Alexandersmap

    Category: Poetry

    • The Moments Between Us

      Most people search all
      of their lives
      for someplace to belong to
      as you said
      but I look instead
      into the eyes of anyone
      who talks to me
      — June Jordan, Poem For a Young Poet

      We know how this works when we’ve lived awhile. People come and go from our lives, some never to return, and we move on without them. Some people we will barely recall, but others remain unforgettable. What do you remember most about a person? A tilt of the head and a shared laugh? Something said or done to punctuate the day? Often it’s nothing more than lingering in a gaze, and reaching deep connection with another soul, if only for a moment.

      I have little interest in transactional conversation. If the barista or waiter is expecting to take my drink order and move on with their lives they have another thing coming. I seek connection, even in those brief seconds, that will create a ripple of positive energy in an otherwise mundane exchange. Most of the moment will surely fade away for both parties, but what lingers?

      We are but a moment’s sunlight
      Fading in the grass
      — Chet Powers/The Youngbloods, Get Together

      Knowing everything fades away, wouldn’t the most generous thing we can do in this world be to then reflect light back to another? To illuminate and radiate, one-to-one, in this moment shared. It’s a form of upping the ante, because when the other soul is willing and aware they reflect right back to you too, magnifying the positive vibe.

      This is the opposite of the negative energy seen in the comments section of any social media platform, where darker forces prevail. Do you wonder why? I believe it’s because fellow humans aren’t making eye contact with one another, and thus not feeling the stakes of the game they’re playing. We can’t make real connection with another through words typed in reaction to someone else’s words. Darkness only consumes, it never illuminates.

      So where do we find moments of light? Awareness matters a great deal in building a life of connection and love. We all want to belong to something in this world. We all want to find meaning and purpose and maybe a bit of joy in the rush from there to the next. And there’s the answer, hiding in plain sight. So often we miss the opportunity for joyful connection standing right in front of us, awaiting our response. Look connection right in the eye and shine your light.

    • On Ritual and Routine

      “Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.” — Jane Kenyon

      Last year my bride and I took a morning walk on a quiet beach in the off-season. We saw an older gentleman swimming with his dogs in the brisk Atlantic Ocean and met him as we were walking back towards our car. Well, as is usually the case, his dogs met us first, and he joined them in introductions soon after. He looked like Obi-Wan Kenobi in a thick, hooded robe. He mentioned that he took this Atlantic Ocean plunge with his dogs every day of the year, no matter the weather. The robe and the walk back home were his rewards for completing this ritual, and were thus an integral part of it. His fitness level and radiance betrayed a lifestyle worthy of consideration.

      Lately I’ve thought more of lifestyle design—of deliberately choosing how to spend my remaining time on this earth in daily ritual and routine. We might agree that we’re already living our lives based solely on the bookends of ritual and routine. The question is, are we optimizing our life or should we build better bookends? Is writing first thing in the morning the best use of this time? Or is a long walk better? Or a brisk plunge into cold water? The answer is whatever sets the table for an exceptional day—what comes first should hardly matter, just that we do the things that, stacked together, make up a productive and meaningful day, and by extension, our life.

      We tend to track things like workouts, but don’t always track other things that make up our days. Tracking habits makes sense when you’re trying to establish or reinforce them. I began flossing every day when I stared at an empty box one day, knowing I’d broken the streak. A friend quit smoking simply so he didn’t have to leave a day on his calendar without a big X through it. We forget sometimes in our realization that we can’t control everything that we can control some things. And these small things, added up over time, become big things indeed.

      The way to be a good steward of our gifts is to protect our time in ritual and routine. Kenyon outlines hers in the magical quote above. We might add a few others that punctuate our own days. The trick in building these bookends is to fill the space in between with more activity worthy of our precious time. We know that that space will be filled either way—shouldn’t we make it fulfilling?

      Plunge into things that optimize your days

    • Buds of Fire

      And in the shadow of our human dream of falling,
      human voices are Creation’s most recent flowers,
      mere buds of fire
      nodding on their stalks.
      — Li-Young Lee, Dying Stupid

      Working through the gardening shed, I found a terra cotta pot sporting hints of old root filaments, betraying its previous occupant from last season. Each life takes their place in line, lives their season and moves on for the next to take their turn. The keen observer sees hints of past lives all around us, ghosts whispering that they once turned their gaze to the sun too. Gardeners know a thing or two about the tenuous hold we have on our time. So do writers and poets.

      May mocks the meticulous gardener. Put your best foot forward and the trees crap all over it, again and again, until you admit you aren’t in control of anything. Life offers lessons for the attentive student. Seasons come and go. So too do we. We are only here for a brief dance with our best intentions.

      Life is change—this we know. Some of those whispering ghosts are us, telling tales of past seasons gone forever, of who we used to be. Sometimes there’s just wisp of filament that betrays our past life, sometimes it’s the whole pot. Still, there’s work to be done in the now. While there’s time in this season, fill an empty pot with something new.

    • To Be Joyful and Full of Love

      The longer I live, the more
      deeply I learn that love —
      whether we call it
      friendship or family or
      romance — is the work of
      mirroring and magnifying
      each other’s light.
      — James Baldwin

      We’re in the business of amplification, you and I. Our life’s work is accretive in nature. The longer we’re actively engaged in this world, the more we can contribute of ourselves to the greater good. But we must be engaged.

      Our children are a product of our presence or absence their lives, just as we are a product of our own parents engagement with us. This ripple extends to family and friends and those who become more than just friends. We’re each muting or amplifying the best and worst of each other.

      The last few years, I’ve seen some people change in profound ways. Maybe it was the pandemic, or maybe it’s their stage of life, or it’s the sum of everything the world dumps on us piling up inside. I remind them that we do have agency. We either shed ourselves of the bile or let it sink into our pores. Of course, we do the same with love. The question is, what do we mirror and magnify?

      When I find myself becoming angry and more cynical I find that person repulsive and force that tide of darkness to recede back inward. We all have reason to be angry in this maddening world, but we also have reason to be joyful and loving. Whoever we are will surely be reflected back to us. Choose wisely.

      Life is about building momentum. We see this in our careers and work, in our health and fitness, and surely, we see it in our relationships. When we are consistently present and offering love, we build deep relationships with others that carry us through the challenging times and amplify the good times. So reflect on this: we are the sum of our active engagement with others, and when we live well, that sum will resonate long after we’ve left the room. How do we live well? By choosing to be joyful and full of love.

    • Sea Foam Consultation

      I go down to the shore in the morning
      and depending on the hour the waves
      are rolling in or moving out,
      and I say, oh, I am miserable,
      what shall—
      what should I do? And the sea says
      in its lovely voice:
      Excuse me, I have work to do. — Mary Oliver

      The ocean is indifferent to our schemes and stumbles. We go to her for consultation or consolation, and she offers all the time in the world. But the answers are ours to find.

      Every morning, when the ocean is nearby, I walk down to the surf line and think about the day ahead. I wonder at my solitude as the sun rises to meet me. Why doesn’t everyone seek what I seek? The ocean whispers her reply: we each have our time. We only have agency to question our own.

    • The Promise of Now

      “He was weary of himself, of cold ideas and brain dreams. Life a poem? Not when you went about forever poetizing about your own life instead of living it. How innocuous it all was, and empty, empty, empty! This chasing after yourself, craftily observing your own tracks—in a circle, of course. This sham diving into the stream of life while all the time you sat angling after yourself, fishing yourself up in one curious disguise or another! If he could only be overwhelmed by something—life, love, passion—so that he could no longer shape it into poems, but had to let it shape him!” ― Jens Peter Jacobsen, Niels Lyhne

      Often in the urgency of becoming, we forget to savor moments. It’s an odd thing to say, being an unabashed savorer of moments, to admit that I lose the feel of now sometimes in my quest for a then I may never reach. But now is ours to live, everything else is chasing promises.

      A person in my close circle heard that their cancer is terminal, which means that they’re facing their mortality more profoundly than they had every imagined before. The truth of the matter is they were dying all along—we all are—but he wasn’t focused on the expiration date. When someone hears they’re going to die they immediately wonder exactly when. This is a fair question, to be sure, but perhaps the better question, for all of us, is what will we do with the vibrant and healthy days left for us? Not the bedridden, atrophied and out of time days, but our very best days of those we have left?

      In a way, a diagnosis is a gift, forcing the person hearing it to focus on the urgency of living now. This awareness magnifies what is essential. When all the noise is finally filtered away, what calls to us?

      Go out and live, friends, for our time is so very brief. Dive deeply into the stream of life. Savor the moments and create memories that will make you smile at the sheer audacity of living in the now. Feel this moment, and the next. Be overwhelmed by life, love and passion, for these are the spices of today. Realize the promise of now while it’s here.

    • Through the Darkness and the Light

      And consider, always, every day, the determination
      of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.
      — Mary Oliver, Evidence

      We are change agents, creating new iterations of ourselves with every action. But so is everyone and everything else, which makes change exponential and complicated. There are some things we simply can’t control. One moment we’re celebrating what we’ve accrued and the next we’re mourning what has passed. The moments in between are often confusing and stressful. Mostly, we can only control how we react.

      “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      Life is change, which means accepting the two sides of that coin. Amor fati. There will be obstacles and setbacks. Life is a series of such lessons, learned and forgotten and re-learned again. The lessons are unending, meaning we must learn to endure. We must find a way, despite it all.

      “The nature of the rain is the same and yet it produces thorns in the marsh and flowers in the garden.” — Arab saying (via Anthony De Mello)

      Through everything, there is growth, but isn’t it fair to ask ourselves, what are we growing towards? What are we rooted in, to sustain us in troubled times? What are we reaching for, when times are better? These are our days, through the darkness and the light, to do with what we will.

    • Begin Anew

      The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day. — Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

      Very long days lend themselves to the notion of skipping things we promise ourselves we’ll do. Things like writing, for instance. But sometimes we must shake ourselves loose from this notion and remind ourselves that we have miles to go before we sleep. There are days when I’d rather sleep, to be honest. You may have those days too.

      Productivity and effectiveness are demanding dance partners. As active participants in the dance, our job is to show up and do our best, and try to do make it a little better than yesterday’s best. This constant improvement can’t go on forever, we know, but maybe just another day. We might tell ourselves this tomorrow too, but today will do for now.

      One day at a time, and then another still. The cadence becomes our identity, and the day feels empty without the work. I suppose that’s why they call it fulfilling.

    • My Earth Day Reckoning

      And we died of the future,
      of calling and mission only we could keep,
      leaping into every favorite season;
      sinking into roots, dreams, and books.
      — Li-Young Lee, First World

      “I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news” — John Muir

      Looking back, it seems quite natural to be locked into this routine of daily obligations—of work and chores and driving from here to there. Things fall apart and must be fixed. We must be fixed too. We are what we repeatedly do, as I repeatedly remind myself. So when is there time for nature and hiking? When is there time for long walks in the woods?

      There is no other time than now. We must go, and see, and take something of it with us for eternity. Not a rock or a leaf or even a flower, but a memory of who we were when we found the truth. Earth is far bigger and more beautiful than we’ll ever fully realize, no matter the frequent flyer miles accumulated. Earth is fragile yet resilient, and will wait an eternity to shrug herself of humanity. It may take a million years, but Earth will fix itself in time. We’re the ones who suffer for our neglect.

      Yet we are a small ripple in this big pond. Whether I recycle or not makes little difference, not when we see the crisis of leadership in the bigger things happening in the world. Nonetheless, we all make a small difference. We might pile on or opt in to the mission of making the planet a better place for our children’s children. Our small daily actions aren’t meant for others to see, they affirm who we tell ourselves we want to be in this world. We’re part of a larger chorus, and our accumulation of voices make a difference even when we can’t see it. A forest is made up of thousands of trees and millions of leaves. There is power in numbers.

      “I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves—we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other’s destiny.”
      — Mary Oliver, Winter Hours

      Earth Day is a reckoning, a day when we take stock of what we’re doing to the Earth, but also a day when we take stock of what we’re doing with our own brief time on this planet. There are things we say yes to in this world, which means we say no to many other things. In the end, we must choose, what dreams will die with us? What will we stand for? What will we stand up against?

      We all see the changes in the world, but forget we have some agency in the matter. Is this a year of incremental improvement or reckless abandonment of what we believe we ought to be. These are questions for society, surely, but also for each of us in our daily lives. The question is always the same: who are we becoming?

    • A Thing Promised

      Who hasn’t thought, “Take me with you,”
      hearing the wind go by?
      And finding himself left behind, resumed
      his own true version of time
      on earth, a seed fallen here to die
      and be born a thing promised
      — Li-Young Lee, To Life

      We feel the urgency to live, feel it deeply within. We see the days go by so rapidly—blink and you’ll miss it quick—and something wells up inside of us to do something with the moment. Before it’s gone forever. Each moment matters, the moments of inertia just the same as the moments of peak performance (whatever that might mean for us). We are the sum of each, collected in our time, defining our lives.

      Each of us wrestles with the desire for more against the desire to savor what we have already. This restlessness is expressed in different ways, varying from bucket list experience-checking to home improvement projects to staying up all night to read a page-turner, or perhaps binge-watching a favorite show just to know how it ends. What satiates this restlessness? When do we linger a beat longer?

      As we accumulate experience, we naturally want more of it. To leave this world with boxes unchecked seems a waste. But rushing off to the next big thing usually means missing the best part of the big thing we’re already living in. The moments that are locked in the amber of our memories are those moments we paused a beat and payed attention. Dwelling in place and time offers opportunities to add layers of experience too.

      Seeds are often carried by the wind, but grow in place. Aren’t we the same? Our best relationships with people and place are developed over time. Our promise in this lifetime is fulfilled with our presence.