Alexandersmap

    Category: reading

    • One Who Seeks

      “I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.” ― Hermann Hesse, Demian

      There’s a scene in the movie Good Morning, Vietnam where the song What a Wonderful World is playing while scenes of horror unfold. I used to hate that scene, for taking a beautiful song and associating it with the ugliness of war. Now I understand that the world is always filled with ugliness, and yet it’s also beautiful and yes, wonderful. War is horror, and so sometimes is living. The dichotomy is both external and within us. We are drawn towards that which we seek. But it’s all there, isn’t it?

      As this is published, there are humans executing wars on other humans at the same time as other humans are exploring the void of space. It’s not much different than 50 years ago, is it? Vietnam and the Apollo missions and Civil Rights in the 70’s. Have a look at the headlines today and we see the same stories unfolding. Humans are complicated, and we never really change all that much.

      I may fancy myself a philosopher or a writer tapping away at my keyboard, but the rubber meets the road when we get out into the world and see the ugliness. Sometimes we ourselves are the ugliness. Sit in traffic long enough and you begin to resent the world. Sit in a meeting listening to others ramble about nonsense and we become nonsensical ourselves. In such times, the journey must turn inward. Just who do we want to be anyway?

      I may look around one day at 94 and realize that I’ve got everything figured out, but it’s folly to believe it so. To reach 94 would be an epic journey in and of itself. To reach old age with a sound mind, with the clarity of purpose burning within and a body capable of sustaining the drive, well, that would be a miracle. The odds are stacked against us humans. And yet people get there, and thrive well beyond that random number we call our age.

      Let’s see how it goes. I’d like to survive the madness we live in now, let alone try to skip to the end of the book to see how it ends. One page at a time is the proper way to immerse ourselves in a great book or a compelling life. It all goes fast enough already—tempus fugit—so do try to be here, now. All change begins within. The worst in us and the best in us are both awaiting which side we truly want to have emerge.

    • The Nature of a Sunbeam

      We speak of the sun’s light as “pouring down on us,” as “pouring over us” in all directions. Yet it’s never poured out. Because it doesn’t really pour; it extends. Its beams (aktai) get their name from their extension (ektainesthai).
      To see the nature of a sunbeam, look at light as it falls through a narrow opening into a dark room. It extends in a straight line, striking any solid object that stands in its way and blocks the space beyond it. There it remains—not vanishing, or falling away.
      That’s what the outpouring—the diffusion—of thought should be like: not emptied out, but extended. And not striking at obstacles with fury and violence, or falling away before them, but holding its ground and illuminating what receives it.
      What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.
      — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      The first day of April is often thought of as April Fool’s Day. That can be fun or tedious, depending on how one thinks about trickery and which side of the prank we find ourselves on. At the risk of being overly serious, I think I’ll sit this one out and reread a favorite book instead.

      It’s April, and that brings us to the birth month of Marcus Aurelius. Perhaps that means more to me than to you, and that’s okay. But consider the nature of the man through the work that extends through time to us. The man transmitted light.

      And what of us? What do we transmit in our daily lives? Are we like sunbeams, extending hope and beauty and love as far as we can reach, or are we blocking the light from entering altogether? We must be active illuminators, friends, if we are to leave any room we enter better for our having been there. The nature of a sunbeam is to extend into the darkest reaches to bring light to these places too. Consider that a mission if you like, just to see how bright we can make the world this day.

      Have a look at the night sky sometime. Do we focus on the dark void or the stars? We are inclined towards light, for this is where life is sustained. We may choose to be light transmitters ourselves, and thus sustain life in the most inhospitable times. Isn’t it nice to shine a light on others, instead of shadow? Unlike darkness, light reflects when it reaches a surface. And the life we save may indeed be our own.

    • This Vessel

      “Do good, bestow kindness, strive for beauty, seek and find the river that leads to life everlasting, and draw from the fountain that never runs dry.” ― Allen Levi, Theo of Golden

      I needed a beautiful book for travel. As with people, beauty is not the outside sleeve, but rather that which is hidden within. Theo of Golden is such a book. The cover is rather ordinary. We must let it unfold page-by-page to get to know the character. This is a book for these angry times.

      We become what we consume, so why consume anger? Why not find a way to drink from a more beautiful stream? We may confront the world with eyes wide open, but also with a full heart and generous soul. Navigating towards a more beautiful life is a daily choice of accepting joyfulness as a natural state. Nurture this nature and watch it grow.

      If this all sounds rather naive, well, so be it. I’ve been there myself, angry and jaded by the state of the world and all that I cannot control. We confront it every day in everything from what the character in the White House just said to the person who just cut us off. These things are outside of us. What we carry within may be a cool stream of consciousness. A joyful life is a deliberate life, carried towards the sublime in this vessel we call our days. Just where is this one carrying us?

    • The Right Direction

      “A man’s rootage is more important than his leafage.” — Woodrow Wilson

      At some point in life that is hard to pinpoint, filling gaps became more important than reaching upward and outward. Is that a sign of wisdom, or a desire for it? Personally, there are still too many gaps to fill before I’d be considered wise. I should think being curious is enough at this stage of the game.

      Wisdom is not the same thing as being knowledgeable. I know many extremely intelligent people who have no common sense whatsoever. They’re charming and particularly useful on trivia night, but not people you’d seek counsel from if you needed advice on a career move or relationship. For that we seek those who have been there before and lived to tell the tale. And more, are willing to lend an ear or a shoulder as needed.

      How does wisdom develop? Not in leafage—forever blown about in the winds of change, fashion and trendiness. It takes roots to grow wisdom. Stillness of mind, steady in ritual, and deliberate with thought, reading and deeper conversation with those who have seen a few things themselves. The wise are continuously growing more deeply rooted and anchored in first principles.

      The thing is, the less one dwells on the leafage, the more one may look deeper within. This all leads us somewhere. We are all here to solve that greatest of questions, why are we here, in this place and time? It’s far less scary to stay above the surface on such things than it is to dig deeper. But isn’t that a shallow existence?

      So it is that this writer strives to go deeper still. That may make this blog more interesting or less so. But it remains a sincere quest for wisdom and insight. It’s no longer striving for success (whatever that is), it’s seeking deeper meaning. And that, friend, requires growth in the right direction.

    • Break It Down

      “If you repeated what you did today 365 more times, will you be where you want to be next year?” — Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living

      This week I experienced something called Instrument-Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (IASTM), which is a fancy way of saying a highly-trained physical therapist used a chunk of metal to scrape my leg to what felt like a bloody pulp. It turned out there was no blood, just the breaking up of scar tissue accumulated over many stubborn years of telling myself that my ankle would just get better on its own. This procedure helps undo what’s been done through micro-trauma to the scarred areas. It turns out those micro-traumas create a bit of state change in the recipient. Ouch. But also, revelation.

      It’s no secret that small habits, done consistently, change us over time. If the scar tissue in my leg reminded me of anything, its that those bad habits accumulate and develop into things we aren’t even aware of until something jolts us into awareness. For me it was a gimpy ankle. For others it’s far more serious. Like the alien spores in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, bad habits sneak into our lives and change our identity. Don’t let the bastards drag you down! Break down that scar tissue.

      “Looking ahead, focus on direction rather than destinations. Maintain the right direction and you’ll arrive at where you want to go.” — Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living

      Dropping two quotes from Kevin Kelly today, but this little book is a gem. It reads like a series of bite-sized tweets, which makes it a natural read for people who stare at a screen more than they should. That’s another habit akin to an alien invasion, creating outrage and depression in people who we used to know. We’re collectively undergoing scarification, and we must find a way to scrape it away from our lives if we hope to hold on to the best of who we are and will become.

      Scar tissue hides within. Awareness of where we are is important, and so too is knowing where we’re going. What small habit, done daily, changes our course from a lesser version of us to a greater? The days will fly by either way, we might as well tune up the body, mind and soul in positive and productive ways. Decide what to be and go be it. Just accept the discomfort of change for what it is—the breaking down of the bad to make room for the good.

    • All That Is Not Us

      “No one thing shows the greatness and power of the human intellect or the loftiness and nobility of man more than his ability to know and to understand fully and feel strongly his own smallness. When, in considering the multiplicity of worlds, he feels himself to be an infinitesimal part of a globe which itself is a negligible part of one of the infinite number of systems that go to make up the world, and in considering this is astonished by his own smallness, and in feeling it deeply and regarding it intently, virtually blends into nothing, and it is as if he loses himself in the immensity of things, and finds himself as though lost in the incomprehensible vastness of existence, with this single act of thought he gives the greatest possible proof of the nobility and immense capability of his own mind, which, enclosed in such a small and negligible being, has nonetheless managed to know and understand things so superior to his own nature, and to embrace and contain this same intensity of existence and things in his thought.” — Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone di pensieri

      The encapsulation of the vastness of the universe within our minds indicates connection to something larger than ourselves. That awareness is spiritual in its own right, and one may build upon that with belief. Discovery is our path. Instead of telling ourselves stories we may seek a deeper understanding. We are connected to the universe, perhaps only in thought or recycled billion-year-old carbon, but perhaps in far greater ways that we haven’t yet grasped. Life is a span of figuring it all out, knowing we won’t reach the end with all the answers.

      This year I’m discovering Giacomo Leopardi. You might ask, what’s taken me so long? Or you might ask, who the heck is Giacomo Leopardi? Friedrich Nietzsche called Leopardi one of the four or five masters of prose in the century he was alive, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walter Savage Landor, Prosper Mérimée and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. That’s heady praise from a notable deep thinker, and a homework assignment for the avid readers amongst us. Surely if this blog continues for the foreseeable future there will be more quotes from each of these characters.

      The mind may shrink or grow depending our willingness to exercise it. We may simply believe what others tell us or go find out the answers ourselves. Awareness leads us to discovery, which draws us out into the vastness of all that is and ever will be. The universe is calling—it’s been trying to reach us our entire lives. It we aspire for anything in a lifetime, it ought to be to reach beyond ourselves to seek greater connection with all that is not us.

    • Like Glowing Coals

      “You cannot quench understanding unless you put out the insights that compose it. But you can rekindle those at will, like glowing coals. I can control my thoughts as necessary, then how can I be troubled? What is outside my mind means nothing to it. Absorb that lesson and your feet stand firm.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      This week I found myself in a string of conversations about books. It began with a copy of The Devil in the White City sitting on the desk of a customer. Having read it and many other books by Erik Larson, we got into an enthusiastic conversation about what we were reading in historical non-fiction. When he and I finished our conversation, someone else jumped in, listing the fiction he reads, mostly Harlan Coben books. I’ve read a few, my bride has read them all, we compared recommendations and then it was on to the next conversation. The third one was most interesting of all.

      A co-worker whom I’d just met, technical and quiet, was tapping away on a keyboard programming a proof of concept sequence (the entire reason we were all there to begin with) and said he’d overhead the two other conversations about reading that had just taken place. He reads philosophy, had just finished Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and was beginning The Discourses by Epictetus. I opened my Kindle app and showed him Nietzshe’s The Gay Science, which I’ve been reading in between physical books (’tis far better to read a book standing in line at the supermarket than to doom scroll social media). And we ran through a list of recommendations as any fellow students of philosophy would do.

      If all of this sounds particularly geeky, well, so be it. Reading isn’t for everyone, though it ought to be. If you’re reading this blog post and have reached this point, you’re clearly an avid reader yourself and understand. We are all self-taught beyond a K-12 education and the opportunities a university might offer. I say might because plenty go through the motions there too. We know the game and we choose how to play it. A lifetime education begins outside the structure of a classroom—it begins within the mind.

      Each book read, each conversation with a fellow reader that points us towards some new insight, is a step along the path to personal excellence (arete). What we consume stokes our inner fire and shines brightly in the eyes of an avid student of living. And living is the whole point, even as so many continue to go through the motions. But that’s not us! So what are you reading right now? I hope it’s compelling and insightful. If it is I’d love to hear about it. We are all climbing to greater heights, one great book at a 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.

    • Things That Got Away

      “Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.” — James Joyce, Ulysses

      Back in 2018, when this blog was a young pup and its writer was blessedly naive about all that would happen in the next seven years, we stepped into the every day. We can all agree that a lot can happen in seven years. Good Lord, can a lot happen. We’ve all been on this ride together, in so many ways. Yet each of us rides through life in their own way. Some with eyes wide open, some with blinders on, and so many simply staring at a screen for an entirely different user experience. The only thing we all may agree on is that time flies. Tempus fugit.

      I happened upon a blog post I’d written back then about the ten books I meant to read that year. I read eight of those books, and one of them, Meditations, I’ve read three times since. But one in particular still eludes me. Ulysses. I’ve begun it many times over the years, and many times I’ve moved on to other books. Perhaps I’ll tackle the yellowing pages of this classic next, or perhaps it will forever be the one that got away. Time will tell, as it always does.

      If I’ve learned anything in these last seven years, let alone all that preceded them, I’ve learned to talk less about what I’m going to do and more about what I’ve done. We are either dreamers or doers in this world. Less talk and more action, thank you. If that inspires a laugh when I refer to reading a book, well, I shrug in your general direction. I may believe myself to be well-read, while noting how incomplete it feels when some notables evade me for years. When I think about all the YouTube videos or tweets I’ve read in the last seven years, not having read a classic novel feels wasteful of the opportunity.

      We all must choose what we say yes to in this brief go at living. Where do we want to go? Who do we want to be? Just what is that verse we’re writing going to say anyway? We all have agency over what we do in the now. As the future plunges into the past, how will we take stock of the time spent? Some part of us will feel incomplete for having used that time elsewhere. What matters most now? Choose accordingly. We may celebrate all that we’ve done while acknowledging the things that got away from us.

    • Old Riddles and New Creeds

      After one moment when I bowed my head
      And the whole world turned over and came upright,
      And I came out where the old road shone white.
      I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
      Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
      Being not unlovable but strange and light;
      Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
      But softly, as men smile about the dead

      The sages have a hundred maps to give
      That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
      They rattle reason out through many a sieve
      That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
      And all these things are less than dust to me
      Because my name is Lazarus and I live.
      — G.K. Chesterton, The Convert

      Chesterton famously converted to Christianity when he was 48. The fame came with his zealous endorsement of the Catholic faith in his writing. The poem above is one example of that, indicating his joy at being born again. He passed away at 62, which seems really young now, but a full life in 1934 when his whole world turned over and came upright.

      Now I’m not especially religious, but I fancy myself a spiritual being on a quest for experience, knowledge and enlightenment. This blog is a ship’s log of sorts, showing where my journey has taken me thus far. I’d like to think I’ve come a long way. I’d like to think there are many pages left to write. ’tis not for us to know such things, only to do what we can with today’s entry.

      I’ve come to value the sands of time more than gold, and the wisdom of voices who have crossed the threshold. The young seek shortcuts to influence and wealth, the old seek solace in a life of connection and comfort. I’m somewhere in between, learning what I will, sharing what I feel s’éclairer. This is our age of discovery, friend, for we are here, now and alive. Picking up what we can in our time even as it falls away.