Alexandersmap

    Category: reading

    • The Book Stack

      “A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

      “The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching toward infinity…” — A. Edward Newton

      I wrestle with books. I love reading, and stack more books than I ought to into my life. Settling down with a great book is one of my favorite activities, so why do I pile on more than I can possibly get to? The stack of books taunt me. Even as I write this I can see them in the periphery, mocking my use of time when it doesn’t involve them.

      We live in a time where we’re blessed with abundance in everything around us, and cursed with the same scarcity of time. We must be prudent in what we add to the pile, and what we edit out. Reading is just another experience in a brief life that contributes to its richness and meaning. The rules of good nutrition apply. Beyond the required reading of a formal education, we get to choose our information diet. But we also then live with the consequences. When we use our reading time wisely we enhance living substantially.

      Imagine my delight when my Twitter feed offered up the two quotes above within a few days of one another to perfectly summarize my… situation. We live an impossibly short life for the sheer number of books available for us to read, and then pile on the distractions of life (like Twitter), and how are we ever to get to everything we want to read? The very act of writing this blog is stealing time from reading, even as writing fuels my hunger to read more. Which experience is more valuable in the moment? Isn’t life a quest to find balance between what we do and what we consume?

      And therein lies the answer; reading is just another form of collecting experiences that build a life. As with other experiences, we are what we prioritize. We can’t do everything, but we can certainly do the most important things. So it is with reading. It’s not just a stack of books and an infinite jumble of words, it’s the building blocks carrying us higher and higher towards a richer perspective and broader potential. It’s ours to realize, or to leave on the shelf.

    • Each Page

      All of Time began when you first answered
      to the names your mother and father gave you.

      Soon, those names will travel with the leaves.
      Then, you can trade places with the wind.

      Then you’ll remember your life
      as a book of candles,
      each page read by the light of its own burning.
      — Li-Young Lee, Become Becoming

      Recently, I spoke about travel with people who aren’t traveling right now for the same reasons I once didn’t travel. Different chapter of life, as the saying aptly goes. Each page offers value and helps complete the story, but we don’t always see that when the story is incomplete.

      The thing is, the story is always incomplete to the very end. We live a novel life with the last page ripped out. There’s simply no knowing how this one turns out until we get there ourselves. Each page is ours to write, mostly ours anyway, edited by the troupe that presently surrounds us. Our task is to make it a hell of a story.

      Page-turners tend to be thrilling but lack substance. Weightier tomes sometimes feel plodding and a chore to get through but leave a mark long after we’ve tucked them up on the shelf. Somewhere in between is a life’s work that is meaningfully appealing and often reflected upon.

      Ultimately there will be other chapters. Aware of this, we might choose to weave magic and depth into this one. When we arrive later in our story, the pieces may finally all come together. It’s then that we’ll remember the true meaning of each page.

    • Everything Half Known

      “In the soul of man,” Herman Melville wrote, in one of his terrifying flights of prophecy in Moby-Dick, “there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.” Cast off from that protected world, he’d gone on, and “thou canst never return!” But the half known life is where so many of our possibilities lie. In the realm of worldly affairs it can be a tragedy that so many of us in our global neighborhood choose to see other places through screens, reducing fellow humans to two dimensions. On a deeper level, however, it’s everything half known, from love to faith to wonder and terror, that determines the course of our lives. Melville’s sorrow lay not just in his restless inquiries, but in his hope for answers in a world that seems always to simmer in a state of answerlessness.” — Pico Iyer, The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise

      Pico Iyer pulls a reader to places they likely hadn’t considered going to in their own lives. He travels to corners of the world I’d never choose to go to myself, taunts me with eloquence I strive for in my own writing, and expands my mind with thoughts I haven’t arrived at yet in my own journey. He takes very seriously the mission of the great writer to change the reader in ways they weren’t quite ready for when they began the book. And he does so with a sprinkling of wonder in lyrical observations we’ve come to expect from him.

      The question is, what are we looking for? What are our possibilities lying in a half known life? What encompasses our soul awaiting answers? We each must reconcile these questions in our lives, wherever our journey takes us. Our lives are not about that which we are sure about, but the larger questions that surround us. The thing about finding answers is that they always lead to more questions still. Thus, our lives, lived with purpose, are a finite inquiry.

      “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms or books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers.” — Rainer Maria Rilke

      Over time, many of us come to terms with the things we’ll never fully understand. Life isn’t about finding all the answers, merely a journey towards enough in our time. Each question and subsequent answer is another step towards becoming. Becoming what, we might ask? And that is our half known, different for each of us, yet very much the same.

    • We Are a Spark

      “The universe has no timeless geography. The universe is a happening. The universe is an explosion. Galaxies continue to fly through the universe away from each other at colossal speeds…
      You and I also began with the Big Bang, because all substance in the universe is an organic unity. Once in a primeval age all matter was gathered in a clump so enormously massive that a pinhead weighed many billions of tons. This ‘primeval atom’ exploded because of the enormous gravitation. It was as if something disintegrated. When we look up at the sky, we are trying to find the way back to ourselves…
      But what is this earthly substance? What was it that exploded that time billions of years ago? Where did it come from?” “That is the big question.” “And a question that concerns us all very deeply. For we ourselves are of that substance. We are a spark from the great fire that was ignited many billions of years ago.” — Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy

      When you look at the stars, do you feel the connection? When you scan the horizon from a mountain summit or along the ocean shore, do you wonder at how big the world is or reflect on how small we are? When we look up to the stars, aren’t we reuniting with our kindred energy? For if the universe is a happening, so too each of us is happening right now. It’s our mission to meet this, our fragile moment.

      Each star, and our own sun, is a spark from the Big Bang burning in their time. So it is that we too are a spark from the great fire. These, friends, are our days. As we collectively begin another trip around the sun, it’s worth asking, what bold vision sparks our imagination? Feel how it stirs our embers. Can we realize it in our time?

      Life is a precious few moments before our stardust returns to the universe. This might horrify us, or light a bonfire. Choose fire.

    • Go For What You Wanted

      Look around me
      I can see my life before me
      Running rings around the way it used to be
      I am older now
      I have more than what I wanted
      But I wish that I had started long before I did
      And there’s so much time to make up everywhere you turn
      Time we have wasted on the way
      So much water moving underneath the bridge
      Let the water come and carry us away
      Oh, when you were young
      Did you question all the answers?
      Did you envy all the dancers who had all the nerve?
      Look around you now
      You must go for what you wanted
      Look at all my friends who did and got what they deserved
      — Crosby, Stills & Nash, Wasted on the Way

      I once heard a DJ dismiss Graham Nash as the least talented of the trio of Crosby, Stills & Nash. I think he missed the point, looking at individual songs added to the catalog instead of the overall contribution to the whole. Thinking of this group absent any of them leaves a void, for the magic was in the harmonies. Oddly enough, that DJ’s comment reminded me of a man who once greatly influenced me who wore a shirt that said “If you aren’t the lead dog the view never changes”. It may be funny, it may even be technically true, but that sled ain’t moving without the contribution of every dog. For me, those harmonies and a song like Wasted on the Way is contribution enough for Nash.

      The twin analogies of growth (rings on a tree in good years and bad) and that water under the bridge, are familiar themes of looking back. But this is not a song about where we’ve been or that water under the bridge, it’s a song about now: the way, and the life before us. Life will always be about now, with a nod to what brought us here, but we must bring our attention to the way.

      For each of us, what comes next is far more important than what happened before. We can’t linger on what’s wasted, for this business of living will continue until the end. We must embrace our chosen way and have the nerve to dance with it. Decide what to be and go be it. For we have another season of growth ahead of us. What kind of ring will it be?

    • The Day After Twain’s Birthday

      “Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born -a hundred million years -and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.” ― Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

      Since I completely missed Mark Twain’s birthday yesterday (surely he didn’t mind), I thought a short post on the day after would be appropriate. We all ought to spend more time with clever people—people who don’t just say clever things but people who look at the world in a certain way that help us see what was right in front of us all along. Twain was certainly clever in that way.

      Dead now longer than he was alive, I imagine he’s made the most of the opportunity for peace and serenity that comes from passing from this world. I’m not particularly ready to join him, but take his words to heart. We weren’t alive far longer that we have been, and so it will be on the other side. We ought to be at peace with that, while using this unique opportunity to live as boldly as we can. Happy belated Birthday, Mr. Twain.

    • The Payoff

      “The Muse does not count hours. She counts commitment. It is possible to be one hundred percent committed ten percent of the time. The goddess understands.” — Steven Pressfield, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be

      Every morning I write for an hour or two, publish this blog, store a few collected bits for another day, and mentally flip the switch back to active participant in the rest of my life. That blog, Alexandersmap.com, is admittedly clunky, heavy on WordPress coding that I don’t really want to understand, and probably the opposite of cool. It’s the equivalent of a DIY project at home, that professionals politely nod and smile at when you invite them over. I can only hope for retro vibes if I hold out long enough.

      I’ve been slowly slogging through three books of philosophy. They’re heavy because they aren’t page turners, not really, though each is filling in the blanks for me in a life mostly focused on not wrestling with philosophical questions. We get busy, don’t we? But some things are worth our time and effort. I read a few pages of each book each morning, and attempt the same at night. I’m locally famous for my night reading, and acknowledge that it’s not my most effective time to wrestle with heavy books. Still, I persist.

      The thing is, we know the small habits that make up our lives pay off in the end, but there are days when we wonder if it’s worth the effort at all. Incremental progress is hard to get excited about. We all want the big payoff when we do something important to us, but forget sometimes that the payoff is who we are gradually becoming in the process of doing the work.

    • What is Beautiful

      “The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it.” ― Simone Weil, Waiting for God

      Two things I rarely write about are religion and love. The meaning of each is in the eye of the beholder, and the fastest way to divide a room is to carry on too much about either. Even writing that statement will turn off a true believer or two. So be it. We each wrestle with ourselves and our place in this world. Relationships, whether with God or science, your true love or platonic love, are complicated. We’re not on this earth long enough to know everything, but our journey isn’t about the finish, it’s about who we become each step along the way.

      Some people want certainty in their lives. So they only marry someone who believes in the same god, or goes to the same church, or no church. Or maybe it’s politics or nationality or favorite sports team that dictates who they choose to associate with. This is inherently limiting, of course, for it keeps us in a box of our own making. They might as well make it a casket.

      The thing is, we all have our core belief systems and tend to seek out that which reinforces that identity. Over the years I’ve wrestled with strong feelings about everything from musical genres to whether the house lights are left on at night. None of it matters in the long run, it’s just positioning of the self in an indifferent world. Writing every day is the miraculous clarifying tool which brings me closer to understanding it all. Perhaps it is for you too.

      When the year is over, barring some last-minute heroics, I will have read fewer books than last year. And yet the lift is heavier this year, with some significant philosophical works in the mix. This may be my What’s it all about Alfie stage of life, but I think not. I’ve always been this way; I just make better choices now. As you grow you tend to explore your openness to new influences a bit more.

      As sure as I believe there’s a heaven above
      Alfie, I know there’s something much more
      Something even non-believers can believe in
      I believe in love, Alfie
      Without true love we just exist, Alfie
      Until you find the love you’ve missed
      You’re nothing, Alfie
      — Burt Bacharach / Hod David, Alfie

      The world is wrestling with nihilism and division at the moment. It will eventually swing back towards unity, hopefully before too much damage is done. All we can do is be active ambassadors for openness and unity. What is beautiful in our lives may wreck us, but it might also be our salvation. What is life but a journey to discover that which resonates most for us? We reach awareness in our own time, and learn to cherish the experiences and influences that bring us there.

      Whatever the package it comes from, that which is derived from true love and honesty is beautiful. We may learn from it, or turn away from it, but the truth remains. Our obligation to ourselves and the world is to be open. What is beautiful will find its way to us.

    • Schemes and Dreams

      “A thousand Dreams within me softly burn:
      From time to time my heart is like some oak
      Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.”
      — Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works

      We all dream of things beyond the scope of our present situation. It’s human nature to dream, and we tend to collect dreams like books waiting to be read. How many books can we read in a lifetime? When you think of your average, it’s a surprisingly short number. So it is with dreams: we may dream an unlimited number, but accomplish but a few. We ought to make them our favorites.

      Dreams are evasive distractions until we start working towards them. Dreaming is unproductive on its own, for we must scheme as well. Without a plan, we risk walking in circles. Or maybe we dance in circles, happy in our own little world, content to linger with our dream. But we humans like to scheme too, and soon we’re dreaming of the next mountain to climb.

      Schemes and dreams pair well together in this way. But we’ve all experienced moments where we’re forever planning our next big move, but never actually beginning the climb. Excessive planning is procrastination. Dreams and schemes are just a dance without action.

      We tend to think we’ll be productive and get things done in good time. But great ideas don’t transform themselves into completed work, the muse just chooses a different author willing to dance long enough to make it real. That trip of a lifetime likewise doesn’t happen on it’s own. We must do the work to realize our dreams, or they’ll simply dance with someone else.

    • Mastering Our Moments of Truth

      “Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is…and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be…and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart…no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn’t matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them.” ― Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

      We might never achieve the mastery of a Rodin in our art, but surely it’s something to aspire to. We might also aspire to it in this bold act of living. For living with and for others is itself an art, mastered by some, clumsily attempted by most. Everyone wants to be seen and heard and appreciated in the moment they encounter another person. How many disappoint in that moment of truth?

      I aspire to craft a sentence like Heinlein’s in each post. Maybe I will attain that level of craftsmanship on the next one, or the one after that. Time will inform the reader of such things, but making a go of it day-after-day is what matters most on our journey to becoming. Art isn’t the same as aging, for aging subtracts some vitality from the physical self, while days are accretive in art.

      At a party recently, I was reminiscing with a woman about her mother, who passed away a couple of years ago, shattering my belief that she would live forever. When she was alive she and I had a thing for each other, she being 40 years my senior, but young at heart. From the day I first met her I treated her as the vibrant woman I saw in her eyes, and she treated me as her would-be suitor, doomed to fail but welcome to try. This performance went on for almost three decades before she passed, and still makes me smile today.

      We may not become a Rodin or Heinlein in our art. But living offers other opportunities for mastery. Life is about the connections we make with people along the way, one after the other, in our time here. To master that is truly a gift.