Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • The Occasional Success

      “It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.

      There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” — Mary Oliver, Of Power and Time

      It feels like success is more elusive nowadays. We could all use more wins in this stage in our collective history. A few less setbacks would be great. Just what is happening in the world anyway? Nothing all that good it seems. We must remember to focus on what we can control and acknowledge the rest is up to fate. Amor fati.

      The thing we can control is our reaction to this world boiling away uncontrollably in rage and gases. We don’t have to like it but we have to remain focused on the things within our grasp, like how we greet each other and the example we set for our children. We can choose to be cool and steady, and produce something beautiful in this world.

      Distraction is pulling us down from the heights we might reach. What does success look like today? Small wins have a way of stacking up into something bigger. When the sun sets on this day, on this lifetime, what will we have done with it? The muse will not be ignored, it will simply find someone else who will give it the focused time it demands. Let that be us.

    • Active Imagination

      “I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells.” — Dr. Seuss

      I watched enough of the debate to validate my feelings about the two candidates. I made up my mind who I’m voting for long ago, and it’s never ever the smug orange [convicted] clown. The current guy looks old and frail and was hard to follow at times. I imagine he’s sharp of mind but there were times when his stutter and raspy voice made me feel otherwise. Didn’t matter—he’s not the other guy.

      So I took a long walk in the dark with the pup, just the two of us and random wild things just out of view that drove the pup a bit crazy. Our imaginations could easily take over at times like that, but I’ve walked this dark street hundreds of times over the years and don’t let imagination get in the way of a good walk. The problem with the clown is he’s making up stuff that enough people imagine is true that he stands a fighting chance of winning. Now that would be scary.

      When the world feels a bit upside down, it helps a lot to venture out into it and see for yourself just where you stand. I feel I’ve got a pretty good imagination that I try to utilize for creative output. Wouldn’t it be a shame if imagination were only used to instill fear and subservience to the ambitions of someone else? We mustn’t let the nonsense of the world distract us from creating the possibility we imagine.

    • The New Way

      “If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.” ― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

      This week has brought me to a new destination from the one that I departed just a few days ago. Everything is different, once again, because we all change all the time. When we encounter those close to us after these changes, we influence them as they do us. The ripples may be profound or undetectable (but they are surely there).

      Writing telegraphs the changes in me before I reunite with some of my close circle, and if they read the blog, they absorb the changes and react to each themselves. That’s the thing about blogging—you’re constantly telling the people around you who you are today with a deferred reaction from them. It’s that “I know something about you that you don’t know that I know” moment of awkward acknowledgement. Usually that’s not even who we are now, just who we were when we wrote that thing they’re reacting to. But it’s the bed we make for ourselves when we move beyond anonymous and continue to push beyond who we once were.

      We each arrive, look around, and see if the world will join us or if they’ve already moved well past us. Some people are forever anchored to that character they were long ago. I’d like to think I’ve moved beyond that old character myself. I’m under no illusion that I’m ahead of the pack, for I feel my adult life has been forever playing catch-up for the choices I made when I was a younger version of myself. We must bury our former self with each arrival at a new us. So it goes.

      Everything changes and so too must we. There’s no doubt I look at things differently today than I did just a few days ago, and that’s how our lives progress. Sometimes progress is revealed as a leap, sometimes it’s disguised as a setback, but in every case it’s a new way that we must adapt to before everything changes once again.

    • Adding Surprise

      “If you keep experiencing the same things, your mind keeps its same patterns. Same inputs, same responses. Your brain, which was once curious and growing, gets fixed into
      deep habits. Your values and opinions harden and resist change.
      You really learn only when you’re surprised. If you’re not surprised, then everything is fitting into your existing thought patterns. So to get smarter, you need to get surprised, think in new ways, and deeply understand different perspectives.” ― Derek Sivers, Hell Yeah or No: What’s Worth Doing

      We know this, don’t we? To learn is to grow. To experience new and diverse things in our lives offers this learning experience for each of us. So it follows that we ought to get outside of our own small box and leap into the new and surprising. It’s here where we may just find delightful insight.

      Ah, but can’t we find delight in our everyday routines? Isn’t that why we’ve landed here? I may walk out into the garden and delight in new blooms, the smell of fresh basil, the song of a cardinal overhead. I can sit in a familiar chair practically molded to my form and read a favorite book again and again, drawing out something new from it every time. Indeed, there are advocates for immersing ourselves ever deeper into the familiar that we may one day master it. We can’t reach mastery if we’re always frittering from one thing to the next.

      There is of course a happy medium. We may go out and seek new perspectives and return to the familiar with them as a more experience-rich person. we collect memories and insights into the ways of the world and bring them back to build a bigger, more expansive and more open box. And like a bird nest we may fly away and return in the proper season. Life is about balancing the familiar with the surprisingly new. The trick is what to prioritize when in our lives.

    • Showing Up

      The hardest day in a new workout routine is the second day. You’ve hit it hard on day one, felt that sense of accomplishment, and then get up the next morning a bit stiff, with lactic acid buildup and a hundred reasons why you should wait just a little while before you get back to that routine. This is the day when you’ve got to show up and push through it, no matter how it goes. Showing up is where committed identity is established.

      The thing is, the results may be pretty ugly. My day two was humbling and embarrassing to post, but it’s one workout in what should be a steady climb to better. What does it matter if we don’t set a PR on day two? I’m not rowing in the Olympics, and the dog walking team hasn’t called me just yet. All that matters is the streak, and you can’t get to day three without getting through day two.

      We are what we repeatedly do. That’s the only success formula that matters in a lifetime. The reason The Beatles were so prolific in the relatively brief time they were a band was because they showed up and did the work. When they slid into a distracted fog they fractured and broke up. The analogy isn’t any different for us. We must show up and do the work that calls to us, every day.

      I was talking to one of my favorite writers a few days ago and she told me she hadn’t been writing lately. I reminded her then (and now, I suppose), that writers write, every day. It’s the only way to avoid atrophy. It’s why I publish this blog every day, and check a dozen other important boxes every day. We must show up, if only to keep a promise to ourselves. There’s nothing worse than a dysfunctional relationship with our inner voice.

      Easy for me to say, right? I’ve already established the habit. But that’s just one part of a routine that is always a work in progress. We never quite reach excellence (arete), do we? All we can do is try to move closer. The rubber hits the road when we gently put our excuses on the nightstand and rise up to meet the moment.

    • Coloring Beyond

      “Live life to the fullest. You have to color outside the lines once in a while if you want to make your life a masterpiece. Laugh some every day, keep growing, keep dreaming, keep following your heart. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” — Albert Einstein

      I’m usually suspicious of quotes attributed to famous people but can’t find anything that contradicts the source, so thanks for the advice, uh, Albert. He seemed like the kind of guy who might have actually said it anyway. But I digress…

      I was always a meticulous “color within the lines” kind of wanna-be artist. The lines were there for a reason, weren’t they? Don’t stray beyond, I’d tell myself. It wasn’t until I was older that I started figuring out that the lines were just someone else’s interpretation of where they should be. And I started straying beyond and finding out that that’s where the magic is. So I’d stray a bit farther still.

      When you color outside the lines you begin to notice the other people who color beyond the lines. There’s a whole community of outside the lines people fully enjoying their lives while the inside the lines people grind through their days. Coloring beyond is invigorating and a bit audacious. Following other people’s rules is constricting and subservient. Who do we really want to be, ourselves or someone else’s version of who we ought to be?

      Monday mornings feel a bit different when you stray outside the lines. At the moment, I’m thinking I ought to stray a bit further to see just how audacious I can be today. We can’t make our own masterpiece following someone else’s plan, can we? Carpe diem, friend.

    • The Linen of Words

      All day I work
      with the linen of words

      and the pins of punctuation
      all day I hang out
      over the desk

      grinding my teeth
      staring.
      Then I sleep.
      — Mary Oliver, Work

      Life is change, and our why pivots with it. We may channel this into creative work and find out something about ourselves in the process. One more day blessed with the opportunity to dance with our why to produce a what before we sleep.

      I track the journey from here to there and publish it free for all to see. Some days our journey takes us to faraway, sometimes the journey has us turning inward from a familiar place. We have the luxury of time some days, and the urgency of just a few minutes to spare other days. They all add up to the catalog of work published—our contribution to the Great Conversation.

      This blog post feels incomplete to me, like there’s far more to wrestle with before it’s fully fleshed out. And yet I’m about to publish it anyway. In a way that’s a good metaphor for our lives. We’re all just incomplete souls trying to reach some conclusion that makes sense before we reach ship this work and move on to the next.

      The work will end one day, but [apparently] not today. This linen of words is strung together in a streak of days; breadcrumbs of a life. Words are the glue that holds our collective history together, binding you and I together just as surely as it binds the generations before and after us. That feels more salient than just another blog post.

    • Proper Work

      “How important it is to walk along, not in haste but slowly, looking at everything and calling out Yes! No! … Imagination is better than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” — Mary Oliver, Yes! No!

      I saw some pictures of friends off on some beautiful hike over the weekend, and other friends reawakening their sailboat before setting off for adventure. My own activity this weekend was less inspiring. Instead of adventure, I found some new soreness this weekend, earned with a pressure washer and a tall stepladder navigated to high places to make the house shine a little brighter. Sometimes our proper work is doing chores that have been nagging us for awhile, that we may return our focus to the universe yet again.

      The thing is, when I walked the pup later in the afternoon when the sun was shining just so, the house smiled back at me. We become what we put into the world, and a bit of housework does the body and soul good. It may sound silly, but I can look at a sparkling clean house and say “I did that” just as proudly as if I’d hiked up Mount Washington. The memories are different, but every journey set out upon that is completed counts for something.

      Proper work is highly subjective, but in the end it’s the things that we apply focus to that moves us forward. Writing this blog—to me—is proper work. So is tending the garden and washing the dishes and calling the customer you know is angry because it’s the right thing to do to hear them out and help them move to a better place. To be present and engaged in each thing that we do matters a great deal, for it’s the stuff of life and we only have the one go at it.

      What we say yes and no to in our days becomes our identity. When this day is complete, what will it say about us? We ought to slow down just enough to see the path we’re on, that we may know where we’ve been, and perhaps, where we’re going next. And so if you’ll excuse me the blog is now complete for the day, and it seems I have even more work to do.

    • To Do, Beautifully

      “My time here is short; what can I do most beautifully?” — As quoted by James Patterson

      This is stoicism in a nutshell. Acknowledgement that our time is limited (memento mori), with the follow on question; what will I do about it (carpe diem) that will resonate most for me and possibly others? That the most successful author in book sales frequently drops that quote serves both the author and those who will hear the call. It’s akin to old friend Mary Oliver’s challenge at the end of her most cherished poem, The Summer Day:

      Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?
      —Mary Oliver

      The question of questions for each of us is what to do with our precious time. The answer is usually to waste it in distractions and deferment. Why set course today when we can keep doing what we’ve always done, assuming a tomorrow? We know the folly of this even as we master the art of procrastination. We must feel the urgency in the question and take the steps that lead to our answer. We aren’t here simply to enjoy the ride, but to love our verse.

      That you are here—that life exists and identity,
      That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
      — Walt Whitman, O Me! O Life!

      So begins another day. We can’t control everything, but we can control this next thing. To step into beautiful, and bring light to the dark. In doing so, we may pass the torch to those who would follow. There is only now to make our mark.

    • Momentum in the Moments

      “We should tell ourselves, once and for all, that it is the first duty of the soul to become as happy, complete, independent, and great as lies in its power. Herein is no egoism, or pride. To become effectually generous and sincerely humble there must be within us a confident, tranquil, and clear comprehension of all that we owe to ourselves.” ― Maurice Maeterlinck, Wisdom and Destiny

      We must first reach for our own potential, that we might fully lend it to others. Put another way, we must become increasingly necessary to those around us through the value we bring. Value is our accumulated skills, knowledge and presence applied to contribution. To make a greater contribution, we must build up our value.

      When I look at my career, the times when I’ve been happiest are when I’ve been able to contribute something substantial to the overall cause. The times when I’ve been most miserable in my work are almost always when I feel like I’m not contributing my full value and I’ve lost my way. The thing is, these feelings come well after the work that it took to arrive there, for momentum is built in the moments leading to it.

      This is most obvious in how we feel about our fitness level. If we’re feeling fit, it’s generally because of all the work that led us to physical fitness. Working out can be tedious when we view it as something we have to do. When it becomes part of our identity it’s simply part of our days. And this applies to everything else we do in life: reading and learning, writing and artistic expression, connection to the people in our lives, and our continual development in the self.

      Excellence is a habit. But so is laziness, sloth and a bankrupt soul. Both ends of the spectrum are paths built on the moments that precede our arrival there. We must choose how we spend our days accordingly and build momentum in the right things. So it is that nothing is more important in a brief life than our self development, that we may be more valuable to ourselves and others in the moments to come.