Alexandersmap

    Category: Community

    • Leaving Long Shadows

      “Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne

      The march through time continues. What will the shadow that we cast behind our lives look like? I’m reading through a couple of weighty tomes that run through evolution. Don’t know why the stars aligned in such a way that I’m diving deep into evolution at this particular moment, but here we are.

      Maybe it was the subject matter but I absently sketched a dinosaur on a notepad and thought about these giants who came and went millions of years ago. Millions. So what is a hundred years or so for us? Not a whole lot.

      Or maybe it’s enough, if you use it well.

      The point is, we’re all leaving shadows behind us. What will our shadows be? Long and notable or brief and forgettable? In some ways it doesn’t matter when you look at life through the lens of millions of years. But then again, doesn’t it all matter in the end?

      This planet has been spinning around in the universe for billions of years. Dinosaurs roamed millions of years ago. These are big numbers. But this? This is our time. Shouldn’t we make the most of it, and leave the longest shadow we can? I should think so.

      Time Flies

    • Living in the Layers

      I have walked through many lives,
      some of them my own,
      and I am not who I was,
      though some principle of being
      abides, from which I struggle
      not to stray.

      We’re all collectors of sorts. Accumulating experience, relationships and perspective as we march through our time on this spinning blue ball in the dark vacuum of infinity. We acquire it all and, if we’re generous, bundle it up into shared wisdom before we become part of infinity ourselves. This sharing of experience differs from shared experience; that which you and I might experience together. Sharing is passing something of ourselves along to others, as I’m passing along this Stanley Kunitz poem.

      When I look behind,
      as I am compelled to look
      before I can gather strength
      to proceed on my journey,
      I see the milestones dwindling
      toward the horizon
      and the slow fires trailing
      from the abandoned camp-sites,
      over which scavenger angels
      wheel on heavy wings.
      Oh, I have made myself a tribe
      out of my true affections,
      and my tribe is scattered!

      The last few weeks are a whirlwind of my tribe coming home and leaving home. One returns, one leaves, friends stay for the weekend, other friends drift apart. We all scatter about to wherever the song in our hearts lead us. That we remain together at all is a blessing of shared moments.

      How shall the heart be reconciled
      to its feast of losses?
      In a rising wind
      the manic dust of my friends,
      those who fell along the way,
      bitterly stings my face.
      Yet I turn, I turn,
      exulting somewhat,
      with my will intact to go
      wherever I need to go,
      and every stone on the road
      precious to me.

      I try to explain how this will go to my children as they graduate and move into new phases of their lives. Most relationships are based on convenience and proximity. Teammates, classmates, coworkers, soccer parents… in each case you share something in common at the same time and place, and meaningful moments collect here. But the bond is only as strong as the links that hold it together. Most relationships eventually drift apart, though you might pick up exactly where you left off when you see each other again and piece together what you’ve each been up to in the interim. Some relationships seem to stand the test of time and trial and absence.

      In my darkest night,
      when the moon was covered
      and I roamed through wreckage,
      a nimbus-clouded voice
      directed me:
      “Live in the layers,
      not on the litter.”
      Though I lack the art
      to decipher it,
      no doubt the next chapter
      in my book of transformations
      is already written.
      I am not done with my changes.
      – Stanley Kunitz, The Layers

      Life is littered with old bonds broken by circumstance. But experience informs. We’re all changing, and our transformation continues even as the tribe changes too. Each layer of our life makes us deeper. Each chapter adds context and richness. We are the sum of our accumulated experience, relationships and perspectives to this point. All these layers add up to one hell of a stepping stone.

      Which makes you eagerly wonder… just where might this next step lead to?

    • Opening the Blind Eye

      I’ve heard a few people describe Boston as a racist city. I tend to get defensive and indignant when I hear this, because I don’t think of the city as particularly racist compared to other cities I’ve been to. But then again, I’m a white male with limited experience living with the encroaching beliefs of other races. Perspective filters. And comparison is a weak platform for a defense.

      So does my default position of treating everyone as equals translate to the rest of the population of Boston? Obviously not. I don’t even live in Boston, I’m north of Boston, in New Hampshire, one of the whitest states in America. The state I’ve lived in since my late twenties is 95% white, so who am I to even think about racism?

      Well, I’m a citizen of the world, a traveler who seeks new perspectives, an embracer of diverse experience and cultures. But it’s overly smug to say I’m fully “woke” when I might visit a predominantly black neighborhood in Boston or New York ocassionally and then return to my 100% white neighborhood. This offers the luxury of distance from the everyday immediacy of multiracial interaction. You tend to think you know, but do you really? And so I wonder, what am I missing?

      When my son played AAU basketball and I spent entire weekends in a gym with a highly diverse population I learned more about myself than I did about basketball. I learned that the world doesn’t always see things the way I do, because they don’t experience things the way that I do. We’d come together in some random gym, experience the highs and lows of a weekend tournament and go our separate ways. That’s skimming the surface, not seeking to understand.

      If my default position is to treat everyone as equals, when does that wiring short out? When I’m the minority on a city street or on a subway car? Or when someone I thought looked at things the same way I do starts parroting racist propaganda at me? When do we turn our blind eye back on the harsh reality someone else is facing and stare down the ugly truth?

      Boston was once overtly racist. Is it now? I’m not sure. Each generation seems to move closer to acceptance. When I hear someone call Boston a racist city, my indignation is rooted in my own position. But my defensiveness is rooted in knowing that there are still too many racists who are quite vocal with their hate. And this is a key point, they’re vocalizing a position, held by some but certainly not most. But what the hell are most of us doing when the racism happens?

      Not enough. Clearly we need to lose the indignation and look squarely at the situation. If the majority of people feel that everyone should be treated equally, then act that way. A chorus of welcoming acceptance should drown out the toxic voices of the relative few. If we’re all in this together we ought to start living that way. Not by wringing our hands together but by lending a hand and building something better, together.

    • Life From the After

      “I wrote a song called ‘Death Is Not the End’ a couple of years ago, and I never finished it. But I liked the idea, because I guess I don’t believe that it is the end. I carry so many ancestors with me on a daily basis. I experience my father regularly. I experience Clarence. I experience my old assistant, Terry Magovern. They visit me in my dreams quite often — I may see them, you know, several times a year.

      So, this idea is you don’t lose everything when someone dies. You do lose their physical presence, but their physical presence is not all of them, and it never was all of them, even when they were alive. Spirit is very strong. Emotion is very strong. Their energy is very strong. And a lot of this, particularly for people who are very powerful, really carries over after death.” – Bruce Springsteen, from Robert Love Interview: Bruce Springsteen, A Homecoming, AARP

      I recognize the larger than life people who have passed from my life in this quote. I hear their laughter, see the twinkle in their eye, feel their presence in certain moments. Those we’ve lost return to us over and over again, if not in physical form.

      Memorial Day in the United States honors those we’ve lost in battle, and I honor them as well. I think of my uncle, whom I never met, who died in the Korean War. I feel his presence, not as a person but as a hole in the family often mentioned with reverence by those who once knew him. Even as those who did know him pass away themselves, his presence remains. His presence was very strong, and amplified by his abrupt and premature passing in war. Those who were touched by him have touched me, and the ripple continues across the pond.

      That’s the thing about losing someone. Their presence filled us, and without that there’s a void in our lives. The void remains, even as other things like children and work and friendships fill in around it. Springsteen points out that they’re never really gone, they’re just physically not here. The larger they were in life the more of them remains with us after life.

      This Memorial Day I think about those who carry over after death. Ripples big and small, reverberating in this life from the after. And I honor and celebrate their time here. And know they’ve never really left us.

    • Let It Rain

      “The sound of the rain needs no translation.” – Alan Watts

      A rainy weekend dashes the dreams of many. For me it provides an opportunity to refill the pool, water the garden and catch up on reading and favorite old songs from years ago. Songs that pair well with raindrops tapping on hard surfaces. Rainy days are a necessary chapter in the story, and I welcome the cool, soggy embrace. The world is changing, and collectively so are we.

      The timing of this rainy weekend is unfair for businesses deeply impacted by the pandemic. Imagine riding out the storm and circling this weekend to open up to full capacity and having it rain buckets. Imagine seeing things begin to brighten and suddenly the dark clouds open up again, washing away dreams of outdoor sports and al fresco dining. Have we learned empathy in the darkest of days? I hope so.

      We’re all living through the storm together, and some of us are, apparently, on the other side of it. But storms don’t hit us all the same. Some are going to be hit harder than others. Some will have it linger for years. And some will never see the other side of it. Let it rain if it must, but remember those who are weathering the worst of the storm.

      No, I have no business complaining about a rainy weekend. We’ve seen far worse than this. And we will again. Rain washes away old memories and feeds new growth. The world greens up in celebration. Shouldn’t we? Welcome the raindrops for what they offer. This too shall pass, and what will remain of us on the other side? What new possibilities are germinating even now in the soggy soil?

    • Delightfully Awkward

      We all remember that awkward phase of wearing a mask in public for the first time last year, as the pandemic was forcing our hand and people slowly woke up to the reality of the danger of COVID-19. The first time I walked into a box store before they required masks on everyone I heard someone talking on their phone, irritated, saying “Everyone is wearing a mask” as he looked squarely at me. As you might have guessed, he wasn’t. Awkward.

      Walking into stores and meeting people I knew before the pandemic for the first time when we were all masked was also a bit awkward. But then it became commonplace. You just wore the damned mask. Not for your own safety but for your regard for others. Those outliers who didn’t wear them were the odd ducks, not us.

      Fast forward to now, and where do we stand? Pockets of this world are in a COVID crisis, other pockets are vaccinated and cases are declining. And now the CDC says you can go out without a mask on if you’re vaccinated. So what’s a vaccinated mask-wearer to do? I haven’t had a cold in over a year. Do I embrace the winds of chance and unmask?

      I suppose I will, slowly at first, but more and more. But the mask thing got weird again, just as we were hitting our masked stride. Awkward.

      I walked into a butcher shop to buy some overpriced meat. I mean 3x what it was a year ago overpriced, and half the people in there were masked and half were unmasked. I’m fully vaccinated and technically don’t have to wear it anymore if I don’t want to. But I’d already put it on to walk in the store – take it off now? I should think not.

      I remembered in the moment why I’d put it on the first time last year. It’s not for me, it’s for those around me. And the people in that store don’t know if I’m vaccinated or not, they just know that I respected them enough to wear a mask for just a bit longer. Or they think I’m a masked nut job, but really, who cares what they think?

      Tomorrow will sort itself out. There will be more awkward moments of mask uncertainty. For this, friends, is what the light at the end of the tunnel looks like.

      Delightfully awkward.

    • Mothers

      Mother’s Day 2021 seems to be trending back towards where we were before the pandemic, if forever different. Before you just showed up with flowers or a gift, broke some bread and tried to sync with siblings to be there at the same time. Now there are things to consider, beginning with who’s vaccinated and who isn’t.

      Fathers have something to offer beyond teaching kids to drive and fixing things, but let’s face it, in most families mothers are the glue that keep everyone together. I see that in my own mother, and I see it in my wife and how she connects with my daughter and her mother. As a father I like having the kids around, but it’s mom that makes that happen.

      Ryan Holiday promotes this Stoic idea of Sympatheia, which is “a connectedness with the cosmos” and “the interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of all things in the universe”. That interconnectedness doesn’t just happen in a vacuum, it happens one mother at a time, connecting people together and teaching us to see it ourselves. That connection goes beyond family, but family connection is where it starts. And that starts with Mom.

      Happy Mother’s Day to you mothers out there, and particularly to my own. Grateful for the work you all do to keep things interconnected. The universe, and I, thank you.

    • Making Antibodies

      It turns out the second Pfizer shot beat me up a bit. Between the 20th hour and the 36th hour seems to have been my scheduled antibody manufacturing time. It began with chills, moved to aches, then lightheadedness. And then it sort of went away for a time. It turns out the vaccine was resting up to double down on the wave of suck. Suddenly I couldn’t get warm, then couldn’t stay cool. My body started aching down my right side (where I got the shot) to my lower back.

      And I’d have done it all over again in a second. If the vaccine beat me up like this I have no doubt the virus would have been 10x worse. Which is an admission this tough guy isn’t comfortable making.

      The takeaway is to get your vaccine whenever you’re on deck. Because I’d love to have you stick around for awhile. Because we have celebrations and travel and some version of normal waiting for us.

      So make some antibodies. It might not be as fun as making pizza or love, but it’s a good way to help get us back to where we all want to be. We’re almost there.

    • The Newfield Covered Bridge

      The 1853 Newfield covered bridge is a survivor. Wooden bridges were usually torn down when they grew old. New York State once boasted of 250 such bridges, now there are only 24. And Newfield’s is the only remaining covered bridge in Tompkins County, New York. As with any survival tale, it comes with a story of perseverance and a battle of beliefs.

      If you aren’t from places where they build such things, you may wonder about the reason for covered bridges. It was simply a matter of economics. Wood was plentiful, but you couldn’t realistically leave a wooden deck exposed to the elements in northern climates without having to close and replace parts of it every few years. So the builders would simply put a roof over it. It was a lot cheaper to replace a roof every twenty years than the bridge itself every few years. And once you had a winner, other communities would copy the design and soon these timber tunnels were commonplace in the northeast United States.

      But soon steel bridges were the rage, quickly replacing older wooden bridges as they aged. It was another case of economics – a steel bridge would last far longer than any wooden bridge, and could be built longer and wider – allowing for more cars and taller trucks. Progress trumped timeless beauty. And so the wooden bridges were taken down one-by-one as they grew weary.

      And then the engineers came to Newfield in 1969 and declared that this bridge too would be replaced with modern steel and concrete. And a woman named Marie Musser said “Over my dead body” and dug in her heels to fight progress. She and her husband Grant fought the county over the fate of the bridge and eventually won the right to preserve it.

      Three years later they oversaw the restoration of the bridge, and again in 1998 when it was reinforced and raised to support modern vehicular traffic. And so it was that the Newfield Covered Bridge survived and today looks as good as she ever did. It’s now the oldest active bridge of its kind in the area. Driving through it feels like time travel. In a way it is.

      Marie Musser died the year after that 1998 restoration, and her husband Grant died the year after that in 2000. Their old bridge survived them both, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 25, 2000. I imagine they both knew in their last days that their bridge would make it. I hope so anyway.

      And this story informs. What are we willing to fight for, as the Muller’s fought for this old neglected bridge, resurrecting it to a sparkling example of the possibility of purpose? What is our own contribution to the future? It only takes one of us to stand up and say “Not on my watch.” If the Newfield Covered Bridge tells us anything, it’s that we are the bridge between the past and future. And where there’s a will there’s a way.

    • Charming Gardeners

      “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” – Marcel Proust

      Spring in New England is a tricky thing. We pivot from beautiful warm days to snow squalls and bitter wind, often within a few minutes of each other. But the days grow longer and we quietly grow more confident about putting the lawn furniture back out and maybe planting some seeds in starter soil. Basil, cilantro and parsley are each growing in sunny windowsills as I write this, and I’m considering getting the dahlia bulbs going soon. Such is the mind of a gardener.

      Proust writes of a different kind of gardener, of course, but they’re generally one and the same. The people who light us up in social interaction are quiet observers of humanity, readers of eyes and solicitors of smiles. In this particular time when social interaction has been elusive, we haven’t had as much interaction like this, and we’ve never needed it more.

      Spring brings hope to the gardener, and vaccines bring hope for time with those people who make us happy. I’m as ready for a gathering of celebration with friends and family as I am for the smell of fresh cut grass and tomato vines. Confident hugs and hand squeezes and shoulder leans are just around the corner.

      Imagine the days ahead, as a gardener imagines them – life blossoming anew, hope in the air, warm sun on our backs. Breathe in the fresh warm air, turn towards friends old and new, and smile. They could use it – and so could you.