Alexandersmap

    Category: Travel

    • A Visit to the Getty Center’s Gardens

      “Always changing, never twice the same,” — Robert Irwin

      A day at the Getty must include a visit to the extensive collections exhibited in the museum buildings. Included in the collection are famous works like Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises” and Rembrandt’s self-portrait “Rembrandt Laughing“, along with significant works by Cézanne, Monet, Claudel and many more. One needs a full day at the Getty to see everything, and even then you feel compelled to return again as soon as possible.

      The gardens at the Getty Center are equally impressive and a must-see destination of their own. Robert Irwin’s Central Garden is a marvel in any season, and as with any magnificent garden, he practically demands that you see it in every season. In all honesty, I’d been wanting to see the museum for some time, but it was the gardens that really called to me. They don’t disappoint.

      Robert Irwin’s Central Garden is the star, with a stunning water feature, iron rod tree sculptures with bougainvillea rising through them, and an ever-changing flower-lined meandering path that leads you down to a central pond. It’s simply a must-see. Not to be undone, the Cactus Garden reaches out towards Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean in a dramatic balcony seen from different levels. Other gardens fill the Getty as well: sculpture gardens, fountains and large rock gardens make wandering outside the museum as desirable as your time spent indoors.

      For me personally, it was time with my daughter in a magical place. She shares my love of art and the artistic process, and is pursuing her own dream to have a creative, expressive career. To share the Getty experience with her made the moment. For we too are always changing and never the same twice. And isn’t that also quite beautiful?

    • Only Us

      There is no them
      There’s only us
      — U2, Invisible

      Remember that feeling when we reached a point where we could safely gather with friends, family and colleagues again? After vaccinations and herd immunity overcame the underlying uncertainty of social gatherings? The feeling was connection: Face-to-face interaction, communication, a dance of ideas, hopes and dreams. There was no them, only us, once again.

      This week I’m at an industry event seeing people I’ve known for years and meeting some for the first time. The dynamic of collaborative exchange is positive and productive, and friendships are formed through mutual investment in the welfare of the other. The reunions have been profound. The introductions hopeful.

      The more we interact with others, the closer we approach our purpose. Could it be as simple as realizing and then acting upon the realization? Or are we tasked with forever discovery? Doesn’t it begin with an acceptance of who and where we are?

    • A Visit to Red Rock Canyon

      The region I live in was experiencing a total eclipse on April 8th. I was in Las Vegas, Nevada with an opportunity to see a partial eclipse. I might have been chagrined by this at another time in my life, but now? Amor fati friends. I watched the eclipse I had before me and made the most of the place and time I had available and visited Red Rock Canyon.

      Red Rock Canyon more than lives up to its name, but red is just one of the many colors in this desert environment. Calico might have been a better choice, and one section of the scenic drive does have that name. It’s a stunning departure from the ugliest parts of humanity you might find elsewhere in the city.

      The scenic drive is a one-way, 13 mile loop winding through the canyon. The one-way nature of it is a blessing as drivers are distracted enough already by the scenery without having to worry about cars coming at them head-on. But it does mean you should take the time to stop at every point of interest for there’s no going back.

      A drive is nice, but I was here to hike. There is a nice network of trails throughout the area, but we spent the bulk of our time at Calico Hills scrambling and hiking amongst the massive sandstone formations. It was similar to Joshua Tree National Park in many ways, without the scale of that place, but more than making up for it with convenient proximity to Las Vegas.

      The region is very popular with rock climbers and we watched dozens of them climbing the cliffs on our hike. Like gambling, rock climbing is not my game, but I can appreciate the skills of those who pursue it. Hiking and scrambling are enough for me, and in a place this beautiful this close to the Vegas Strip, I found the experience both exhilarating and immensely enjoyable.

    • To Shed, and Grow

      “We must be willing to get rid of
      the life we’ve planned, so as to have
      the life that is waiting for us.

      The old skin has to be shed
      before the new one can come.

      If we fix on the old, we get stuck.
      When we hang onto any form,
      we are in danger of putrefaction.

      Hell is life drying up.”
      ― Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

      Walking on the beach last week, I picked up two shells. One was tiny and in perfect shape, the other larger and more surf-beaten. Shell identification is not my game, but I like learning new games.. Based on a helpful shell identifier web site I found, we’ll call the small one a Threeline Mudsnail, the other a Shark Eye. I regret not holding on to the Shark Eye if only for the name… but I digress.

      We know that Hermit Crabs swap out old shells for new as they grow. We know that snakes do something similar with their skin thus making Campbell’s analogy resonate so well. Potted plants grow pot-bound and begin to fade if we don’t repot them into something bigger. So what of us? Why do we try to hold on to so much of our past instead of growing into the next version of ourselves? When we create a life for ourselves, parts of that life are going to fall away from us. People come and go. Favorite restaurants close. Developments are built in woods that used to speak to us. Everything changes and so too must we.

      Lately, a few friends have left the company I work for in favor of greater opportunity for themselves. In each case I cheer them on to do great things with their lives, even as I feel the loss of their contribution to the place where I still work. We must grow or risk drying up in the old shell we’ve built around ourselves. Like my kids growing into adulthood and moving to other places, these work friends will still be in my life, just not every day. It’s not a goodbye, it’s until we meet again.

      The trick, I believe, is to stop feeling so comfortable with the character we once were and begin feeling comfortable with the idea of a new identity. When we decide who we want to be and begin the process of becoming that person, we are shedding our old skin. We often wonder after we’ve left it why we held on so very long to something we were so ready to leave behind.

    • Still to Be Ours

      Last night
      the rain
      spoke to me
      slowly, saying,
      what joy
      to come falling
      out of the brisk cloud,
      to be happy again
      in a new way
      on the earth!
      That’s what it said
      as it dropped,
      smelling of iron,
      and vanished
      like a dream of the ocean
      into the branches
      and the grass below.
      Then it was over.
      The sky cleared.
      I was standing
      under a tree.
      The tree was a tree
      with happy leaves,
      and I was myself,
      and there were stars in the sky
      that were also themselves
      at the moment
      at which moment
      my right hand
      was holding my left hand
      which was holding the tree
      which was filled with stars
      and the soft rain –
      imagine! imagine!
      the long and wondrous journeys
      still to be ours.
      — Mary Oliver, Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me

      It seems to rain all the time now. Is that a function of climate change or spring in New England? If winter was a forever mud season, what are we to make of the regularly-scheduled mud season? Control what we can, let go of what we cannot, and celebrate the moments rain or shine; that’s what. The silver lining was that the rain that greeted me this morning inspired me to seek out an old friend.

      It’s been a while since Mary Oliver graced the blog, and honestly, I felt the void. If our quest is greater awareness of the moment we’re in, the whisper of a poet in our ear is as good a place to start as any. But then you read a poem like this one, with a look ahead to what’s still to be ours, and it’s easier to see the way. A great poet looks at who we are becoming as much as who we are. Poetry is life, after all.

      I’m not much for resolutions, but I love a great routine. Each day should include a bit of self-maintenance, a bit of movement, some honest effort applied to work that matters to us, a conversation with someone as deeply invested in us as we are in them, the pursuit of deeper knowledge and experience, and yes, a wee bit of poetry and song to complete the soundtrack. That to me is a successful day, and if we may string together enough of them in a row, one heck of a life.

      If I dwell too often in what’s to come, it’s merely a sense of hope and purpose betraying my intentions. Our present is built from the momentum of the past carrying us to this place, where we linger for a beat to feel the rain on our face before we turn again to what’s next. Our lives are forever lived with an eye on the path ahead, lest we stumble. To imagine what’s possible for ourselves and have the boldness to step towards it. This is the momentum for our tomorrow, greeting us today.

    • Practiced Reasoning

      “While we naturally understand that writing is a good way to share ideas with others, we under-appreciate just how much good writing helps us think about an idea ourselves. Writing is not only a means of communication, it enables us to practice reasoning.
      Writing forces you to slow down, focus, and think deeply. In a world where attention is fragmented into seconds, thinking becomes more reactive than reasoned. Only when [we] take time to play with our ideas can we hope to think about them substantially. Writing requires sticking with something a little longer and developing a deeper understanding.
      Writing is the process by which we realize we do not understand and the process by which we come to understand.”
      — Shane Parrish, Unspoken Expectations, Brain Food – No. 569 – March 24, 2024

      Until I read Shane Parrish’s latest newsletter, I still had it in my mind—even after a couple of thousand blog posts—that I was writing for others. I had it partially correct. I’ve been writing for myself, to better understand that which I encounter on this dash through the decades, and then to share that processing with you; the reader. I’ve talked of breadcrumbs and the processing of ideas before myself, so the idea isn’t exactly revolutionary, but he hammered it home well enough that I thought I’d practice a bit more reasoning writing about it here.

      The thing about documenting your own reasoning in a blog is that when you publish, you’ve let the world in on a bit of a secret. Deep down, you know more about who I am and how I process information about the world and my experience in it. Sure, I filter out enough that people aren’t guessing my passwords (those simple passwords are long gone anyway) or otherwise hacking my identity, but the bottom line remains clear: unless you’re writing a blog yourself, you know far more about how I think than I know about how you think. Advantage reader?

      Perhaps. But we aren’t adversaries in this game of life, are we? My reasoning, should you choose to follow along, is simply my half of a conversation. And as a writer we ought to view it as such. Otherwise what is it but a dull college lecture or a dad speaking to a table full of people staring at their phones? There are some blog posts that fail to resonate with the world, and it feels a lot like that latter example in such moments of posting into the vacuum of the Internet, but that is exactly the moment to remind myself that this blog post is one human’s humble attempt to reason with the universe and to see what comes from it.

      In a way, writing this blog is similar to playing chess with the computer. The computer always wins, often in frustratingly devious ways (like a cat and the mouse with me always the mouse), but each game is a lesson in strategic thinking for me, even in the loss. When the game is over, was it a waste of time or an incremental step forward towards becoming a better chess player (ie: strategic thinker)? So it is with this blog post and all those that preceded it. Each is an incremental step towards better reasoning, and better writing. And perhaps that’s enough to make me a better human too.

    • The Gift of a Lifetime

      “Just living is not enough,” said the butterfly, “one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.” ― Hans Christian Anderson

      Spring for me begins when the crocuses bloom. Well, they’ve bloomed and continue to dance in the crisp air even as the season tries to figure out who it wants to be. As usually happens in March, we had a taste of spring weather in New England before things got chilly again. This is normal, though winter was anything but normal. The climate has changed, we all feel it, and perhaps we’ll act upon it one day too late.

      I was texting with a business associate yesterday, responding to his complaints about product and service and the miserable state of affairs that is the world we live in. I politely steered him to the bright side of the road, which he found unsatisfying. There is no room for joie de vivre in his life. He’s been this way since his son passed away years ago, leaving him forever hollowed out. Who am I to tell him there’s a bright side to anything? All we can do is show that life may still be beautiful even with shadows.

      The question of a lifetime is always what to do with it. We may roam like a caribou, straying far from home through places fraught with danger. We may root ourselves firmly in place, like a mighty oak that keeps the young saplings from getting ahead of themselves in their rush to find their own light. Life is never perfect and sometimes it’s downright unfair, but we yet exist for more than to be a placeholder for carbon.

      The art of living well is to savor our experiences while we’re dancing with them. Tomorrow may bring a cold front to our doorstep, but today the sun is shining and we would be ungrateful to let it slip away uncelebrated. Each moment has it’s time, and so to do we. To elevate our experiences with our awareness is the ultimate gift we may give to ourselves. It’s the gift of a lifetime, isn’t it?

    • A Provocation to Venture

      During the pandemic I latched on to a couple of sailing vlogs that reminded me of why I wanted to be out in the world, and allowed me to be out there when we were all sheltered in place. Sailing friends pointed me towards the YouTube channels SV Delos, Sailing Uma and Ran Sailing and I was easily hooked on their visits to places I could only imagine at that time in the pandemic. Those channels led me to other travel channels, and before I knew it I was subscribing to more than I could possibly watch while still living a productive, engaged life of my own.

      When the world opened up again, travel vloggers offered an easy research opportunity: to see a place before you visit that place so you may pick the very best places to go when you get there. Want to eat the best pizza in Napoli? There are plenty of vlogs that will point you towards the highest rated, and you hungrily watch as they eat pizza and rate their favorite. From there it’s up to you to follow along or ignore their opinion altogether and go your own way.

      Visiting Seceda a couple of years ago, surely one of the most stunning places I’ve ever been in my life, we were struck by the sheer number of people clearly there to use the jagged mountains as a backdrop for Instagram photos and vlogging banter. We could shake our heads at the folly of it all, but the reason I even knew the place existed was from seeing it on a travel vlog myself. Vlogs, blogs and podcasts are the democratization of lifestyle media, and one can appreciate the form without being sucked into the vortex. There’s no doubt it can devolve into a hustle for attention in an increasingly competitive world. Why not simply experience a place instead of launching a drone or reading a script or showing a little more skin? Our lives don’t have to be coin-driven all the time.

      Watching a few of these vlogs offers some insight, but who wants to simply fund the lifestyle of someone else instead of finding a way to live a larger life ourself? Instead of vlogging my life for others to see, I write about my experiences in this blog, and happily live anonymously without the recognition a GoPro and a selfie stick offer. My choice is more insular than theirs, but that doesn’t mean I don’t post pictures from Seceda or Iceland or Muir Woods on social media and write a blog post about each of these places too. It’s a fine line between sharing our experiences and bragging about them. And of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

      Coming back to those sailing channels on YouTube, the trend now seems to be about building new boats or completely remodeling the one they have. Their channels are thus pivoting and they’re asking their subscribers to follow along. It seems that somewhere on the other side of that selfie stick are people who aren’t as satisfied with where they are, or with how much money they’re making, or maybe with the people they’re missing while they’re off making YouTube videos in faraway places. We’re all just figuring things out as we go through life. Some people just post about it more often.

      My bride watches home improvement programs and has some great ideas about how to remodel our home. I watch travel vlogs and have more reckless ideas about skipping out of town and seeing the world on a leaky boat over-provisioned with perishables and beer. Reality lies somewhere in between. We’ve made some big improvements on our home and garden as a result of her creativity and my sweat equity, and we’ve been to some places we’d never have gone to otherwise simply because we were inspired by something we saw someone else doing. When it’s all said and done, life is a short dance with our potential. The best vlogs, blogs, podcasts and sure, the best home improvement programs, explore that dance and provoke others to venture further themselves.

    • A Great Day Not to be Dead (With the Egopantis and Thee)

      I thought about my car crash and my close call
      I started getting sentimental
      I said, I love this house, I love you guys
      I even love my rusty old car outside
      And I’m so happy to be alive with you
      Let’s do all the things we always said that we would do
      ‘Cause it’s a great day
      It’s a great day
      It’s a great day
      It’s a great day
      And it’s a great day to not be dead
      — Don White, Great Day

      “The Bull Run has been a Tavern for centuries and was the first stop on the Boston-to-Albany Stagecoach route in the 1800s.” — History of the Bull Run Restaurant

      Mounted to the fireplace near the bar of The Bull Run is the head of a creature they call the egopantis. When you see it, you’ll never really forget it, mostly because your first and last reaction when seeing it is, “What the hell is that thing?” Could it be a bear or a buffalo with a distinctive facial birth defect? Or someone’s art project made eternal? The tall tales told by the establishment are enjoyable but only lead to more questions. The only certainty as we navigate fact and fiction in this complicated world is that most answers are a load of bull. So we’d clearly come to the right place.

      That we go through our lives with so few opportunities to see good friends over good food and fun live music is unfortunate. Life really should be a celebration; a forever birthday to mark the miracle of our dance through this time and place together. Life really is what we make of it. So we made our way to the quiet town of Shirley, Massachusetts for a night of live music with the beautiful comedic soul Don White. And we found some magic. Not just a strange bit of taxidermy on the wall magic, but the kind of magic that happens when you gather around a table with some of your favorite people in the world to enjoy some live music. We all remember the worst days of the pandemic when we’d wish for such moments to come back again. Here we are.

      A place as old as The Bull Run has seen a lot of characters come through its doors. A night out with Don White, the edopantis and thee was another layer on the life experience cake. We were simply the latest weary world travelers who stopped in for the night. We may not be able to get a room at the inn like we might have once upon a time, but we can surely have a memorable evening. Memories are what stay with us, after all, so let’s do all the things we always said that we would do. We are history makers one and all.

      Egopantis decked out for St. Patrick’s Day

    • For Discovery

      “We’ve been trained to believe that mediocre obedience is a genetic fact for most of the population, but it’s interesting to note that this trait doesn’t show up until after a few years of schooling.” — Seth Godin, Graceful

      “Fear of living without a map is the main reason people are so insistent that we tell them what to do.” — Seth Godin, Graceful

      A few days ago, Seth Godin offered up his e-book Graceful as a free download. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I downloaded it immediately and read it almost as quickly. It’s a short book jammed with little nuggets of gold like the quotes above. Seth’s best books and blog posts are tiny gems that punch above their weight. Something to aspire to as a writer—perhaps I’ll arrive there myself in a few thousand more blog posts.

      Many of us wing it in certain parts of our lives, but meticulously plan other parts. I write what flows through me when I sit down to write, but feed myself with a steady diet of reading material and life experience to widen the lens. The result is an often eclectic mix of topics that are most certainly not what some sign up for. But who wants to read or write about the same thing every day anyway? Art, learning and living a full life should be a meandering progression.

      There’s something overly formal about mapping out our experiences, but there’s value in the process. I have some travel coming up this spring that I’m particularly excited about. With every trip I take, I do a ton of research and planning to optimize my time in any given place. I leave some room for discovery, but in general I live my life in the fashion the lyrics of an old Seals and Croft song, “We May Never Pass This Way (Again)”. You don’t have to look up the lyrics: that’s it right there in the title. It’s the kind of ear worm song you curse for it’s persistence, but a good reminder to be fully aware in the moment.

      We don’t venture out into the world for predictable. We venture for discovery. When we leave the rigidity and structure of the classroom, we either spiral into indifference or grow into a fascination with the world and our place in it. To be lifetime students of living seems an aspiration worthy of our remaining time, don’t you think? Our growth depends on it.