Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • Walking In Their Footsteps

      There’s a moment 7:24 into the James Corden Carpool Karaoke with Sir Paul McCartney when James remarks, “If my grandad were here right now he’d get an absolute kick out of this” and McCartney replies, “He is.” That moment grabs me by the throat each time I’ve watched it. After a trip to Liverpool a couple of weeks ago, I’ve revisited the episode on YouTube a few more times for the “I was right there” time warp it offers. Which is closely related to the “They were right there” experience of walking in their footsteps on that day.

      We’re all souls marking our time on this planet, eventually our time ends and we’re remembered in moments like Corden’s. Generations later we’re just a small ripple, echoes that show in the traits of future generations, the equivalent in personality to having the same color eyes or the same shape to the earlobes. I can only hope my children carry my better traits to the future, and leave the more annoying stuff behind. But whatever will be will be.

      As I write this my friend the Carolina Wren is singing her morning song outside. We’re well into November and I thought she’d have migrated south by now. But it seems she wanted to stick around a bit longer, brightening up the days with her songs. It’s a sound I wasn’t familiar with until she arrived just this year, but one I won’t ever forget now. It’s funny how little things like that mean so much over time. Which makes me wonder, how will we be remembered?

    • The Farmer and the Poet

      It sits perched atop its fellow stones, neatly laid as a capstone of sorts. Who’s hands laid this stone? A farmer from the earliest days of this nation? Or perhaps their grandchild, the last generation to farm this land before the young turned to the mills or went west? Once the land surrounding the wall was cultivated, bearing harvests of corn, beans and squash. Then the farms faded and the trees regained the land. This wall marks the past, and this stone waits eternally to tell its story, like that poem buried in a musty old book on a library shelf. The farmer and the poet each speak to us through their creations long after they’re gone. If only we’ll listen.

    • Travel and Writing

      Vacations end. There’s no getting around that. But there’s value in resuming the life you’ve built for yourself at home. This morning I’m dining at a lovely breakfast buffet in London, tonight I’ll assess the empty pantry we left behind. But full instead on recent memories. That’s a fair trade.

      The hard part of writing when you travel is carving out meaningful time to do it well. For me early morning was my salvation. The easy part is having a treasure chest of material to write about. Embarrassment of riches? Most definitely. Doesn’t get much richer than London and Scotland (but I’ll surely test that in the coming years).

      Travel and writing pair well. No revelation there. Not all travel is created equal, and this trip provided a wonderful shock to the apathy of the everyday. I try to stop and smell the roses wherever I am, but sometimes you’ve got to step into a new garden to see how they tend things elsewhere. And as I head back to my own backyard, I’ll tap into these memories again and again.

    • The Birdman of Stirling Castle

      You see Stirling Castle long before you get to it. Perched high on a chunk of volcanic intrusive rock at the strategic point where the River Forth widens, offering the last downstream crossing between the Highlands and the Lowlands of Scotland. You couldn’t pick a more strategic spot for a castle, and the sheer cliffs made it impossible to breach from any side but the heavily-defended front. There were eight significant sieges on the castle, the last (unsuccessfully) by Bonnie Prince Charlie.

      Mary, Queen of Scots was crowned here. That’s a story many know. Lesser known but certainly noteworthy was the life of John Damian, resident alchemist for King James IV, who boldly declared that he would fly to France in a flying rig he created that looked like a chicken suit. Damian brought the court out to the Ladies Lookout, which offered one of the steepest drops. He flapped his wings, stepped off the edge and… promptly plummeted. He would have died right then had it not been for the large pile of chamber pot remnants. Instead the mound of muck cushioned his landing just enough that he got out of it with a broken leg and wounded pride. And on the bright side, a bit of immortality.

      Glancing over the wall where Damian made his flight, its hard for me to imagine him taking that leap into the abyss. But that demonstrates the power of convictions. Sometimes they work in your favor, sometimes they leave you covered in feathers and crap with everyone you know laughing at you. There’s nothing wrong with taking the leap, but maybe limit your downside first.

    • Live Awakened

      The book Awakening begins with a foreword by Francis J Stroud, relaying a story the author of the book used to tell when he was alive:

      “A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air. Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings. The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked. “That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” said his neighbor. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth—we’re chickens.” So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.” – Anthony De Mello

      Today I’m walking all around Edinburgh, feeling quite awake. Yesterday I came across Memento mori at Greyfriars Cemetery and smiled at the sight of this familiar reminder that life is short. Learn who you really are and live a larger life. The rest will take care of itself.

    • The Vivacious Many

      There’s more to do, surely, before we go. But enough is enough. Lists are checked and then confirmed again. Having set one bird to fly it’s time to fly again myself. And I’m ready.

      “Who can guess the impatience of stone longing to be ground down, to be part again of something livelier?” – Mary Oliver, The Moth, The Mountains, The Rivers

      I understand…  As much as I embrace the daily ritual of routine; the obligations of family and work and making sure the recycling is put neatly into a rolling bin on the edge of the road, I’m ready.  I’m ready for the speed dating bucket list items knocked off in succession, of conceding to wait in line for the obligatory went-there but then rewarding myself by lingering a bit longer in a few remote corners I’d never heard of before stumbling upon them. Shifting a car with my left hand.  Reflecting on alchemy in a distillery or two along the way.  Feeling the pulse of London and the weight of Edinburgh. The remote chance of an Aurora Borealis sighting in Skye or Speyside.  A pilgrimage to Abbey Road and Quiraing and Pennan. These precious few have been unchecked for way too long.

      “And I suggest them to you also, that your spirit grow in curiosity, that your life be richer than it is, that you bow to the earth as you feel how it actually is, that we—so clever, and ambitious, and selfish, and unrestrained—are only one design of the moving, the vivacious many.” – Mary Oliver, The Moth, The Mountains, The Rivers

      The world calls.  Let other voices try to shout it down.  Tonight we fly.

    • Bury the Bright Edge Deep

      “The cold smell of potato mould, the

      squelch and slap

      Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

      Through living roots awaken in my head.

      But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

      Between my finger and my thumb

      The squat pen rests.

      I’ll dig with it.” – Seamus Heaney, Digging

      Jim Rohn said that we are the average of the five people we associate with the most. I tend to agree with that, not just in people but in authors, media, podcasters… etc. Influencers on our outlook should be scrutinized regularly at minimum, and wholly changed over now and then just to keep your mind sharp. There’s nothing like a different perspective to floss the brain. And lately I’ve been sprinkling in more Seamus Heaney, Mary Oliver and Robert Frost. When life throws political chaos, war and social media trolls at you, turn to the poets to re-set the sail.

      The garden is done for the year, other than a few mums and asters and one lone fuchsia blossom that stubbornly holds out hope for company. But harder frosts are coming, and with it the growing season ends. Heaney’s words sprinkle memories of planting in my mind, of burying the bright edge of a spade deep to turn the soil, and I smile at the thought. There’ll be no planting for six months to come. But Seamus points to another digging tool in writing, and that seems a good place to spend my time as well. Pull out the weeds that work to root in your mind, turn over the fertile ground to aerate it, and plant some new ideas to grow and ripen.

    • The Great Conversation

      I’m bouncing again, book-to-book, pulling this book off the shelf, scanning over that sentence on the Kindle app, and stacking the pile higher. It’s funny how one thing sparks another thing, it’s what Robert Maynard Hutchins called The Great Conversation, written work building on written work, theory built on theory, across time, but shrunken down to just the books in my personal library. Each offering a little something to keep the imagination abuzz. This morning’s great conversation started with a little stoicism:

      “What’s the meaning of life? Why was I born? Most of us struggle with these questions—sometimes when we’re young, sometimes not until we’re older. Rarely do we find much in the way of direction. But that’s simply because we miss the point. As Viktor Frankl points out in Man’s Search for Meaning , it is not our question to ask. Instead, it is we who are being asked the question. It’s our lives that are the answer.” – Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic

      That led me right to the source, and I pulled Frankl’s classic off the shelf for additional perspective:

      “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.” – Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning

      Outside I hear the telltale roar of hot air balloon burners. It breaks my focus and I walk outside barefoot to look for the familiar visitors, but all I hear is them announcing “we’re close”. Bare feet quickly turn cold on the pool deck and I move back inside. Shoes are one of our best inventions as a species, but we miss so much information about our environment that is telegraphed through our bare feet (today’s telegraph: put some shoes on you fool, that’s what they were invented for). I glance outside and spot the yellow top of smiley face balloon over the trees and, seeing its landing elsewhere, give a nod of welcome and get back inside to the great conversation. Life is calling, but I have a few things to mull over first.

      “Well, what are you? What is it about you that you have always known as yourself? What are you conscious of in yourself: your kidneys, your liver, your blood vessels? No. However far back you go in your memory it is always some external manifestation of yourself where you came across your identity: in the work of your hands, in your family, in other people. And now, listen carefully. You in others – this is what you are, this is what your consciousness has breathed, and lived on, and enjoyed throughout your life, your soul, your immortality – your life in others.” – Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

      I read that passage for the first time in 1989, the year I graduated from college, not in Doctor Zhivago, but as a quote from a book by Warren Bennis called On Becoming a Leader. This book, along with Frankl and more recently Holiday’s books, can be thought of as stepping stones in the stream of life, there for me when I needed a solid footing on my way across. And they’re also voices at the table, part of the great conversation happening still. There are hundreds of voices at that table: authors, poets, songwriters, coaches, family and friends. All voices in that great conversation, ripples across time, influencing me in ways subtle and profound. And you’re at the table too. Welcome.

    • More in Less

      Recently I’ve begun limiting myself to one cup of robust coffee when I brew it with the AeroPress, where I’d previously indulge in a second and often a third. It seems one does the trick, and one more would be too much. The net benefit is less money spent on coffee, fewer trips to the bathroom, and ironically, sharper focus.

      There’s merit in avoiding the things that dull the senses, and embracing the things that electrify the senses. You’ll be the better for having done so. Take for example, a glass of single malt scotch.  It offers so much more in less. Savor it, reflect, take another sip. A little sip of Scotland to brighten your day. And an example of more in less. So I’m trying to take a similar approach to coffee.

      Today feels like a good opportunity to practice brevity.  I’m averaging a little over 400 words per post.  Today’s contribution will lower that average a bit.  So be it. I chip away at it nonetheless. Sometimes less is more?

       

    • Writing Illuminates

      October 7th and there’s no escaping it now. The morning concedes more and more of herself to the greedy darkness. Darkness, not satiated, comes back for more sooner and sooner each afternoon. The days are more beautiful than ever this time of year in New Hampshire, there’s just less time in the day to enjoy it all.

      The available light changes routine. No going outside to read in the still morning light now. Instead I find myself huddled inside during the magic hour. This won’t do at all. Perhaps a brisk morning walk outside would serve me better, with reading later? But thoughts of work encroach the later in the morning it gets, and by 7 AM there’s no escaping the feeling that the jig is up. Daylight brings responsibility, there’s no more buffer when the earth turns a cold shoulder to the sun.

      Still, there’s beauty in darkness. That old huntsman Orion greeted me in all his glory over the weekend. He’s tired of playing hide and seek with the Northern Hemisphere. And I delighted in greeting him once again. True, the Autumnal Equinox makes stargazing more accessible. There’s that. Take what the day brings you, that’s the answer isn’t it?

      Darkness grudgingly concedes the day, and I must be moving on. Writing calls, but so does the day job. The endless wrestling match between creative output and economic responsibilities. One voice tends to dominate the conversation. So what’s a writer to do? The answer, it seems, is to get up even earlier tomorrow. More time alone in the darkness, though not in the dark. Writing… illuminates.