Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • The Deathbed Question

      “You are 99 years old, you are on your deathbed, and you have a chance to come back right now: what would you do?” – Christopher Carmichael

      No relation to me that I’m aware of, but I love the question. This question is referenced by Jérôme Jarre, a young man with an old soul, in a written interview he’d done in Tribe of Mentors, itself a wealth of information and inspiration.

      The answer should never be “not this” of course, but importantly, what IS that answer? The time travel spin is a variation on the dying wish story: I wish I’d spent more time with my children instead of working, or similar wishes. But it’s easy to separate ourselves from the responsibility of that deathbed moment. There’s still time… Carmichael’s what would you do? question brings the future to NOW. And really, that’s all we have isn’t it?

      So, …what’s the answer to the question? Right now?

    • Snatching Necklaces From the Sea

      “The wind freshened, and the Spray rounded Deer Island light at the rate of seven knots.
      Passing it, she squared away direct for Gloucester to procure there some fisherman’s stores. Waves dancing joyously across Massachusetts Bay met her coming out of the harbor to dash them into myriads of sparkling gems that hung about her at every surge. The day was perfect, the sunlight clear and strong. Every particle of water thrown into the air became a gem, and the Spray, bounding ahead, snatched necklace after necklace from the sea, and as often threw them away. We have all seen miniature rainbows about a ship’s prow, but the Spray flung out a bow of her own that day, such as I had never seen before. Her good angel had embarked on the voyage; I so read it in the sea.” – Josh Slocum, Sailing Alone Around the World

      I’ve read that passage a few times over the years since first reading this book, and did so again last night.  There’s magic in setting out on a new adventure, and I feel this paragraph captures that exhilaration.  These are the highlighter moments in the novel of life; the first ride without the training wheels when you have balance and velocity with you and you feel like you’re flying, boarding a plane for a flight overseas to a place you’ve always dreamed of going, or simply the first feeling out steps on a long hike when you realize everything is good to go.  Preparedness meets possibility, and the world is in front of you welcoming you to explore your potential.  Ready?  Go!

      Of course, not every moment is a highlight moment, but there should be something in every day that makes you feel alive.  Every dawn is full of possibility, if we’ll only get out and greet the day.  Over the weekend I re-acquainted myself with my sister’s dog Parker. She’s a yellow lab with a highly expressive face and eyes that tell you everything you need to know.  Reading about Slocum’s boat Spray, I thought of Parker’s expression as she realized she was going for a swim in the bay.  Sheer delight, and a sprint to the water.  May we all have more of that in our time here.

      What shall we make of this day?

    • Great is Today

      If you want to fully feel the urgency of “now” watch a veteran roofing crew begin work on a house. There’s no time to get in touch with their feelings, they pull up, assess and get on with it. Get it done ASAP, and move on to the next house tomorrow.

      It’s the first Tuesday in September, and the first day of school pictures will be snapped all over Massachusetts. New Hampshire went back last week, but really that’s just to get a head start on snow days to come. School begins in earnest this week from kindergarten to college. And so [unofficially] summer ends, Autumn begins, and there’s a heightened sense of the moment.

      I read Leaves of Grass last week. More precisely I finished Leaves of Grass last week. Walt Whitman has some brilliant prose, and some sprinkled liberally throughout this work, but there’s a lot of chewing to get this one down. Lot of Walt getting in touch with his sensuality stuff in there that proved controversial for the time, but this isn’t going to be a post about the work as a whole. Instead, this line jumped out at me:

      “Great is today, and beautiful, It is good to live in this age… there never was any better.” – Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

      Whitman wrote that sometime between 1850 and 1855, when Leaves of Grass was published. It was before the Civil War and other dark days in Whitman’s life. But there are always dark days, and always vibrant days throughout history. Life is the ebb and flow. Don’t bury your head in the sand when darkness reigns, but don’t ignore the extraordinary gift of now we’ve been given either.

      “Look around. Look around. How lucky we are to be alive right now.” – The Schuyler Sisters, Hamilton

      Be alive, right now. That’s all there is. We can’t time travel backwards, and we can’t hit fast-forward.  We all know Aesop’s fable about the ants and the grasshopper, but he wasn’t saying there’s no time for play, he was saying that we need to harvest first, then dance and sing.  So by all means work, and build that nest egg, but don’t lose sight of this magic moment along the way. 

      “Do not be concerned with the fruit of your action – just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord.” – Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

      I’m weighing that fable as roofers strip the roof over my head and I contemplate Whitman. The irony isn’t lost on me, I’ve been on construction crews and know their world. They don’t stop to smell the roses for very long, but sometimes a moment appears. As I spoke with them before they started I pointed to the ripe grapes they would soon cover over to protect them from debris and told them to help themselves. They savored the sweetness of the grapes with audible pleasure, even as they got on with the work at hand. The fruit came of it’s own accord, then it was time to get back to work.

    • Shattering the Peppadew Jar

      (Reposted after quirky WordPress delete)

      This morning I was pondering the power of routine in our lives when my routine abruptly changed.  I was filling a glass of water in the refrigerator when I noticed the basket of limes was protruding out because they were crowded by the package of strawberries.  In pushing the strawberries to side I started a chain reaction that led to a jar of peppadews to topple over onto the glass I was holding in my hand, shattering both immediately.  They eventually ended up on the floor, where the juice and glass and peppadews and water began to flow outward in all directions.  Suddenly I wasn’t focused on the next step in my morning routine and quickly began the cleanup process, which included extracting two small slivers of glass from my hand.

      Prior to that moment, I had been contemplating in succession the workout posters on the wall in the basement where we exercise, and then the cookbooks on the shelf in the kitchen, and thinking about how we rarely look at either.  When I work out I generally do the exercises I’m familiar with, I don’t scan the wall for a new one.  When I cook uiuiI usually cook the same things over and over, rarely going to the cookbooks for something new.  In the time I could scan the index of a cookbook I could Google a couple of available ingredients and find a dozen four and five star-reviewed recipes.  And yet the cookbooks remain ready should I need them.

      Routines are powerful things indeed.  I’m better for having changed the start to my early morning from grabbing a coffee and scrolling through social media to exercising first, reading second and writing third before I jump into whatever the rest of the world is up thinking about.  I credit reading Atomic Habits for shaking me loose from the normal routine.  Other books have inspired me along the way, but that book was like a jar of peppadews shattering in my hand, triggering me to change things immediately.

      This is my 200th blog post this year, and this is the 189th day of the year.  I’m well ahead of last year’s pace when I started this thing.  Last year I posted 143 times total.  That’s the power of establishing habits for you.  I’ve read more, and better books.  I’ve worked out more consistently as well. But the writing has been the one I’m most pleased about.  I was contemplating what to write about in this 200th post of 2019 – travel, gardening, history or some such thing, but nothing has done more for my writing than changing my daily habits.    Some of it is pretty good, some of it isn’t so good, but I’m not aiming for perfection.  Instead I’m establishing the habit and the commitment to shipping every day, as Seth Godin would say.

      Follow some friends of mine at fayaway.com to see how they’re doing their own version of shattering the peppadews to sail around the world.  Other friends have completely transformed their lives by focusing on hiking the mountains of New Hampshire.  We rarely see them anymore but they’ve never been healthier or happier than they are now. I watched a niece similarly transform herself through hiking and other lifestyle changes. Another good friend from Maine left an abusive marriage and moved to the mid-Atlantic region, where she just announced her engagement to a much better person. All shattering their own peppadew jars. Anything is possible if you just shake yourself free of the shackles of routine.

      “Don’t think, try.” – John Hunter

      “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” – Aristotle

      What Aristotle left unsaid is that mediocrity is also a habit. Change – getting out of your comfort zone, can be good indeed. James Clear talks about casting votes for your identity. If you identify yourself as an athlete you’re more likely to get up and work out. If you’re identify yourself as a disciplined eater you’re not even going to see that bowl of M & M’s your wife leaves right next to the door. Carrying the metaphor further, shattering the peppadew jar is deciding what your identity is going to be and casting that first vote. Who you’ll be, and who you won’t be on a larger scale.

      Back in my early twenties I used to call rowing an attractive rut, because it’s easy I could see the benefits of doing it in my overall health and fitness level, but I could also see the opportunities I was missing out on to do it. Travel, taking specific college courses because they conflicted with rowing, going out with non-rowing friends to an event because it would impact my performance. When you believe the overall benefits outweighs the costs it’s inconsequential that you’re missing out on things. About when I started identifying rowing as an attractive rut I was changing the equation in my own mind. I still row, but I don’t have illusions of winning the Head-of-the-Charles anymore.

      Achieving anything requires a healthy measure of sacrifice. Establishing one routine at the expense of another. You can remain average at a bunch of things and get along perfectly well in this world, or you can do the work that makes you exceptional at a specific thing and below average at other things. Attractive ruts are found in routine. But life is all too short, and before you know it another decade has flown by.

      “A rut is a grave with the ends knocked out.” – Laurence J. Peter

      So perhaps it’s best to shatter a few more peppadew jars. Sometimes an abrupt reminder to shake up the routine is the best thing that can happen.

       

       

    • Love the One You’re With

      I woke up extra early today, hearing the call. Looking out the window I see a faint orange tint to an otherwise black sky. Not time yet, but close. I lay back down, but it’s no use. The call prevails. I scroll social media to distract the restless spirit. A quick scan confirms my worst fears of missing out. Aurora Borealis seen in Maine and New Hampshire last night. I switch to the Aurora app and look at the blob of green and orange stretching across the entire northern hemisphere, dipping down enough towards New England that a perch on Mount Washington or Katadin would surely offer a glimpse. Despair. I’ve missed it once again. I close the app and open Facebook to distract me. An old college friend posted pictures in Iceland… bet she saw it, I think to myself. Enough! I get up, get dressed and walk out to the crickets. No Aurora here but something equally spectacular I’m blessed to witness. The last day of August calls, and there’s plenty to see right here.

    • Three Legs of the Triangle

      Beginning Tuesday morning through last night I drove from Southern New Hampshire to Rocky Hill, Connecticut, up to Danbury, over to Dover Plains, New York, up to Albany, up to Burlington, Vermont and back down to Southern New Hampshire.  That’s a roughly 700 mile perimeter triangle on a map that is bigger in area that some of the states I drove through.  I’ve found that the people are mostly the same no matter where I go, but there are some differences in the three legs of that triangle.  The drive from Southern NH through Massachusetts and Connecticut is one world. The other two legs from Dover Plains to Burlington and back offer a very different world.

      I was at a bar in Danbury talking to a guy who was waiting out the traffic with dinner and a couple of drinks before he got back in his car to crawl home.  I know a guy in Massachusetts who does the same thing.  The traffic in both places will murder you 1/10th of a mile at a time.  There’s a helplessness that comes with relentless traffic that can eat you alive. That guy in Danbury was shell-shocked by a combination of forces working against him.

      Sprawling development has changed Danbury from the place I knew 25 years ago.  Perhaps nothing disgusted me more than seeing condos perched on the top of a hill, offering lovely views for the people who lived there but ruining the view for everyone that had to look at what they did to that hill.  Wedging more homes into open space means more and more people jamming onto those roads.  But the people are great, if worn down by the grind of traffic, urban sprawl, and Connecticut’s bureaucracy. There’s seemingly a sign everywhere telling you what you can and can’t do (Take my sunglasses off when I drive into a tunnel? Who knew?).

      New York is two states, metro New York and everywhere else. Dover Plains is not Metro NY, and neither is anyplace else along the stretch from there to the Canadian border, save for some Capital District commuter misery. North of Saratoga you can breath again. And other than the ferry drama mentioned in yesterday’s post those two longer legs were uneventful bliss. No condos carved into hilltops, no commuters on the verge of boiling over. Bliss.

      If you’ve ever stood by the side of a road you know how unnatural it is. It’s a horrific blur of noise, fumes and speed, all meant to rapidly transport goods and people from one place to another as quickly as possible. It’s inherently inefficient, destroys vast swaths of land, disrupts communities and ultimately destroys itself and chunks of the planet. The flip side of that story is that the world becomes smaller. I love the highway system when I’m zipping around 2/3 of that triangle, and hate it when I’m crawling along on the other 1/3. It’s a complicated debate, but I hope we get it right in the end. Let’s not let the 1/3 leg become the norm

    • “Ferry” Tales

      Waze. A blessing and a curse. Better than GPS no doubt. But sometimes it gets it really, really wrong. Yesterday was one of those wrong times.

      After bouncing between meetings from Danbury to Albany I set Waze for my next destination; Burlington, Vermont. I’ve done this drive in reverse a few times, so no big deal, right? But Waze conditions you to drive in autopilot, and I was well into my drive when I double-checked the route it was sending me. Bad news: It had me taking the ferry. Worse news: That ferry stopped running for the night an hour before. I could either try to make the last Port Kent ferry or go all the way around the lake. Damn.

      Cursing myself did no good. Cursing Waze did less. Instead I did a re-set of both Waze and my own brain. It was raining hydroplane hard if I were to push the speed. Instead I checked the time, realized I’d get there with plenty of time to spare and drove to the tiny ferry terminal in Keeseville, New York. When I arrived the booth attendant ignored me for whatever was on television, not jumping to attention until I pulled behind the only other car in line. Grabbing my tiny umbrella I walked back to the booth and paid my $30 for the ride across. It was worth three times that for me as the buckets of rain made short work of the umbrella and soaked my dress shirt sleeves and my favorite off-roading leather sole shoes.

      30 minutes later we were boarding the ferry for the ride across Lake Champlain. I knew the view we were missing in the rain and fog, and described it to a retired couple from Wisconsin taking the long, scenic (usually) route to Cape Cod. I described the strategic importance of Lake Champlain and the story of when Benedict Arnold was a hero before it all went wrong for him. The blank, polite stares told me to swing the conversation back to their trip. They were traveling the old school way, with a road atlas and no smart phone or GPS. I recalled days when I’d have plotted my own trip, noted bridges and little things like ferry schedules. I told them they might just be on to something.

      The crew joined in on the conversation. This was the last run of the night and all the chores were done. As we cruised into Burlington I looked over the shoulder of the couple from Wisconsin and pointed out the sun setting as the clouds lifted just in time. We were just slipping into port with the lighthouse to Starboard. The trip was full of twists and turns, but it all aligned for this moment. Three passengers and as many crew, sharing it before we all hustled to our respective positions. Things have a way of working out if you just trust… but verify.

    • I’ll Take Crickets

      PT Barnum was born in Bethel, Connecticut on July 5, 1810. He is buried in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he once served as Mayor. So he’s as much a son of Connecticut as anyone, but is mostly known for being that circus thing. He demanded attention, and is known still as the greatest showman. I have very little interest in the man… but my grandfather was fascinated with the circus, and so PT Barnum is a curiosity.

      “Audentis Fortuna iuvat” (Fortune favors the bold) – Virgil

      This morning I was sitting in a completely unremarkable diner in Connecticut. Bland food, horrible coffee, no soul. The kind of place Hollywood would use to show the bland existence of some poor character before they woke up and sought more in their life. When they asked me whether I wanted white or wheat toast I knew I had to get out as soon as possible.

      There are parts of Connecticut that are lovely. I forever think of Kent fondly, not because of the private school, trendy stores, or a past relationship (gone horribly bad), but because of the stillness away from Route 7. There’s magic in those hills, and in the light buzz of crickets in the fields, and in the white water of the Housatonic River at Bulls Bridge. I made my way up there on my drive to Dover Plains. Some detours are more essential than others. The hills and crickets offer the same song, and there’s more Manhattan money than ever in this tiny town. We all seek solitude, some pay a premium for it. But the bridge looks about the same, and I drove through a 26 year time warp crossing it. On the other side of that time warp I appreciate where I am now.

      The residents of Bethel put up a statue of old PT Barnum showing him in his most dynamic days. I drove by early this morning because I don’t like sitting in hotel rooms longer than I need to, or soul-suckingly bland diners. The statue was erected in 2010, not all that long ago, and its clear Bethel wants to celebrate their connection to Barnum. I stopped by, took a picture and got on with my day. A nod to my grandfather. He loved the vibrancy of the circus, and old PT offered an association with that vibrancy. Perhaps he was as grandiose as history suggests. But I’ll take crickets, thank you.

    • Hummingbirds Squeak under a Waning Moon… and Other Observations

      Cool enough for a fleece this morning. It seems summer is tilting away faster by the day. The white noise buzz of crickets fills in. Other sounds penetrate. Cars in the distance getting an early start. Birds like my old friend the Brown Thrasher announce their presence, if further away than in July.

      The mornings are especially active now. The bees and hummingbirds flitter from honeysuckle to basil gone to flower and on to the next. Each have a unique sound; not shockingly bees buzz and hummingbirds, well, their wings hum as they zip by you. I smile when the hummingbirds squeak at each other, a chorus of animated bird banter filling the yard. They largely ignore me as I sip coffee and take in the show. As if to mirror them, the squirrels are jumping tree to tree dropping acorns and hickory nuts that thump to the ground for collection later. Two scratch around my favorite white oak tree on the planet, chasing each other in young squirrel frivolity with their own chirping chorus.

      Looking up, the Waning Crescent moon greets me in a crisp blue sky. This is September blue, always embedded on my mind these last 18 years, a reference point anyone around here that day will understand. A reference point from New England to New Jersey. That day remembered in random moments like this, then gently put aside. There’s a collective joy about September in New England, with an undercurrent of sadness for the summer fading away and change in the air. But it’s still August, even if it feels like we’ve crossed. Seasons come and go, and it feels time for summer to move along too.

      Back on earth, there are a few more tomatoes to harvest, a thriving and ironic grape harvest after my public shaming in the spring, fading flowers and herbs to contend with. Like the squirrels I’ve got to get my act together and do some work to prepare for the cooler days and changes ahead. My fingers are cold from sitting outside a layer short of comfortable. Time to move. So much to do and it stirs a restlessness inside of me. But first another coffee.

    • Breaking Free of Spreadsheet Travel

      “Buddhists believe that we live our everyday lives as if inside an eggshell.  Just as an unhatched chicken has few clues about what life is truly like, most of us are only vaguely aware of the greater world that surrounds us.” – Rolf Potts, Vagabonding

      I’ve been re-reading Vagabonding again.  It’s been about ten years since I read it the first time, and I’m discovering it anew.  At first glance a travel bible, on further review there’s a good dose of stoicism and hard-won pragmatism in this book that I appreciate more now than when I read it the first time.  As with re-reading Walden, it offers something new with every stage of life.

      When we confirmed an upcoming trip to London and Scotland in late October, I immediately started scanning the lists of things to see in each place, lists of experiences others felt worthwhile enough to put at the top of a list. Then came planning the foundational stuff like hotels, Airbnb and traditional Bed & Breakfast reservations, which put us in specific places at specific times. Then came the logistical stuff like car rentals, trains and ferries, amount of daylight at that time of year, the hours of distilleries and let’s not forget the typical weather. Not so much London, where other than the hotel I’m planning on winging it and relying on my daughter to show us her favorite places, but Scotland… Scotland has been heavily researched. I’ve watched just about every YouTube video you can imagine, plotted travel times and scrutinized street views, until finally I’d had enough. It was sucking all the joy out of the anticipation this trip offered.

      “With escape in mind, vacationers tend to approach their holiday with a grim resolve, determined to make their experience live up to their expectations; on the vagabonding road, you prepare for the long haul knowing that the predictable and the unpredictable, the pleasant and the unpleasant are not separate but part of the same ongoing reality.” – Rolf Potts, Vagabonding

      I’m not this way with other travel. When I went to Newfoundland I didn’t plan my every move on a spreadsheet, I booked a place to stay, went to the meetings I needed to go to and asked the locals where they recommended I visit beyond that. Simply talking to the locals about what their favorite place is has led me to some amazing waterfalls, restaurants and historic sites I might not have seen living off a spreadsheet.  But Scotland…  Scotland holds a dear place in my heart.  And so I over-planned with eager anticipation.  Vagabonding woke me up once again, and having done what I had to do with the rough framework of our trip, I’ll leave the rest to the whims of the road.  I’m eager to give driving a stick with the opposite hand.  Hopefully that doesn’t distract me from actually staying on the road.  There’s so much to see.