insufficient, that it is literally a miracle that anything can exist and develop at all. I was impressed by that fact long ago, as a young medical student, and it seemed to me miraculous that I should not have been prematurely annihilated. Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away — an ephemeral apparition.
      When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures beneath the eternal flux. What we see is blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains. In the end the only events in my life worth telling are those when the imperishable world erupted into this transitory one. That is why I speak chiefly of inner experiences, amongst which I include my dreams and visions. These form the prima materia of my scientific work.”
      — Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

      Our lifespan is but the bloom that eventually withers away, yet the rhizome remains in our spirit and the work we leave behind for others. Think of the traits we see carry from generation to generation. Think of the art and music that resonates long after the composer has withered away. We have people that stay with us for the rest of our days; we can see the twinkle in their eye, we can hear their laughter. Life is Jung’s ephemeral apparition, but as we feel of those who have transcended this world, the physical manifestation of our being isn’t all there is of us.

      Our season is very short, but rooted below the surface we’re anchored to eternity. And this, when you think about it, offers a bit of hope in this ridiculous game of living. For we come and go in our season, but our rhizome remains. There’s a sense of permanence in that, as we make the most of our impermanent time in bloom. We shine in our time and offer what we might to those who carry on.

      The present season, anchored to eternity

    • It’s All Relative

      Are you having a long day
      Everyone you meet rubs you the wrong way
      Dirty city streets smell like an ashtray
      Morning bells are ringing in your ear
      Is your brother on a church kick
      Seems like just a different kind of dope sick
      Better off to teach a dog a card trick
      And try to have a point and make it clear
      You should know compared
      To people on a global scale
      Our kind has had it relatively easy
      And here with you there’s always
      Something to look forward to
      Our angry heart beats relatively easy
      — Jason Isbell, Relatively Easy

      When you want to reset your brain about minor inconveniences and perceived affronts, take a look at the rest of the world. Take a look at the people you care about wasting away with terminal illnesses. Get outside of yourself and see the pain in another’s eyes. Sure, we suffer too, but aren’t we getting off relatively easy compared to so many?

      I spent two hours on hold with an airline trying to apply a credit from one cancelled flight towards another flight that might end up being cancelled too. There was a time when I might have complained about this, embraced the indignities of modern economics, and pointed out the frustration of the moment for all to hear. I’m not that indignant anymore. What are our problems compared to others?

      There are no bombs dropping in the neighborhood at the moment. No tanks rolling across the landscape targeting my family and friends. We have food and shelter and our health, and a reasonable chance of having each again tomorrow and next year.

      We have it relatively easy. Isn’t that enough? Learn the rhythm of celebrating what we do have. Dance with the world outside our own heads.