Alexandersmap

    Blog

    • The Highest Alchemy

      “The process of life should be the birth of a soul. This is the highest alchemy, and this justifies our presence on earth. This is our calling and our virtue.” – Henri Amiel

      I’ve managed to finish three books this year, a disappointing total to be sure.  But I’m actively reading every day, and balance a stack of virtual books on the Kindle app that I read through often with an actual stack of books that I return to now and then.  I’m reading a lot, and yet I’m not finishing a lot of books.  Go figure.

      I’ll often read a quote like the Henri Amiel quote above and immediately research the author’s work on Wikipedia, scroll through highlights of their publicly available work and if inspired I go on Amazon and add to the stack.  I added to the stack with Amiel’s Journal, widely declared his master work (free on Kindle)… and published posthumously.  Which brings me back to the quote that inspired the search, and emphasis on the quote that wasn’t there previously.  Quotes are funny things, we pull out a set of words that seem especially powerful, tag the author and leave it out there like a neon sign on a dark night.   Knowing something of the author brings context and resonance.  It’s something that Maria Popova is masterful at with Brain Pickings, and you’ll see my own attempts at it here now and then.

      I’ve learned over the years to dig a bit deeper in my own process of life.  To linger on something that others might skim over.  And most of all to learn, and to hopefully add a bit of value to the rest of the souls walking this earth now, and maybe some future then too.  To pursue the highest alchemy, if you will.  And I’m seeing some return on investment with my two adult children.  Both are deeply empathetic, thoughtful observers with strong leadership traits.  If nothing else comes of my time on this earth, the ripples from these two might be enough.  But that shorts my own time here, doesn’t it?  We’re all a work in progress in our time, from day one to the final day, and there’s still plenty of time to add more.  Today anyway.

      Alexandersmap started out as a blog about the places I was visiting, digging deeper into the history of the place, occasional insight into the best fish and chips or whatever.  And I surely will dabble in these observations again when travel isn’t limited.  But the blog evolves as I read more, think more, observe more….  and write more.  It turns out I’m digging deeper into myself, and putting it all out there for the world to see (thanks) or not see (yet).  That’s writing for you: taking you places you didn’t expect to go.  Then again, maybe deep down I did expect to get here, I just needed to write about fish and chips enough to reach this point.

      “You get better at the craft of writing the more you do it, and that’s the beauty of non-fiction writing being a craft rather than an art. You can practice it, you can get better, whereas with an art, you’re either a genius or you’re not.” – Alex Perry (via Rolf Potts interview)

      Writing, like life itself, is a process.  We’re all just birthing our souls here.  Some remain soulless (I’m not naming names) while some illuminate the darkness for all to see.  Personally, I’m on the journey and marking the trail as I go.  I’m not sure I’m illuminating darkness for anyone, but I’m lighting the way for myself one post at a time.

       

       

    • Return of Wonder

      “Wonder dies and is replaced by boredom, as we develop language and words and concepts. Then hopefully, if we’re lucky, we’ll return to wonder again.” – Anthony de Mello, Awakening

      The hummingbirds work their way across the mounds of honeysuckle in turns. One fills up and flies off and another takes its place. The vine and the birds return year-after-year and each season I marvel at the intimate dance of the honeysuckle and the hummingbird. I’ve learned over many seasons together to sit silently and let the dance happen. I’m rewarded once again in 2020, a year like no other, and nod in gratitude to the dancers.

      I keep returning to Anthony de Mello, and why not? Every visit mines gold, like a hummingbird returning to honeysuckle. This is an especially good year to re-read Awakening, and lately I’m scanning a few pages in between history and philosophy and poetry. There’s so much you miss the first time through with great books, and I’m reading it again with a new sense of wonder. And isn’t that the way with everything worthwhile? The garden is different every time you visit it, and so is the forest, and the ocean, and mountains, and old friends in our lives and surely a spouse. And so are we, if we’ll just sit still long enough to see.

      I’m lucky. I know this. I can sit quietly in the garden and watch hummingbirds. I can walk on a dark street alone at night looking at the stars without concern. Born in a place and time with a skin color that offers me a silent leg up over people who are in every way my peers or a few notches above me. I’m not struggling the way many people struggle, and I’m grateful. But what do you do with the gift? Become bored with it? Jealousy hold it tight, not willing to share it with others? Lecture those who don’t see the wonder?

      I think the first step is to appreciate the beauty in your own life. To truly see it anew. And then share it with the world. Pull wisdom from the ages and embrace it, and shine a light on it for others to see. To be a stabilizing force for those who need a hand, and a teacher for those who need to see the wonder in all of us. I view the merit of another person by the sparkle in their eyes, not by the color of their skin or the position they hold. Help others to see. To find wonder themselves. We all live by concepts we’ve learned along the way. Concepts are funny things. They change when the student is ready and not a moment sooner. Offer a hand to those struggling with the climb, an ear for those who need you to hear and a shoulder for those who are hurting to cry on. Share wonder with the world and dance with those who rise up with you. And keep offering a place on the dance floor for those who aren’t there just yet. They could use some wonder too..

    • The Traveler’s Ditch Bag

      Sailors know of the ditch bag.  It’s a bag filled with essential items should the worst case scenario play out and you have to abandon ship.  Food, water, medicine, communication, maybe some fishing line and other assorted things that hopefully keep you alive long enough to be rescued.  All these things assembled at the ready – to be grabbed as you reluctantly jump into a life raft.

      I’m a land-based creature at the moment, but a traveler nonetheless.  I have a ditch bag of my own, usually kept in my work bag, but sometimes relocated to my duffel bag or suitcase, depending on the nature of travel.  But it’s always there at the ready, even now.  I came across it today as I was looking for the charger for my noise-cancelling headphones, and smiled at the ditch bag that silently waits for our next adventure.  I’m ready my friend, even if the world isn’t quite ready for us.  Flexible traveling requires keeping things to a minimum, but there are some things that must always be with you.

      My traveler’s ditch bag is filled with the important items that must be with you – charging cords and plug adapters for various countries, a mini power strip, an extra watch band, a second wallet with a couple of just-in-case credit cards that I rarely use, a headlamp, a couple of pens and a small notebook, earplugs, a couple of protein bars and some Motrin and Tums.  All that is typical.  Where I might go off the path a bit is in the other things I bring with me: A sky chart that glows in the dark for both northern and southern hemisphere, media adapters for plugging a laptop into a monitor or television, a bullet journal to keep tasks on track, those invaluable noise-cancelling headphones, reading glasses and a paperback book to read just in case the iPhone with Kindle app fails me.  The iPhone has helped immeasurably in minimizing stuff jammed into the travel ditch bag.  I used to bring 3-4 books to read, now I have everything on the kindle with that one physical book.  I also have an assortment of required apps at the ready: Duolingo, Google Translate, Pocket Universe, iTunes, Aurora, Ring, TripIt, Uber, Waze and of course, WordPress.

      Toiletry kit, laptop, passport and assorted work-related items go elsewhere.  Wear an outfit that would be appropriate attire should your bag get lost.  Always carry a water bottle, sunglasses and a baseball hat too.  Good walking shoes, sunscreen and a reversible belt and you can pull off just about anything.  And that’s my travel kit, packed and ready to go, waiting indefinitely…  like the rest of us.

    • Represent Worthily

      “I learned not to fear infinity,
      The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,
      The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,
      The wheel turning away from itself,
      The sprawl of the wave,
      The on-coming water.”
      – Theodore Roethke. The Far Field

      In our dance with infinity it’s now a Thursday once again.  The days fly by.  Just as the weeks fly by.  Just as the months fly by.  Just as the years fly by.  And yet here we are, in the now, in this shining moment.  Nothing hammers that feeling home like being at home, day-after-day, doing the same thing over and over again.  This pandemic has highlighted for me – and maybe for you too – the dying of time in the white light of tomorrow.  The endless cycle of routine punctuated by another dawn.  What else is there but now?  Is tomorrow ours to wonder at?  There is only now.  And that brings to mind something I’d stored away long ago:

      “Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! Let us do something, while we have the chance….at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say?” – Samuel Beckett, Vladimir, Waiting for Godot

      I read Waiting for Godot in college, and found it repetitive and boring.  I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be reading such things.  I believe I felt the same way about Walden once too.  The restlessness of youth, or the immature mind…  no matter.  And yet I’ve returned to both recently.  I’ve re-read Walden three times since I was required to read it in college.  And Godot keeps coming to mind as we march along in this dance with the repetitive.  They say the mind never forgets anything, it just stores it away somewhere deep inside, dormant and untapped.  Today, after thousands of days, I’ve tapped Waiting for Godot and Vladimir stepped to the forefront with a few words of wisdom: There’s no time to be idle.  Represent us worthily, for you live in the white light of what was our tomorrow.  Don’t waste it.  And today, facing the windy cliffs of forever, that is my task.

       

    • Smile

      O wondrous creatures,
      By what strange miracle
      Do you so often
      Not smile?
      – Hafiz, Strange Miracle

      The world is challenging at the moment.  It’s always been challenging of course, but most of us never really felt the full weight of the world like we do this year.  Still, there’s plenty of reason to smile, beginning with waking up this morning.  Hafiz pokes at us, offering a challenge to crack the stoic face more often and smile.  Life is a miracle, and we need to celebrate being alive, even as we tackle the realities of our time. A simple smile breaks the spell, and opens up the wonders of the world.  Smiling is the universal language.  God knows we need more smiles now.

      “Smile and maybe tomorrow
      You’ll see the sun come shining through for you”
      – Charlie Chaplin, Smile

      I smile more now than I did when I was younger.  I wasn’t unhappy then, I just didn’t smile as much as I should have.  Always serious.  Always earnestly charging through life. Always looking grimly ahead, focused on the task at hand.  But grim is no way to go through life.  And so I remind myself to stop being so damned serious all the time.  Bring a little joy to others; smile more.

    • Bobby Kennedy Quotes From the Edge of the Tinderbox

      We’ve all been quietly dancing on the edge of a tinderbox, alone in our own thoughts.  Until something sparks the flame, and we stamp feverishly to put them out, even as they consume us.  Welcome to 2020, the year the tinderbox reignited.  It’s been aflame before, and will be again if we don’t get it right this time.  And again thereafter.  As a student of history, I’m well aware that none of this is new.  It sometimes gets swept under the rug, but it’s not like we haven’t been dealing with racial injustice and political leadership who view those who are angered by it as thugs.  This year feels a lot like 1968 to me.  A challenging year if ever there was one.  Who better to listen to than Bobby Kennedy, who navigated the edge between chaos and order as well as anyone, until he too succumbed to a violent death.  Here are six Robert Kennedy quotes that resonate for me this morning as I contemplate the state of things:

      “All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don’t. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity.”

      “What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.”

      “America’s answer to the intolerant man is diversity – the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.”

      “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

      “Every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted, when we tolerate what we know to be wrong, when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy or too frightened, when we fail to speak up and speak out, we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice.”

      “Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others.”

       

    • The Waves of Change

      “The first thing to do—don’t get worked up. For everything happens according to the nature of all things, and in a short time you’ll be nobody and nowhere, even as the great emperors Hadrian and Augustus are now. The next thing to do—consider carefully the task at hand for what it is, while remembering that your purpose is to be a good human being. Get straight to doing what nature requires of you, and speak as you see most just and fitting—with kindness, modesty, and sincerity.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      The world is in a state of change, and countless people are raising their voice to say that this reality, the way we are right now, it will not stand.  Will we be the better for having endured the tumultuous waves washing over us?  Or will we drown in the chaos?  That often depends on how we react in the moment.  When the world get’s a bit overwhelming, and let’s face it, the world is a little overwhelming at this moment, I turn back to stoicism, take long walks, and write more.  In short, I sort out how I want to react to the world around me.  Instead of getting angry at injustice, despair at suffering, or frustrated at apathy, I must absorb the reality and choose how to react.  Like waves crashing over you in heavy surf, you’ve got to get your feet underneath you to absorb the blows, but also know when to duck under the big waves so you aren’t knocked down for the count.  2020 is bringing some pretty heavy surf.

      “If, at some point in your life, you should come across anything better than justice, honesty, self-control, courage – than a mind satisfied that it has succeeded in enabling you to act rationally, and satisfied to accept what’s beyond it’s control – if you find anything better than that, embrace it without reservations – it must be an extraordinary thing indeed – and enjoy it to the full. – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      Justice, honesty, self-control and courage, acting rationally and accepting what isn’t in your control…  That’s stoicism.  And a good place to set your feet as the waves crash over.  At some point this storm will abate.  Will the storm shift the landscape enough for meaningful change, or will there be more storms in the future? Will we be the better for having endured?  I can’t change the landscape, and I can’t change the storm, but I can choose how I react to it, and to act in small, meaningful ways that cast a vote for what I want to see in the world today and tomorrow.  To be a good human being and a steadying influence to help others find their footing.  To set my feet and rise to the occasion.  That seems to me a good starting point.

    • Treasure Hunting

      “It’s not enough to reach the treasure, one must bring it back.” – Roger Lipsey

      I’m a collector of words and music.  I find them in the wild and then bring them back in quotes and playlists.  Perhaps that’s enough for the blog or drinks with friends, but I have all the other treasure that I’ve found that deserves another format.  That treasure I keep polishing and dodging and returning to again.  That treasure needs to be brought back.  That treasure nags me like the Arc of the Covenant burning through the box in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  It wants to get out there.  Quit dodging.

      This weekend, in an exercise in futility, I’ve cleaned the oak catkins out of the pool over and over again.  I’ve taken a leaf blower and blown them off the deck and off the driveway.  I’m being mocked by oak trees each time the wind blows and the sky fills with more catkins floating down onto just-cleaned surfaces and into the pool.  I contemplate the wisdom of putting a pool on the edge of this tree orgy, and grab the skimmer yet again.  Maybe the chainsaw would be the better tool…  but I’m committed to what was here before me.  The next owner of this house will someday have to make the same choice.  I wish them well.

      Weekends are filled with time sucks like catkin cleanup and lawn care and an endless task list.  Weekdays offer their own time commitments.  All of this is my choice.  But I the treasure won’t wait indefinitely.  I can hear it calling me even now.  What’s this?  Catkin cleanup?!  Time isn’t your friend, and I want to be set free. I’ll honor the call – promise – but first I need to clean out the pool skimmers.  And take some allergy medicine.  But the treasure grows impatient, like a jilted lover looking for another partner to dance with.  Quit dodging already.

    • American Outrage, Revisited

      I’m past the point where I tell my adult children that they should be patient, that things will work out, that this too shall pass.  There’s outrage in this country over politics, race, sexual preference, identity, infringement on Rights, and countless other injustices.  But injustice has been a part of American life since Myles Standish stuck the head of Wituwamat on a pike and the Pilgrims left it there for years as a message.  The Pilgrims may have come to peacefully coexist with the Native American population, but within a generation they were sweeping aside that illusion and the march across the continent began in earnest.  Brutality and injustice have been under the surface of American life from the beginning. Those in power get to choose the narrative, until that power shifts.

      There’s a simple formula for understanding America.  We use our personal freedom as a rallying cry of ME.  I have the right to [fill in the blank] and nobody can tell me I can’t have it!  Some bend or outwardly thwart the rules to get what they want, and some celebrate this as uniquely American.  The heroes of Industry and Commerce, carved right into Mount Rushmore alongside Presidents.  But when YOUR personal freedom gets in the way of MY personal freedom, conflict happens.  And when the amplification mechanism of listen/watch me media ramps up, things get ugly.  We’re in a particularly ugly period in our history at the moment.  American outrage is back in force.

      But America is a pendulum that always swings eventually to what is right.  We’ve swung too far to the ugly, and you’re seeing a societal correction in action.  It’s horrifying to watch, and I think about the scars it’s leaving on all of us, but we must pay a price for having swung too far to the ugly.  We must purge that ugliness, clean up the mess and find a way to move forward together.  And I think we can all agree that there’s a real mess right now.  Lean into the law, lean into generosity, lean into fixing what’s broken, lean into the work that must be done.

      Americans unite for common causes, and divide on everything else.  Hitler, Hideki Tojo and Bin Laden learned the hard way not to unite Americans in a common cause.  Sometimes we need a smack in the mouth to sharpen our focus.  I thought maybe COVID-19 would be that unifying event, but apparently not enough people feel it’s more than an inconvenience to “living their best life”.  It would surely help if there was a leader who united people to a common cause, but the current leadership is anything but unifying.  It would help if there was a unified media making it clear that we all need to be in this together, but too many succumb to the outrage for profit platform.  It would help if there was robust, proactive social outreach for the disenfranchised, but that would chip away at profitability.

      America has swung to extreme ugly recently, but humanity is still largely united and pulls the pendulum back to center.  We need to stop amplifying the angry voices on the edges, stop enabling outrage, stop allowing those in power to game the system, and start rewarding the positive work being done in this country and the world.  This is an election year, and it’s a great time to focus on what we want America to be in one year and in the next hundred years.  I’m optimistic that we’ll get it right eventually.  There’s a big mess to clean up, beginning now.  The pendulum must swing back to middle ground.  Turn that outrage to productive work.

    • Sea Change

      “The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.” – Jules Verne

      I’ve been to the desert, and I’ve been at sea. There’s magic in both places, but give me the ocean. But what of the trees? I write this listening to the trees that surround me alive in the wind, with life stirring on all sides. Surely there’s magic here too? True, but I’m too far inland to smell the ocean, and that just can’t stand forever. And what of mountains? Aren’t they also alive, singing their siren call in seductive whispers? Indeed, but the waters of the mountain yearn for the sea and so do I. My mind’s on the sea, for I’ve grown to be a salty dog and prefer the ocean swells to the shifting sands and even tree song and mountain whispers. The sea is alive on all sides, and it stirs life in me when I’m a part of it. And haunts me when I’m away. I’ll return again, as the mountain stream inevitably does, and will rejoice in the union.