Alexandersmap

    Category: Culture

    • Sharing Light

      “Let tenderness pour from your eyes
      The way the Sun gazes
      warmly on the earth.”
      – Hafiz, If It Is Not Too Dark

      There’s enough darkness in the world. Enough anger, accusation and bitterness. Outraged darkness. Indignant darkness. Resentful darkness… it’s not for me. I prefer to share light.

      Have I been outraged, indignant and resentful? Of course! There’s plenty of material out there to work with. But why throw yourself into that toxic bonfire? Trolls need people to pay attention to their fire to fuel it.  But don’t follow them into the flames, or you’ll just burn up with the others.  Their bonfires don’t warm, don’t sustain, don’t comfort.

      The alternative is sharing our light. Light is energy, just as the sun casts warmth and vitality on the earth. The friend offering reassurance and the resolve to stick with you through it all. The parent offering unwavering patience and love to a child. Seems a better place to be.  And that’s where I tend to roam, quietly pouring tenderness from my eyes and doing what I can to brighten things up.

       “We live in a flash of light; evening comes and it is night forever.” – Anthony De Mello, Awakening

      Life is a short little burst of energy followed by darkness, or if you will, the unknown.  All we have is this little sprint we’re collectively running together.  Some fall by the wayside, others think they can win this race by tripping others up or taking a shortcut.  But most of us just sprint along at the best pace we can, full of all the human reactions to the challenges and surprises along the way.  It seems that we ought to dance and sing a bit more on this march across time instead of grumbling the whole way. Inspiring and building each other up, and lighting the way for those who are lost. It seems a better path, don’t you think?

      “Let us hope
      it will always be like this,
      each of us going on
      in our inexplicable ways
      building the universe”
      – Mary Oliver, Song of the Builders

      I had one more sunrise by the bay before I make my way back to the northern woods. I debated whether to post a picture or not, but ultimately reminded myself I post pictures that highlight the beauty I see in the world. When you find something beautiful, shouldn’t you share it?

    • Masked Regard

      When I was first out of college I worked in construction to support my coaching habit.  By habit I meant I was trying to make a living coaching crew, but rowing at the time wasn’t a particularly lucrative field (but still the best job I’ve ever had).  Working on construction sites was the first time I wore a mask in public, not counting Halloween, and it felt perfectly normal to me to be wearing a mask that kept the nasty stuff floating in the air from entering my lungs.  But I remember watching a demo crew take down a wall using a power cutter, which looks like a chain saw with a giant spinning wheel that could take your arm off in one second.  Those guys attacked that cinder block wall and had it down in ten minutes and carted away in another ten.  Time is money, and they hustled.  Not one of those guys was wearing a dust mask, and only the guy cutting the wall was wearing safety glasses.  The clouds of dust kicked up by that power cutter were impressive, and I remember shaking my head at the stupidity of not protecting your lungs from the assault.

      Fast forward to the current COVID-19 pandemic we’re all living through.  I’m on my third mask, and it seems the third time is the charm in comfort level achieved.  The first time I wore a mask was to the market, where I’d grown uncomfortable with the casual disregard for social distancing by some of the unmasked, unconcerned patrons.  It felt strange to be wearing it, but I quickly learned that I was more uncomfortable not wearing it.  I bumped into an old friend in the market one day last week, me in a mask, he unmasked, and I mumbled something about wearing it because I’d promised my wife I’d wear it…  but a week later I’m less inclined to make some silly excuse for having it on. Just as that dust mask protected my lungs from construction dust on that job site years ago, this cloth mask offers a small measure of protection from whatever respiratory droplets you’re exhaling while generously reciprocating and keeping my own respiratory droplets safely captured in my mask.  Seems logical to me.

      But then I see the videos of the Constitution bangers crowding into a coffee shop in Colorado or protesting in close quarters with firearms draped across their backs, all of them unmasked, and I can’t help thinking about the geniuses cutting that wall down with no regard for their health.  At least those guys weren’t infecting their parents and grandparents with that construction dust.  We’re living in an experiment in Social Darwinism, coupled with epic narcissistic selfishness.  There’s no doubt the United States messed this one up in not having a better pandemic response preparation, in not having enough testing available to support the population, and in not having enough inventory in ventilators and Personal Protective Equipment…  like masks.  But collectively we own our behavior now, in this current reality, and not enough people are stepping up. The sooner we get beyond the current crisis the sooner the economy will rebound, so man up and do your part.

      At some point the world will return to normal, people will know whether they have or have had COVID-19, and the wearing of a mask in public may seem unnecessary again.  But I don’t believe it will ever again seem strange to see someone wearing one at the airport or walking through the train station.  We’ve been collectively educated through adversity, and masks are the new normal.  For those who choose to walk around without them, I marvel at the disregard.  The collective sacrifice of millions compromised by a percentage of indignant outliers.  But that’s the world we find ourselves in now, hoping for herd immunity and shrugging at the tens of thousands of deaths as if it were a conspiracy to infringe on your rights.  Simply getting over yourself and wearing a mask, washing your hands and maintaining appropriate social distancing doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice.  I view it as my overall regard for the well-being of others to wear a mask and practice social distancing, and I appreciate yours.

    • Those Beloved, Perfect-Enough Movies

      There are no perfect movies, despite the Twitter debate going on around it.  Nothing is perfect, but you have to ship it at some point, and hopefully you get close enough to the mark.  Perfect doesn’t always mean commercially successful, but if the stars align and word of mouth lifts a movie’s profile, it sells enough tickets.  Anyway, I’m not Roger Ebert, but I know a great movie when I see one.  Sure, I could pick the big ones that I love, like The Godfather or North By Northwest or Casablanca, but what’s the fun in that?  Let’s go one layer deeper and find some other gems.  Here are five perfect-enough movies – movies that I’d see over and over.  Like a near-perfect song or poem, there’s magic woven into each.  Some may be very familiar to you, some may be completely foreign, but they all have cast a spell on me in their own way.

      The Shawshank Rebellion
      The ending is just about perfect and what everyone remembers in this film.  That scene is set up by the one I linked to, where Andy and Ellis have this conversation:
      Ellis: “I don’t think I can make it on the outside, Andy.  I been in here most of my life.  I’m an institutional man now.  Just like Brooks was.
      Andy: “Well, you underestimate yourself.”
      and later in this scene: “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really.  Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

      Local Hero
      No shock for readers of this blog, as this remains my favorite movie.  Is it perfect? Of course not!  Parts of the soundtrack are charmingly locked in the 1980’s (while most of it is stunningly beautiful and  timeless).  Watch the scene in this link, as the band starts to play Mist Covered Mountains and Gordon walks up to join them, he places his glass of scotch on the snare drum and Rikki the drummer gives him a WTF glance.  Gordon gives his own glance soon after as Mac dances with his romantic partner Stella.  Small examples of the magic woven into this movie.

      Gettysburg
      This one is an outlier on this list, I know.  But this movie about the Battle of Gettysburg stays with me just as the other movies do.  And this scene with Sam Elliot is the highlight of the movie.  I was never a soldier, but I know the value of the high ground in a battle.  As a New Englander I tend to focus on the contributions of Joshua Chamberlain to holding the line, but the reason he had high ground to hold in the first place was because General John Buford held the high ground long enough for the Union forces to arrive.  That ultimately determined who would be victorious at Gettysburg, and this scene captures the moment when he decides to hold off the Rebel army long enough for the infantry to arrive.

      Hugo
      When Martin Scorsese created this movie he said in an interview that he wanted to make a movie his grandchildren could watch with him.  I use the word magic too frequently (indeed), but this movie about an orphaned Hugo Cabret living secretly in a train station in 1930’s Paris is truly magical.  This scene, where Hugo and Isabelle talk about their purpose is a lovely moment in the film, and set up a scheme to help Isabelle’s godfather re-find his own purpose.  I’ve watched Hugo with my daughter many times, it inspires her to create her own magic in this world.  And it just might do that for her father too.

      The Princess Bride
      Another Mark Knopfler soundtrack that I can’t stop listening to.  And another movie that casts a spell on you.  The characters of Inigo Montoya and Fezzik are the MVP’s of this film, with dialog sprinkled in fairy dust.  As a parent, I can think of no better movie to watch with your children.  As an adult, The Princess Bride is a welcome step into a world of wonder.  I wish it were longer, but there’s a lesson in it’s brevity too.  Nothing nearly perfect lasts forever, so enjoy every moment of it while you have it.  Want to watch it again?  As you wish.

       

       

    • Recently Collected Quotes

      My mind’s distracted by work and projects. I need to write them all down and get them out of my head. Prioritize and tackle the list. First on the list is writing, and in writing I’m tackling another distraction: I’ve noticed my quote collection piling up again, which means I’m not sharing enough of them. I save quotes for blogs, for inspiration, for reflection… or simply to remind myself that others thought deeply before my attempts to do so, so get out of your head and do something. I was raised to share, so here are some favorite recent acquisitions to the collection:

      “Don’t do things that you know are morally wrong. Not because someone is watching, but because you are. Self-esteem is just the reputation that you have with yourself. You’ll always know.” – Naval

      “Wild success requires aggressive elimination. You can’t be great at everything.” – James Clear

      “Every great thing is done in a quiet, humble, simple way; to plow the land, to build houses, to breed cattle, even to think—you cannot do such things when there are thunder and lightning around you. Great and true things are always simple and humble.” – Leo Tolstoy

      “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” – Marcus Aurelius

      “Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.” – Mortimer J. Adler

      “Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.” – Jack Kerouac

      “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” – Henry David Thoreau

      “Nothing is so certain as that the evils of idleness can be shaken off by hard work.” —Seneca

      Until tomorrow then…

    • London Eye

      I’m reflecting on the places I’ve been to instead of the ones I can’t get to at the moment. One place that every tourist seems to go to is the London Eye. And so too I made my way into one of the pods last November for my own check on the tourist checklist. Opened to the public in 2000 to coincide with the new millennium, it also goes by the name Millennium Eye. According to Wikipedia, it’s “the most popular paid tourist attraction in the United Kingdom with over 3.75 million visitors annually”. It was once the tallest Ferris Wheel in the world but has fallen to fourth place on the list. That might be true, but I don’t have a burning desire to go on the other three ahead of it. The London Eye has a certain charm the others haven’t earned. Location helps, of course, but there’s also a level of cultural history the London Eye has spun through that makes it feel more timeless than its twenty years.

      It takes 30 minutes to make the trip around, and that feels about right to me. It’s slow enough that you can take your time getting a picture but fast enough that you aren’t getting restless. I took the ride with some random strangers and some close family. It’s interesting to experience the trip through other’s eyes, one very uncomfortable with heights who chose to stay right on the bench in the middle, the rest of us walking about to the edges of the glass pod looking around at seemingly all of London. Circling slowly to the highest point, you’re struck by the magnificence of the city around you, and the beauty of the Thames River as it flows below. It’s worth the money to experience this, and I’m grateful that I went.

      March was the 20th birthday for the London Eye. It sits empty for the first time since it opened. Tough way to celebrate your birthday, I’d say. By my math, there have been roughly 75 million passengers in that time. That’s a lot of souls spinning around in that bit of sky. Mine amongst them. It’s a staggering statistic, and one the architects and engineers who built this magnificent machine can point to with pride. The experience was just as amazing for me in year 19 1/2 as it was for the first passengers in 2000. A chance to fly above the city, marveling at it all. But I took some of that time in our glass pod in the sky to examine this extraordinary structure supporting us on our slow turn. This amazing time machine of glass and steel and wondering, wandering souls collectively awestruck for two decades and counting. Surely a generous share of awe must be given to the London Eye?

    • Pay Your Dues

      “You have to assemble your life yourself – action by action.  And be satisfied if each one achieves it’s goal, as far as it can.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      I wrote an entire blog post alternating between English and French to practice my French.  But I relied heavily on Google Translate to accomplish the task, and frankly it felt too much like cheating to me to publish it.  I’ll attempt it again another time, but with me slogging through it, not by typing an entire sentence and having it translated for me.  Handy tool when you really need it, but there’s no soul in that.  And no satisfaction when it’s done.

      There’s value in the work.  Learning by pushing through the challenges.  Becoming better over time.  I learned that rowing in college.  Bloody knuckles from getting pinched on the gunwales when the boat suddenly tilted to port (likely my fault for lunging too far out).  Bruised back from catching an oar handle of the starboard rower behind me (from bad timing on one or both of our parts).  Blisters upon blisters on the hands (a necessary evil, for as you harden your resolve through thousands of strokes your soft skin must adapt too).  All of it is paying your dues in blood and sweat and time.  Maybe a tear or two on those especially cruel rows when coach would have us turn around and do it again.  But the work payed dividends, and changed me in the process.

      And so it is with other work we must do.  Lingering projects that won’t finish themselves.  The blessedly passé commute to work.  You know sometimes it will suck, but get on with it already.  Working when you don’t feel like it.  Cleaning up the dirty dishes and cleaning the bathroom and washing the clothes and weeding the garden and picking up the branches after a windy night on the edge of the forest.  And it turns out the mind stops protesting and you get into the routine and you see the finish line and push on through until you’re finally, blessedly, done.  Until tomorrow.

      And that’s life, one task at a time, repeated.  Sure, a little rest and relaxation is nice too, but the mind and body weren’t built for sloth.  We all need to get on with the work at hand.  And so I try to move, try to keep up with things, try to make the most of the time at hand, and save the little life hacks like using Google Translate for when I really need it.  There’s value in the work, and we know it instinctively.

      We all know people who skate through life, not doing much, talking a good game, telling the world how much they’re doing and how important their contribution is….  but in your gut you know they’re full of it.  Really, you don’t have to look too far for a great example of that.  But that’s not us.  We pay our dues.  Look at the pictures of nurses with scars on their face and the backs of their ears from wearing a mask all day, every day.  Who are we to complain when the world is full of people paying a tougher toll than us?  Do the work.  Pay your dues.  Even when you feel you’ve earned the right to relax a bit, pay your dues anyway.  We’ll all be better for having endured.

    • For My Next Trip Around The Sun

      For my next trip around the sun, if I may be so presumptuous, I’ll try harder to meet the Aurora Borealis on its terms. Maybe finally catch those evasive Northern Lights, I really do need to meet up with them this time around.  I’ll travel again to faraway places.  Places previously unknown to me that caught my imagination in a travel article or a book.  Places that Google street view hasn’t posted online.  I know these places are out there, I’ve tried in vain to reach them with a mouse before.

      For my next trip around the sun, if good fortune should shine upon me, I’ll rest a hand on the trunk of a Sequoioideae, but first I’ll learn how to spell it without copy and paste.  I once spent a week within an hour’s drive of Redwood National Forest and never bothered to go visit.  Some excuse about work, I suppose.  I don’t recall that mattering in the end anyway.  Touching a redwood tree and looking up to the sky would have mattered far more.

      For my next trip around the sun, if the stars align and I make the full trip, I’m going to celebrate the graduation of my first born and prepare for the graduation of my second born.  The world has changed in ways that seemed fictional not too long ago, and presents challenges that you and your generation will rise up to meet.  I hope my generation and my parents generation does the same and you have something to build on.  The world isn’t fair, we all know that, but a few generations collaborating on solutions to the world’s problems seems a logical next step.  The world is ready for non-violent transformation.  Will it begin with now?

      For my next trip around the sun, should I be so bold, I’ll strive more.  Strive for more meaningful contributions, strive for more engagement in conversation, strive to be more disciplined in the food and drink I take in, strive to be more consistent with the daily habits that make a difference today and for however many trips around the sun you have left.  We all know what we should do, how many do it?  I strive to do it this time around the sun.   You know I’ll write about it, so feel free to poke and prod me should I fall behind.

      For my next trip around the sun, if it should come to pass, I’ll savor more.  Savor the sounds and sights and smells that make up the moments of the day.  Sip a little slower, chew a little more, slow down just enough, look up from the phone and see what’s happening around you.  Savor the time passing by instead of grabbing it tighter and watching it escape anyway, like beach sand in a tight fist.  Savor the long walks and the long talks and the short moments that catch your breath.

      For my next trip around the sun, should the gods look down upon my favorably, I’ll look up more.  Look up at the sky to track our progress over the next year.  Look up old friends you don’t talk to nearly enough.  Look up at the stars and learn to identify them by the way they align with other stars from our unique perspective in the universe.  Look  out, up and out again as the sun rises, warms the skin and the earth around you and drops down again below the horizon, as we all must do eventually.  And so you begin another trip around the sun.  Where will it take you?

    • A Rainy Day Soundtrack in Five Jackson Browne Songs

      It’s raining today.  It’s April in New England and such things are to be expected.  I set my alarm every night for 6:30 AM, and I’m usually up well before it ever goes off.  This morning I was finishing a dream I don’t recall except that someone was about to speak and as they opened their mouth the alarm went off and it all went away.  Feel free to analyze that if you wish, I’m moving on to other things.  6:30 is sleeping in for me, and I found myself behind the eight ball on my morning routine.

      But back to that rain.  It reminded me of this collection of Jackson Browne songs I’ve been collecting in my drafts waiting patiently to fly.  So why not now?  It’s not easy to create a list of only five songs from a writer as prolific as Jackson Browne, I mean, I played the Running on Empty album on repeat for months when I was 17 or so.  That one would be a favorite album, but only one of the songs on it made it onto this list.  I think the rain also impacted my choice of songs, all of which are introspective, forgoing classic hits like Running On Empty, Doctor My Eyes and Somebody’s Baby in favor of deeper water.  Anyway, here are five Jackson Browne songs that are particularly meaningful for me:

      You Love The Thunder
      “When you look over your shoulder
      And you see the life that you’ve left behind
      When you think it over, do you ever wonder?
      What it is that holds your life so close to mine”
      This song, along with The Road and The Load-Out, was a highlight and the one I play frequently from this album.

      For A Dancer
      “Into a dancer you have grown
      From a seed somebody else has thrown
      Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
      And somewhere between the time you arrive
      And the time you go
      May lie a reason you were alive
      That you’ll never know”
      Jackson wrote this for a friend who died in a fire, and it’s one of those songs I return to when I think about people full of life taken too soon from this world.

      The Pretender
      “I want to know what became of the changes
      We waited for love to bring
      Were they only the fitful dreams
      Of some greater awakening?
      I’ve been aware of the time going by
      They say in the end it’s the wink of an eye
      When the morning light comes streaming in
      You’ll get up and do it again
      Amen.”
      If the pandemic is doing anything, it’s pushing people to question the endless cycle of mindless work they do.  If you don’t love your life, change it.  This song is the great reminder of the unfulfilled potential in all of us bursting to get out, if you’ll just stop doing what you think you have to do.

      Your Bright Baby Blues
      “Baby if you can hear me
      Turn down your radio
      There’s just one thing
      I want you to know
      When you’ve been near me
      I’ve felt the love
      Stirring in my soul”
      The link above is a Don Kirchner performance in 1976 where Jackson’s backing band was The Eagles.  I’m old enough to remember a lot about the 70’s, but young enough to have missed most of the craziness happening at the time.  I imagine there was a hell of a party after these guys played this song.

      These Days
      “These days I’ll sit on corner stones
      And count the time in quarter tones to ten, my friend
      Don’t confront me with my failures
      I had not forgotten them”
      I understand that Jackson wrote this when he was 16.  Talk about being an old soul at a young age.  I’m a long way from what the lyrics express at the moment, but haven’t we all been here?

       

    • A Bit of Thoreau and Sagan on Earth Day

      I toyed with the idea of a long blog post about Earth Day. Instead I’ll drop these two quotes. I think Thoreau and Sagan would have gotten along quite well. I’d hardly keep pace, but would love to sit in on that conversation:

      “This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way?” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” – Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

    • Patriot’s Day 2020

      Today is Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts and Maine (once part of Massachusetts). The day marks the commencement of hostilities in the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Traditionally, it’s also the day that the Boston Marathon is normally run, at least when there isn’t a global pandemic anyway. And the Red Sox play a matinee game that caps a four day weekend of baseball. In a normal year anyway.

      Holidays are funny things, and Patriot’s Day is one of those quirky holidays. Growing up in Massachusetts, I came to expect the day off from school. Living in New Hampshire for half my life now, I no longer “officially” have the day off, but I’ve taken it as PTO a few times to track a favorite runner in the marathon or simply to soak up the energy. I wasn’t there in2013 but I’ve been right there many times. And like many I was pissed off at the affront. Patriot’s Day started off marking the start of war. It’s evolved into the celebration of the human spirit against adversity exemplified by thousands crossing that finish line. Today the course is quiet, as it should be. Runners and fans alike will wait until September and – hopefully – healthier days. And speaking of healthier days, I wonder what Patriot’s Day 2021 will bring? I hope something better for the lot of us. In the meantime, stay the course.