Alexandersmap

    Category: seasons

    • Busy Got Me

      When I am among the trees,
      especially the willows and the honey locust,
      equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
      they give off such hints of gladness,
      I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
      I am so distant from the hope of myself,
      in which I have goodness, and discernment,
      and never hurry through the world
      but walk slowly, and bow often.
      Around me the trees stir in their leaves
      and call out, “Stay awhile.”
      The light flows from their branches.
      And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
      “and you too have come
      into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
      with light, and to shine.
      — Mary Oliver, When I Am Among the Trees

      Suddenly the leaves have returned to the earth. Tropical rain and gusty wind have done the job, and wet clumps of oak leaves blanket everything like a first snow. I shuffle through the fallen leaves knowing that I didn’t walk in the woods nearly enough this season. Busy got me once again.

      I too am so distant from the hope of myself when I get busy. Too busy for peak fitness or deep work or even to mop the kitchen floor. Too busy to reach out to someone who may need to talk—or maybe it was me that needed to talk. Those moments fall away like autumn leaves in a storm.

      Busy is a choice we make to subtract meaning from our lives for the belief that there is growth in hustle. There’s nothing wrong with filling our days with productive and meaningful work. Just don’t believe that busy is the same thing.

      The answer is to go easier along this path. To back away from the transactional life and choose a new direction while there’s still time. Like tea leaves, those wet leaves blanketing the ground have something to tell us. If not now, when? Don’t let busy rob you of all that is dear. All that is light. All that would fill our days if not for busy.

    • Leaves and Plastic

      Nature’s first green is gold,
      Her hardest hue to hold.
      Her early leaf’s a flower;
      But only so an hour.
      Then leaf subsides to leaf.
      So Eden sank to grief,
      So dawn goes down to day.
      Nothing gold can stay.
      — Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay

      Each October day the carpet grows. Where once there was grass or pavement, now a fallen kaleidoscope blankets all. The neighbors, eager for pristine green and neatness, rush out with their leaf blowers and oversized mowers to whisk it all away. I will be the maverick in the neighborhood who will wait it out for the love of fallen leaves and pine straw.

      Why do we rush from one thing to the next, never seeing the season we’re in right now? Where do all of the plastic decorations go when their time is up? I believe that storage rental companies conspired with large box stores to create a fear of missing out on molded plastic skeletons and fake cobwebs. FOMO is alive and well in suburbia, just not in me. No matter: whatever Halloween plastic was tempting the masses, it’s too late, because the Christmas plastic is now on display for another week or two before the beachwear is back on the shelves. Blink and you’ll miss it, so buy today!

      Just what do we want our yards to say about us? My own says that my bride loves Halloween while her husband loves to linger with the season a beat longer than the average. In other words, minimal plastic with a touch of whimsy, and a lawn that the neighbors will scorn on a windy day. I like to share in that way. The trees were here before the neighborhood, and their leaves ought to have their moment before being blown away in a roar of machinery.

      Don’t get me wrong, I love a clever Halloween decoration as much as the next person, but everything in moderation people. Running up the credit card on plastic yard bling isn’t a recipe for a happy holiday. Those credit card bills will come due just in time for Black Friday. It’s all a vicious cycle designed to slowly kill the middle class.

      If all this feels like a rant against consumerism, well, I’m glad you’ve been following along. Late October is about that blanket of leaves frozen solid by the first hard frost, that smell of pine straw on a brisk walk in the woods, and the brilliant blue sky conceding to an explosion of stars as Orion hunts Taurus yet again. You can have the plastic—I’ll enjoy the leaves.

    • October Skies

      Well, it’s a marvelous night for a moondance
      With the stars up above in your eyes
      A fantabulous night to make romance
      ‘Neath the cover of October skies
      And all the leaves on the trees are fallin’
      To the sound of the breezes that blow
      And I’m trying to please to the callin’
      Of your heart strings that play soft and low
      — Van Morrison, Moondance

      The October sky in New England is a wonderful thing. Sunrises and sunsets are full of color that somehow match the foliage as it peaks. There is a crescendo when all of the colors are most vibrant and then it all seems to fade away. And so we ought to put ourselves in the way of beauty, just as Cheryl Strayed’s mother suggested. We are either there for it or we aren’t.

      It all goes so quickly. Autumn foliage sprinkles us with magic and all too soon fades and returns to the earth. Blink and we miss it. The lesson is to get out and see what we can while the opportunity presents itself. And we know that the lesson applies well beyond leaves.

      Tempus fugit. Time flies. Dare to use our time, or risk losing it. Every day may be a love affair with life. As with any love, life will only offer to us what we put into it. It’s up to us to notice the details. We may choose to play an active role in the chores that make each day meaningful and productive. We may dare to ask ourselves in those moments of hopeful scheming, how may we extend this magic just a little longer?

    • Developing Patina

      You need some rust; sharpness does not suffice:
      Else you will seem too young and too precise
      — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

      Blame it on October if you will, but I’m feeling my age this week. That old ankle injury barks at me after last weekend’s hike. The new tricks I’m learning in my career make me feel like an old dog. Surely, the world feels out of alignment, but I know it’s most likely me that needs a tuneup and a new set of tires.

      It’s all just fatigue, I tell myself; Burn the candle at both ends and look what happens. Perhaps. But there’s also some rust on the old undercarriage. I’m not a kid anymore. Life catches up to us. Blah, blah, blah… Bah, humbug!

      That accumulation of experience can be a lot to carry some days. We were built for the moment we’re in by all the moments that came before this one. That doesn’t mean we have to like every moment we’re in. But each brings us something to hold onto. We ought to keep asking ourselves; What’s the lesson in this one?

      Patina adds depth and character to a surface. When we stop our constant scrubbing away at ourselves long enough to appreciate where we’ve arrived at, we may find that we like the progress we’ve made. What’s a little rust on a beauty like that?

    • Kingdoms Fall

      October and the trees are stripped bare
      Of all they wear
      What do I care?
      October and kingdoms rise
      And kingdoms fall
      But you go on
      And on
      — U2, October

      Inevitably, I encounter simmering rage when I listen long enough. That’s America now—rage in one form or another. It’s everywhere. Yes, common at the extremes on both sides, but creeping more and more into the middle. An even keel is hard to maintain in a tumultuous sea. We are in the midst of a storm brought on by profiteers and pirates. Bastards.

      If I sound distant from the rage myself, well, it’s a deliberate act to remove myself from the storm. Maybe there are no safe harbors in a storm like this, but we ought to find places of refuge to take stock of where we are, what we stand for, who we want to be and what we want to be remembered as one day when all of this is being cleaned up and analyzed by future generations. Those of us who reside in the middle keep this ship from capsizing. We choose whether the scales will be forever tipped.

      It’s October. Peak foliage days before it all falls away and all that we are left with are memories of what was and what might have been if we’d only paid more attention. Seasons come and go. All that will be left of us one day is what we choose to leave behind.

    • Deliberate With the Highlights

      How do we fill our days? Life is a stack of days, as we know. What fills them fills a life. So we ought to choose wisely. I may have said that once or twice, but I assure you it’s to remind myself to bring out the highlighter now and then.

      On a warm October weekend, I spent the bulk of it working to ready the home and yard for the coming of colder days. Hours with a pressure washer cleaning all the newly vacated surfaces. And warm enough for shorts and a t-shirt. The tropical plants were stunned to be cut to the base and tucked in the cellar. Am I crazy putting summer away on such a warm weekend? It doesn’t matter what the thermometer says, it’s what the calendar tells me. And so my tropical paradise has receded back to memory for the next six months.

      Will I remember the yard work? Maybe. A clean shed offers evidence we can certainly refer back to. But life isn’t meant to be a series of chores before we die. If we’re smart with our time, we should fill the days with highlighter moments too. A late afternoon walk on the beach and dinner out with family are highlighter moments in and of themselves, but within each we can choose something even brighter to mark it as special. Each could have been highlighted with something uniquely out of the box. We know it when we see it. I was more tame than I might have been. Let’s call it refinement.

      All of this makes for compelling reading, no doubt. But the point is, we ought to embrace the productive work that moves the chains in a full life but save a little time and energy for something extra. Our one line a day may be completing a bunch of chores, but it might also a call to catch up with an old friend, splurging on dessert or a fancy drink we normally wouldn’t order, or getting up and out early to witness the Harvest Moon before it too fades into the past. The chores tend to line up all by themselves—we ought to be deliberate with the highlights too.

    • Low Ground, High Places.

      Autumn is when most people flock to the high ground, searching for vantage points from which to take in the foliage. It’s a lovely thing, that foliage. What is less lovely is the flock of people. Foliage gridlock is the ugly phenomenon of fall. So those of us who live amongst the foliage tend to avoid the popular places. Beauty can be found in the quiet places too. A single orange and red leaf drifting to rest just so is all I need. But oh, those vantage points are stunning too.

      My bride and I went to the sea to walk the pup in the low tide surf. That’s just about as low ground as you can get in New Hampshire, and we reached the highest of places watching the pup play in the foam, chase seagulls, and giving the horses a sideways glance. In the offseason the horses return to the beach, riders splashing into the waves as they trot the long stretch of firm sand out and back from the state park.

      We also return in the offseason, favoring the relative quiet it offers. Late in the afternoon on a warm October day, we found we had plenty of company but still nowhere near what it must have been earlier in the day. With the surf up and churning its relentless song, the sun casting brilliant warm light as it drops to the west, there is no foliage to wonder at. Walking along the surf line to witness what the low ground has to say, seeing the joy that a beach walk draws out of my two companions, I can tell you that there is magic just the same.

    • May This Day

      After so many changes made and joys repeated,
      Our first bewildered, transcending recognition
      Is pure acceptance. We can’t tell our life
      From our wish. Really I began the day
      Not with a man’s wish: “May this day be different,”
      But with the birds’ wish: “May this day
      Be the same day, the day of my life.”
      — Randall Jarrell, A Man Meets a Woman in the Street

      The walks are colder now. Brisk. As in, I wish I’d put on a pair of gloves kind of brisk. But I welcome the change, even as I mourn for the things that will be missed as the earth tilts away from the sun yet again. Life is change, after all. Don’t blink: it will all change again soon enough.

      We each settle into a routine that becomes our life. We normalize the commute, the chores, the favorite game show we watch when we return home. What is all of this but the same day, repeated, to the end of our days? And so we look for different, while there’s still time, maybe with a little magic mixed in, just to feel like we found some wonder in our day.

      What do we wish for? It usually comes down to something different from the routine. But what is different quickly becomes the same too, when repeated. And so we chase different again and again. And there are times when different is the right answer. But not always. Sometimes the answer lies in gratitude for the rhythm of a beautiful life, built on the foundation of a routine that fits us like our favorite sweater. Just what would you wish for? May this day be savored for all that it brings.

    • Naturally Next

      “Remember that there is only one important time and that is now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future? The most important pursuit is making the person standing at your side happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Emperor’s Three Questions

      What next? I’ve heard the question over and over again since summer ended. Is it because I’m asking it myself? Or because we reach the same point in life where such questions become increasingly important? I think if I ask one more question in this paragraph I’ll lose a few subscribers in rapid succession. What’s next is blessedly the next paragraph.

      We navigate our place in the world, run into obstacles we learn to get around or stall behind indefinitely. Habits are obstacles, and so is a closed mind. Sometimes we get so focused on the obstacle in front of us we don’t step back to see the many ways around it. When writing stops flowing I simply walk away for a few minutes, make a coffee or throw the frisbee to the pup and the obstacle drifts away.

      I think Tolstoy had it mostly right with his focus on the present moment, and the most important person being the one we’re engaged with right now. But is our most important pursuit making that person happy? I think this itself becomes an obstacle, for happiness is a fickle thing, and serving the whims of another’s state is slavery.

      We’ve all got to find our own path to whatever is next for us. Helping others to see is a fine thing indeed, but they must learn to reconcile their obstacles in their own life. Maybe that obstacle is us. To give space and time for others to find their own way may be the most generous gift we can give them.

      What’s next? The sky filled with migratory birds noisily chatting about the commute. Maple leaves turning yellow and orange and red as the sun gradually reminds them that their time is almost over. Montauk Daisies budding so very long after the rest of the garden fades. Cherry tomatoes bursting in the autumn sun because we cannot possible keep up with the harvest. Next is always right in front of us, showing us the way around whatever we imagined was impossible to get beyond. Dare I say we must pay attention to now? Or is that one question too many?

      Then how about this? Answers come from doing. Stop worrying about the obstacle and simply do what calls for attention today. Like writer’s block, simply doing something pulls us inevitably to possibility. Look around, it’s all around us—everywhere except that place we were stuck in. We may simply do what is naturally next, and see where it takes us.

    • The Dog and the Frog

      “A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.” — Albert Einstein

      Every morning I let the puppy out to relieve herself. Inevitably, she ignores her full bladder and makes a beeline for the pool to see who is swimming there today. Most mornings this time of year there’s a frog bobbing around with the acorns believing it’s found paradise on earth. And so the standoff begins. The pup will circle for hours if I let her, chasing something that she’ll never catch. The only way to break the spell is to take the net and rescue the frog from the pool, relocating it over the fence. Tomorrow it will likely be right back in there again, awaiting the pup. This would go on each morning until the end of time if the season wasn’t drawing to a close.

      Are we any better than the dog following the frog? We also run around in circles relentlessly pursuing some concept of happiness or success, as if either are tangible. Reach for either and we find it’s bobbing somewhere other than the place we just dove for it. Each are nothing but ideas of what we think we ought to be.

      The aim of life is growth. A tadpole or a mighty oak measures it’s time alive in growth, and so should we. We ought to break the spell of chasing happiness or success, whatever the heck those mean to us and focus instead on purposeful gain. What might our net gain be today with a change in focus? Knowledge or strength? Enlightenment? A deeper understanding of ourselves and our place in this world?

      Forget about running in circles with nothing to show for it but a wet nose. Break the spell of the chase and focus on incremental growth instead. Whatever moves the needle forward in a meaningful way towards personal excellence and growth are the true wins for the day. Stack enough of these wins together and we may realize a state of happiness and success.