Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • Exhausting Our Present Capacity

      “A novel worth reading is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility, of what human nature is, of what happens in the world. It’s a creator of inwardness.” ― Susan Sontag

      As an active reader, I keep searching for the perfect book to read. Someone once said that the only perfect book for us is the one we write ourselves. I think the self-critic in me laughs at the very idea of creating perfection. Perfection is an excuse for not doing our best in the moment. It’s a way of saying we aren’t ready yet, before we even begin.

      There are always excuses. We must put them aside and follow the call. We may still tap into something unique within ourselves and draw it out for the world to see. But why put ourselves through the process of writing—the blank page mockery, the wrestling with the order of words, the feeling of not good enough rewrites—while precious moments of a brief life tick away? With so much to do in a lifetime, why write when there are so many unread books in the world already?

      I believe that the best writers are seeking enlightenment themselves, and the words written are merely the breadcrumbs of where they’ve been on the journey. Those breadcrumbs are a generous gift that show the way for those of us who would follow. Sometimes we find the path is not to our liking, sometimes we find it leads to a better climb altogether, but that path took us somewhere. Otherwise, we’re no better than those unread books, just gathering dust and waiting to be tossed aside in favor of the next generation.

      Perhaps even more than taking a path, each book read is filling up a void within us that we weren’t quite aware was there until we sensed fulfillment. The funny thing is, that substance isn’t subtracted in the process of sharing for the writer, it merely expands the capacity of the writer to share more. In this way it’s like exercise: the growth begins when we exhaust our present capacity. The more we do, the more we grow. And there lies our call to action, with no time to waste. Somewhere beyond our present capacity is possibility.

    • Thou Hast Thy Music Too

      “Give me books, fruit, French wine, fine weather and a little music.” — John Keats

      Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
      Think not of them, thou hast thy music too
      — John Keats, To Autumn

      Keats only lived to 25, but his life was memorable because he had productive energy and talent and used it to churn out enough poetry to capture the world’s attention. Had he lived another few decades, I wonder where his voice might have taken him. Perhaps less flowery and more pointed? Our voices change with time, having lived beyond the illusions of our youth to a place more… earthbound.

      I’ve long ago abandoned any idea that writing a blog post every day would net a million followers. That’s Seth Godin territory. Blogging is a daily practice in writing, and thinking more deeply about consequential things. The idea of advertisements and diligently churning other platforms for clicks is not my game. Frankly, it’s not a game at all anymore, it’s simply the practice of writing every day. A steady climb to a better place.

      If life is short, but hopefully not as short as Keats’ life was, then to live it with joie de vivre seems vital. Ah, the poet has joie de vivre—but does the blogger? I think so, friend, but taking oneself less seriously and learning to enjoy the discoveries one makes about the universe along the way would surely carry us to a more joyful place than overanalyzing one’s key performance indicators (KPI’s) ever would. We don’t always have to know where we’re going or even why, but we ought to feel something stir deep within us when we move through our days. For ’tis true, thou hast thy music too.

    • Mine the Magic

      “Dumbo got airborne with the help of a magic feather; you may feel the urge to grasp a passive verb or one of those nasty adverbs for the same reason. Just remember before you do that Dumbo didn’t need the feather; the magic was in him.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

      Earlier this morning, still before the sunrise, I sat out with a cup of coffee trying to determine what kind of bird was making a very unusual call when the pup decided I’d lingered long enough without throwing the frisbee and put me to task. That lengthy sentence alone indicates how blessed I am to have a moment like that, one that repeats regularly, despite all the madness in the world. There are plenty of people who would trade places and I’m not so wrapped up in my storm of minor problems that I don’t recognize that. Circumstances arise that change our trajectories, but we largely determine who we become. We mustn’t forget to savor such moments when we find ourselves living them.

      The question of next is always weighing on us, even as we tell ourselves to immerse ourselves in now. Humans are built to ponder the future, with hope or dread or maybe chagrin, but the future isn’t anything but a script that hasn’t been played out yet. We may yet sharpen the pencil and draft something clever for our future self. And isn’t that the hope for all of us creative types? We anchor ourselves to the moment while drafting the exciting, implausible next. Drafts are always rewritten as the editors in our universe play their part, but we may still influence the final scene.

      I never did figure out what that bird was. It flew away to sing its strange song somewhere else, and I was left with another missed opportunity. Life is full of such things, and yet we still have agency. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves to stop grasping for magic feathers and simply mine the magic within ourselves, that we may realize it one day. Don’t let that dream be another missed opportunity that flew away with time.

    • The Lifetime Study

      “Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy.” ― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

      When I was an undergrad I took a Philosophy class that turned me upside down. I promised myself at that time that I’d go back to school someday, maybe after retirement, to study it more completely. I was young then and it never occurred to me that philosophy is a lifetime study, not something you do in school.

      This weekend was productive. In fact, far more productive than my work week last week was. That says a lot about the state of mind I was in last week in my chosen career, as well as during the weekend when I channeled all that untapped productivity into getting things done. Reflecting on it now, it makes me reassess how I’m spending my Monday through Friday. We’ll see how this week goes. I’ve started it with two of the three things that kick off a great day: reading and writing. And a brisk walk with the pup is just around the corner for the trifecta.

      But what then? We must schedule our productivity, lest we slip into bad habits. There’s a whole list of things that must be done, but what’s the one thing that, having done it, would make this day as good as one of our best days? Focusing on productivity seems far more effective than dwelling on philosophy. But really, the two go hand-in-hand. We must know how to optimize our what, but surely we must begin with understanding our why.

      So it is that I dive deeply into philosophical works that challenge my casual why’s, and dare myself to write about them here on this blog. Travel and history and observations about my current fitness challenges will surely be a part of this blog for as long as I’m capable of writing it, but they’re all means to an end. We never stop being a student, we just pay more taxes as we grow. Understanding just why we’re here in the first place, and what to do with that realization when we reach it, was our thesis all along. It’s fair to ask ourselves regularly, how’s it coming along?

    • What Are We Ready For?

      “Conquer yourself rather than the world.” ― René Descartes

      Yesterday wasn’t particularly productive. I mean in some ways it was very productive, but in the trading work for money way it wasn’t a stellar day. Blame it on Wednesday, but really it was my own inclination to do other things that felt more essential in the hour at hand. We ought to follow our gut more than the demands of the world. We know what we must do.

      Looking at it a completely different way, yesterday was very productive. I knocked out a blog post before breakfast, brought my favorite pup to play with her friends, spent a few hours doing some research work that mattered a great deal to me and had a good conversation with my bride after cooking her dinner. I also bought groceries, but hey, I don’t like to brag.

      The thing is, each day we move in the direction we want to go in with our lives is a good day. The ebb and flow of productivity in any particular activity isn’t as essential to our value as simply moving the chains from one hash line to the next. Get through this day largely intact and with some semblance of forward momentum, and survive to fight another day tomorrow. Insane productivity will have its time, or it won’t, but either way it’s telling us something about the direction we’re going with our life.

      Descartes popped up in my media feed this morning, just when I was telling myself roughly the same thing. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear, as the expression goes. We ought to ask ourselves each morning when we face this gift of being alive, what are we ready for?

    • September Song

      Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December
      But the days grow short
      When you reach September
      When the Autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
      One hasn’t got time for the waiting game
      — Frank Sinatra, September Song

      Labor Day Weekend in the United States is the unofficial end of summer. That in itself isn’t particularly remarkable, but I feel compelled to remark on the fact that it’s now September. In general I love September for the crisp air and epic sunsets that seem to come with it, but that’s tinged with the reality of shorter days and a realization that we never really do everything we wanted to do with summer before it’s gone. Alas, we can’t do it all. We must simply be deliberate about doing the things we most want to do with the time we have.

      There’s a Latin phrase that is often found on sundials, “Serius est quam cogitas”, which means, “It’s later than you think.” We must remember this and live with purpose each day, that we may look back on the season recently passed and feel we didn’t miss the boat. We can’t change seasons already passed, but we can feel the urgency to do something with today. We’re all familiar with that other Latin call to the moment, carpe diem, and ought to embrace it more for the desperate call to pay attention it was meant as. Indeed, we must seize the day before it fades away in our memory with all that is lost.

      Yesterdays carry us to today, either as a stepping stone or a slide into oblivion. I’d rather be climbing, wouldn’t you? Writing saves more of my days than reminding myself to get to it already. Writing anchors me to the moment, forcing me to pay attention to something tangible in the time I have available and do with it what I can. Last week was a series of late, often frenetic posts inserted into spare moments in airports and hotel rooms. Finding something that anchors us to the day makes the day less likely to float away like all the rest. A blog post, a moment shared with people of consequence, a bold act of self-determination and a nod to the time passing by are things we can hold on to.

    • Forever and Always Now

      Reflecting on the moment

      You said time makes the wheels spin
      And the years roll out and thе doubt rolls in
      In the truck stops, in the parking lots
      And the chеap motels
      When will we become ourselves?
      — Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Hashtag

      The other day I was talking with a coworker at a hotel bar in Washington, DC. He’s a few years closer to retirement than I am, doesn’t travel all that much anymore in his current role and isn’t the picture of health (probably related to too much time in hotel bars). He mentioned that he’d never visited the Lincoln or Washington Memorials before, let alone the war memorials on the National Mall. He wasn’t sure if he would have the time on this particular trip either. I looked at him, said “why are we sitting here now?!” and summoned an Uber. For the next couple of hours we visited memorials to those who exemplified greatness in the United States. I took a few pictures of and with him and shared them with him afterwards. Memories must be built, not stumbled upon.

      I’ve reached a point in my life where, when I compare the former me to the current version, I usually forgive that former guy for not being better at the art of living than he was. We must figure things out along the way, or be lucky enough to have a guide to show us the ropes. We become ourselves through deliberate acts more than stumbling along through life. When we do stumble, we figure out a way to get back on track again. Being human is full of opportunities to learn and grow.

      The thing is, we must keep challenging ourselves to step out of the box we’ve grown into. It may be bigger than the one we were in before, but it’s still a damned box. The answer to “when will we become ourselves?” must forever and always be, now.

    • Sinking In

      “The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things. Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.” ― Franz Kafka

      “The meaning of life is that it stops. Only the moment counts. It determines life.” — Franz Kafka

      The truth is, I’m way overbooked this weekend. Life stacks up its moments some days, and leave you wanting for more others. Ours is not to reason why, as Tennyson put it, ours is just to do or die (three quotes dropped and I’ve barely started writing—imagine where this post is going). The point is, we ought not question the crazy moments any more than the quiet moments, but savor them all just the same.

      I celebrate and savor and seek to capture the things I’d forget one day, that I might remember. I’m not gifted with a photographic memory, but I’m blessed with an inclination to document the moment with a picture or a note in the journal that will jog it all back one day. I think the truly blessed are those who recognize the fragility of it all and wrap themselves in the blanket of now. I’m not declaring I have it all figured out, merely that I’m aware of the time passing by. Here and now are all that matters. We ought to let that sink in before it all flies away.

      We are all collecting experiences, big and small, and building a lifetime of memories to store them. Knowing we’re the sum of our parts, I mourn the things I’ll say no to in my days just as much as I relish the things that are heck yeahs. We must never defer what we may do now, unless we’re embracing something else just as profoundly interesting for us. And that’s the underlying truth in this jumble of words and thoughts coming to a blessed conclusion: we must relentlessly sink deep into that which interests us most profoundly. And not someday, but now.

    • Learning to Fly

      “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
      — Kurt Vonnegut

      A soul in tension that’s learning to fly
      Condition grounded but determined to try
      Can’t keep my eyes from the circling skies
      Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
      — Pink Floyd, Learning to Fly

      Any self-respecting rock n’ roll fan knows that there are a few songs with the title Learning to Fly, and I love them all. We can argue about which gets your heart rate racing more, or any such thing like that, but for my money Pink Floyd’s song is the best of the bunch lyrically. Foo Fighters fans and Tom Petty aficionados might quibble, and the shear number of covers of Petty’s song indicate popular opinion on the matter, but there: I’ve said it. And yes, I digress.

      To master anything in this life we must at some point leap into the unknown and find out how we fare. Mostly we fall on our face in those early days. We either quit and play another game or we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get to it again. Even writing that I felt the overpowering cliche of familiar metaphor wash over me (sorry). But if the metaphor fits, use it.

      The whole point of this game is discovery. Try everything, learn which things work well for us and lean into them with gusto. With enough leaps we become adept at adaptation. Sure, some people have more talent than us, but persistence matters too. Skills may be learned. The rest is just breaking through the mind games of categorization and imposter syndrome. The fact is, some people will always put us in a certain bucket (people like that don’t do things like this), but mostly we do it to ourselves first. Just go do it and be ready for the stumble (see metaphor above).

      I write this knowing that there’s some new cliff I’ll need to jump off sooner or later, that I may learn to fly yet again. Life is a succession of such cliffs, and we may grow a pair or live with being ground-based creatures. We all feel like earth-bound misfits in the beginning of anything new. There’s only one way to soar though, and so we must toe up to the edge and lean into the next. It’s the only way we’ll ever fly.

    • The Present Hour

      “I follow you whoever you are from the present hour.” — Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

      As small as we are in the vastness of the universe, we each nonetheless leave our mark on history. Every interaction stays with us, every poem read, every sideways glance, every hint of fragrance in the air are a sum of our whole. We may make a big splash or a minor ripple, but we all have our verse to contribute. The magic in writing is carrying that verse across time.

      We are a collection of hours arranged as a lifetime. We whittle them away as if they were unlimited. We learn as we grow older that each had value, but some shine brighter than others. Applying this realization to the next becomes ever more essential. Whoever we are in this moment, whatever we make of it in the now, will indeed follow us for the rest of our days. Our ripple, through those we encounter, is carried further still. What will we lay upon the shoulders of those who will carry us with them from this moment on?

      Autumn is in the air. Harvest time is well underway already. The seasons signal that time is flying along, with us in tow, ready or not. What will we remember of this time in our lives? What will people we encounter remember of us? May we smile recalling the gift we gave in this present hour.