Alexandersmap

    Category: Travel

    • Tickled By Audacity

      “Il faut vivre et créer. Vivre à pleurer”
      (Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears)
      ― Albert Camus

      I’ve moved away from apps that teach me to read other languages, because they never really brought me to conversational French or German or Spanish. They aren’t immersive enough for that. Perhaps some of the AI-driven apps will deliver on the promise of multilingual proclivity, but as with most things, we learn by immersing ourselves in proximity to others doing that which we aspire to do. Which is another way to say we ought to challenge ourselves to go and do and be that person who is beyond where we currently are.

      French, for me, is the language I’ve dabbled with too long without mastering. We are all students of something, aren’t we? We may dabble in some things and attempt to master one, maybe two things in a lifetime. Conversational French is as good a skill to aspire to as anything. But skills are merely acquired to bring us to something else. Perhaps reading Camus in the language he wrote in, or perhaps holding one’s own in a local café where the tourists rarely go. We reach places we would never get to through the knowledge and skills we acquire and use.

      To live—vivre—is more than simply going through the motions. We can make a case that going through motions is not living at all. Going through anything is mere existence. To be alive we must do and dare, create and share. Embrace living by turning away from existing, towards something bolder and a little tingly. Those tingles are the nervous system expressing being tickled by audacity.

      Well, to live’s to fly
      All low and high
      So shake the dust off of your wings
      And the sleep out of your eyes
      — Townes Van Zandt, To Live Is to Fly

      How many ways must we say it? Be bold today. Live an expansive life. Try new things with frequency. Wings should never accumulate dust and skills should never be allowed to rust. We’re here to fly and strut our stuff. What is a day but another chance to make something memorable of it? What will we embark on next? What will we finally complete before we run out of time? Immerse yourself. Live and be bold! Vivre à pleurer.

    • Surfacing

      “You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.” — Paulo Coelho, Manual of the Warrior of Light

      It’s easy to get submerged in our routines. Buried in our work. Wrapped up in our frantic days. The obvious question is, when do we come up for air? The less obvious questions might be, what have we immersed ourselves in and should we get out immediately?

      “There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys, how’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?”
      — David Foster Wallace, This is Water (Kenyon College commencement speech, 2005

      If each day is structured by belief and ritual, when is it appropriate to question what those beliefs and rituals are? I should think, always. But then life gets a little messy, doesn’t it? When we’re always questioning what we’re doing with our days, we’re not moving through life smoothly. We’re bumping into truth at every turn, switching direction, bumping into something else, and it feels like we’re being constantly jostled. If you loved riding on the bumper cars as a kid, then question everything. If you prefer to charge through life picking up as many experiences as possible until the ride ends, it’s best not to slow down and linger with questions at all. Maybe a roller coaster was your ride. Simply buckle up, put away those loose items and don’t eat the chili dog beforehand.

      The thing is, we need to settle into some form of ritual and routine in our lives, that we may gain a sense of place and time—that we may actually do something while we’re in this place and time. For it will all float away soon enough like all the rest. What the hell is water? It’s all this stuff floating around us friend. Whether we dove into it headfirst or quietly sank in doesn’t matter so much as what we choose to do now. Remember if you lose your bearings that bubbles float up (so exhale a bit now and then). Immersion has its benefits, but surfacing offers perspective and maybe even survival.

    • We Are Stirred

      I don’t want to be demure or respectable.
      I was that way for years.
      That way, you forget too many important things.
      How the little stones, even if you can’t hear them,
      are singing.
      How the river can’t wait to get to the ocean and
      the sky, it’s been there before.
      What traveling is that!
      It is a joy to imagine such distances.
      — Mary Oliver, I Don’t Want to be Demure or Respectable

      When this blogger is finally done (perhaps when he begins to refer regularly to himself in the third person), it may be when the collection of Mary Oliver poems have all been quoted. It could just as easily have been Henry David Thoreau or Marcus Aurelius. Truly, I don’t mean to keep returning to each of them here, but then I re-read a poem like this one, in just the kind of mood I find myself in now, and well, here we are.

      We know when we’re ready for the next. To imagine such distances. Oh, the audacity to try to reach them! We all get tired of being demure and respectable. Don’t we? No, maybe not all of us. But some of us. The kindred fire is easy to feel when encountered. We are fellow schemers, some of us. We dream our dreams and chase some of them. We aren’t satiated by travel or poetry or encounters in the wild—we are stirred. Forever wanting just a bit more than this, please and thank you.

      To be demure is to concede that now is not entirely for us. Now is a time to be present and honorable and a sacrificer of time and energy and that special fire within that longs for oxygen and fuel. To do the right thing is honorable. Honor has its price, but truly, it also offers its beautiful dividend that cannot be ignored. A sense of place and connection keeps us alive and thriving too—just look at those Blue Zone folks for affirmation.

      As a friend recently phrased it, we have competing opportunities in our lives. The only wrong answer is to be a slave to someone else’s dream that robs us of our vitality. In time, we learn what is an empty pursuit and what feeds the flame. Having felt the heat within, how will we now feed it, so it doesn’t peter out like the vitality in so many others who have come before? It’s a joy to imagine such distances we may travel as we grow into our possibilities. Go! Do something with it while there is time.

    • A Day at The Met

      The first thing you learn when you spend a day at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is that a day is comically not nearly enough time to see everything. A year at The Met might do. And be sure to capitalize that T in “The” because the official name is what it is and details matter. In matters of affectionate familiarity, it’s perfectly fine to simply call it The Met.

      Comic or not, I had one random Thursday for a Met marathon. The only thing to do is to get to it—to meander through the maze of exhibits, to see, to linger on art that whispers for you to be with it for a moment, to eavesdrop on tour guides as they drop insight on what seemed randomness a moment before, to gawk at the famous and smile at the packs of teenagers giggling about the lack of fig leaves, and to move relentlessly through as much of the collection as time and mental capacity allows. As with all things, we hope to return again one day and pick up where we left off. Like that expression about the river, we will have changed in the interim, and everything we see will seem different with that new perspective.

      Claude Monet, "Bouquet of Sunflowers", 1881
      Claude Monet, “Bouquet of Sunflowers”, 1881
      Marie Denise Villers, Marie Joséphine Charlotte du Val d'Ognes (1786-1868), 1801
      Marie Denise Villers, Marie Joséphine Charlotte du Val d’Ognes (1786-1868), 1801
      Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Why Born Enslaved!
      Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Why Born Enslaved!
      Claude Monet, "Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies", 1899
      Claude Monet, “Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies”, 1899
      August Rodin, "Beside the Sea", 1907
      August Rodin, “Beside the Sea”, 1907
      William Bouguereau, "Breton Brother and Sister", 1871
      William Bouguereau, “Breton Brother and Sister”, 1871
      Vincent van Gogh, "Wheat Field with Cypresses", 1889
      Vincent van Gogh, “Wheat Field with Cypresses”, 1889
      Bronze statuette of a satyr with a torch and wineskin
      Bronze statuette of a satyr with a torch and wineskin
      Foreground: Finial for a ceremonial house, Sawos artist; Kaimbiam village, Middle Sepik River, Papua New Guinea Background: Finials from Ambrym Island artists; Fanla village, Vanuatu
      Foreground: Finial for a ceremonial house, Sawos artist; Kaimbiam village, Middle Sepik River, Papua New Guinea
      Background: Finials from Ambrym Island artists; Fanla village, Vanuatu
      Drum Possibly Babungo/Vengo people Cameroon, ca. 1940
      Drum
      Possibly Babungo/Vengo people
      Cameroon, ca. 1940
      Arms and Armor Room from above
      Arms and Armor Room from above
      Frans Hals, "The Smoker", ca. 1623-1625
      Frans Hals, “The Smoker”, ca. 1623-1625
      Pablo Picasso, "The Blind Man's Meal", 1903
      Pablo Picasso, “The Blind Man’s Meal”, 1903
      Death German, mid-17th century Lindenwood with traces of pigment, spruce base
      Death
      German, mid-17th century
      Lindenwood with traces of pigment, spruce base
      Auguste Rodin, "The Burghers of Calais"
      Auguste Rodin, “The Burghers of Calais”
      Jean Antoine Houdon, "Winter", 1787
      Jean Antoine Houdon, “Winter”, 1787
      Fireplace Surround Attributed to Désiré Muller, ca. 1900
      Fireplace Surround
      Attributed to Désiré Muller, ca. 1900
      Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, "The Vine", 1921 (this cast 1924)
      Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, “The Vine”, 1921 (this cast 1924)
      Antonio Canova, "Perseus with the Head of Medusa", 1804-6
      Antonio Canova, “Perseus with the Head of Medusa”, 1804-6
      Camillo Pistrucci, "Mary Shelley", 1843
      Camillo Pistrucci, “Mary Shelley”, 1843
      Émile-Antoine Bourdelle, "Herakles the Archer", 1909
      Émile-Antoine Bourdelle, “Herakles the Archer”, 1909
      Body Mask Asmat artist; Ambisu, Ajip River, Casuarina Coast, West Papua
      Body Mask
      Asmat artist; Ambisu, Ajip River, Casuarina Coast, West Papua
      Bronze helmet of the Illyrian type Greek, late 6th-early 5th century, B.C.
      Bronze helmet of the Illyrian type
      Greek, late 6th-early 5th century, B.C.
      Mechanical Table Workshop of David Roentgen, ca. 1780-90
      Mechanical Table
      Workshop of David Roentgen, ca. 1780-90
      Jean-Basptiste Carpeaux, "Ugolino and His Sons", 1865-67
      Jean-Basptiste Carpeaux, “Ugolino and His Sons”, 1865-67
      Augustus Saint-Gaudens, "Hiawatha", 1874
      Augustus Saint-Gaudens, “Hiawatha”, 1874
      Asmat artist, Yamas village, West Papua Wuramon (spirit canoe)
      Asmat artist, Yamas village, West Papua
      Wuramon (spirit canoe)
      Bronze ornament from a chariot pole Head of Medusa Roman, 1st-2nd century A.D.
      Bronze ornament from a chariot pole
      Head of Medusa
      Roman, 1st-2nd century A.D.

    • Curious and Interested

      “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.” ― Marcus Aurelius

      I took a cab across Manhattan and found myself in a fascinating conversation with the driver. He was 70, clearly fit and handsome and very bright. He’s locally famous (showed me the newspaper articles) for offering stock market advice to his passengers. He’s done everything from real estate investing to being a Chippendales dancer to owner of two cabs. He reminded me of that most interesting man in the world character, and indeed he was as interesting to speak with as you might imagine.

      I’d spent the previous day running into people I’ve known for years at a trade show. We’d each built a life, formed relationships and grown as people. Tenure is a way to form long-standing professional relationships. Being honest and forthright and genuinely interested in the lives of others is an accelerant to forming deeper bonds that last a lifetime. If there was a lesson in my encounters with old friends, it’s that friendship transcends any single job or project.

      “Be curious, not judgmental.” — Walt Whitman

      Just how are we moving through our years? Surely we’ll have moments of boredom and drudgery along the way. But we ought to sprinkle in more things that fascinate us. When we are curious and interested, people in turn are more curious and interested in us. At least that’s my way of thinking about the matter.

    • Page-Turning

      “Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”
      — Mary Oliver, Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches

      When Mary Oliver writes, in the poem quoted above, that there is still time left—fields everywhere invite you into them, I admit that I’ve received the invitation, and I’m stepping into the field. But as bold as I am in some moments, there are times when I breathe just a little. Isn’t it that way for all of us? We talk a good game, but then we do what must be done to keep the lights on and the puppy fed. Life is compromise, we tell ourselves. But sure, there is still time left.

      So if you’re tired of the same old story
      Oh, turn some pages
      — REO Speedwagon, Roll with the Changes

      There’s been some serious page-turning going on this year—enough that a scorecard might be appropriate. Global changes. Personal changes. Every day offers a transformation if we let ourselves step outside of our routine long enough to see it. And we ought to keep track of our lives in such a way, through journals and pictures and retrospect. Just see how far we’ve come! And always the question; just where are we going next?

      And still there is time left. Still it feels sometimes that we are breathing just a little, calling it a life. The thing to do, it seems, is to be bold right now: aware and alive, doing that thing that demands our attention in this small measure of time. The next step will take care of itself, if only we would change our story right now. To breathe deeply—while doing that which leaves us breathless, is where boldness lies awaiting action.

    • Of More and Enough

      “Our love of our neighbor—is it not a lust for new possessions? And likewise our love of knowledge, of truth, and altogether any lust for what is new? Gradually we become tired of the old, of what we safely possess, and we stretch out our hands again. Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some more distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: The Joyful Wisdom of Life, Love, and Art

      I’m currently managing the chaos that comes with some home improvement work. Every change has a price to be paid, and temporary chaos is our toll. The constant desire for improvement demands payment in one form or another. Today’s toll is tomorrow’s pleasure. At least that’s what we tell ourselves.

      There’s a reason why those house hunter and renovation programs are so popular. It’s the same reason some of us have an urge to travel to new places all the time, to try the latest trendy restaurant, to buy a bigger boat, to hike to new summits, or to day trade looking for that perfect stock to fall in love with. Divorce lawyers specialize in the consequences of unchecked avarice. Because we humans tend to lust for something beyond what we have. Even the pursuit of personal excellence (arete) is a pursuit of something more than what we possess now.

      As Nietzsche put it: to become tired of some possession means tiring of ourselves. Unchecked avarice is a weakness. To temper the unrelenting desire for more and realize that one has enough is a path to happiness. Good luck with that. Our consumer-driven world fuels a constant desire for more, different and better. It takes conscious willpower to unplug from that and appreciate exactly who we are, with what we have, right here and now.

      I’ve written about my wanderlust before. I’m chagrined by the single passport stamp I’ve gotten this year, compared to last year when I visited seven countries. I forget sometimes that I’ve traveled from coast-to-coast this year, seeing places and doing things that I’d once said I’d get to someday. Add in a few significant home improvement projects and the picture becomes clearer. It’s been a good year in more ways than it hasn’t.

      Comparison is the death of joy, as the saying goes. Simply enjoying the abundance of all that one has and have experienced ought to be enough. When we compare we turn our attention from all we have to what we don’t have. The math will never work in our favor when we compare, because what we don’t possess will always outnumber what we do have.

      Still, there’s so much more to see and do and be. And time is ticking away so very quickly. Is it any wonder that we have this urge for more, now, before it’s too late? We are growing beings, living a brief life before we slip into infinity. We ought to seek growth for growth’s sake. To learn and experience and build is how our species has made it this far. But we’ve also made it this far by eventually settling down and growing roots. A sense of place is uniquely gifted to those who stick around for awhile. The hunger for more is our blessing and our curse, depending on how much we control it.

      That quiet desperation Thoreau spoke of is as real as any possession we have. Desperation comes from not feeling control over one’s destiny. Not following one’s dream to it’s natural conclusion. We grow frustrated and seek relief in the fresh and new, buying impulsively, renovating relentlessly, comparing even when we know it’s a fool’s game. We each deal with the same old avarice within, while trying to be grateful for all that we have in our lives.

      As with everything, balance is the key to a joyful life. We must necessarily seek growth, knowledge and experience to fulfill our potential before the music stops, but we must also learn when we’ve been satiated. To keep consuming after we’ve had enough is gluttonous. To keep wanting bigger and better and different is avarice, unchecked. The gods don’t seek arete, they already have it. It’s we humans who are always seeking more. What is enough in this lifetime? Finding our way to that place may lead us to what we’ve been searching for all along.

    • The JFK Memorial, Hyannis

      “I believe it is important that this country sail and not lie still in the harbor.” — John F Kennedy

      When I was a kid, Hyannis, Massachusetts was the place we’d go to walk Main Street and buy some candy. When I got a little older it was the place to hang out with college friends or to catch a ferry to Nantucket. Hyannis isn’t quaint or quintessential Cape Cod, it’s a bustling village in the town of Barnstable. I practice active-avoidance here the way locals avoid tourist traps anywhere in the world. But I’m not a local, just way too familiar with the place.

      And yet I’d never visited the John F Kennedy Memorial. It’s a quietly-dignified and understated nod to the President who once sailed in the harbor this memorial overlooks. Finding myself with a little time to spare, I fell back on my old habit of seeking out the most interesting and often overlooked places wherever I was at the moment. And this moment brought me to Hyannis.

      I remember having a glimpse of the entrance to the Kennedy Compound from the back of a station wagon as a kid, but to me that’s like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. That’s not for me. Far more interesting is an offseason visit to a quiet memorial to honor the brief, brilliant flame that was JFK.

      The memorial features a fieldstone wall with a placard of JFK. Appropriately, it faces the harbor. There’s a fountain with the quote noted above engraved around it. In the offseason it’s simply a drained pool. I’m sure in summer it’s lively and impressive. But for my purposes, its stillness was appropriate for the somber occasion for the memorial. While it celebrates the life of the man, it also reminds us of all that we missed when he was assassinated that day in Dallas in 1963.

    • To Do Bold Things

      “All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.” — Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

      Risking all that we’ve built for some uncertain future is a fool’s game—at least that’s what we’ve been taught by our mothers and other well-meaning influencers in our lives. But tell me, without risk when exactly will we leap? We must develop our leaping ability through a series of calculated risks. This, friend, is our hero’s journey personified.

      “Do or do not. There is no try.” — Yoda

      Culturally, we celebrate the risk-takers because we know deep down that the leap they’ve taken is available to all of us in some form or fashion, but the leaper is unique for having done it. We may be inspired to take risks having witnessed theirs, or we may recoil back into habits of safety and assurance. We learn something about ourselves in either case.

      We all take calculated risks at some point in our lives—even our mothers risked it all to deliver our sorry ass into this world. It’s okay to be careful, and it’s good to play it safe in certain circumstances, but there are many times when we ought to let it ride. To go for it when the leap is worthy of a bold measure of risk honors those who risked it all to make our lives possible, and ultimately it honors our future potential and eventual legacy. We become the type of person who does things like this.

      Boldness is developed. But so is suffering. Decide what to be and go be it.

    • Paper Tigers

      “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.” ― Amelia Earhart

      What are we afraid of anyway? Decide what to be and go be it. The alternative is to never try anything. What kind of a life is that? When we make a habit of making the bold choice something stirs within. We learn that we can do things beyond the ordinary.

      And so it is that we make our way towards the person we wish to become. Some days we leap forward, some days we slog along hoping for progress but finding we slid backwards. Looking around, we wonder if we made the right choice.

      Who we once were seems more attractive when things get especially challenging. But deep down we know better. Keep moving forward, towards the dream. Ordinary was nice, but extraordinary offers a better view.

      Be bold today—if only so that when we reach the end of the day we feel like we’ve really done something with the time. Which paper tiger do we need to tackle first? They tend to scatter once we’ve knocked off one or two of the big ones. There is no time like now to show them who’s boss.