Alexandersmap

    Category: Poetry

    • What Would Do?

      And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure—
          your life—
      what would do for you?
      — Mary Oliver, To Begin With, the Sweet Grass

      There’s still time today to find adventure. The day is still young, and we are young enough to be bold—and old enough to play this hand wisely. Seek adventure, as Thoreau whispers from his root-covered grave in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Be enchanted, Oliver whispers from her grave in Amarillo.

      And so we must heed the call, with the sum of who we are, to multiply our experiences. There is no deferring with living. Do the math: Every day we subtract another.

      Yes, these are distracting times, and things like adventure and enchantment may seem frivolous when there’s so much at stake in the world. But this is our time, and these are our days to be alive. Do something that stirs and inspires. The world will still be there, miserable as ever, when we return to it.

      What would do for you? What are you waiting for? Do. Be. While there’s still time.

    • Moments of Clarity

      no baby, if you’re going to create
      you’re going to create whether you work
      16 hours a day in a coal mine
      or
      you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children
      while you’re on
      welfare,
      you’re going to create with a part of your mind and your
      body blown
      away,
      you’re going to create blind
      crippled
      demented,
      you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your
      back while
      the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
      flood and fire,

      baby, air and light and time and space
      have nothing to do with it
      and don’t create anything
      except maybe a longer life to find
      new excuses
      for.
      — Charles Bukowski, air and light and time and space

      I heard from the daughter of an industry friend. He doesn’t have long now, she told me, and is spending this time in hospice with family and friends. I reached out knowing this, and to offer a few words that I know will reach him through her. In such situations, we must say it now, or know that it will be never. These moments of clarity are profound when someone reaches the end of their life, but we must remember we’re all just a step behind them ourselves. Memento mori. So for gods sake, carpe diem already!

      We have so many excuses available to us to avoid telling someone how we feel, or to defer exercise and writing and creating beauty in a world insistent on growing darker. But it grows darker precisely because we defer the call of creating. This is our verse, after all, and it could all end today for us. What will we leave behind as our beacon of truth and courage?

      We must put all that energy used to create excuses aside and finally listen to the muse before our opportunity fades away forever. Produce something beautiful. For all the chaos and distraction, there will not be a better time than now. We’re going to create now, or know that it will be never.

    • To Be In This World

      Bless the notebook that I always carry in my pocket.
      And the pen.
      Bless the words with which I try to say what I see, think, or feel. With gratitude for the grace of the earth.
      The expected and the exception, both.
      For all the hours I have been given to be in this world.
      — Mary Oliver, Good Morning

      When the world turns us brittle, a bit of Mary Oliver poetry helps make the soul pliable once again. The poem quoted above is the same one that brought us the lines, “Stay young, always, in the theater of your mind.” and “It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.” I can’t very well put every line she ever wrote in this blog, but surely I’ve covered a lot of them. For all the exceptional lines, the one that resonates for me is action-oriented: To be in this world.

      A couple of nights ago I walked out at dusk and looked at Venus, Jupiter and Mars marching in a neat line across the sky. Orion, ever the hunter, stood ready to release his arrow. These are days we’ll remember until they scrub the hard drives and burn the books, but the infinite remains indifferent to the drama unfolding here. Knowing it’s a short run, we must return our focus to our own verse, whatever it might be for us. A creative, productive life demands our full participation.

      Perhaps it’s the poet in me, but I believe that gratitude and wonder are the two key ingredients to a meaningful day. When we look at the whole hot mess that is our lives in this moment, we must accept the miracle that we’re here at all. We cannot be forever distracted by the fools on the hill, letting our precious life slip away. Be here, now. And perhaps, like Mary Oliver, have the audacity to do something exceptional with the opportunity.

    • What Carries the Day

      I went on a lunch date with my bride Saturday. We didn’t talk politics, we talked about new dinner plates and the house and things like that. Sometimes the present is both beautiful and awful, and the only thing that determines which wins the moment is what we choose to focus on.

      There are plenty of reasons to feel down about the state of the world. There are plenty of reasons to feel joyful. As reasonable people, it’s possible to feel both at the same time. But we ought to be asking ourselves, which carry the day? A poem by Charles Bukowski, formatted in that Charles Bukowski way, comes to mind:

      some people
      grind away
      making their
      unhappiness
      the ultimate
      factor
      of their
      existence
      until
      finally
      they are
      just
      automatically
      unhappy,
      their
      suspicious
      upset
      snarling
      selves
      gringing

      on
      and
      at
      and
      for
      and
      through

      their only
      relief
      being

      to meet
      another
      unhappy
      person

      or
      to
      create
      one.
      — Charles Bukowski, downers

      When we get so distracted by the state of things, we sometimes forget to do the joyful things that make living an event worthy of our time. We can create a wake of misery behind us, or we can leave a ripple of joy. We should ask, just how do we want to be remembered? But let’s get right to the heart of the matter: just how do we want to move through this one go at life?

    • The Total of Our Doing

      we are always asked
      to understand the other person’s
      viewpoint
      no matter how
      out-dated
      foolish or
      obnoxious.
      one is asked
      to view
      their total error
      their life-waste
      with
      kindliness,
      especially if they are
      aged.
      but age
      is the total of
      our doing.
      they have aged
      badly
      because they have
      lived
      out of focus,
      they have refused to
      see.
      not their fault?
      whose fault?
      mine?
      I am asked to hide
      my viewpoint
      from them
      or fear of their
      fear.
      age is no crime
      but the shame
      of a deliberately
      wasted
      life
      among so many
      deliberately
      wasted
      lives
      is.
      — Charles Bukowski, Be Kind

      We have all lived out of focus at times. Sometimes the good days make up for the bad. Sometimes. Like pulling an all-nighter to finish a paper we’ve procrastinated on, sometimes we pull focus out just in the nick of time to move the chains forward in our lives. But sometimes we wait a beat too long and the opportunity is lost forever. The lesson of course is to focus, but instead we blame it on fate or bad luck or the immigrants who moved in down the street who got straight to work.

      The answer has always been in focus. What kind of a life do we want to have? Why are we distracting ourselves with all of these things that pull us away from focusing on achieving that? What small, measurable step might we take right now to move us closer to the dream?

      The total of our doing keeps pace with wherever we are in this moment. How does it look so far? Stop being so outraged at the state of the world and do the things in our control. Look around and focus on the essential. To do otherwise is to waste more of this life that is already flying by so very quickly.

    • Calibrating for Greatness

      “If you make the choice of reading classic literature every day for a year, rather than reading the news, by the end of that time period you’ll have a more honed sensitivity for recognizing greatness from the books than from the media.
      This applies to every choice we make. Not just with art, but with the friends we choose, the conversations we have, even the thoughts we reflect on. All of these aspects affect our ability to distinguish good from very good, very good from great. They help us determine what’s worthy of our time and attention…
      The objective is not to learn to mimic greatness, but to calibrate our internal meter for greatness. So we can better make the thousands of choices that might ultimately lead to our own great work.” — Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

      We have the opportunity to do something with our lives. We may reach closer to personal excellence (arete) and achieve that which we’d only imagined. Arete looks different for each of us, but we know when we see a glimmer of it in those who rise to meet it. And it stands to reason that if we wish to get closer to personal excellence ourselves, we must also rise to meet greatness where it resides. We must climb beyond where we’ve been and work towards it.

      I have some exceptional people in my life who are currently outraged by the things happening in the United States. I grow quiet when they talk about it, not because I’m not also outraged, but because focusing on the worst in others takes our focus away from our own climb to greater things. It recalibrates us for outrage.

      The point isn’t to ignore it all and just let it fester, it’s to grow into one’s own potential. We are what we focus on the most. We mustn’t be dragged down by putrefaction and the strategic dismantling of our higher collective vision. We are builders of greatness—don’t ever lose sight of that. We must take to the heights, now more than ever.

      The heights by great men reached and kept
      Were not attained by sudden flight,
      But they, while their companions slept,
      Were toiling upward in the night.
      — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Ladder of St. Augustine

      This is a time in our lives when we may achieve greatly, whatever that means for us. The world is more frustrating than ever, but it’s always been so. In our darkest days of human history, those who would reach for personal excellence found a way to climb. And so too must we in our time.

      Climbing requires energy and a level of focus that comes from inspiration. We are what we repeatedly do, and surely we are also what we repeatedly consume. To actualize excellence, to bring it into existence within ourselves and our work, we must develop a taste for it. Nurture a deep hunger to do more with our brief time before it all goes away. We may find excellence throughout human history, including today. There it all is, hiding in plain sight: we must simply lift our gaze to find it. Having seen it in others and in their contribution, we may then climb to meet it ourselves.

    • Where We Are, Where We Are Going

      Into my heart an air that kills
      From yon far country blows:
      What are those blue remembered hills,
      What spires, what farms are those?

      That is the land of lost content,
      I see it shining plain,
      The happy highways where I went
      And cannot come again
      — A. E. Housman      , A Shropshire Lad, XL

      We all get a little sentimental at times, remembering our days gone by. Youthful vigor and adventures, friends and family long gone but not forgotten, and a sense of place forever locked in the amber of that particular moment. We shall never pass that way again, yet we revisit it often in our memories. And so it must be.

      I believe most of the troubles we have in the world today are related to people wanting to return to some notion of what life used to be like back in the good old days. Instead of making the most of now, instead of working towards a dream of a better tomorrow, people dwell on who they once were. Like a time machine taking us back to see the best in us, and to fix the things that didn’t go our way.

      I remember who I once was—nice enough guy but he didn’t know a damned thing about life yet. He didn’t realize the opportunities he was missing out on. And maybe that’s what people believe they can fix by living in the past. All of it brought us here, to who we are, to where we are. The good, bad and the ugly all contributed to this: our identity. Magnify that by billions of restless souls and we arrive at this particularly baffling time in our collective history.

      Where we went matters a great deal as it brought us here. Wake up and look around, for this is where we are! This is our time, not back then. And time is flying rapidly by, waiting for us to step into living again instead of looking back at who we once were. Be bold today! Where are we going? Work to realize the opportunities we’d miss out on now if we don’t leap. Create the moments that will be fond memories themselves one day. If we aren’t so busy living the dream of tomorrow when we get there.

    • Virgin Snow

      “Every single thing you do today is something that your 90-year-old self will wish they could go back and do.
      The good old days are happening right now.”
      — Sahil Bloom

      Overnight snow is the best kind of snow. It’s like Christmas morning with its big reveal at first light. With it, we may think in terms of chores or play. Either way, it won’t be here forever. We must always remember that neither will we.

      Snow removal completed on the home front, sun offering a brilliant day that felt warmer than it really was, I read the timely Thread above from Sahil Bloom and it reinforced what I knew I had to do. Really, I’d been thinking it all morning. Get out there in it! Find some virgin snow and glide across it with all the vigor one can muster. For we may never cross this way again.

      Snowshoeing on local trails can be thrilling or discouraging, depending on the condition of the trail and the snowshoer. It didn’t start off well, with a dog walker arriving just ahead of me post-holing the trail where the snowshoers before me had been. Adding insult to injury, the dog walker didn’t clean up her dog’s poop, dropped right next to the trail. That’s no way to go through life, I thought to myself. But walkers in deep snow are quickly overtaken; I nodded hello, said hi to the pup and kept my feelings to myself. I was here for something more essential than policing other people’s behavior. I was here to fly.

      The main trail had already seen visitors, and I did my part to compress the trail further—a gift for those who would follow without snowshoes. Eventually I reached an intersection where the snowshoer before me had gone left, while the side trail to the right was virgin snow extending on through the trees for as far as my eyes could see. The choice was clear.

      Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
      I took the one less traveled by,
      And that has made all the difference.
      — Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

      I know these woods well. I know where the waterfalls lie smothered under ice and snow, where granite outcroppings and hemlocks form a cathedral as beautiful as anything made by man. Snow transforms the landscape and forces one to learn it anew. If the trail had been broken I might have strayed further afield, but I felt an obligation to guide those who would follow my tracks. Stay on trail to show the way, and I may stray another day.

      I tend to think in time buckets now. What might I do now that I won’t be able to do later in life, when I’m old and frail? Do that thing now and celebrate the gift of health and vigor. Maybe one day we will regret not watching others live their best lives while we sat on the sidelines, but I think not. This is our time too. What are we to do but make the most of this day?

      Virgin snow with a worn, familiar trail revealed underneath
      Out and back trail compression

    • I Cannot Miss My Way

      The earth is all before me. With a heart
      Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
      I look about; and should the chosen guide
      Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
      I cannot miss my way. I breathe again!
      ― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

      I aspire to be what Ayn Rand described as “a man with an immense capacity for the enjoyment of existence.” I’m long past apologizing for this aspiration, and I’ve learned not to tolerate those who would suggest that I grow up and be as miserable as the person suggesting it. We cannot have it all, but we must not miss our way in this lifetime, for it is nothing but fleeting.

      We scurry through our days with so much accumulated responsibility. We must ask ourselves, is this my burden to carry? When the day is done, how much of it will be given to the work that whispers to us in the quiet moments? What verse are we writing today that is ours alone to write?

      We must rise above the melancholy of the masses and find our own way through the fog. Too many choose a purposeless existence. Too many settle for a life of subservience to the dreams of others. Look around! We may be poets, should we be so bold. We must not be afraid of our own liberty.

    • A Look and a Listen

      I want to leave to you,
      My grandchildren,
      This wren from Down,
      Its cotton-wool soul,
      Wire skeleton, feathers
      Apparently alive,
      Its tumultuous
      Aria in C or
      Whatever the key
      In which God exists.
      — Michael Longley, Another Wren

      I learned that Michael Longley has passed, and realized that I’ve never quoted a single poem by him in this blog. To do so now, after his death, is one way to keep his voice alive. But then, don’t all poets transcend the fragile timeline of life? We all ought to write more, as a gift to our own grandchildren and their children beyond.

      We get so angry at the world and the failings of mankind that we ignore the music playing in the background while we rant. It turns out to be quite beautiful when we return to stillness and hear it as if for the first time. We owe it to ourselves to discover the miracles hiding in plain sight. We become like the Marshall McLuhan analogy of fish in water, not realizing what they’re swimming in. Friends, we’re swimming in miracles. Have a look and a listen.