Alexandersmap

    Category: Poetry

    • To Be Productive and Daring

      Give winter nothing; hold; and let the flake
      Poise or dissolve along your upheld arms.
      All flawless hexagons may melt and break;
      While you must feel the summer’s rage of fire,
      Beyond this frigid season’s empty storms.
      Banished to bloom, and bear the birds’ desire.
      — James Wright, To a Troubled Friend

      Winter is thriving. The darkest day of the year is almost upon us, and then Christmas, and New Year’s, and before we know it we’ll be looking ahead to spring. At least that’s the hope of winter days. We look ahead, placing ourselves in some future place, brighter and perhaps warmer than where we are now. But now is the gift we forever ignore at our peril.

      I want to make something of this day—to be productive and daring. To do the things I promise myself I’ll do in the earliest hours, before the sun rises, before the first coffee bolsters my courage, before this blog post is captured and released for your consideration. Before is now for the productive mind. Now is the time to write and create something, now is the time to do that workout that mocks us. Now is before we get to those things. After is like another season altogether for the busiest mind.

      It’s all a blur of restless productivity towards something beyond here and now. Simply do what must be done next, and beyond will be there waiting. How we like to believe it so! Do with today what we only dream about for tomorrow. For all flawless hexagons may melt and break.

    • Expanding Possible

      “History enters when the space of the possible is vastly larger than the space of the actual.”

      “History itself arises out of the adjacent possible.”
      ― Stuart A. Kauffman, Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion

      What is success to you? Isn’t success something that stirs emotion within at the very idea of achieving it? Or of having achieved it? Success isn’t a thing at all, but a belief. People chase the idea of success, but often don’t have an idea of what would satiate that drive. So they keep on driving, on and on, to the end—whatever that is. Death, decline, or hopefully, enlightenment and a level of satisfaction with the place achieved during the climb.

      We each woke up this morning, beginning a string of successful moments and achievement of ever-expanding possibilities. Never forget the small victories on the march to summits beyond our present ascent. Writing and publishing this blog post is another small win in a series of possibilities (the streak continues for one more day). Is that success? If we believe it to be. The thing is, we can’t have success always in front of us like a carrot, we’ve got to recognize what we’ve actualized as a big part of what makes us successful.

      I heard the phrase “expanding the adjacent possible” in a Rory Sutherland Knowledge Project interview, as he called it his definition of success. As with any phrase or quote that captures my attention, I naturally look for the original source. Sutherland pointed towards Kauffman, and here we are with another book added to my must-read list. How can we believe ourselves to be well-read when there’s always another book to read?

      As someone who delights in well-spun words and phrases, I found Sutherland’s definition simply breathtaking. What is possible in our life? Not the life we’ve lived thus far, but looking ahead—what possibility are we inclined to expand? What are we willing to trade our life for, as we surely do, chasing our dreams and distractions the way we do?

      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?
      — Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

      The year is almost to an end, and with it the closing of any possibility for this particular year in our lives. So many dwell on bucket lists or to-do lists. This focuses us on what we haven’t yet done, which leaves us feeling that there’s a void in our lives. I’ve recently taken a hint from Oliver Burkeman and started listing the things that I’ve done in a day or for the year as a way to expand my idea of possibilities achieved. Mindset is everything in life, and when we grow a list as we accomplish things we begin to realize that we’ve had a very successful time indeed.

      Naturally, there will always be more things to do and be. We may celebrate abundance of that we’ve achieved while delighting in executing on future plans. What is possible now, having done all this? We may grow and be, built on our expanding foundation of accomplishment.

      “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” — Anaïs Nin

      We may agree that life is expansive based on all that we’ve become and done so far in our lives. Were we courageous enough? Might we be more so in the future? Success lies in what we believe the answer to be. Chasing success is folly, akin to chasing happiness. Choosing to expand adjacent possibilities is a life of discovery and action, realized one expansive moment at a time. So as we move beyond the actual that is this day and indeed, this year rapidly drawing to a close—just what is possible next?

    • So Soon

      “How did it get so late so soon?
      It’s night before it’s afternoon.
      December is here before it’s June.
      My goodness how the time has flewn.
      How did it get so late so soon?”
      ― Dr. Seuss

      December came so quickly, and so too did winter…
      Sure, it hasn’t officially begun,
      not until we hit 21.
      I don’t feel all that much older
      and surely not very wise.
      Tempus fugit, they said.
      Ain’t it funny how the time flies.
      We’re all surfing each day
      in our own way.
      Today will fly by like all the rest.
      Doing things worthwhile would be best.

      An admittedly weak attempt at poetry on the fly to mark the 10th day of December. How did we get here? The rapidity of the days flying past shocks the system some days. We know that we cannot control time, only how we use it. But those grains of sand are sneaky fast, and grabbing bunches of them are out of the question. And so we must decide what to be and go be it, today, as best we can before the opportunity is lost.

      Seize what flees, as our old friend Seneca told us. Carpe diem. That’s not a sad refrain, that’s a celebration of the day at hand, and of the hand we may play in making something of it. What a gift! May we use it well today.

    • How Words Mean Things

      Imagine you’re on Mars, looking at earth,
      a swirl of colors in the distance.
      Tell us what you miss most, or least.

      Let your feelings rise to the surface.
      Skim that surface with a tiny net.
      Now you’re getting the hang of it.

      Tell us your story slantwise,
      streetwise, in the disguise
      of an astronaut in his suit.

      Tell us something we didn’t know
      before: how words mean things
      we didn’t know we knew.
      — Wyn Cooper, Mars Poetica

      Life feels a little chaotic lately, at least in my world. How about yours? We move through life at variable speed. Lately the accelerator feels stuck.

      Simplify.

      Words having meaning based on weight and measure. A poet knows this and measures out words just so, knowing that the weight of one or two will topple the whole thing. Chaos ensues, if we let it. Do we live a neat and tidy life? I should think not. So why should the words that outlive us portray otherwise?

      What will you miss most about today when it’s gone? This is life, boiled down to the essence of now. Does it sparkle and shine? Does it provoke and rhyme? What will it mean when it’s put to bed? What will it mean when we’re dead?

      Jot it down and leave this thought for tomorrow. It’s not ours any longer when we click publish. It belongs somewhere beyond today. And maybe we do too. What does it all mean? Perhaps we’ll find out when we arrive there. But that feels like living on another planet today.

    • Stop Fluttering About

      Never regret thy fall
      O Icarus of the fearless flight,
      For the greatest tragedy of them all,
      Is never to feel the burning light.
      — Oscar Wilde, Icarus

      Some days we soar, and on some we stumble. The trick is to keep getting up and trying to win the next day. The alternative is to sink into the abyss, and what kind of life is that?

      Life is unfair and challenging. Life is beautiful and ripe with potential. Where is the truth but in the eye of the beholder? We may experience the life we manifest, but we can acknowledge that there is an element of luck too. Most of us reading this were born at the right time and right place. Some were dealt a lousy hand. We may celebrate or blame the circumstances that brought us to where we are, but we ought to recognize that here and now is only the beginning of this odyssey. The next step is up to us.

      This idea of having agency in our life is revelatory or ridiculous if we aren’t conditioned to take matters into our own hands. We may choose to learn and grow, to rise early and stay with something until we’ve reached mastery. Or simply concede that we never really wanted to soar anyway and simply give up our agency to someone with loftier goals. The choice was always ours to make.

      The thing is, this is nothing but words until we take action. We all have dreams that will go to our graves with us. But we also have our daily rituals and habits that are leading us to realize something tangible in our lives. Just where are our habits taking us? Maybe we ought to up our game, and soar just a little higher than where we’ve been fluttering about. While there’s still time.

    • What We See or Seem

      Take this kiss upon the brow!
      And, in parting from you now,
      Thus much let me avow —
      You are not wrong, who deem
      That my days have been a dream;
      Yet if hope has flown away
      In a night, or in a day,
      In a vision, or in none,
      Is it therefore the less gone?
      All that we see or seem
      Is but a dream within a dream.

      I stand amid the roar
      Of a surf-tormented shore,
      And I hold within my hand
      Grains of the golden sand —
      How few! yet how they creep
      Through my fingers to the deep,
      While I weep — while I weep!
      O God! Can I not grasp
      Them with a tighter clasp?
      O God! can I not save
      One from the pitiless wave?
      Is all that we see or seem
      But a dream within a dream?
      ― Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream Within a Dream

      Maybe I don’t revisit Edgar Allan Poe’s work as much as I should. For me it’s like watching horror movies—there’s enough horror in the world already, thank you, so why seek it out? But really, the reason I don’t revisit Poe is for the same reason I don’t revisit Melville or Dickens: there’s just so much to read, and so little time. And of course, that’s a lousy excuse. We use our time the way we use it. Great authors ought to be revisited with regularity, for the work changes as we ourselves change.

      I believe in ghosts. Not the kind that float around in your house spooking the dog, but the ghosts that we knew. People who were once in our lives who live on in conversations we replay in our heads in quiet moments. For me that time is 04:45. Which is why I write in the morning, I suppose, when it’s quiet but for the muse and the ghosts in my head competing for attention. I favor the muse, for she looks ahead to what may be done. Ghosts are nothing but the past calling for attention. And like those classic books, we must learn to focus on what will bring us the most value in exchange for our precious time.

      Each day past is done and gone, and the whispers are nothing but versions of who we were, viewed through the lens of who we have become. We were and always will be imperfect students. It all slips away, eventually. What we take with us are memories. But look at all that we’ve built with them! The ghosts can tag along if they want to, but we must be moving on. Now is calling, and the future is just ahead.

    • Improving the View

      Do not stay in the field!
      Nor climb out of sight.
      The best view of the world
      Is from a medium height
      — Friedrich Nietzsche, “Worldly Wisdom“, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

      I find myself returning to Nietzsche’s Prelude in Rhymes again, because it was so remarkable of an encounter initially. What a delight to discover his poetic tendencies hidden in plain sight. Surely he would be on my list of people I’d try to meet with a time machine, were such an invention possible. But isn’t that what reading is? A time machine that brings us directly to the mind of the writer, wherever and whenever they put thought to paper. Isn’t that what a blog is, sans paper? A time machine to the future, well beyond this character we are as we click publish.

      We write about the things we experience, with the level of knowledge and understanding we’ve reached to this point in our development. I’d like to believe that I’ve climbed beyond the field to medium height, with a nod upwards towards the climb ahead. The view is fine right here, but incomplete—as incomplete as we are in this moment. The thing to do is learn and grow and climb some more just to see where it takes us. Readers of this blog know that the goal is arete, or personal excellence. That lies far beyond this climber’s lifetime.

      The thing to do is to improve the view. One blessed day at a time, with all its thoughts and ideas either captured or evading me. We must be ready for each lesson in a lifetime in order to understand where we are and what we’ve reached. We are forever growing into the type of person who might understand the place we’ve arrived at, but for an open mind and a bit of a reach. So how’s the view? Ready for the next step? For time flies and we have so far to go.

    • Blame It On the Poets

      Man with wooden leg escapes prison. He’s caught.
      They take his wooden leg away from him. Each day
      he must cross a large hill and swim a wide river
      to get to the field where he must work all day on
      one leg. This goes on for a year. At the Christmas
      Party they give him back his leg. Now he doesn’t
      want it. His escape is all planned. It requires
      only one leg.
      — James Tate, Man with Wooden Leg Escapes Prison

      I hope you laughed when you read that poem. I know I did. It reads like a standup routine, like many James Tate poems, I suppose. Maybe that’s why I’ve strayed into his work a little, just because a smile is better than a frown, and certainly better than a scowl. We all scowl too much nowadays.

      I was reading the news just this morning. I make a point of not reading the news before I write (because of that scowl thing), but I found myself awake thinking about to-do list items. Instead of getting up to do these things, instead of rolling over and reaching for some REM, instead of doing a workout or brushing my teeth or attempting to steal the covers back from my bride—instead of anything really, I opened up the BBC app to see what was happening in the world. And of course I scowled.

      When one starts one’s day in such a way, one ought to quickly find a way out of it. Social media is nothing but random clickbait video clips now. I surely could have gone there for hours of screen time. But I sought out the council of a poet to set me straight. And that road less travelled has made all the difference.

      This ritual of writing before any other thing continues to serve me well. The world can go to hell in a mindless spiral of dancing stars, home renovation transformations and fantasy football trades, but I may ignore it all and simply write what comes to me. This clunky, impossible to navigate blog, my running collection of deep thoughts and discoveries, goes on for at least one more day. Blame it on the poets if you like. More likely it was me all along.

    • Acutely Aware

      “Remember, remember,
      this is now,
      and now,
      and now.
      Live it, feel it, cling to it.
      I want to become
      acutely aware
      of all I’ve taken
      for granted.”
      ― Sylvia Plath

      The urgency of now is amplified by the awareness of time going by. We ought to do the things we believe we ought to do now, while time is ripe and dreams are unfaded by the rapid flow of the days to follow. Tempus fugit, friend: Time flies.

      Plath died young, taking her own life after putting her children to bed. Knowing that, read the poem again and feel how it changes. There is more desperation, more immediacy to the words when life hangs in the balance. A few more minutes, a few more years—it’s all the same. Memento mori.

      Now that we’ve got that out of the way, we ought to go out and live with this bonus time we’ve been given. Seneca reminded us to seize what flees. Carpe diem. Why would we dare to waste our time so carelessly? Accept the fragility of the moment and do something with it.

      A cold water plunge shocks the body into immediacy (I wonder sometimes why nobody follows me in). The body is jolted into sudden awareness of the moment. There is no distraction in cold water, it’s sink or swim. So what will do for your soul? But enough of intellectual discourse; what will jolt us into awareness that this is it? That there is only now? Live it, feel it, cling to it.

    • We Are Stirred

      I don’t want to be demure or respectable.
      I was that way for years.
      That way, you forget too many important things.
      How the little stones, even if you can’t hear them,
      are singing.
      How the river can’t wait to get to the ocean and
      the sky, it’s been there before.
      What traveling is that!
      It is a joy to imagine such distances.
      — Mary Oliver, I Don’t Want to be Demure or Respectable

      When this blogger is finally done (perhaps when he begins to refer regularly to himself in the third person), it may be when the collection of Mary Oliver poems have all been quoted. It could just as easily have been Henry David Thoreau or Marcus Aurelius. Truly, I don’t mean to keep returning to each of them here, but then I re-read a poem like this one, in just the kind of mood I find myself in now, and well, here we are.

      We know when we’re ready for the next. To imagine such distances. Oh, the audacity to try to reach them! We all get tired of being demure and respectable. Don’t we? No, maybe not all of us. But some of us. The kindred fire is easy to feel when encountered. We are fellow schemers, some of us. We dream our dreams and chase some of them. We aren’t satiated by travel or poetry or encounters in the wild—we are stirred. Forever wanting just a bit more than this, please and thank you.

      To be demure is to concede that now is not entirely for us. Now is a time to be present and honorable and a sacrificer of time and energy and that special fire within that longs for oxygen and fuel. To do the right thing is honorable. Honor has its price, but truly, it also offers its beautiful dividend that cannot be ignored. A sense of place and connection keeps us alive and thriving too—just look at those Blue Zone folks for affirmation.

      As a friend recently phrased it, we have competing opportunities in our lives. The only wrong answer is to be a slave to someone else’s dream that robs us of our vitality. In time, we learn what is an empty pursuit and what feeds the flame. Having felt the heat within, how will we now feed it, so it doesn’t peter out like the vitality in so many others who have come before? It’s a joy to imagine such distances we may travel as we grow into our possibilities. Go! Do something with it while there is time.