Alexandersmap

    Category: Travel

    • To Be Witnesses

      “We’re only here for a short while. And I think it’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention. In some ways, this is getting far afield. I mean, we are — as far as we know — the only part of the universe that’s self-conscious. We could even be the universe’s form of consciousness. We might have come along so that the universe could look at itself. I don’t know that, but we’re made of the same stuff that stars are made of, or that floats around in space. But we’re combined in such a way that we can describe what it’s like to be alive, to be witnesses. Most of our experience is that of being a witness. We see and hear and smell other things. I think being alive is responding.” — Mark Strand

      We are stardust, billion year old carbon, as Joni Mitchell put it. To be made up of the same stuff as the universe but with consciousness is a miracle, really. We ought to celebrate that miracle with each breath. More likely, we might at least wake up in the morning embracing the gift when we’ve been granted another day.

      There haven’t been as many mountain peaks or waterfalls in the blog this year, and I plan to remedy that in the near future. Our lives are as big or as small as we make them. Blessed with good health and a sound mind, we ought to make the most of the opportunity. This blog was never meant to be solely about what I’ve read recently. It was derived from a bias towards action and the desire to see as much of this world as possible while here. Stasis should never be the goal in a life so very brief, let alone for a blog designed to convey highlights of the journey.

      This is our time to experience and bear witness to what we encounter. More, we should be active participants in living a full life, for this billion year old carbon we each walk around in will someday return to the universe. It ought to have a few stories to tell.

    • Attention is Vitality

      “Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.” ― Susan Sontag

      Please take a moment and re-read the quote above, but in the voice of a close friend or loved one who’s a bit exacerbated with you for not doing this the last time they reminded you to be more vigorous with this business of living. Vigorous in a “lust for life” way. Vigorous in a “decide what to be and go be it” way. What we pay attention to matters. We must choose to rise above mundane.

      Each of us is wrestling with something, likely amplified by the madness in the world these last several years. What drowns out that voice in the back of our head more than action? We all know the fable of the frog and boiling water (Put a frog in a pot of boiling water and it will leap out. Put that frog in cold water gradually heated and it will boil to death). The moral of the story seems obvious, but what are we currently boiling in ourselves?

      We must shake ourselves loose from the belief that we’re unable to change our circumstances. We must pay attention and get to the living part of our story. Get out of the damned pot! Be clenched! Be curious! Be eager!

    • Stepping onto the Mastodon Path

      Admittedly, social media can be a dark place, pretending to be about community and connection, but really just an echo chamber of accusation, antagonism and positioning. It’s not a quiet conversation with friends sharing stories and pictures, yet that’s what we all signed up for. Or, if we’re being honest, was it to become an influencer? Being a voice of moderation doesn’t earn you followers, you must shout louder than the rest to get attention. And herein lies the problem.

      Alternatively, we might step away. Find a place that makes more sense. Wade into the waters of something new and see how it feels. To be fully alive means to experience change and make the most of it. Change isn’t so bad, it’s how we react to the possibility of change that scares people. We each ought to decide what to be and go be it.

      This blog is now linked to a Mastodon account. You can still find it on Twitter if you want to, at least until that platform implodes and sinks. That’s unlikely though, isn’t it? Too many people rely on doing the same easy thing every day. But diversifying the distribution of this blog seems logical to this writer. If nothing else, I’m calling my own bluff and embracing the unknown. And it was surely unfamiliar territory. At first glance, Mastodon was confusing. Blogging once felt confusing too. Going to a new job once felt confusing. There are plenty of blogs and YouTube videos to help make sense of it all.

      After lingering with it a few days, it seems a lonely place, comparatively, to Twitter or Facebook. Loneliness is also good for us, sometimes. It means we’re building something new, and eventually, together. Consider it an adventure. Isn’t it so? Like starting something new. That loneliness is a sign that we’ve stepped off the old block and are entering the wilderness. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of elbow room while we sort things out. The pioneers get all the streets named after them.

      Follow me on Mastodon, if you’d like. Currently @nhcarmichael@universeodon.com unless another server or instance tempts me. See what I mean? Different. But who wants the same thing all the time anyway? Let’s jump in, shall we?

    • Opting for a Colorful Plate

      “The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.” ― Ann Wigmore

      A coworker recently brought up his frustration with the the “plateful of brown” options available for breakfast at a typical American hotel chain: eggs, bacon, sausage links, bread, potatoes or hash browns, coffee. If you’re lucky enough to have fruit options it’s usually bananas and pineapple or melon. Maybe some yogurt. In other words, a whole lotta brown.

      There’s a rule of thumb that we ought to include as many colors in our food as we can. A plate loaded full of brown foods isn’t especially good for you, and may indeed be a slow form of poison. If we are what we eat, why are we opting for processed junk and the same old same old? Add color! Add variety! Add flavor!

      Looking at the travel menu for dinners, there’s a lot of brown there too: pasta and bread, steak, chicken, rice and all sorts of not very colorful food. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can do as the Europeans do and swirl in a healthy mix of green, red, orange and yellow and feel more vibrant after eating. Or stick with browns and feel bloated and tired after eating. The choice is ours, one meal at a time. We ought to choose wisely. Choose deliciously. Choose colorfully.

    • Yes and No

      “It’s worth making time to find the things that really stir your soul. That’s what makes you really feel alive. You have to say ‘no’ to other things you’re used to, and do it with all your heart.“ — Roy T. Bennett

      Checking out the float plan for friends Fayaway as they resume their journey to the Caribbean, it’s easy to see the navigation points clearly charted. The trick is to stick to plan as the unexpected forces of wind, weather, current and fatigue influence that course over time. We can’t predict everything, we can only choose the course and decide when to take a leap into the unknown. Every day brings subsequent decisions that carry us to the next. So it is with life.

      It’s easy to see the series of decisions that brought us to where we are in hindsight. It’s more challenging to plot our course through life uncertain of the forces that will influence that course. Life is what we make of it, a series of yeses and no’s from start to finish. Sometimes what we’re most comfortable with needs to be a no to make progress. Staying in the cozy harbors of our life may feel like a yes when it ought to be a no.

      What we say yes to today will matter in our tomorrow. But so too does what we say no to. The future will judge what the right choice was. We can’t be paralyzed in indecision in such moments, we must decide what to be and go be it. As a rule, it’s probably best to say no to recklessness, and yes to moving away from comfort towards progress. Bon voyage.

    • Savoring Moderate Consumption

      “Thrift isn’t stinginess. It’s a cure for overconsumption.” — Stanley Tucci

      We are spiraling headfirst into the consumption holidays. In many ways it’s already begun with Halloween, didn’t it? Purchase one bag of candy more than we really need to, and suddenly the pants are a bit snugger than they were a few weeks ago. Autumn days are days to eat, drink and be merry. It’s a time to celebrate the harvest. Many of us take this a step too far—one “bite-sized” candy bar after another, washed down with a pumpkin spiced latte and the abandonment of all reason.

      Watching Stanley Tucci’s magnificent Searching for Italy, the episode that struck me most profoundly was Episode 8: Liguria in which he savors traditional Genoese pesto recipes and walks the barren cliffside olive plantations. This is not a place where you are burdened with such things as too many Thanksgiving pies to choose from, this is a place where you savor the ingredients you can muster up from the land and sea.

      There’s no magic in a drive-thru, only convenience. And we may appreciate convenience, but do we savor it? Distracted eating serves our busy lifestyles, but is there any nuance in consumption when it’s lost in the moment of defensive driving or determined scrolling? There can be no savoring when multitasking. When we deliberately focus on the food we suddenly we realize just what we’re shoveling into our mouths. This moment may delight or horrify us.

      Savoring is the key to an extraordinary life. If overconsumption and gluttony are the antithesis of savoring, then it stands to reason that to live an exceptional life we ought to be more thrifty in our consumption. To savor life means to slow down and appreciate what the world offers to us in the moment. This is celebratory, but not overindulgent. It is a dance with life, one small and delightful bite at a time.

    • The Attractiveness of Adventure

      “The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” — Christopher McCandless

      Watching the eclipse of the moon this morning, I thought about how beautiful it was, but also about who was actually seeing it with me. The adventurous are always attracted to others with the same gumption to do outrageous things. Those who seek to wring the most out of life are appealing to those who aspire to add vibrancy and sparkle to their days.

      Right on cue my bride stepped outside, groggy and unsteady, but willing to give it a go with the moon and binoculars. It’s not the first micro adventure I’ve coaxed her towards, and I appreciate her willingness to subtract sleep for experience. Box checked, she was back to her appointment with her pillow.

      Lingering with the moon a bit longer, I thought about the attractiveness of adventure. We seek adventure to feel most alive, and naturally feel the energy emanating from similar spirits. This is true in youth, but equally true as we age. Some of the most vibrant people I’ve known are most attractive because they live a full life. They live outside the norms of society, breaking the established “rules” for living a typical life in favor of adventure. You simply can’t live your own full life inside the box someone else built for you.

      A sustained, vibrant life builds upon itself, it doesn’t subtract years from our lives through poor choices. Aliveness and vitality are the opposite of self-destructiveness and living on borrowed time. Bad habits will choke the life right out of us, so we ought to choose wisely in our quest for adventure. By all means, listen to your mother and wear sunscreen, but don’t hide behind the shades your whole life.

      We never know what we’ll attract into our life until we step out of the cage. Joyful experience is indeed attractive, and we become more attractive in our aliveness. The living are most attracted to those who live a full, adventurous life. A richer life experience, engagement with others living on a higher plane, and deeper realization of our full potential await us when we live our lives with an adventurous spirit.

      I’ll see you out there.

    • Keep Thy State

      “To wish to escape from solitude is cowardice.” — Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

      “At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—’Come out unto us.’ But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson

      Being an advocate for solitude doesn’t mean one is antisocial, it means embracing the potential of the moment. We ought to embrace our time alone, and stop reaching for distraction at any sign of discomfort with the practice. Solitude isn’t the same thing as loneliness, they’re quite the opposite of one another. We can be alone and be productive with the circumstance, or retreat into the comfortable friction of others. We aren’t bait fish, friends, there may be anonymity in numbers, but that isn’t safety, merely avoidance.

      Writing requires solitude—there’s no getting around it. We must wrestle with our thoughts without interruption if we hope to mine anything of consequence from ourselves. Most of us don’t have the luxury of a cabin in the woods in which to dream and scheme. We seek the edges of the day and make them ours. Some of us thrive early in the morning, others late at night. The time is inconsequential, it’s the willingness to tap into the moment that matters most.

      Solitude is a productive state of being in a world intent on drawing you back to the pack. Solitude isn’t retreating into our selves, it’s a deep conversation with an old friend, the one who knows all our traits and sticks with us anyway. We only have so many such moments in a day or in a lifetime, and ought to explore them fully. The best thing about writing is sharing a wee bit of that with a few interested collaborators. In that respect, we transcend aloneness completely.

    • Home, and Away

      “Now more than ever do I realize that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.” – Isabelle Eberhardt

      Well past dark, I completed the relocation process for thousands of fallen red oak leaves that had blanketed the front lawn with the muted satisfaction that comes with not seeing your finished project and knowing it will likely be covered again soon enough. This is fall, but it’s also folly to believe you’re ever done with yard work. The trees giveth in abundance, and on their own timetable.

      The thing is, I like the chores of home ownership even as I contemplate my next move on the bucket list. Restless spirits are always moving, whether at home or in travel. I’ve never sat still very well. Meditation for me requires movement, and there is already an abundance of travel booked or in the works. Schemes and dreams of places near and far haunt me, it isn’t something that can be flushed out of your system like too much drink. Travel perpetuates, as reading does. It’s a positive addiction, trading mundane routine for more worldly experience. Many of us have nomadic tendencies running through our blood.

      And yet we can’t imagine nomads raking the leaves and putting away patio furniture. Having a home base isn’t such a bad thing when it doesn’t dominate the conversation. One can happily manage home chores and segue immediately into the next adventure if one structures a life properly. We can have our cake and eat it too. As with all things, balance is the key.

      Go
      And beat your crazy head against the sky
      Try
      And see beyond the houses and your eyes
      It’s okay to shoot the moon
      — John Sebastian, Darling Be Home Soon

      Like sharks, I suppose, restless spirits must move to live. Being fully alive isn’t passive: energy doesn’t rest. So we too should rest less. But fear not, for we’ll be home soon.

    • 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.