Alexandersmap

    Category: Poetry

    • In Favor of Wonder

      “Sadly it is not only the force of gravity we get used to as we grow up. The world itself becomes a habit in no time at all. It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world. And in doing so, we lose something central—something philosophers try to restore. For somewhere inside ourselves, something tells us that life is a huge mystery. This is something we once experienced, long before we learned to think the thought.” — Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy

      Gaarder’s premise is sound: We come into the world full of wonder, but as we grow up being alive becomes a habit. We reach a point where we think we’ve seen it all before and grow comfortable with the general act of our daily existence. Each day remains a miracle, but the vast majority of people take it for granted. What a pity.

      I’ve been working to break this habit in myself for years through deep immersion in philosophy, poetry, history, travel and the deliberate process of savoring the moment. Sometimes I get it right, sometimes I slip into the routine of the day-to-day. But every day I try to begin with reflection on this miracle of being alive. The blog forces me to stay in this lane, if only for a short while, before work and responsibilities draw my attention elsewhere. But I always strive to return to wonder.

      What if instead of returning to wonder we found a way to stay on the dance floor with it? Not in some stupor or drug-induced high, but through deliberate focus on each moment. Turning the habit of living day-to-day on its head and instead embracing heightened awareness and the quiet delight available to us in each encounter along the way. Isn’t that taking the act of living to a higher level?

      We all want more wonder and delight in our lives, for it’s the frosting on our cake—our exclamation point on our moments. The thing is, to break the old habit of merely living, we’ve got to favor wonder and make it a regular part of us. Like any habit, it becomes a part of our identity through consistency. That’s putting the wonder in a full life.

    • Riding the Shining Sea Bikeway

      Rail trails offer a great opportunity to walk, skate or ride without dealing with the resentful glare of automobile drivers who believe they own the road while controlling your life in their distracted hands. The Shining Sea Bikeway ups the ante with beautiful views and a diverse landscape. The trick on this trail is to avoid being too distracted yourself as the views stack up one upon the other.

      The trail lives up to its name, with views of Buzzard Bay across both of the Sippewissett Marshes (Little and Great—but aren’t they both great?) and of Vineyard Sound and Martha’s Vineyard as it hugs the beach. Shining Sea runs from North Falmouth to Woods Hole, offering plenty of options to linger for time on the beach, stroll through woodland trails, or a visit to the many shops and restaurants of Main Street in Falmouth and Woods Hole.

      As a sucker for salt water, it was easy to fall in love with the beachside section of the trail. Here you’re treated to those expansive views, the latest trends in beach fashion, and a monument to the trail’s namesake, Katharine Lee Bates, author of “America the Beautiful”, which ends with the famous line, “from sea to shining sea”. Very few Americans can recite every verse of America, the Beautiful, but everyone knows that last line.

      The magic on this trail is in riding through a tunnel of woodland canopy, salt march grass, past that beach sand and finally to the trail’s terminus at the Woods Hole Ferry. For a cyclist with dreams of never getting in a car for a vacation on the Cape and islands, the Shining Sea Rail Trail makes a strong statement of what’s possible. For this cyclist, it was an opportunity to give the feet a break while getting some exercise with a view.

      From the North Falmouth terminus, it’s a 21 mile (33 km) round trip. That’s very manageable on a good bicycle. The human body connects with a bicycle in five places, each essential to a great experience. Perhaps none more than the seat. My bicycle seat was apparently designed to maximize suffering, but no matter, a sore saddle wasn’t going to ruin one of the prettiest rail trails in the northeast United States. The seat is replaceable, the memories will last far longer.

      There may be no better time to experience the Shining Sea Bikeway than autumn. September is a great time to get the warmth with the crowds, and October should be spectacular for fall colors in that canopy. It’s a trail worth considering if you’re interested in experiencing Cape Cod without the hassle of driving in traffic.

    • Doing, With Purpose

      “There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.” — Peter Drucker

      “You seem to spend a lot of time worrying if you will survive, and you will probably survive…. It’s the wrong question! The question is how to be useful.” — Peter Drucker to a young Jim Collins (via Nextbigideaclub.com)

      In September, Massachusetts’ Buzzards Bay is chock full of bait fish—millions of tiny fish trying to make a go of it in this world, as countless birds and bigger fish attempt to turn that bait fish’s purpose in life to be their breakfast. It’s a fish-eat-fish world on display, and offers lessons for those who witness it. Mostly, it’s a reminder to avoid being a bait fish. For us land-based creatures, the best way to avoid that is to live with purpose.

      We all dabble in those questions of purpose, the “Why are we here? questions. But isn’t that too big a place to start? Purpose is an impossibly big scope to answer with such a broad question. We ought to break it down into bite-sized questions that determine our unique value: “What do I do well? “How can I translate that into serving those who need this value the most?” and “What do I need to learn to become even more valuable for those I wish to serve?” are good starting places for building purpose into our lives.

      It’s fair to ask ourselves why we’re doing something. It’s appropriate to wonder where our work is leading us. And we ought to do something with the answers when we arrive at them, for our opportunity to do useful things resides in a very brief window of time. Feeling the urgency of the moment and doing something with it begins with knowing what both that something and that it really are for us.

      When we leave our lives to chance, we sometimes stumble upon a meaningful life. But more often than not, we end up getting chewed up in the feeding frenzy of life. Purpose brings us higher up the food chain, where we might rise above mere existence to a more valuable destination.

      Which leads back to that question of questions, posed so well by Mary Oliver in her poem The Summer Day:

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

    • Ours Alone

      “You are everything that the rest of the universe is not.” — Ogawa (via @bashosociety)

      Is it the ego speaking when you reflect on Ogawa’s words? The universe can feel overwhelmingly vast, and we are but bit players in the big scheme of things. Who are we to brashly believe we have a significant stake in the game?

      Yet, small as we may be measured against infinity, we’re still…. here. Sure, it’s a bit part, but still we get to play. As Walt Whitman famously answered when pondering this very question, “That you are here—that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

      In a life that may seem a bit overwhelming at times, we each have our verse. We might sprinkle magic. We might add reason in unreasonable times. We might play the game with audacity and hope. And we might concede that our part, however small, is ours alone.

      Orange stillness

    • Days to Come

      “Days to come stand in front of us
      like a row of lighted candles—
      golden, warm, and vivid candles.
      Days gone by fall behind us,
      a gloomy line of snuffed-out candles;
      the nearest are smoking still,
      cold, melted, and bent.”
      — C. P. Cavafy

      When you think about it, our days gone by are a stack of previous lives, somewhat resembling us today. Yet we must seek the vivid and alive, embrace our days to come, especially this one, at the expense of what we once were. For there’s no growth in dwelling on the past—we must stand ourselves on top of who we once were, we aren’t built to linger there.

      What’s done is done, what lies ahead is all that matters now. Past accomplishments and failures, all the good and bad, are like books we once read that form us in sometimes notable, and often insignificant ways. There’s no telling in the moment you pick it up for the first time what it will mean to you until you give it your attention in the moment. Such are our days—notable and insignificant, but all adding up to this.

      Days to come offer hope for a better future. It’s our time together, formed today, and nurtured in however many more we might have. Like the past, we’ll face new highs and lows, savor wins and absorb losses. Each are inevitable. All we can do is give each our singular attention and an honest attempt to make the most of the line, however long it might be.

    • Reaching Enough

      About suffering they were never wrong,
      The old Masters: how well they understood
      Its human position: how it takes place
      While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
      How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
      For the miraculous birth, there always must be
      Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
      On a pond at the edge of the wood:
      They never forgot
      That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
      Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
      Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
      Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
      In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
      Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
      Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
      But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
      As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
      Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
      Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
      Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
      — W. H. Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts

      The big things happen around us, things that are planet-changing, culture-changing, life-changing, yet most people go about their business in the most human of ways—intently focused on themselves. Walk into any scene playing out around us and chances are the actors are engaged in the mundane while largely ignoring the monumental. Wars, political scandals, climate change, images from deep space…. all are monumental but don’t quite make the cut when compared to that itchy nose or debate over what’s for dinner or who is taking the recycling out.

      It’s this we must understand in our attempts to influence and cajole the apathetic. It’s not about us, it always must be about them. To inspire, stir or instigate the story necessarily must reach into the souls of each member of the audience. Storytelling, selling, pandering for votes—each is a form of engaging the audience and making them feel the story is all about them. For even if it feels like it’s about something much larger, it never really is. It’s always been, and forever will be, how might I stir something in you?

      And even then, someone else will be walking past oblivious to the two of us. No matter, for we can’t reach everyone. We just have to reach enough.

    • Reach

      To understand many things you must reach
      out of your own condition.
      — Mary Oliver, Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way

      There’s a place for nuance. There’s a place for understanding. And above all, there’s a place for meeting in the middle. This inclination to receptiveness runs counter to the toxic stagnation of self-centered.

      There is another virus spreading through the world—it’s a virus of the closed mind. We’ve become closed to new perspectives that might challenge our own. Too many sip the same flavor of Kool-Aid (blue, red, orange seem to be the only flavors at the moment in the U. S.). But a full life doesn’t fit neatly into such rigid choices, does it?

      Like a root-bound plant left too long in its pot, we must reach out of our own condition to grow to our potential.

    • A Garden Monk Sips Coffee

      A monk sips morning tea,
      it’s quiet,
      the chrysanthemum’s flowering.
      — Matsuo Bashō

      The mornings are chilly again, and unlike Bashō’s poem, full of the sounds of squirrels gathering food and bickering about who gets what. The water is warmer than the air, for the sun is reluctant to stick around so long nowadays. The seasons are flipping, just as surely as the hickory nuts are falling.

      I think about the fall cleanup and shudder. Is it the chill in the air or the thought of forced labor to come? We dream of autumn for all its beauty, for the crisp air and the scent of fallen leaves. We forget about the work. We pay penance for the pleasure.

      I promised myself I’d drink more tea this summer. I planned to use more of the mint spilling out of its terra cotta pot in an attempt to displace the basil in the neighboring pot. Yet the drink of choice is most often coffee. Does coffee nullify my monk inclinations, or does the ritual matter more? Ask the flowers—for they’ve quietly observed all summer.

      For all the changes, some things remain the same.

    • To Grow and Know

      “With each encounter with truth one draws nearer to reaching communion with it.” — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

      What resonates? Doesn’t it change moment-to-moment as we ourselves change? As the world offers lessons, from subtle and brutal? Just what is our truth, our first principle?

      We try to arrive by sorting. We must process the world as it comes to us, and indeed, encounter the things that challenge our worldview. Assumptions and beliefs fall aside for the willing truth seeker. We must find and embrace each encounter for all that it offers us. Like the body adapting to exercise, the stronger mind is capable of handling even more challenges. Each challenge in turn makes us stronger (if we don’t let them destroy us).

      The truth is, we are alone on this journey. Surely friends and family offer support, mentors guidance, and those who came before us breadcrumbs to follow (or ignore), but this is our vision quest. We follow the winding path and see the changes in ourselves as we climb.

      She has seen me changing
      It ain’t easy rearranging
      And it gets harder as you get older
      Farther away as you get closer
      And I don’t know the answer
      Does it even matter?
      I’m wonderin’ how
      — Crosby, Stills & Nash, See the Changes

      We ought to leave our own breadcrumbs. For the conversation to continue with those we love, and those we’ll never meet, we must draw from ourselves and leave it for the world to accept or ignore. It’s not ours to choose, but when we suck the marrow out of life and gleen the wisdom of the ages our voice becomes more compelling.

      We won’t ever fully arrive at the truth. We might accomplish some noteworthy things, reach conclusions that resonate, grow closer than we ever thought possible to certain people while remaining dissatisfied and chagrined at the ones that got away… but we never will fully arrive. Still, we ought to be satisfied in the end that we gave it a go to grow and know. And to celebrate the journey wherever it leads us.

    • Every Day Has Something

      Everything that was broken has
      forgotten its brokenness. I live
      now in a sky-house, through every
      window the sun. Also your presence.
      Our touching, our stories. Earthy
      and holy both. How can this be, but
      it is. Every day has something in
      it whose name is Forever.
      — Mary Oliver, Everything That Was Broken

      Nobody said life was supposed to be a happily ever after greatest hits package of days to remember. Yet even the most tedious, frustratingly mundane days offers a gift of timelessness. We only have this one, no matter how it goes, and ought to celebrate the smallest sparkle of light just as we celebrate the highlight reel moments that come along, however so infrequently.

      The artists, poets and some not-always-so-poetic blog writers share one thing in common; an appreciation for the moment at hand. For every day has something to offer, should we go looking for it. Every moment offers a gift of possibility. What will forever look like today?