Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • A Moment With Harold Evans

      “I appreciate engineers, I wrote a book about their achievements, but I deprecate what they and other techies do to English words. Hey, these nouns and verbs aren’t bits of silicon you can dope with chemicals (boron, phosphorus, and arsenic), drop into a kiln at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and slice and dice. Words breathe. They need TLC—you know,”
      ― Harold Evans, Do I Make Myself Clear?: Why Writing Well Matters

      When the world seems to be looking too far inward, when everyone around you seems to be spun up into things that shouldn’t matter, when the conversation turns towards the latest scandal in Hollywood or Washington or Buckingham Palace… seek other voices. Because the only way you’ll grow is to rise up towards it. The larger conversations in the world are happening without you until you join the adult table. When you get to the adult table, by all means be ready to join the conversation.

      Sir Harold Evans passed away last week at the age of 92. In a wild case of six degrees of separation I once had Thanksgiving dinner with Harold Evans and his wife Tina Brown, putting me literally at the adult table with two of the most influential and brilliant people in the publishing industry. I was a college student who happened to be in the right place at the right time – they lived next door to the place we were for the long weekend and we invited them over. Simple. The parents were up to the conversation at hand, I wasn’t quite up to the task – a college kid who still thought he knew everything and not bothering to do the work needed to get closer to there. Harold Evans asked me a question about which candidate in the Republican Primary I liked, and without any thought to the matter I blurted out “Bob Dole” without explanation. It seemed like a safe answer at the time. He looked at me patiently and diverted to other topics with someone else, ending our conversation instead of trying to draw any logic out of my answer. He and I both knew I’d punted. I always regretted not being better prepared for a conversation like that.

      “His parents had taught him to make the most of himself, so he had. Though he kept a certain working-class deference and friendliness, did not shout, was “Harry” to everyone and would quite kindly tell reporters their copy was hopeless, he had taken on almost every part of the establishment and made it quake.” – Harold Evans’ Obituary, The Economist

      Reading about Evans’ life, I was struck by how hard he had worked to raise himself up and to demand the best from himself and others. I remember he was a voracious reader, and would often devour several books on the drive from New York City out to Quogue, New York. As the editor of Random House he needed to read quickly because he had an endless stream of books coming at him. I would try speed-reading a few times over the years attempting to get as much from it as people like Evans did. But I’ve found that speed-reading doesn’t work for me. I like to linger on words and sentences a bit too much. If I were to have that one conversation with him again I might ask how he approached reading. I suspect he did it two ways, for work and for pleasure, and the speed varied based on which it was. It would have been a better conversation than the Republican Primary of 1987-1988.

      “Running a newspaper gave him “a glorious opportunity of attacking the devil”. – Harold Evans’ Obituary, The Economist

      Harold Evans was fired from The Times by Rupert Murdoch, setting up his move to New York and his rise to the top of the publishing industry. Had he not been fired I would never have met him. He used it as fuel to rise up even higher, and it was surely a gift not having to cater to the whims and biases of Murdoch. Attacking the devil was a purpose, and I wondered sometimes what he thought of the nastiness of present-day politics. But there it was, an interview from 2017 where he called Boris ‘buoyantly reckless’, Trump dangerous and May ‘terrifically smart’. I believe he was on point with all three. No surprise for a man who did the work necessary to find the truth of the matter with the most evasive of characters. Thinking back, I was no match for him at the time. But he helped inspire me to try harder, as I suspect he did with many others over the years. I wish I’d had another conversation with the man, I was more prepared for the next one.

    • The Light of Intellect

      “A man who lives an intellectual life is like a man who carries a lantern in front of him to light his way. Such a person will never come to a dark place, because the light of his intellect moves before him.“ – Leo Tolstoy

      I suppose I haven’t reached the intellectual level just yet, as I still stumble into dark places now and then. But on the whole the pursuit of an intellectual life, combined with a pursuit of the active outdoor life, and the family life have kept me above the darkest valleys I know some are struggling in. Feel overwhelmed at times? Tap into the Great Conversation and see what those who came before you thought and did with their own lives. We have it pretty good by comparison. But only if we fight for it.

      Leo Tolstoy was influenced by Henry David Thoreau (and each was an interesting character beyond his writing). He in turn strongly influenced the nonviolent direction that Mahatma Gandhi would take in his own life, and there was a handoff of sorts when the two corresponded for the last year of Tolstoy’s life when he offered insight and direction to Gandhi. Thoreau and Tolstoy and Gandhi in turn influenced Martin Luther King, Jr., who incorporated their wisdom into his own philosophy and referenced them often in his speeches. An intellectual life lights the way for more than just the original carrier of the lantern.

      A daily blog is the slow rising of the lantern. An attempt to light the way for yourself and perhaps for a few others now or someday. A way to balance the stream of consciousness and sound bite world we live in with deeper thought and contemplation. And a catalyst for probing deeper into the world – to travel more, to get outside more, to read more, to learn more, and to write better. The intellectual life is the life of pursuit. Its not a yawn-fest of casual reading in the study but a pursuit of understanding, both the self and the world. It’s a call to action. A call I’ve heard and pursue every day I wake up, which (thankfully) includes this one.

    • Creating the Moon

      “The moon itself may have been born of a great tidal wave of earthly substance, torn off into space. And remember that if the moon was formed in this fashion, the event may have had much to do with shaping the ocean basins and the continents as we know them.

      There were tides in the new earth, long before there was an ocean. In response to the pull of the sun the molten liquids of the earth’s whole surface rose in tides that rolled unhindered around the globe and only gradually slackened and diminished as the earthly shell cooled, congealed, and hardened. Those who believe that the moon is a child of Earth say that during an early stage of the earth’s development something happened that caused this rolling, viscid tide to gather speed and momentum and to rise to unimaginable heights.

      Physicists have calculated that, after 500 years of such monstrous, steadily increasing tides, those on the side toward the sun became too high for stability, and a great wave was torn away and hurled into space. But immediately, of course, the newly created satellite became subject to physical laws that sent it spinning in an orbit of its own about the earth. This is what we call the moon.

      There is to this day a great scar on the surface of the globe. This scar or depression holds the Pacific Ocean.” – Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us

      Rachel Carson published The Sea Around Us 69 years ago, and it was a runaway best-seller at the time. I’ve known Carson as the author of Silent Spring, but was ignorant of this book that launched her into fame. As the name suggests, the book explores the sea and is filled with magically breathless wonder. The excerpt above filled me with awe and set the stage to position this book at the top of the stack. For who doesn’t look at the moon and wonder how it got there? And this theory of a massive wave of molten liquid rising up and ripping from the earth to form the moon, and the great scar of the Pacific basin makes as much sense to me as any other.

      Science is a funny thing. I ran away from science in school because the teachers were dispassionate bores. But when I read a passage that delivers a rightful sense of awe to the story, well, it becomes captivating. If the politicization of the pandemic and mask-wearing has demonstrated anything, its that the world needs more captivating story-tellers in science. Carson was a catalyst for a better understanding of our oceans and the environment with a page-turning writing style that betrayed her own wonder at the subject matter. Were her writing style technical and dry she never would have made the impact that she did, and the world may never have realized the threat of nuclear waste dumped into the ocean or of DDT on the food chain we are very much a part of. If she were alive today I expect she’d have a lot to say about plastic and climate change.

      Writing isn’t nearly as epic as creating a moon, but it can feel that way sometimes to the writer. I’m plugging away at the writing, both here and elsewhere, and feel that the words and characters are my own rolling, viscid tide moving unchecked through my mind. At some point maybe that momentum will spawn something awe-worthy. And that’s the challenge isn’t it? To produce something compelling and timeless. Watching the waxing crescent moon peaking through the forest last night as it dropped into the western sky was both an inspiration and a challenge to get it right. I imagine Rachel Carson looked up at the moon in a similar way, and she rose to that challenge. So why not us?

    • A Self-Indulgent Rant on the WordPress Change to Block Editor

      I started writing this blog using Blogger, which was free but very limited in what I could create. I switched to WordPress and started paying for the privilege because I enjoyed using it and liked the creative challenge of building a website that I liked. Alexandersmap.com is still a work in progress and still amateurish by many standards, but it generally works for me and hopefully for you too.

      Then WordPress started pushing harder on the Block Editor, which is lovely, but seemed intrusive to me. Why force tools on people just because you fall in love with them as a company? That seems a bit too Apple to me… and yet here we are: force-fed, beginning today. To their credit, WordPress gives you two paths back to what you started with, but that means you’ve got to do the work to change things back to what you had versus having you opt in to their Block Editor experience. I’ve opted out for a long time for a reason, but then they forced my hand anyway. Thanks WordPress.

      Complicating my feelings on the matter are a new issue of uploading media to a post that started occurring when Block Editor was unceremoniously shoved into my lap. Perhaps they’re two separate things, but I don’t believe in coincidence. And don’t enjoy having to tackle my own technical support instead of simply writing, which is what I signed up for with WordPress. If a platform charges you money but eliminates the simplicity of why you started paying to use their product, is it still worth paying them money?

      This all makes me sound like a curmudgeon, and sure, I’ll take that categorization in this case even if I haven’t reached the minimum age limit for curmudgeon membership. For all the problems in the world having Block Editor forced on the paying customers of WordPress doesn’t seem like that big a deal, right? Right. And yet it seems an affront anyway. With a hint of we know what’s best for you smugness.

      I’m writing this post using Block Editor. Its not bad, just different. Who knows – maybe I’ll fall in love with it? Maybe I’ll figure out why my mobile uploads suddenly don’t work anymore? Maybe I’ll figure out how to select all and copy to another post? Maybe drafts will suddenly speed up again instead of taking forever to upload? Maybe. But I like WordPress a little less than I once did. Not because of Block Editor, but because they changed the tools on me whether I opted in or not. Again, it strikes me as a smug corporate move. Surely that doesn’t make a bit of difference to them, but hey, if enough of us complain maybe they’ll listen? No? Anyway, this post is completely self-indulgent, but my original post has been stuck in limbo while I try to figure out the mess I’ve been handed.

      Ultimately this is an exercise in handling change. There’s been a lot of change in 2020, and this is just one more. A good life lesson in handling minor inconvenience and finding creative ways to deal with it. And that’s what this post is really all about – approaching a hurdle thrown in my lane and finding a way to clear it without face-planting into the asphalt. Maybe tomorrow’s post will feature beautiful media and precisely-formatted content? One can hope.

    • So Many Mornings

       

      “This is the earnest work. Each of us is given
      only so many mornings to do it—
      to look around and love
      the oily fur of our lives,
      the hoof and the grass-stained muzzle.
      Days I don’t do this
      I feel the terror of idleness,
      like a red thirst.
      Death isn’t just an idea.”
      – Mary Oliver, The Deer

      Each morning I jot down one sentence that sums up the day prior in my Clear Habit Journal.  This one exercise alone has prompted me to be more creative in my days; to seek adventures worthy of writing down.  But there are plenty of days when I just go to work (which currently means walking downstairs) and maybe had a meaningful conversation with someone.  And sometimes that’s enough.  But in the back of my mind I feel that tomorrow morning I ought to write something down that was worthy of a day alive.  For as Mary Oliver says above, each of us is given only so many mornings, and death isn’t just an idea.

      Saturday morning brought tales of night swimming with my bride and hot embers warming cold skin.  Sunday morning brought soreness and a note about the magical Franconia Ridge Trail.  And this morning brings a summary of bottles of wine, grilled goodness and laughter with friends at a distance.  This was a string of worthy days and I work to compress the entirety of it all into one sentence that somehow may sum it up.  These are moments of quiet smiles and satisfaction.  Sometimes I write about adventures above tree line, but sometimes I write about installing a new toilet in my parent’s bathroom.  Both count just the same as worthy entries.

      Just as the blog forces me to reach beyond my comfortable place to explore and try new things, the daily sentence lingers as a cold-hearted judgement on the worthiness of any given 24 hours on this planet.  If that seems like a lot to live up to, well, so be it.  I believe we’ve got to live with urgency for all the reasons I’ve written about before that you already know too.  Someday I’ll have my last morning on this planet, and I hope the day that follows it is so epic that I wish I’d had one more to write down what I did.  Those single day entries will pass on to those who survive me, and I hope they’ll see the sparkle and shimmer of a life well-lived, one day at a time.

       

    • To Kindle a Light

      “Make of yourself a light,” said the Buddha, before he died.” – Mary Oliver, The Buddha’s Last Instruction

      Last night I lay quietly in the backyard well past my bedtime watching bits of billion-year-old space dust streak across the sky in brilliant dying gasps of white light. The dust is debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle, which takes 133 years to orbit the sun. The Earth, orbiting the sun every year, meets this debris field every August.  I won’t be alive when the comet Swift-Tuttle visits again, but every year I look for her cosmic wake in the form of the Perseid Meteor Shower.

      “As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” – Carl Jung

      If ever there was a year during my lifetime to bring more light into the world, its 2020.  I’m not sure yet how much light I have to offer, but I know the answer is…  more.  And so I’m going to double down on the writing for the next hundred days to get through the first draft.  And then do the work to make it sparkle, for surely it won’t sparkle in 100 days.  Ah, but writing kindles a light in me, and I must stoke that kindling until I get a good flame going.

      “A good book is [one] you can feel [is] alive.  You can feel it vibrating, the character comes alive, you can sense the brain matter of the writer is like flickering on the page.  They’re alive.  And a dead book the author doesn’t have any energy, the person they’re writing about doesn’t come to life, ideas have no sparkle to them.  So you have to bring energy and aliveness to the process.  It shows in your writing.” – Rolf Potts, from his Deviate podcast

      One thing I’ve often lectured myself about is a tendency to announce what I’m going to do instead of just doing it and talking about it later.  Yet here I am talking about the next hundred days like I’ve actually done anything meaningful.  A way of forcing my writing hand to fish or cut bait. I’m tired of cutting bait.  And holding my own feet to the fire seems to work for me.  I rowed a million meters in four months because I said to my world that I would.  And now I’m saying this will be done.  Sometimes a measure of audacity puts you on the spot just enough to get you over the hump.

      I’ve firmly established the habit of writing early in the morning.  Demonstrated by the consistency of published posts to the blog.  But writing a book requires a different level of focus.  I’m just not producing enough focused material towards the book…  yet.  November 19th is 100 days from yesterday, when I began this journey of 100,000 pages.  What’s that?!  Day one is already gone.   A lot can happen in the next 99 days, but only with sweat equity and commitment.  I believe it to be one of those five big things, so why not treat it as such?

      The comet Swift-Tuttle last visited in 1992, but was only visible with binoculars at the time (like NEOWISE last month).  I was cosmically indifferent to it then, but I’ve never been indifferent to the Perseids.  Comets seem more timeless and steady in their travels across the universe.  Meteors are only here for a moment of flash and streaking brilliance and then they’re gone forever.  We’re a lot more like meteors than comets, aren’t we? Why not kindle a light in the darkness of mere being in this brief time?

       

       

    • Getting Up and Looking Further

      “No doubt in Holland,
      when van Gogh was a boy,
      there were swans drifting
      over the green sea
      of the meadows, and no doubt
      on some warm afternoon
      he lay down and watched them,
      and almost thought: this is everything.
      What drove him to get up and look further
      is what saves this world,
      even as it breaks
      the hearts of men.”
      – Mary Oliver, Everything

      This will be the 773rd blog post for a total of 333,789 words (including quotes from others).  I wonder sometimes where the words go when I click publish.  And I wonder sometimes whether writing everyday matters.  But I snap out of it, remembering the words of Seth Godin:

      “Daily blogging is an extraordinarily useful habit. Even if no one reads your blog, the act of writing it is clarifying, motivating and (eventually) fun.”

      Daily blogging has indeed turned out to be all three of those things and more.  But it isn’t lost on me that I set out to blog about exploration and I tend to be locked in my own yard most days.  But that’s 2020 for you.  Above all, writing is clarifying.  And even if no one reads the blog, the act has mattered far more to me than anticipated.

      What drove him to get up and look further is what saves this world, even as it breaks the hearts of men.

      It also isn’t lost on me that few actually ever read it.  But I haven’t earned that following just yet (and don’t invest any time in self-marketing my blog).  Still, there are those WTF days when you bleed all over the screen and the world buzzes in complete indifference.  Like putting all that energy into a garden and having it mowed down by a groundhog while you were away for a few days, its the world telling you that your work doesn’t matter as much as you thought it did.  The ultimate exercise in humility.

      Someone told me recently that the blog is a gift for my children someday when I’m gone.  I suppose that’s true, but its also a living trust of sorts, with the writer being the primary beneficiary while he’s still around.  If I should keep this up for the next ten years that works out to be roughly 1.5 million more words coming out of my brain and onto the page.  If I push the average up I could make that 2 million words.  Godin also mentioned that the first 1000 posts are the hardest.  Frankly I can’t agree more.  The process of writing, of getting up and looking further, is moving me in directions that are enlightening and yes, clarifying.  And maybe that’s enough.

       

       

       

    • Five Things

      “Strategically, its better to do five big things with your life than 500 half-assed things.” – Derek Sivers, The Knowledge Project podcast

      This statement got me thinking.  I’ve done plenty of half-assed things in my life, but what are the big things, both accomplished and yet to complete?  That’s the real question of a lifetime.  I’m likely past the halfway mark on my own life (you never know), so what have you done with the time?

      “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 Summer Day

      Raising two children to be good humans is one notable accomplishment.  An accomplishment that was decades in the making.  And if they’re a work in progress, they’re far ahead of where I was at their age.  Surely parenthood is one of the five big things.  When I look at my two I’m amazed at who they’ve become.  I played a part in that (perhaps only as an example of what not to do?).  If you have kids be a responsible kid with them, delighting in the world.  Most of parenthood is figuring things out as you go, but being a steady, reassuring presence in your children’s lives as they stick their own necks out into this crazy world.

      And if parenthood is one big thing, so too must a long, happy marriage?  Having gotten this one very wrong once, I celebrate the one I’ve gotten right.  And by right I mean I haven’t screwed it up just yet, despite my stumbling through the minefield of time.  I’m no expert on the topic, but I’ve learned a few things over the years.  Ultimately you get what you put into something, and if you invest the time and passion into a marriage you’ll have a healthy return on investment with the right partner.  Marriage is never 50/50 – sometimes you give 80, sometimes you give 20, but with the right partner it evens out over time.  So that’s two, for those keeping score, and where do we go from here?

      Career?  One’s career is a complicated journey full of half-assed things, but if you play it well there’s potential for that big thing over time.  If I’ve learned anything at this stage of my career its that relationships and trust built day-after-day matter more than skills accumulated or degrees earned.  It all counts, but nothing matters more than how you interact with others.  I celebrate being in a good place in a complicated time with the potential for great things should I do the work well.  Isn’t that what we all want in a career?  One of the key decisions you’ll make in your career is how much you want to sacrifice time with that family and in your marriage  for career growth.  Choose wisely, for balance is possible.  Life is too short to work for assholes.

      So riddle me this: Beyond family, marriage and career, what are the next couple of big things that you want to accomplish in life?  Starting a business?  Meaningful charitable work?  Environmental activism?  Writing that great American novel?  Athletic accomplishments?  And what of world traveler?  I like to think of myself as an unpaid American diplomat, going out into the world and demonstrating that what you see in the movies and reality television and (God forbid) politics isn’t the real America, but just a part of our story.  There’s a lot to be said for climbing the ladder and reaching a hand down to help others on their own climb.  The more you’re a student of the world, the more you learn and the more you can apply that knowledge towards meaningful interactions.

      “Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.” – Joseph Campbell

      Focus on the big things, and less on the half-assed things.  You’ll know the big things when you find them.  At least I’m counting on that as a guiding principle on my own path.  And if you don’t eventually get five big things accomplished, maybe one or two is enough.  But make them really big things.

    • Be Less Comfortable

      “It takes many hours to make what you want to make.  The hours don’t suddenly appear.  You have to steal them from comfort.  Whatever you were doing before was comfortable.  This is not.  This will be really uncomfortable.” – Derek Sivers, Where To Find The Hours To Make It Happen

      This phrase, stealing hours from comfort, was  plucked from a blog post Sivers wrote last October and highlighted yesterday by Seth Godin, borrowing for one of his own blog posts.  And so I pay it forward here.  For there’s genius in the phrasing, isn’t there?  We all have the same amount of hours in the day, and those who do exceptional things with their lives do so by stealing hours otherwise spent on comfortable things like binge-watching Ozark or SV Delos YouTube videos (guilty x 2).  In the meantime the great novel in your head slides sideways into the abyss.  The language you might have learned remains a mystery to you.  The belly gets soft.  The community volunteers carry on without you.  The work is accomplished by others, and we look on in awe at what they achieved.

      And the answer, of course, is to be less comfortable.  To challenge yourself more.  To do the work that must be done to get from this place of relative comfort to a better place of greater meaning and contribution.  To stop scraping by at the bare minimum and double down on your effort.  For all that is worthwhile in this world requires an investment in time and a healthy dose of discomfort to earn it.  But we have to remind ourselves of this daily, because comfort is a dangerous temptress.  And before we know it the days, weeks and years fly by and the dreams remain only dreams.  So toughen up, buttercup!  A bit less comfort is the answer to the question of where will you find the time?

      As Jackson Browne sings, I’ve been aware of the time going by…  and so I’m trying to invest my time in less comfortable things.  Hiking with intent, writing more, working more focused hours in my career, and slowly chipping away at expanding the possible of today.  But I’m still too comfortable.  When there’s so much more to do in the time we have left, isn’t it essential we get to it already?  And in some ways the pandemic offers us a reason to make profound shifts towards the uncomfortable.  To break from the routine and tackle the meaningful.  A catalyst for change just in the nick of time – in this, our critical moment.  For if not now, when?

    • Move Out on Faith

      “Stay away from people who are world-weary and belittle your ambitions. Unfortunately, this is most of the world. But they hold on to the past, and you want to live in the future.” – Sam Altman, Idea Generation

      Sam Altman is an entrepreneur and 35 years old at the time I write this, so I understand his spin on living in the future. A creative mind must indeed live with an eye on the future, for that is where hope and possibility lie just out of reach. To get anything done in this world we must bridge that gap with work today.

      Avoiding the world-weary seems like a great idea. but there’s just so many of them. Some of my favorite people have a world-weariness about them. Its hard not to get a little worn down by 2020 and some of the maddening missteps of humanity over the last few decades, but even in these strange times there’s always something positive out there if you look for it.

      The larger point, of course, is to avoid those who would undermine your dreams in active or subtle ways because they’ve given up on their own. A voice of reason is often a disguise for a “poisonous playmate” who would kill your dream that you might not rise beyond their own lowly ambitions. Quotations are for a term borrowed from Julia Cameron, who has a few things to say about the creative spirit inside us.

      “It is my experience both as an artist and as a teacher that when we move out on faith into the act of creation, the universe is able to advance.” – Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

      When I started writing this blog I did it quietly, just writing in Blogger most days, but with breaks in between. I wasn’t fully invested in myself as a writer yet, but there was a tangible shift when I switched to WordPress. Now I write every day and link to it in Twitter for anyone invested in finding my thoughts. Some people find my blog and support it, while others ignore it completely. I try not to let either dictate my writing or the directions the Muse takes me. Keeping eyes on the task at hand and casting votes in the form of daily blog posts.

      “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits

      Last night a thick fog swallowed up Buzzards Bay whole. “There will be no sunset tonight, I believe“, I announced to my daughter. And upped the ante by saying I’d give her a dollar if there was. Sure enough, the clouds parted, the fog thinned and we had an epic sunset with dancing fog glimmering in bright orange hues. I gave her a five: a dollar for being right and four for her optimism. Maybe that entire scene foreshadows a brighter future. Wouldn’t that be welcomed?