Alexandersmap

    Category: Poetry

    • Something New

      Above the mountains
      the geese turn into
      the light again

      Painting their
      black silhouettes
      on an open sky.

      Sometimes everything
      has to be
      inscribed across
      the heavens

      so you can find
      the one line
      already written
      inside you.

      Sometimes it takes
      a great sky
      to find that

      first, bright
      and indescribable
      wedge of freedom
      in your own heart.

      Sometimes with
      the bones of the black
      sticks left when the fire
      has gone out

      someone has written
      something new
      in the ashes of your life.

      You are not leaving.
      Even as the light fades quickly now,
      you are arriving
      — David Whyte, The Journey

      On the 4th of July I walked out onto the deck, stepped down the first stair and noticed a sag in the decking. You know exactly what the story is in such moments, the question was the extent of wood rot in the joists under the decking. It turned out to be not all that much and a quick trip to the home improvement box store for some new pressure treated lumber solved the issue. Time had crept up on the joist, which I distinctly remember building beyond the code at the time. Time is indifferent to such things.

      Life is change. We know this. Sometimes the change is more apparent than at other times. Sometimes it’s thrust upon us by circumstance, sometimes it creeps over us so slowly that we don’t notice it until we look around and everything is different. We may choose how to react in such moments, but we may agree it’s far better to be surfing the edge of the wave than washed over by it.

      The thing is, walking down that step on that day felt different already. Because I’m different, and the people who have used those steps are all different too. Too many have moved on forever. We may mourn the passing of time and the changes it brings or work our way up to the edge and surf it. We choose how we react to the changes in our lives. Something new may be debilitating or exhilarating, depending on how we interact with the wave. Be inclined to embrace the thrill of change for the duration, for it’s rolling either way.

    • What Emerges

      “To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. The people they’re too exhausted to be any longer. The people they don’t recognise inside themselves anymore. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out; to become speedily found when they are lost.
      But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honour what emerges along the way. Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame. Sometimes it will be a flicker that disappears and temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness.” ― Heidi Priebe

      I’ve been thinking about relationships lately. I’m in a 30-year relationship myself, which is a jumble of highs and lows and left turns made right, but generally going about as good as one could hope for when we envision a lifetime coexisting with any one person. The part they don’t tell you is that it isn’t one person at all, but a person who is changing all the time, just as we are. The trick to a long term relationship is waiting out the parts of each other that aren’t delighting us in anticipation of the person we see them becoming. Hopefully they’re doing that with us.

      The thing is, that couple who were so enthralled with each other once upon a time is still around, just weighed down by all the things that life throws at us along the way. We like to think that we’ll always be at the same place in life, but we learn quickly that each of us goes at our own pace. Sometimes we’re ahead, sometimes behind, but always committed for the long haul. Perhaps our wedding song showed us the way, all those years ago:

      Now everyone dreams of a love lasting and true
      But you and I know what this world can do
      So let’s make our steps clear that the other may see
      And I’ll wait for you
      If I should fall behind
      Wait for me
      — Bruce Springsteen, If I Should Fall Behind

      We all need to live a little before we’re really prepared for something as impactful as finding our partner for life, because life will surely wash over both people over and over again. We meet a few people along the way who may feel like the right one, only to develop into absolutely not the right one. I find myself grateful for having gotten it right, when we see so many that go wrong. What emerges from a rich life is the perspective to see that life partners are human, with all the complexity that comes with it. To find the right one, and then to grow together is to live a profoundly more meaningful life.

    • The Linen of Words

      All day I work
      with the linen of words

      and the pins of punctuation
      all day I hang out
      over the desk

      grinding my teeth
      staring.
      Then I sleep.
      — Mary Oliver, Work

      Life is change, and our why pivots with it. We may channel this into creative work and find out something about ourselves in the process. One more day blessed with the opportunity to dance with our why to produce a what before we sleep.

      I track the journey from here to there and publish it free for all to see. Some days our journey takes us to faraway, sometimes the journey has us turning inward from a familiar place. We have the luxury of time some days, and the urgency of just a few minutes to spare other days. They all add up to the catalog of work published—our contribution to the Great Conversation.

      This blog post feels incomplete to me, like there’s far more to wrestle with before it’s fully fleshed out. And yet I’m about to publish it anyway. In a way that’s a good metaphor for our lives. We’re all just incomplete souls trying to reach some conclusion that makes sense before we reach ship this work and move on to the next.

      The work will end one day, but [apparently] not today. This linen of words is strung together in a streak of days; breadcrumbs of a life. Words are the glue that holds our collective history together, binding you and I together just as surely as it binds the generations before and after us. That feels more salient than just another blog post.

    • Emergency Room Poetry

      “I don’t know if I will ever write another poem. I don’t know if I am going to live for a long time yet, or even for a while.
      But I am going to spend my life wisely. I’m going to be happy, and frivolous, and useful….
      To rise like a slow and beautiful poem. To live a long time.”
      — Mary Oliver, Fletcher Oak

      Hours waiting quietly in an emergency room, alongside the patient dozing on a bed nearby, her husband dozing in a chair next to me, and a constant stream of activity feet away as the frailty of humans is displayed in one example after another. But not just frailty—resiliency is also on display. So many people fighting for better health and another day. We have only to see the staff in an emergency room in action to know that the best of humanity lingers among us.

      It’s unspoken, but acknowledged. You assess the people around you and the suffering they’re dealing with in this particular moment in our collective history. They do the same with you. What brought us all here? Most often not how we expected this day to go. Yet here we are. Amor fati.

      The waiting rooms in hospitals usually have televisions broadcasting something uncontroversial, like cooking shows. There’s already enough tension in such places without pouring gas on the fire. But inside the locked door where treatment happens (or where you await it) there are no such distractions as cooking shows. It’s here that people learn to listen to themselves again, or glance at others, or most often, text and scroll with the outside world, far from this place.

      I chose Mary Oliver. Poetry in the quiet moments awaiting answers, awaiting treatment for those I support, those who have supported me on my own down days. Here I sat in awe of doctors and nurses doing what is routine for them. Asking questions and texting updates when there were any, feeding crackers to the patient and joking about sneaking gin and tonics in. Whatever it took to make the moment better. To be useful in a challenging moment is all we can ask of ourselves.

    • Proper Work

      “How important it is to walk along, not in haste but slowly, looking at everything and calling out Yes! No! … Imagination is better than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” — Mary Oliver, Yes! No!

      I saw some pictures of friends off on some beautiful hike over the weekend, and other friends reawakening their sailboat before setting off for adventure. My own activity this weekend was less inspiring. Instead of adventure, I found some new soreness this weekend, earned with a pressure washer and a tall stepladder navigated to high places to make the house shine a little brighter. Sometimes our proper work is doing chores that have been nagging us for awhile, that we may return our focus to the universe yet again.

      The thing is, when I walked the pup later in the afternoon when the sun was shining just so, the house smiled back at me. We become what we put into the world, and a bit of housework does the body and soul good. It may sound silly, but I can look at a sparkling clean house and say “I did that” just as proudly as if I’d hiked up Mount Washington. The memories are different, but every journey set out upon that is completed counts for something.

      Proper work is highly subjective, but in the end it’s the things that we apply focus to that moves us forward. Writing this blog—to me—is proper work. So is tending the garden and washing the dishes and calling the customer you know is angry because it’s the right thing to do to hear them out and help them move to a better place. To be present and engaged in each thing that we do matters a great deal, for it’s the stuff of life and we only have the one go at it.

      What we say yes and no to in our days becomes our identity. When this day is complete, what will it say about us? We ought to slow down just enough to see the path we’re on, that we may know where we’ve been, and perhaps, where we’re going next. And so if you’ll excuse me the blog is now complete for the day, and it seems I have even more work to do.

    • To Do, Beautifully

      “My time here is short; what can I do most beautifully?” — As quoted by James Patterson

      This is stoicism in a nutshell. Acknowledgement that our time is limited (memento mori), with the follow on question; what will I do about it (carpe diem) that will resonate most for me and possibly others? That the most successful author in book sales frequently drops that quote serves both the author and those who will hear the call. It’s akin to old friend Mary Oliver’s challenge at the end of her most cherished poem, The Summer Day:

      Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?
      —Mary Oliver

      The question of questions for each of us is what to do with our precious time. The answer is usually to waste it in distractions and deferment. Why set course today when we can keep doing what we’ve always done, assuming a tomorrow? We know the folly of this even as we master the art of procrastination. We must feel the urgency in the question and take the steps that lead to our answer. We aren’t here simply to enjoy the ride, but to love our verse.

      That you are here—that life exists and identity,
      That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
      — Walt Whitman, O Me! O Life!

      So begins another day. We can’t control everything, but we can control this next thing. To step into beautiful, and bring light to the dark. In doing so, we may pass the torch to those who would follow. There is only now to make our mark.

    • The Journey Continues

      Oh, if a tree could wander
      and move with foot and wings!
      It would not suffer the axe blows
      and not the pain of saws!

      For would the sun not wander
      away in every night ?
      How could at ev’ry morning
      the world be lighted up?

      And if the ocean’s water
      would not rise to the sky,
      How would the plants be quickened
      by streams and gentle rain?

      The drop that left its homeland,
      the sea, and then returned ?
      It found an oyster waiting
      and grew into a pearl.

      Did Yusaf not leave his father,
      in grief and tears and despair?
      Did he not, by such a journey,
      gain kingdom and fortune wide?

      Did not the Prophet travel
      to far Medina, friend?
      And there he found a new kingdom
      and ruled a hundred lands.

      You lack a foot to travel?
      Then journey into yourself!
      And like a mine of rubies
      receive the sunbeams? print!

      Out of yourself ? such a journey
      will lead you to your self,
      It leads to transformation
      of dust into pure gold!
      — Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi, If a Tree could Wander

      After a couple of months of earnest, enlightening travel, New Hampshire greeted me with pollen and Trump signs. Not the welcome home I’d have chosen for myself. We must be crazy, mustn’t we, to revisit the same irritants year after year?

      People try so hard to hold on to what always has been for them, instead of trying something different now and then. A walk around the World Showcase Lagoon at Epcot is not international travel any more than taking a cruise that drops you in a few places for a few hours each is, but at least it’s a small step into the unknown. Likewise, going to an Ethiopian restaurant isn’t the same as going to the country, but it sure as hell helps the family running the restaurant and might just inspire another step further into the world. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, as Lao Tzu put it.

      We don’t know how far our journey will take us, but we ought to venture while we can. Do the things that challenge our perception of the world. Give others the freedom to follow their own path, that they may broaden our own perspective. It’s not such a far-fetched concept, is it? We must go through our lives knowing we’re taking a first step into the unknown with every step. Change is the only constant.

      So where do we go from here? Bold and audacious challenges, or shrinking to fit who we once were? Those shoes don’t fit anymore friend—we’ve come too far in our development to squeeze back into some idolized version of who we once were. Set a course and step to it. The journey into the self continues.

    • Of All We Make

      The potter
      innocent of all
      he makes
      how could he know
      his bowl would hold the moon?
      — Peter Levitt, The Potter

      Inevitably, for every high when everything seems to click, we find ourselves in a low when everything seems to be off kilter. Working through the down days brings us to the other side. The trick is knowing you aren’t quite through yet and to take yet another step forward. We aren’t simply in it for ourselves here, planting breadcrumbs and such—we’re here to grow, that we might offer more to those who need more from us.

      We don’t always know what will come of our work, only that we may do it. Making it better than yesterday ensures we’re climbing. We ought to know that the climb is bringing us to the right mountaintop, but every false summit is a lesson too. Making sense of all we make is impossible while we are in the act of making it. What we need is a moment to look around from the vantage point reached. We know when our work resonates. We know when it doesn’t. To charge ahead without a glance at our compass will have us running around in circles.

      Joseph Campbell referenced the Krishna’s dictum and observed that “the best way to help mankind is through the perfection of yourself.” Perfection will always be elusive and just out of reach for us mortals, but we’re all works in progress, aren’t we? Every day is one more humble attempt to do something positive in this world through our advancement. To stall now would be a disservice to ourselves, surely, but also to those who quietly root for us from the corners of our lives. Keep going.

    • About Time

      ‘In headaches and in worry
      Vaguely life leaks away,
      And Time will have his fancy
      To-morrow or to-day.
      — W. H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening

      I tend to track time differently than I once did. Now I measure time by the length of my hair or fingernails (weeks versus days since my last trim). I don’t generally look at the clock before calling it a night, for what does time have to do with how tired we feel? Nor do I set an alarm to awaken, I simply wake up. In many ways, I woke up years ago to the folly of time, even if I still follow the rules and show up early (as any civilized adult ought to aspire to). In this way, you might say my relationship with time is complicated.

      When we see time for what it is, something inside us shifts. We become collectors of experiences and embracers of moments rather than maximizers of minutes on the schedule. For all my focus on productivity, at the end of the day I only care that I’ve done the essential few things that move the chains forward for me in the direction I wish to go. The rest float away like all the other past initiatives.

      Writing every day forced me to become an efficient writer. There’s no time to waste on things like writer’s block when you must ship the work and get on to other things. Similarly, other things I do every day become automatic for me, that I may check the box and move on to other things. If that sounds transactional, well, so be it, but it doesn’t mean it’s not the most important thing for me in those moments doing it. When we give something our complete attention for the time necessary to complete it, we may surprise ourselves at just how quickly we can do the work.

      One of the people who works for me was stuck on a presentation he had to deliver to the team, simply overwhelmed by how to structure a slide deck and what to talk about. After being his sounding board for all the built-up stress and despair over the unfairness of having to do this in the first place, I made the deck for him in 30 minutes and quietly sent it to him to personalize in his own way, that he might focus on more important things than a peer presentation. When we get wrapped around the pole on the details of things that aren’t all that important in the end, we waste our time. If experience has taught me anything, it’s to quickly create solutions to problems that I may go back to spending time on more important things. Spending time on my employee wasn’t a waste of my own time, it was an investment in his. I’ll take that trade-off.

      The thing is, I recognize the place that he’s in now in his life. Ten years younger than me, with family obligations that can overwhelm you when you’re just trying to get through the day—I’ve been there, done that. My doing his homework for him wasn’t meant to take him off the hook so much as to show him a clearer future. My priority is to develop an employee who can assess the nature of a commitment and allocate the appropriate amount of focus on it, that he may move on to more essential things. Looking back, I’m sure someone did the same for me once upon a time.

      Life always comes back to our operating system. When we ground ourselves in stoicism, we know that time flies (tempus fugit) and we must therefore seize the day (carpe diem). There’s no time to waste on how we feel about the matter. In the end, the quality of our life is measured in how effective we are at navigating the small things that we may accomplish the big things. What’s bigger for us than using our brief time on this earth on things that matter most?

    • Tell About It

      Instructions for living a life:
      Pay attention.
      Be astonished.
      Tell about it.
      — Mary Oliver, Sometimes

      “If you give away everything you have, you are left with nothing. This forces you to look, to be aware, to replenish.” — Paul Arden

      Writing is simply a practice for tracking and amplifying progress in this bold act of becoming what’s next. There are no advertisements or subscription fees or hints to go buy whatever it is I’m selling that day. There’s simply a trail of breadcrumbs in the form of a daily blog for those inclined to follow along to see what this fool is up to now.

      More than that, it serves as a vehicle for sharing my attention and awareness and growth when it would be easier perhaps to just consume my share and leave the words for others. Who really has time to follow yet another blogger in this crazy world anyway? Viewed as a daily ritual leading to self-improvement and a greater awareness of my place in this world gets me closer to why. But it’s more than that, for wouldn’t a journal serve the same purpose? No, there’s something in the act of sharing everything that opens up the mind to receive more.

      To live and then to tell about what we’ve encountered along the way is to expand our lives beyond ourselves—beyond our time and place and circle of trust, and connect with some soul who may never know you but for these words. Like the tide ebbing and then flowing again, we are refreshed, alive and connected with the rest of the universe as soon as we click publish. We owe it to ourselves to have something to say in that moment. That each post may just be our last implores us to do our best with it. Living with urgency brings vibrancy to the otherwise mundane possibility of another today (sort of like yesterday). Fully aware and ready to share what we see with others forces our senses open. To find something new to be astonished about today seems a lovely way to move through a life, don’t you think?