Alexandersmap

    Category: Discovery

    • Every Passing Moment

      As wave is driven by wave
      And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead,
      So time flies on and follows, flies, and follows,
      Always, for ever and new. What was before
      Is left behind; what never was is now;
      And every passing moment is renewed.
      — Ovid, Metamorphoses      , Book XV

      We are forever transformed by what was. If we take this to be true, then it follows that what will be will be realized because of what we do now. Our lives are thus reinvented one day to the next, right to the end of our days. We may choose to do something with each precious moment to ensure tomorrow renews with promise, or concede our agency to fate and the whim of others.

      Each week passes by more quickly than the last. Seven days feel like three, four weeks feel like two. So what do the years feel like? Shockingly brief time capsules marking each stage of life before the next wave is upon us. Tempus fugit. Our awareness of this rapid flip through days naturally leaves us feeling like we’re forever behind, trying to grasp the moments as they fly past. To seize what flees, as Seneca put it.

      The answer isn’t to try to cram more into our moments, but to savor what we’re doing as it’s happening. Thich Nhat Hanh suggested approaching everything, even something as mundane as washing dishes, with mindfulness, that we may process our time more fully. This is it, such that it is. So what does it feel like? What are we making of it? Where will it take us from here?

      It’s easy to meditate in the garden or even while washing the dishes. It’s harder to sit in traffic and accept the minutes turning to hours. Each situation presents an opportunity to be fully aware, fully awake, fully alive. We are all works in progress, wave after wave, surfing through time. What is this moment teaching us about our place in it? What does it offer for the moments to come?

      Whenever I tell myself to stop writing this blog and use the time for other things, I’m struck by two thoughts. First, I’m a streak-based creature of habit, and I’m not inclined to break this streak just yet. But more to the point, writing is my particular way of processing each wave, for ever and new. I gently place this post in my timeline and face the next wave as it rises before me. The days and weeks and years fly by, marked thusly, for anyone inclined to follow along (I really wanted to use the word thusly in today’s blog, and there it is).

      This post will be longer than the norm. Maybe I just don’t want to say farewell to our moment together. But the next wave is rising, and we each must bring our attention to each passing moment as it renews before us. And here it is! So thank you for this time. We both know just how precious it is.

    • A Little Mystery Each Day

      “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.” ― Albert Einstein

      At this point in the blog, dear reader, you may have realized that I am a collector of quotes. I believe it’s because I’m curious about what other people have to say about this journey through life. We are all somewhere along our timeline from here to there. That ought to mean something now, and it tends to mean something different at each phase of the journey. The takeaway is that it means something.

      When we are curious we are prompted to seek out interesting. Imagination sparked, we do still more interesting things, which leads to an expansive life of ever more interesting. Like attracts like, and in this way we surround ourselves with people who want more out of life than to drown it out in an endless doom scroll with something to wash it all down. To find delight in this world is simply choosing awareness over distraction.

      Curiosity didn’t kill the cat, it saved the cat from a life of boredom and indifference. What mystery is there for discovery? What will we manifest today though our curiosity and inclination to discover? Our search for meaning begins with having a look around and moving towards interesting. It’s certainly beyond where we’ve been thus far.

    • Touched

      “The snow doesn’t give a soft white damn whom it touches.”
      — E.E. Cummings

      Have a look around this winter day. How do you feel about snow? Remember, in answering, what we mean to the snow.

      One’s relationship with snow often comes down to what one is prioritizing that particular day. When we focus only on the bleak reality of our day, snow tends to be nothing but a barrier. We want to get from here to there, but for the snow. We want to park there, but for the snow. Et cetera.

      Alternatively, we may find all the truth in the universe buried like treasure in snow. When we seek council with it, we hear whispers in its silence. When we get out in the world with it gliding or tromping or rolling in it, we find delight revealed in ordinary. When we grab a handful and sculpt it into something alive in our imagination, we are transformed together into artist and form. Temporary and beautiful in this dance with infinity, before one day being transformed again into something else.

      Do you see? Like life itself, snow is neutral and indifferent. It’s people who transform it with meaning. So again I ask, how do you feel about snow?

    • Shake the Grass

      And the days are not full enough
      And the nights are not full enough
      And life slips by like a field mouse
      Not shaking the grass.
      — Ezra Pound

      There is a compulsion to fill my days and nights with experience. Perhaps you share this too. There is an equally pressing sense that time is slipping past us at shocking speed. Tempus fugit. We humans are bound to notice it eventually.

      Forever chasing experience. Forever working to be here, now. It’s a blessing and a curse to be aware. Mostly a blessing, for awareness offers a glimpse of all that flies past. Awareness locks a few moments in amber, that we may cherish them for the rest of our vibrant days. Awareness makes us do things like getting out of a warm bed at 3 AM to attempt a glimpse at the northern lights, or to plunge into a cold mountain stream or the bay late in the season—simply because we may never pass this way again.

      Don’t waste a moment. We ought to spend the time as we know we should. We ought to avoid distraction and waste whenever possible. And be bold and daring when we least expect it of ourselves. Shake the grass and dance all night. For today will fly by like all the rest.

    • We Become the Sum

      “What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is related only to objects and not to individuals, or to life. That art is something which is specialized or which is done by experts who are artists. But couldn’t everyone’s life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life?” — Michel Foucault

      Walking the pup yesterday during a snowstorm, I considered turning back to slip on micro spikes. Fluffy snow over ice is never a good recipe for reliable footing. Instead I shortened my stride and the leash so the dog wouldn’t pull me down in her snowy exuberance. Some life lessons are learned from a sore backside.

      We know that we are works in progress, but sometimes get frustrated with the pace of that progress. It’s okay to paint over our mistakes now and then. It’s better to make them anyway, if only to learn which paths are not ours to take, if only to not have possibilities haunting us for not having tried them at all. As Nietzsche reminded us, that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. In this way, we may consider each day a lesson in how to live.

      The pup and I have a loop that covers the same ground twice to get us to the desired distance. Double the distance and we’re doubling the frequency of times covering the same ground. Which is noticeable when it’s snowing out and we’re leaving foot and paw prints behind us. In this way, each loop revealed the previous ground we’d covered, but our steps never exactly repeated themselves. Our strides changed with the conditions, we were pulled towards some curiosity just a nose below the snow, a car passed by that changed our path or some such thing. As the snow accumulated, the oldest footprints faded more and more into the layers building up on top of them. Each loop was the same, yet completely different. So too are our days.

      Our canvas transforms with every stroke of the brush. Each offers lessons on where to go next. Each fades further into the background with the addition of yet another. But here lies depth and progress. The richness of life is found not just in the changes we make to our days, but in the rituals that anchor them. It all builds upon itself to form the work of art that is our life. In this way, we become the sum.

    • Courage

      “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”
      — Vincent van Gogh

      When we look back, how does the path that brought us here look? Probably full of switchbacks and a few dead ends, some steep learning curves and false peaks, disappointing descents and surprising vistas that taught us a thing or two. Life is a series of attempts at something new. We may be bold today and again tomorrow, or we can shrink into familiar and less risky ventures. Which is the hero’s journey? Which will give us a better story in the end?

      None of this will mean a thing a hundred years from now. If we’re lucky maybe one small thing will break through and resonate beyond. Whatever project we’re currently working on is unlikely to resonate through the ages like Irises. Does that mean I shouldn’t write this blog post or go to work today? Purpose is discovered through daily action and the courage to change course when the one we’re on isn’t bringing us to where we’d like to go. Van Gogh painted Irises shortly after checking into the Saint Paul-de-Mausole asylum. Do you wonder if he considered his own path clear and straight to the top?

      It’s not just okay to try new things, it’s imperative that we do so. Exploring new paths opens up new opportunities, it colors our world with new perspective, it teaches us who we might be simply by stepping away from the tried and true. Some paths turn out to be magical, but we’ve learned that some will crush our spirit. Knowing this, courage is indeed necessary to rise again to try another. And another. And yet another. In this way, we grow into who we might become in this lifetime.

      Irises, at the J. Paul Getty Museum

    • The Slow and Difficult Trick of Living

      It isn’t very far as highways lie.
      I might be back by nightfall, having seen
      The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water.
      Friends argue that I might be wiser for it.
      They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper:
      How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!

      Many have gone, and think me half a fool.
      To miss a day away in the cool country.
      Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish,
      Going to Walden is not so easy a thing
      As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult
      Trick of living, and finding it where you are.
      — Mary Oliver, Going to Walden

      It isn’t very far at all for me to visit Walden. I could be there in about an hour, accounting for rush hour traffic in that general direction. I’ve gone there before, just to be there on some random Tuesday or Wednesday or whatnot. While others worked I would play hooky for an hour or two, just to see the water, just to feel like Thoreau in the interlude between responsibilities. Inevitably I’d return better for having been there. Some might argue that my nose to the grindstone for those couple of hours would have been a better use of the time. Let them think what they want. We’re all different people, aren’t we?

      I can feel that it’s almost time to re-read Walden again, just as I felt today it was time to revisit Mary Oliver. There are other voices beyond the hustle culture that ought to be listened to. There are other ways to spend our precious time. The trick to living is awareness and presence in the invaluable now. To learn and grow and become at a pace that we can maintain for the long haul, even as we know that the time slips away so very quickly.

      You won’t find me at Walden today. I assure you it will be just fine without me. For a Monday I ought to be in more of a rush somewhere, but what is on the other side of that hustle? Just what do we arrive at when we go from here to there anyway? Maybe that’s why I keep writing—to remind myself to be aware of the time going by, or to simply remind myself to cherish the view along the way. To be here, now feels like more than enough. Why would we ever rush away from it?

    • A More Available Life

      “The more you move, the more available you are to chance and little wonders.” — Douglas Westerbeke, A Short Walk Through A Wide World

      To be open to experience is risky. Openness requires more of us than to simply stay in place, doing what we’ve always done, in this familiar way that we’ve always done it. That sentence either sounds like comfort to us or a death sentence, depending on who we have grown to be.

      Westerbeke’s novel is a page-turning wonder itself, as its hero moves through the world. For those of us with travel lust, it stirs those familiar feelings. To leave all of this and go find out more about that, whatever and wherever that is. In experiencing that, we learn a lot about who we are in the process. We are moving beyond the self in such moments. We are living a more available life.

      It sounds wonderful to be forever traveling, forever moving from place to place, as if we’d die if we stayed too long in any one place. In reality, we need a safe harbor to return to now and then, to catch up with old friends and family, to tend a garden and to be there for the harvest, to know the way and what to order at certain restaurants. Familiar has its place in our lives too.

      To weave oneself back into a community is a lovely thing indeed. My barber knows my face and exactly how to cut my hair the moment I walk in the door, even if he hasn’t learned my name in the twenty years I’ve been going there. Honestly, I don’t need him to know my name, only that I’ll be back again in a few weeks to do it all over again. The stories I tell him about where I’ve been since the last time he cut my hair carry him away from that barber shop even as I settle into the familiarity of it.

      As we begin this year, as we venture into an uncertain future, what are we inclined to chance upon? What will we wonder at? Sometimes it’s right in front of us, or within the pages of a book. But often it’s beyond our current experience, simply waiting for us to venture to it. To add venturing to our lives naturally lends itself to more adventure. To go and be and do and yes, to return again forever changed, in the time we have available to us.

      Tempus fugit: Time flies. Every moment of now is rapidly receding into then. How we use now isn’t always up to us, but sometimes—more often that we believe, it is ours alone to spend. Will this day, this year and the balance of our lives be full of familiar routines and comforting safe bets or will we dare to venture beyond?

    • Dreams, Friends and Beginnings

      The sun was in his bathing suit,
      the moon in her pajamas.
      They played all day
      until the two
      were called in by their mamas.

      The sun went home and climbed in bed,
      his mama sang a tune,
      and soon the sun
      was fast asleep
      and dreaming of the moon.

      The moon decided not to go;
      instead she stayed outside.
      She danced and played
      and laughed and sang
      and stayed awake all night.

      When morning came the sun arose
      and went outside to play,
      but could not find
      his friend the moon,
      who slept inside all day.

      So now these two are best of friends,
      apart in dark and light.
      The sun turns in
      at evenfall —
      the moon stays out all night.

      The shining moon sees no sunlight,
      the sun sees no moonbeams,
      but when they each
      are fast asleep
      they’re in each other’s dreams.
      — Kenn Nesbitt, The Tale of the Sun and the Moon

      The ringing of the New Year necessitates staying up late. We early birds struggle, and must choose whether to sleep in or begin the New Year with a decent night’s sleep. The alternative is to simply go to bed early like it was any other night of the year. Whatever the choice, we often resolve to make changes to our routine going forward. Forever improving, forever seeking better things for our selves, forever optimizing. Such is the curse of the modern soul.

      I begin the year with a poem that delights me to read. Does it offer a hint of what’s to come? Perhaps, but sometimes simply finding things that delight us is enough for any given day. Why not kick off an entire year with a bit of magic, a bit of wonder, a bit of delight? We have tomorrow to be stoically focused on productivity and key performance indicators and such things that sound awful to mentioned when we began with friends and dreams. Can we resolve to simply live joyfully aware of the blessings around us?

      I will write more this year, I can feel that it’s all still there within me, bursting at the seams, awaiting release to fly away in fully-formed verse. The words keep coming to me—more sometimes than a blog post can contain. Time will tell whether dreams come true or if they simply fade into memory, like old friends we don’t see anymore but we smile when thinking about. To embark on a New Year is either an adventure or simply another day on a limited timeline. Isn’t it up to us to decide which it will be?

    • Part of Us

      George Malley: You know, if we were to put this apple down, and leave it, it would be spoiled and gone in a few days. But, if we were to take a bite of it like this,
      [bites apple]
      George Malley: it would become part of us, and we could take it with us, forever.
      [offers the apple to Glory, who takes a bite. Al refuses]
      George Malley: Al, everything is on its way to somewhere. Everything.
      — Gerald DiPego, scene from the movie Phenomenon

      The last few days of the year are meant for reflection of what has been, blended with anticipation for what may be in the New Year. The places we go to, the books we’ve read, the things we’ve done or not done all accumulate and become our identity. We are here because of all of that, layered into who we are. It’s all a part of us, carried for our evermore.

      Reflecting on what we’ve added to our identity, what we’ve subtracted from it, leads one naturally to consideration of what one might add to our identity going forward. Just who do we want to become next anyway? What, like that apple George Malley bit into, will become a part of us forever and always? We ought to make it the juiciest and most delicious apple we can find.

      We are all on our way somewhere. Forever accumulating, subtracting, showcasing or burying deep within. Life is what we carry, but also what we build from the blocks we’ve gathered together in our lives. Want a more magical life? Gather bits of magic and make something of them (those magical bits are everywhere when we train ourselves to be aware of them).

      What will tomorrow bring? Who knows? But eternity will surely show its indifference to our plans either way. This is our verse to write, beginning forever today. What in the world are we waiting for? Take a bite already.

      Happy New Year!