Alexandersmap

    Author: nhcarmichael

    • Act

      “To act is to modify the shape of the world.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

      It’s a shame that the phrase have a bias towards action spun into cliché business speak, because I do believe having a bias towards action serves you well in this world.  For me it’s a kick in the ass reminder to get going already.  To use another cliché, to just do it already.

      I took a few steps to try to shape the world today, in my own modest way.  Shouldn’t we all?  Time will tell if I put a dent in the universe or simply sputter into a sea of indifference, but at least I’m acting.  And isn’t that something?

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

    • Revisiting Belém Tower

      Perched on the Northern Shore at the Mouth of the Tagus River, Belém Tower is a time machine back to the Age of Discovery.  It was built while Ferdinand Magellan was still making the first circumnavigation of the globe, a high point on a string of maritime milestones for Portugal.  It was designed by Francisco de Arruda as a “permanent ship” to help defend Lisbon and the river, and features the Portuguese Manuelino style popular during the lifetime of King Manuel I.  That it stands largely as it was built 500 years later is a blessing.  Countless souls have walked through Belém Tower, from kings to prisoners to tourists from all over the world.  I’m lucky to have been one of those souls.  As travel remains a dream for the future, I thought I’d return once again.

      Belém Tower is an island dropped in the waters of the Tagas River. To visit it you purchase a ticket next door and go stand in line on the small pedestrian bridge that spans the lapping waters that swirl around the base of the tower underneath you and then splash up the stairs that circle the tower on shore.  Apparently the island was once further out in the river but an earthquake shifted the land and moved it closer to shore.  Better for tourism today, and it’s likely that the prisoners held in the lowest level didn’t really care about a 360 degree water view anyway.

      You enter into the bastion at the base and the arched ceilings grab your attention.  There are views of the magazine from when it was a fort, or where the prisoners were held when it was a prison.  As you climb, you visit the Governor’s Hall, the King’s Hall and the Audience Room.  I quickly learned that the staircases are very tight, and require you wait your turn to climb up or down in a controlled fashion.  I didn’t expect to be waiting at traffic lights in a building built half a millennium ago, but sure enough I did.  Great indication of just how many people visit, and how cramped those staircases are.  Like other spiral staircases built long ago, these were tight for this tall writer.  There just weren’t a lot of clydesdales walking around in 1520, something I’ve grown to accept as I duck my way through history.  The other thing you notice is the ornate gothic details adorning the building.  This was built as a fortress, but also for a king.  There are wonderful details throughout, and I did my best to take it all in.  Traveling solo, I was able to allocate as much time as I wanted for Belém Tower and managed to explore all parts of the structure open to the public.

      I fell in love with Portugal and wonder when I’ll get a chance to return again.  My visit to Belém Tower in January of 2018 capped off an incredible week in my life that marked a new beginning of sorts for me.  I visited before the tower’s birthday, before the pandemic, before a lot of things.  It would be interesting to return again someday to see Belém Tower with fresh perspective.  To feel the energy of Lisbon and the possibility that the Tagas River offered those who launched their own discoveries sailing right past the tower.  I was so busy looking back during my visit that I wasn’t fully aware of the future that Portugal helped launch for me.  My own age of discovery, if you will.  In many ways, it started right here.

      Inside the Bastion

       

    • Life, Intensified

      “The purpose of art is not a rarified, intellectual distillate—it is life, intensified, brilliant life. – Alain Arias-Misson

      I stepped into the deep end early this morning, plunging straight down to touch the bottom and felt my body slowly rise with thousands of bubbles tickling my skin as we all escaped to the surface together. I slowly rolled over as we reached our destination and looked at the blueness of the sky broken by the oak leaves that were finally, grudgingly waking up to Spring to join the maples in leafing out. The sunlight streamed through them all, coaxing them awake to dance with the light. Of all my morning routines, the plunge is the one I love the most. When you live in the north you think about these moments in the frozen months. You welcome them back with ecstasy in Spring and reluctantly return them to memory in Autumn. These are the moments when the world disappears and you feel most alive.

      I write to wring out these moments of aliveness and capture them in words. To dance with the light and rise above the depths of routine. And I seek out co-conspirators, searching for the vibrancy of fellow light dancers betrayed by subtle actions and a twinkle in the eye. If art intensifies the brilliance of life, the like-minded amplify it and coax you to do more, just as the sunlight draws out those oak leaves. And when you can’t always find them in the wild, you might read their words or see their art and know you aren’t the only one. We all rise together, like a chorus or a thousand bubbles swirling from the depths to break the welcoming surface once again.

    • Owning a Pool

      I dove into deep water Saturday, grateful for the pool heater and the money to pay for the luxury of it.  I’m pretty sure that if I had to do it all over again I’d never have invested in a pool. I’m not wealthy, but I might be if I didn’t have it.  And since I made the financial leap 13 years ago who am I to ignore it now?  A pool has a price that goes beyond the installation and maintenance costs.  It’s an anchor in your backyard that holds you just as firmly as a garden does.  When I installed the pool I had two young children and a highly active Labrador retriever (dog ear infections from swimming too much: yet another hidden cost).  The children are adults now, the retriever has finally escaped the fences of this world, and I’m still looking at a hole in the ground that doesn’t care whether I want it there anymore as long as I feed it money.

      To say I have a tenuous relationship with the pool is an understatement.  But we’ve recently resolved some of our differences.  It involved money, naturally.  If time is money, then I’ve given a lot of my lifetime to this pool, and I was feeling a bit resentful.  The last straw was the pool heater failing a year ago and the water never really warming up to acceptable levels for the masses.  And so it became an expensive water feature in the garden, with trees shading it just enough that it never really got comfortable, even on the hottest days.  And so this year we ponied up the cash and fixed the heat exchanger, dodging a $6000 replacement cost with an $800 repair.  How long it lasts is anyone’s guess, but the pool is warm enough for the fair weather fans.  And I danced the gleeful dance that only a pool owner can understand; I only spent $800 this time!

      Look, I know a large percentage of the population is unemployed and struggling to make ends meet.  I know that having a pool available when you’re under quarantine is surely a luxury, and don’t think for a minute that I’m not grateful for it now.  I’ve been unemployed with the pool and two kids to feed and know both sides of this story.  For the moment the pool and I are peacefully coexisting, and I’m grateful for the good fortune.  With the kids home all summer, the pool may be used more than it has been in years.  But I see the pool liner fading, and the cracks in the stamped concrete, and the louder hum the pump is making, and I know that this toll road continues indefinitely.  A pool is a lot like a boat in this way, but without the travel.  If there was ever a year to have it, it’s 2020.  And so I’ll continue to throw money in the hole and hope for some measure of return on my investment.  That ROI is measured in laps, and I have my work cut out for me to make it worthwhile.  Better jump in again…

    • Memorial Day

      “And if any gaze on our rushing band,
      We come between him and the deed of his hand,
      We come between him and the hope of his heart.”
      – W.B. Yeats, The Hosting of the Sidhe

      Today is Memorial Day in the United States.  A day to remember those who sacrificed everything that we might live in freedom.  I believe that Yeats was on a completely different track with this poem, but I’m drawn to these lines when I think about this particular Memorial Day.  Death came between the hopes and dreams of countless soldiers on battlefields far from home.  And for their sacrifice we should be eternally grateful.  The older I get, the more I recognize this, the more I appreciate their sacrifice, and the more I hope for a day when there are no more sacrifices made to be memorialized.

      In The Hosting of the Sidhe Yeats writes of the supernatural and enchantment by faeries.  I’ve felt this too, in the form of the whisper of a place of significance, in the form of the muse that I channel, and through listening to the land on deep walks in quiet places far from asphalt and concrete and copper wiring.  The beauty of poetry is in the interpretation of the individual.  It means something different for me than to you, and perhaps something else entirely to the author.  Memorial Day itself is subject to interpretation.  I think of weathered gravestones with fresh flags planted beside them that I’ve visited, memorializing heroes of battles long forgotten or never known by most everyone who’s come after their sacrifice.  And those lost in more recent battles we’ve collectively conceded to for reasons we don’t fully understand.  We owe them more than politicians going through the motions at a ceremony and 20% off (this weekend only!) sales.  But that’s the way of the world; it moves ahead anyway, despite that which came between him and the hope of his heart.

      This post is heavier than I wanted it to be.  I suppose the day warrants that.  As the world reflects on the collective sacrifice of all in our effort to keep a virus in check, perhaps take a moment to think of those who sacrificed something more, and act on the hope in our own hearts while there’s still time.  We owe it to them, don’t we?

       

       

    • Rejoice In This Moment

      “Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.” – Michel de Montaigne

      “My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it . . . but love it.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (borrowed from Ryan Holiday)

      “Be still my heart; thou hast known worse than this.” – Homer, The Odyssey

      One thing that’s impressed me over the last three months is the resilience and grace of so many people facing adversity.  Is the world unfair?  Yes, of course it is, but that doesn’t mean we have to be bitter about where we are in this moment.  Embrace the suck, love the moment and learn from it.  And really, it doesn’t all suck, does it?  There’s so much good happening in every moment – change the focus of your internal lens and you’ll see it more clearly.

      The Homer quote above has stuck in my head since I read The Odyssey at the age of 19.  It’s sitting on a shelf waiting patiently for me to come back to read again like Penelope waiting for Odysseus to stop pissing off the gods and get home already.  Anyway, it’s come in handy over the years, right up there with “this too shall pass” on my list of phrases I say to myself when things get challenging.  And let’s face it, things are challenging at the moment.  But how we react to it is more important than what we’re reacting to.  Amor fati: love of fate, seems to have worked for the stoics, for George Washington, Friedrich Nietzsche and countless others over the centuries, and it will work for us too.

      I’ve been guilty of complaining about things a bit too much, and I’m working to change that little character flaw.  If I’ve learned anything, it’s that complaining just fuels the suck.  It all ends badly for all of us, or it all ends as it should for all of us; it’s all a state of mind either way.  Rejoice in what you can control, forget what is beyond you, and love the moment you’re in.  For this moment, even if it’s not what we might want, is the only moment we have.  This, and we, too shall pass.  Rejoice in this moment.

    • Realizing the Path

      “The path of water is not noticed by water, it is realized by water.… To study the way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to awaken into the ten thousand things.” – Brian Doyle, from the Forward of One Long River Of Song

      “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits

      I’ve been thinking about why I write this blog every day. Surely it isn’t for money, or to influence the masses, or even for the thrill of likes and affirmation. Fame? No thanks. A form of immortality? Come on now… No, each post is a step down the path and a vote for identity. I’m a bit overdue to walk this path, but I’m happy to be on it now. Ironically, spending a hour or two writing every morning clears my head enough to be more productive in my day job. I guess it clears the plaque out of my brain cells. It also makes me more focused at home and more engaged with the world around me. All wins in my book. I think that’s enough.

    • Drink Up

      “The cup of life’s for him that drinks
           And not for him that sips.” 
       – Robert Louis Stevenson, Away With Funeral Music

      I read through several poems this morning, finding them all falling flat for me.  Same with the books I’m reading.  I know I have a few stand-byes I can call up, but I resist the urge to tap into Henry and Mary and Hafiz this morning.  I welcome them all, but today I want to explore new places.  And then Robert Louis Stevenson tapped on my shoulder.  Here was a fascinating guy; Scottish (good start), prolific writer and adventurous soul who suffered from respiratory issues but pushed through them anyway to travel the world.  Look at a picture of Stevenson towards the end of his life, while he was living in Samoa, and you see a twinkle in his eyes.  This was a guy who was drinking from the cup of life right to his abrupt departure at the age of 44.

      So what of us?  Why take little sips when you don’t know which will be your last.  Drink with gusto, maybe with a little dribbling out the corner of your mouth.  Get out there when the world opens up and experience all that’s available to us.  I’m not talking about debauchery here, but living larger.  Doing more with the time you have.  Now.

      “Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.” – Jim Collins, Good To Great

      It’s so easy to settle for a good life…  because it’s pretty good.  But Stevenson had a good life in Edinburgh too, and he still got up and got out there to see the world.  And to write timeless work.  And live with a twinkle in his eye right to the end.  So drink up.  We’ve got work to do.

       

       

    • Not an Anchor but a Mast

      “Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral. But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed. Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.” – Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

      “Restless in rest” sums up my weekends, and my time on Buzzards Bay, and sailing, and in the garden and in the house… and in stillness. I need to keep moving and doing things. I’m not much of a meditator. I calm the mind through doing things. Meditate? Do the dishes! Weed the garden! Paint something!  Trim the hedges!  That’s my meditation. Rest is not in my DNA.  Even at my desk I had to put in a sit/stand adapter because I can’t sit still all day.  I guess that makes me a child of space, like a worker bee.  Worker bees don’t sit still. They fly far away, find and collect beautiful bounty, and return it to the nest.  They simply… work. And so must I.

      This concept of your house as a mast mesmerized me, for uh, verily, I’ve long thought of it as an anchor.  In normal times my career takes me to faraway places to busily go about my work and then to return home to the nest with whatever I earned along the way.  Home was an anchor that held me to a certain place, the opposite of a mast.  Wandering souls need masts and disdain anchors, like a dog tied to a tree gnaws at the rope. But don’t we need both?  A place to ground us and fair winds to fly before?

      Every night I lie down in bed with a Groundhog Day feeling.  That feeling of doing the exact same thing that you did the night before and the night before that.  That’s what staying home does to me.  And yet every day is different, full of progression and setbacks and new discoveries and familiar faces seen in a new way.  And I wake in the morning and set the sails and find new ways to move forward.  Shunning comfort.  To be hungrier.  To run lean and with an eye to the horizon.  But you’ve got to weigh anchor before you set the sails, even if it’s only in your mind.

    • Consider The Hummingbird

      “Consider the hummingbird for a long moment…. Each one visits a thousand flowers a day. They can dive at sixty miles an hour. They can fly backward. They can fly more than five hundred miles without pausing to rest. But when they rest they come close to death: on frigid nights, or when they are starving, they retreat into torpor, their metabolic rate slowing to a fifteenth of their normal sleep rate, their hearts sludging nearly to a halt, barely beating, and if they are not soon warmed, if they do not soon find that which is sweet, their hearts grow cold, and they cease to be… The price of their ambition is a life closer to death; they suffer more heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures than any other living creature.”

      “Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise, and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old.”

      “No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside.” – Brian Doyle, Joyas Voladoras

      I get a bit breathless when I read something as stunning as Joyas Voladoras, and perhaps I share too much of it here.  It’s from a collection of essays by Brian Doyle in One Long River Of Song.  I’ve been saving it until I saw my first hummingbird of the season, figuring it would be a nice way to mark the occasion.  Well, that happened over two days ago, and I’m happy to share the sparkling light of Joyas Voladoras with you now.  Welcome back, hummingbirds, I’m glad to see you return to the garden.

      I play my part in keeping them from retreating to tupor with as many hummingbird-friendly plants and flowers as I can justify cramming into the sunniest corners of my backyard.  And in return they keep me from returning to tupor, if only for this short season.  For that I’m grateful, and I keep finding more excuses to add maybe just one more plant.  The bees return first, followed by the hummingbirds, and soon the butterflies will return too and the garden will be complete.  Or maybe it’s me that will be, or maybe all of us, in this together with our collection of heartbeats thumping to the song of today.

      Reading an essay like Joyas Voladoras swings the spotlight onto my own work, and I recognize that I have a ways to go in the writing.  But the blog serves as my apprenticeship and I keep putting it out there even if it misses the mark or is welcomed with grateful indifference.  I’m silently plotting an escape for my ambitions, one post at a time.  Words and structure of sentences are one thing, but weaving sparkling light and magic into those words is another.  What makes you breathless as a reader?  We all churn inside, don’t we?  How do we share that with the world?  Bird by bird, today and tomorrow too.  There’s enough tupor in the world, we all need a bit more warmth.