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    • More Like a Cardinal

      Contemplating the turf war between a pair of stressed House Wrens and a nonchalant female Cardinal perched a little too close to the nest. I was struck by the similarity between the birds and my relationship with my neighbors. The neighbors are fine people, mind you, but they each do something that I find annoying in some small way. And I realized that I was like the House Wrens reacting to encroachment from the Cardinal. And of course, the neighbors were like the Cardinal.

      The Cardinal was simply existing, but doing so in a way that annoyed the Wrens. And I recognized I don’t want to be like a House Wren at all. I want to be more like a Cardinal. Not necessarily annoying the neighbors with my presence, but in the nonchalant way that it goes through life.

      I realized in that moment that I’m probably going to live in this spot, with a nod to fate, for at least thirty years of my lifetime. By far the longest I’ve spent any time in any place. And I’m a nomad at heart. What brought me to this realization? Comfort? Complacency? Commitment? I’m sure there are C’s I’m missing, but you already know the answer anyway. It’s a bit of each. And this is how communities are formed. People sticking together despite annoying tendencies and a competing urge to try a new place now and then.

      Cardinals don’t migrate. They stick with the place they live in and make it work. House Wrens, on the other hand, migrate to warmer climates for the winter and return when the weather warms up again. Snowbirds versus redbirds, if you will. Both return, but where they’ve been in the meantime is so very different.

      Ultimately, I long to fly like each bird. To fly off but return to the home nest seems appealing. I’m coming to terms with the idea that my travel will be shorter in duration, but perhaps more meaningful knowing I have a place to land in when I return. Maybe that’s enough. And thirty years in one nest is surprisingly closer than I ever imagined.

    • The Great Bunny Escape

      I’m not one to think a lot about bunnies. And I can assure you this post will be a rarity in the relentlessly eclectic world of Alexandersmap. But there’s a story that must be told.

      It seems there are people in this world who buy bunnies as pets around Easter. They seem to believe this is a good thing, sharing cuteness and such with children or lovers or maybe just a self-indulgence – who knows, really? Personally, I’m more inclined to dark chocolate, but some people choose to acquire living creatures as pets. And they love them for all their cuteness. Until they grow bigger and become adult bunnies. And then what?

      Well, they drive through some wooded street far from their own home and abandon that bunny on the side of the road like an old mattress or refrigerator they don’t want to pay to have removed. Classy. And a winning strategy for teaching the next generation how to be responsible adults. I bet these bastards don’t even recycle.

      I don’t believe in fairy tales, but I hope if there’s an afterlife there’s a special place in hell reserved for bunny and mattress dumpers. I imagine, in my darkest moments, it involves lying forever on that dirty old mattress surrounded by millions of abandoned bunnies, each with that wrinkly nose munching vibe that bunnies have, staring with those crazy genetically-engineered pink eyes, while the dumpers slowly spirals into insanity.

      What? Won’t concede me this version of Dante’s Inferno? Could they at least have nightmares about abandoned bunnies scratching at the walls trying to get back in?

      Flight of fancy aside, my work day was interrupted by an animal control officer ringing my door bell to inform me that there was a white bunny in my backyard. I’d heard about this bunny, for it’s been roaming the neighborhood since some A-hole dumped it on the side of the road. Apparently the longer bunnies are alive out in the wild the more they like their newfound freedom. Honestly, I don’t blame the bunny – I’d rather deal with wild predators in unfamiliar woods than that crappy family that bought me like some edible arrangement that could be tossed aside when the only thing left was melon slices.

      Apparently the bunny was spotted in the neighbor’s backyard. For those keeping track, this is the same neighbor’s backyard that featured a goat hiding from a killer bear last fall, so the word was out amongst the domesticated animal crowd that this was the halfway house in town. So the neighbors have animal control on speed dial and they had a reunion in the driveway, spooking the bunny into my own backyard, which brings us back to the doorbell ringing.

      Walking outside, I’m confronted with four animal control professionals with a distinct smell of skunk in the air (they’ve been busy elsewhere on this day). Each had a large net on poles, like a fishing net on steroids. They had the bunny surrounded in the shrubbery and were discussing how to get it out of there when I showed up. The bunny answered for them and shot out of the holly and sprinted towards the deck.

      What I noticed in this moment, if we were to put it in slow motion like a Hollywood movie, is four capable adults with nets watching the bunny makes its move. The nets never descended on the bunny. Which makes me wonder – why carry a net at all? Returning to normal speed, the white bunny was moving at a high rate of speed, impossibly fast for the reaction time of an animal control officer bent over to peer under a holly bush. It seems it’s not as simple as bending sideways to dodge a flying bullet like a superhero.

      The bunny went under the deck and the animal control officers each shrugged their shoulders and packed up to leave. Leaving me wondering what they hell I was going to do with a rogue domesticated bunny in my yard. Come on folks, what ever happened to “Try, try again”?! And sure enough, just as I was thinking this the bunny sprinted out from the deck and around to the front of the yard. I shouted to the animal control officers and the chase was on once again!

      You might be thinking this is where they catch the bunny. No, the bunny ran away again, and the animal control officers once again took their big nets, got in their cars and drove away saying they’d be back when the bunny was back. Back? The bunny is still here, just fifty feet from where it left you! But I knew the truth in this statement, the bunny was here as long as it felt like being here or became a bobcat dinner. They just weren’t going to invest any more time chasing it.

      Sure enough, later in the afternoon I walked out to tend the garden and there was the white bunny, quietly munching on my lawn. Next to it was a wild rabbit doing the same. Each assessed me while chewing the flora, knowing there wasn’t much I could do to stop them. I’m not a bunny killer, they could see it in my eyes. And just maybe, they saw a future together, wild and domestic, living together in bliss. I suppose it’s better than the house of horrors the bunny came from.

    • Wake, Into This Life

      The sound
      of a bell
      still reverberating.

      or a blackbird
      calling
      from a corner
      of the
      field.

      Asking you
      to wake
      into this life
      or inviting you
      deeper
      to one that waits.

      Either way
      takes courage,
      either way wants you
      to be nothing
      but that self that
      is no self at all,
      wants you to walk
      to the place
      where you find
      you already know
      how to give
      every last thing
      away.
      – David Whyte, The Bell and the Blackbird

      A poem like this grabs you just like that bell or blackbird, reverberating inside and declaring it sees what you’re doing. What you’re not doing. And reminds you that time is quickly slipping away. And yet here you are, giving it all away.

      Or are you?

      When we finally wake up into this life, we see the uneven ground we walk on, the big asks and the small favors that add up. How do we deal with that, when we finally see life as it is? Do we run away from it or embrace it?

      What is asked of us is not the point of life. What matters is what we give. Willingly or grudgingly, what we give back to life is all that ever matters.

      Have the courage to be selfless.

      Have the courage to give it all away and go to what awaits you.

      But wake up.

    • To Be Touched by Everything I’ve Found

      One obvious problem with long drives is that it eats into reading time. You can solve this with audio books, of course, but then what of podcasts? As a heavy consumer of both, what do you choose? And this is where time becomes our enemy.

      Long drives require epic podcast episodes, and there’s nothing more epic than Hardcore History with Dan Carlin. For the last year I’ve been saving long stretches of travel to complete Supernova of the East, which is like all of Carlin’s podcasts: devastating edge of your seat listening. You want a little perspective as you crawl along in traffic over the Tappan Zee Bridge? Listen to the details of the Battle of Okinawa as Carlin spins his magic.

      What do you do when you’ve finished a series like Supernova of the East and you need to step back into the better side of humanity? Music helps. Lately I’ve been mixing classic rock and what today is known as “Americana” music (personally, I just call it music). Specifically, diving into old Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young tunes and new Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit compilations. Looking for poetry set to music? You can’t go wrong with either. As a lover of words piled together just so, Isbell does to your brain cells what a complex Cabernet does to your taste buds.

      The best I can do
      Is to let myself trust that you know
      Who’ll be strong enough to carry your heart
      – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Letting You Go

      When you get to a hotel room in some remote place and you’ve caught up on all those emails and administrative work, what next? Drink? Watch television? Or dive back into the books that have tapping you on the shoulder for attention? There’s a place for every form of entertainment, but in most of my travels the hotel television never gets turned on. But the Kindle app does.

      After some consistent prodding by a friend of mine, I’m finally finishing Sapiens by Yusef Noah Harari. I know, what took me so long? Honestly it just kept slipping down the pile as other books jumped ahead. Regrettable, but life is about tradeoffs. What we choose to dance with in our brief time makes all the difference in how we see the world. Now that I’ve almost wrapped it up, I see what all the fuss is about.

      “Even today, with all our advanced technologies, more than 90 per cent of the calories that feed humanity come from the handful of plants that our ancestors domesticated between 9500 and 3500 BC – wheat, rice, maize (called ‘corn’ in the US), potatoes, millet and barley. No noteworthy plant or animal has been domesticated in the last 2,000 years. If our minds are those of hunter-gatherers, our cuisine is that of ancient farmers.” – Yusef Noah Harari, Sapiens

      Speaking of that stack of books, I put aside a couple of other books to focus on completing Sapiens. One in particular, The Blind Watchmaker, is a heavier lift than Sapiens, but compliments it well. I’ve referenced it before in the blog, and look forward to moving it to the virtual “done” pile. Combined, these two books have shaken my perspective of the world and how we got here.

      “If you have a mental picture of X and you find it implausible that the human eye could have arisen directly from it, this simply means that you have chosen the wrong X.” – Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker

      Inevitably I need to sprinkle in page-turner fiction, poetry and sharp left turn material to shake off reality until I can catch my breath again. Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda was a definite left turn for me, an interesting read that got me thinking about mysticism and craving more time in the desert Southwest.

      “You can do better. There is one simple thing wrong with you—you think you have plenty of time.” – Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan

      The Sea in You: Twenty Poems of Requited and Unrequited Love by David Whyte is a lovely collection of poems by one of our living masters. Whyte stirs words together with the best of them and catches my imagination with his alchemy. I’ll surely spend more time with Whyte in this blog in the near future.

      “be weathered by what comes to you, like the way you
      too
      have travelled from so far away to be here, once
      reluctant
      and now as solid and as here and as willing
      to be touched as everything you have found.”
      – David Whyte, The Sea in You: Twenty Poems of Requited and Unrequited Love

      We collect bits of wisdom and memorable nuggets in our consumption. Does this make us better conversationalists or a faster draw on Jeopardy? Most likely, but there’s something more to it than that. To revisit the old cliche, we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. What we consume either amplifies our biases or challenges them. I choose to be challenged, and find myself slowly stretching and building a better mind, with greater perspective, through what I listen to, watch and read.

      In short, to be touched by everything I’ve found.

    • The New Clumsiness of Travel

      What happens when, having spend your adult life mastering the art of traveling, you pause said travel for months at a time? Other than one memorable trip to Ohio last fall I haven’t traveled since March 2020. So I eagerly packed my bag for a brief regional trip Monday morning, wondering what the road might offer me this time.

      This one was supposed to be simple. Drive four hours south to New Jersey, spend a night and meet with some folks on Tuesday, then drive up to Connecticut for some other meetings. But I noticed the rustiness right away. It started with leaving my laptop at home. I realized it at a gas station just down the road – no harm, no foul. Just time counted against me. Time that would stack up as traffic built in front of me, adding proposed route changes and a distinct feeling that the drive would be much longer than anticipated.

      Welcome back! Connecticut said, throwing orange greeting cones up for me in celebration at my return. And I embraced the lane closure as a stoic ought to. Such is fate. This used to grind me to dust, now it’s a reminder of what I’d gained during the pandemic: time and perspective. I watched the angry desperation of drivers cutting ahead of three cars just to feel some measure of control over the situation and turned the air vent back towards me for the breeze. No, none of this was all that important.

      The rules are ambiguous. Signage states to wear a mask in some places, and I slip it on as I walk in the door only to see half the people inside not wearing a mask. I keep it on anyway, respecting the sign on the door, or more specifically, the person who left it up. Not very hard, this mask thing, but so bloody divisive for a population that can’t handle anything remotely inconvenient in their march towards oblivion. What’s a mask but a sign of regard for our fellow humans?

      The tavern I choose for dinner is empty and anticipating company that never comes. A help wanted sign waves in the hot breeze outside, trying in vain to get people to embrace working for a living once again. The bartender fumbles for her mask when I walked in, I told her not to worry about it with a simple word: “vaccinated”. And this is where we are in the world, uncertain greetings and understaffed small businesses trying to scrape survival out of the days after COVID.

      I return to my hotel room, largely alone on the entire floor but for a family on the far end who will use the hallway as a daycare until well into the evening. I might have been bothered by this two years ago, but it’s nice just to hear signs of life in this quiet hotel. They might be at 20% capacity, based on the cars in the lot.

      Dozing off thinking about an early start, celebrating the awkwardness of being back on the road again, I’m jolted awake by what I believe to be the fire alarms going off. It turns out to be a tornado warning pushed to both of my phones simultaneously. Turning one off, I acknowledge the other and open the blinds for some of the most brilliant lightning streaks I’ve ever seen dancing across the sky for the next hour. Thankfully no tornadoes touching down at the Doubletree.

      Do you know that old cliché about never forgetting how to ride a bicycle? Travel now feels this way. You just plug yourself back into the travel routine, brush off the rustiness and go. The routine is largely the same, only traveler has changed.

    • Illusions of the Moment

      “When you go through life with preferences but don’t let your happiness depend on any one of them, then you’re awake. You’re moving toward wakefulness. Wakefulness, happiness—call it what you wish—is the state of nondelusion, where you see things not as you are but as they are, insofar as this is possible for a human being. To drop illusions, to see things, to see reality. Every time you are unhappy, you have added something to reality. It is that addition that makes you unhappy. I repeat: You have added something … a negative reaction in you. Reality provides the stimulus, you provide the reaction. You have added something by your reaction. And if you examine what you have added, there is always an illusion there, there’s a demand, an expectation, a craving.” – Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      Monday mornings are a good time to revisit De Mello. To confront the reality of the work week ahead without dread requires a measure of acceptance of the moment you’re living in. If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing do something else as soon as you possibly can. If you enjoy it, understand what it draws out of you and double down on that. Most people in the world today have the freedom to choose how they react.

      The entire quote above might immediately makes you think of Viktor Frankl’s thoughts on stimulus and response. Even in the worst of moments, we can choose how to react to stimulus in our lives. Accept the truth of the matter for what it is and see things for how they are. That might not make you happy, but it makes you fully aware. And don’t we need to be in that state to make effective, meaningful decisions in our lives?

      The question is, what exactly are you adding in the moment? What are your illusions about the way things ought to be, about how someone should speak with you, about wearing a mask or getting vaccinated or how we see a person a bit different from ourself? How do you view that job you’re going to or the title you have or the car you drive? How about how you view the person driving in front of you or the one trying to pass you? What are you adding in that moment?

      We often confront illusions in how others treat us. I had a conversation with an old friend who was poking at me about a tendency I used to have when we were younger. I smiled and let the moment slide away, knowing I’m not that person anymore. You learn to accept who you once were as you get older. But doing so in the moment is a bit trickier, isn’t it? It requires us to be constantly aware of the illusions we’re throwing up. What story am I telling myself right now? And what might happen if I simply subtracted that story?

      This idea of observing yourself in the moment between stimulus and response is a way of getting outside of your own head and seeing the choices in front of you. To shatter the illusion that you don’t have a choice in how you react. To shift to a state of non-delusion and maybe, to choose the path towards happiness. In the thirty years since I first read Man’s Search for Meaning and accelerating in the two years since I read Awareness I’ve chipped away at this within myself. I’m under no illusion that I’ve mastered it, but I work with the tools available to step outside myself towards wakefulness.

      This is a skill that is especially handy on some Monday mornings.

    • Since It Must Be So

      “For Sayonara, literally translated, ‘Since it must be so,’ of all the good-bys I have heard is the most beautiful. Unlike the Auf Wiedershens and Au revoirs, it does not try to cheat itself by any bravado ‘Till we meet again,’ any sedative to postpone the pain of separation. It does not evade the issue like the sturdy blinking Farewell. Farewell is a father’s good-by. It is – ‘Go out in the world and do well, my son.’ It is encouragement and admonition. It is hope and faith. But it passes over the significance of the moment; of parting it says nothing. It hides its emotion. It says too little. While Good-by (‘God be with you’) and Adios say too much. They try to bridge the distance, almost to deny it. Good-by is a prayer, a ringing cry. ‘You must not go – I cannot bear to have you go! But you shall not go alone, unwatched. God will be with you. God’s hand will over you’ and even – underneath, hidden, but it is there, incorrigible – ‘I will be with you; I will watch you – always.’ It is a mother’s good-by. But Sayonara says neither too much nor too little. It is a simple acceptance of fact. All understanding of life lies in its limits. All emotion, smoldering, is banked up behind it. But it says nothing. It is really the unspoken good-by, the pressure of a hand, ‘Sayonara.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh, North to the Orient

      The very best part of coming out the other side of this pandemic, fully vaccinated and more than ready to get on with things, is getting reacquainted face-to-face with the people who you’ve built lifetime relationships with. It was seeing my father in person for the first time in two years a few weeks ago. And seeing a group of people I hadn’t seen since Christmas 2019 yesterday. The reunions are always special, and now always involve some version of How was it for you?

      And what then? We part ways and go back to knowing each other from apart. Fresh memories instead of stretching the mind for highlights. Will we see each other again soon or was this a quick stepping stone to another few years, or really, will we ever see each other again? The presumption is yes, because we live in a time where there’s generally a good probability that we will. But what if we don’t?

      Lindbergh clarifies this moment of goodbye and the things we say to each other in the moment. The moment for me is a celebration of what we’ve just shared in our short time together, less a reflection that we might not cross paths again. Call me an optimist if you will.

      The stoic in me recognizes the fragility of the moment. I was at a birthday party yesterday, looked around at all the people celebrating their newfound freedom to be together and saw that nobody was taking pictures. For the record, I do this at every event, and generally I’m the one pulling out the camera phone and taking photos to lock the moment in photographs. For photos are more reliable than memory. Photos travel through time, awakening old memories and even past our lifetimes to introduce us to people we will never meet. Long after our goodbyes and Sayonaras, that picture may still exist.

      Since our separation must be so, I wish you good health and a moment when we might be together again to celebrate this short time with you once again. Reunions seem more tenuous than before, but surely more special than they ever were. So here is my acceptance of fact: this moment will not last, so since it must be so I’m making the very best of it while it does.

      Happy Father’s Day.

    • Endlessly Changing Horizons

      “The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” – Chris McCandless

      I’m a traveller at heart, a wanderer and nomad wannabe. So it’s easy to be stirred to action by McCandless’s quote above. He was the subject of Into the Wild, making him instantly more famous than those of us who chose a less aggressive path to chase new horizons. I know viscerally the call that brought him to the wilderness of Alaska even as I question his tactics for getting there. I’m far less risk-averse than many, but far more so than McCandless was.

      Friends poke and prod at the nomad in me, knowing it wants to break free and go. There’s a rawness in the desire when it gets stamped down too many times. And the pokes always seem to hit home right in that sore part. Nomads seek endlessly changing horizons to see what’s over there, and then over in that other place. Always chasing new and different. I know this chase.

      There are three fair questions to ask when you chase horizons: What do you seek? and How will you pull this off? and What are you leaving behind? Purpose, logistics and consequences. If you tackle all three and feel comfortable with the answers, then what are you waiting for? Go!

      Joy comes through seeing the change in yourself as you encounter new perspectives. Sometimes that’s in another place, and sometimes that’s in finding a new place within yourself. No, changing horizons aren’t about chasing, they’re about becoming.

      So, again, what is it you seek?

    • Swimming Season

      New Hampshire has a short swimming season. This is the toll we pay up here in the north country. Since I’m not one to pay for a membership at a gym just to swim laps, every year around this time my body gets reacquainted with the aches and pains unique to swimming. Body parts pushing through the friction of water get tested in ways you don’t test them when you’re doing land-based workouts. These are muscles I haven’t used in months and I feel it the next morning. When I do it all over again.

      Full body soreness is a signal. This signal is telling me “congratulations, you’ve done some work. Now keep it going.” And so I get back at it. Lap after lap back and forth in the pool, slowly relearning the joy of swimming for fitness. Out of breath at first, until my lungs figure out the pace and I settle into a rhythm.

      It’s purely coincidence that the Olympic Swimming Trials are being televised at the same time I’m back in the pool. I’m not at the level that these Olympic athletes are at, swimming to realize their dream or see it dashed by the slimmest of margins. I’m awed by these men and women working for years to a peak of physical excellence, but I don’t jump in the pool and swim laps to be like them. They sacrifice far more in their pursuit than I’m willing to sacrifice (the fact that I’m as old as their parents aside). I’m not that delusional anymore.

      We all sacrifice something. I’m not chasing excellence in the pool as I swim alone back and forth like a ping pong ball bouncing off walls. No, I’m not chasing anything at all. Just a return to the joy of swimming for swimming’s sake. No triathlons or swim meets in my future, just more of the same push against the fluid friction of water. The pool mostly, with a few days in salty Buzzards Bay and the dark, silty waters of my favorite New Hampshire pond mixed in before the days grow cold again.

      Early morning swims remind us of the shortness of the season. The air is brisk at 6 AM, steam rises off the pool and dewy surfaces as the sun reaches for them. Laps in a pool are like the cycle of the seasons; ’round and ’round we go, back to where we once were only to turn around when we get there. This might seem repetitive and mundane, but if we pay attention we find we’re not the same person on our return. Something in us changes, one lap at a time. One season at a time.

    • Everything, Left Alone

      We want the stillness and confidence
      of age, the space between self and all the objects of the world
      honoured and defined, the possibility that everything
      left alone can ripen of its own accord
      – David Whyte, Living Together

      I’d like to think that I’ve arrived at this stage in my life where I can just let things be. To allow nature to take its course, for things to sort themselves out, to let everything left alone ripen of its own accord. I should think that’s too bold a statement, the arrogance of youth still pulsing in my middle-aged body.

      We see it mostly with our children. In wanting to control the pace of their lives, to see them land well when they fly – to see the flight itself aim straight and true towards a logical place a few notches above where we ourselves have flown. For we’re in such a hurry to get them there, wanting the very best for them. You can’t rush the ripening, you tell yourself, and keep your unsolicited advice deep inside, waiting for an invitation to weigh in.

      You learn to wait in the wings, ready to lend a hand, just playing the parent or friend card. Maybe it’s the gardener in me, knowing you’ve got to let things grow, more often than not finding yourself in wonder at the progression as things surpass your expectations. Sure, you curse the occasional rabbit or groundhog that ruins your dreams of a perfect season, but on the whole things work themselves out in the end (letting things be doesn’t mean you don’t have to fight for what you believe in: install a fence when you need to).

      I’m not in any hurry to reach old age, but I know (if I’m lucky) that it’s not all that far away. A few decades, maybe, to make what I might of this life project. This work in progress. Imperfect. Incomplete. But in progress just the same. Seeing this in yourself lends a measure of understanding and empathy for the journey everyone else is on. For the possibility that they’re grinding away at.

      Everything left alone can ripen on its own accord. This is the way of the world. Just remember that I’ll be here if you need me.