Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • Put It to Words

      “Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such” ― Henry Miller

      Some mornings I don’t do anything right away. Nothing but let the pup out, feed the h’angry cats, step outside and settle into silent appreciation for the day as it is. Busy will come soon enough. Productive sometimes joins busy to offer a leap forward. And that can be enough some days. Having done some things, we feel that familiar pull to do something even more still.

      The trick in all of this is observation. We must listen more than we speak (two ears, one mouth). And we must learn to see what is dancing right in front of us, for it is life in all its tragic, hilarious, glorious entirety. And Walt Whitman had it right all along: That you are here—that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

      That verse doesn’t write itself. I have some avid hiker friends who would do well to blog. To put their thoughts and feelings to words that would outlive their adventures traversing the granite and schist. Writing pulls something out of us that pictures don’t, even as they tell their thousand words. For those thousand words are mined from within, and brought to the surface to be shared.

      A woman I once worked with took a creative writing class and now every social media post is a beautiful postcard to the world of her early morning walks around the north shore of Massachusetts. The only reason to ever go on social media is to see what someone is doing with their brief go at things in this world—why not post something beautiful? Whatever our choice of expression, we do well by sharing our very best observations with others, that they may see what in that moment was only ours.

      These days I’m inclined to soak up everything for all it offers, yet I keep choosing that dance of busy and productive. One can have both, if each moment is approached with intent. These days will soon be over like all the rest before. What have we got to say about our encounter with it? Put it to words, friend. And share it with a world looking for something beautiful previously hidden from them.

    • To Be Filled

      When I am among the trees,

      especially the willows and the honey locust,

      equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

      they give off such hints of gladness,

      I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

      I am so distant from the hope of myself,

      in which I have goodness, and discernment,

      and never hurry through the world

      but walk slowly, and bow often.

      Around me the trees stir in their leaves

      and call out, “Stay awhile.”

      The light flows from their branches.

      And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,

      “and you too have come

      into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
      with light, and to shine.”
      — Mary Oliver, When I Am Among the Trees

      This morning it’s raining again.

      For the thirteenth Saturday in a row, I might add.

      Breaking a record, I’m told, for consecutive weekends of rainy Saturdays.

      And even though I’d rather have the sun warm my face and draw my tomato vines to the sky, I don’t mind a rainy morning. If only for the sounds it brings to the forest. If only for the quiet it brings to an otherwise busy mind.

      We may choose how to face each day. My inclination to shine may seem out of step with the times, but it’s my day to face in whatever way I decide to face it. To bring light to darkness is a choice, just as it is a choice to bring darkness to light. How we bring balance back to the world is determined by the collective, but I’ll go on shining as best I can in my time.

      Filled with light, I’m inclined to share it.

    • The Bridge of Process

      “We’re not going to talk about what we’re going to accomplish. We’re going to talk about how we’re going to do it.” — Nick Saban

      I’d like to finish writing a book I’d started a while ago. I put it aside, changed media, lost said media, started over again, and here we are with an unfinished work. It will remain unfinished unless I bridge the gap between dream and reality with action. Otherwise it’s simply another unfulfilled wish that peters out one day along with all the other things we said to ourselves we were going to do one day. And so we must build a bridge of process that gets us from here to there and do the work every day to reach the other side.

      I thought it prudent to spend this summer getting fit again. I set a goal weight a week before an important date on my summer calendar and worked backwards to create a plan to get there. I’m nine days into the routine and seven pounds lighter. That’s good progress and well ahead of pace, but nothing to celebrate yet. The celebration will be on that important date after I’ve crossed this bridge. And this fitness plan I’m on is all process too. When we do what we tell ourselves to do, we reach the goals we want to accomplish. Simple, really, and yet so hard.

      We can’t control so much of what is happening in the world right now. We can get spun up about that and drift away from the focus required to reach our goals, or we can simply look at what’s next in our plan and execute on it. When we are process-oriented we filter out much of what we cannot control and just do the next thing we said we were going to do, then the next, and before we know it we’ve gotten somewhere closer to what we set out for.

      I began writing this blog for reasons I’ve covered many times in the process of writing it. It’s so much a part of my identity now that I hardly think about it unless the day is getting on and I’m feeling that bit of anxiety creeping in, telling me I haven’t published yet. And so I carve out some time no matter how busy I am and focus on writing the best possible thing I can muster given the circumstances. These blog posts will outlive me, and the Internet doesn’t care how busy I was in the moment. But the underlying process brought me to a place where writing it is so much a part of the identity I chose for myself that I’ll get it done again and again.

      When we stop talking about what we’re going to do and simply focus on the process to get to where we want to be something amazing happens. We actually start bridging that gap we once thought too far to get across. Once crossed, we can set our sights on something even more audacious, and keep crossing chasms again and again, far beyond what we once believed possible. Stop focusing on the gap, focus on the bridge.

    • Improve, Correct and Change

      “Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out. Time is limited. Focus on that which you can improve, correct, or change. Ignore what you can’t control.” — John Wooden

      We have a way of cramming more things into our days in our culture of growth and achievement. This can lead to some exhausting days, over and over again, until we collapse at whatever finish line we perceive is the end. Maybe that’s a nightcap when we get home, or sinking into the couch binge-watching some version of apocalyptic programming, or heading to the bars on Friday night—or maybe Thursday night. Whatever flips off the switch for a few blessed moments. It’s a slipperly slope of finish line focus.

      There is no finish line until one day we’re finished. We must build a life of meaning and productive purpose that isn’t measured by when we get to stop. What kind of life is that? The better objective is to fill our days with the things that matter most while the unimportant drifts away without the opportunity to land on our shoulders. Easier said than done. But it often comes down to what we say yes or no to. Learning to ignore what we can’t control is the key to a successful, happy life.

      I write this as a reminder to myself. Because more than just focusing on what we can control, we must choose what is within our control that will make the most meaningful change in our lives. Prioritization is thus the key. Which reminds me of the old Stephen Covey lesson about doing first things first: we must fill our days with the big things first, and let all the rest fill in after. To do the opposite means that our big things never get done.

      All that said, I’ve committed to a couple of changes in my daily routine this summer. It means the writing begins a little later than it was before so that I may complete a workout and read some non-fiction before I write. At this point in the game, the habit of writing is set, but the workouts tend to drift into a quick walk with the pup before bedtime if I don’t prioritize it first. I can’t control how the day will go, but I can best influence the way I begin it.

      When we seek to improve, correct and change what is within our control, while putting first things first, we sprinkle purpose into our days. Each day thus becomes a stepping stone towards a higher standard of living. To get closer to arete (personal excellence) requires consistent, focused effort on the right things. Today and always.

    • The Ecstasy

      “There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.
      This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad in a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight.”
      — Jack London, The Call of the Wild

      I witnessed the ecstasy on the face of a two year old mutt with mascara eyes turned shrewd hunter. My carefully-planted garden was no match for the hunter, nor was the fence—designed to keep rabbits out but not the chipmunks, and not the joyful leap of youthful hunter, straining after the food that was alive. And so I scolded her without success. I barred entry only to have her run to the other side. And finally I brought her in, if only as a reprieve until the fence could be raised.

      The ecstasy isn’t something we’re aware of nearly enough when we’re riding that high. When we’re in peak form it feels like it will always will be so, if we ponder such things at all. Nowadays I hunt for moments in the zone, where I may perform at my personal peak, striving for arete even as I understand how evasive that level of personal excellence will always be. The writing offers a taste of that hunter’s zeal, and sometimes work offers it too. And I realized, placing fence pieces atop the garden fence between paragraphs of a blog post, that the garden has offered its own version of complete forgetfulness. At least before it was shredded by youthful vigor.

    • Beyond the Bro’s

      “I don’t want you to wake up at sixty-five and realize, ‘I spend forty of my best years doing something that just funded my life.” ― Jon Acuff

      I sat through a company meeting where the leadership team discussed the benefits of this new-fangled Artificial Intelligence thing to serve as an editor for the basic writing skills of people writing proposals. It confirmed what I’d come to believe: I’m working for yet another bunch of bro’s trying to figure shit out as they go. Damn. So once again the next move is mine.

      We move through life with things on our mind. Each stage of our development tends to be focused on one thing or another. If we’re brought up a certain way, we tend to think of others first. If we’re brought up a different way, we take care of our own needs first. At some point, we look around and realize that the time we thought we had has flown by and we’d better get focused on whatever our own version of personal excellence is before that opportunity is gone forever.

      I started writing a blog to fill a gap in my life that wasn’t being filled working for bro’s trying to figure shit out as they went. Writing a blog to fill a gap isn’t unusual, but there are other reasons. Some folks blog for self-marketing or to create content for their business or maybe worst of all, to serve some awful scheme to have <gulp> influence. Goodness, that’s an illusion best shed quickly so that one may get down the real work in blogging—discovery.

      We write for the same reasons we travel and read and talk to strangers: to discover some truth that was previously hidden from us. And maybe to share it with others inclined to wait for us to catch up. We write to learn how to write better, and not simply to have some AI editor toss out a bland but acceptable proposal. To move through life with the aim of being bro-approved is a version of hell I don’t wish on anyone. We must get past that stage of life if we ever hope to transcend the same old shit. Try a little discovery on for size and see what’s possible beyond the bro’s.

    • Unwritten

      I’m just back from another trip and found myself deep in the follow-up of a busy life put on pause while I was away. There’s follow-up that simply needs to happen, for we are forever pushing the flywheel in our lives to sustain whatever momentum we’ve created thus far. In this way, a trip simply ends with a few pictures on social media, a few stories and whatever memories we hold on to. Then on to the next.

      But I think about what remains unwritten from these trips. So many stories I’ve told myself I’d write but for a little more time and focus. They fall away like our days, drifting into what might have beens. For every yes in our lives there are so many no’s shouting in our ear. To live up to our potential we simply have to develop the skill of filtering out the no’s in favor of our compelling yes. Call me a work in progress on this front.

      Creative work isn’t the same as a career climb. It’s project-based work, not simply a series of 9 to 5 days strung out over a career. Projects don’t work normal business hours, and they don’t stop whispering in our ear when those things that don’t want to take no for an answer shout louder and louder for attention. But whispers have a way of being drowned out in the din if we’re not focused enough on them.

      To have any kind of success with our essential few, we must grow into the kind of person who sticks with a yes. We must come to terms with what we will do in our lives, and what will remain unwritten. Like a marriage, we must learn to listen more than we talk with our projects, that we may know where the muse is leading us. Surely, we ignore either at our peril. Still, do we wonder enough, is this project the right yes, or was it the one we just said no to?

    • A World No One Else Has Seen

      “Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.”
      ― John Le Carre, “The Chancellor Who Agreed To Play Spy”, The New York Times, May 8, 1974

      We’ve all heard that we are unique. That fact is hammered home by helpful people throughout our lives. And what is unique but the differences between us anyway? More to the point, we are each going through a life solely our own—experiencing things that no one else in the history of humanity has or will ever experience. That last sentence ought to have an exclamation point (!).

      We owe it to ourselves to document this unique path we’re on in some way, if only to remember who we once were. A journal or log book will do the trick, and so too will a blog. Pictures naturally capture the essence of a moment in time, or at least our perspective of that moment in time. And the collection of stuff we’ve collected along the way gathering dust on our shelves hints at who we once were and what created the current model on display.

      I celebrate the daffodils I planted twenty years ago as much for the time machine they represent to a younger version of me as for the bold announcement that they made it through another winter just as I did. Each project we do represents some measure of the person we were at the time, each brush stroke, each nail hammered home, each brick laid down on a path we’ve walked upon ever since. We are the sum of our days.

      But we know that the bulk of who we are will live and die with us, never revealed to the world. To the world we are anonymous at worst, and a passing fancy at best. That doesn’t make our lives meaningless—rather a blank slate from which we may begin to influence the lives of others in meaningful ways. We are matter, and we may choose to matter, when we apply ourselves to the task. We may thus make a ripple that echoes as identity, even as the puzzle of our life story will forever be ours alone to ever truly know.

    • Nietzsche, Vonnegut and Doris Day Met in a Blog

      “My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love it.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

      Where I live, this month is trending as unseasonably cool and wet. Great for ducks, I suppose. The rest of us could use some warm, sunny days. But so it goes.

      That phrase, “So it goes”, is rather sticky. It’s a Kurt Vonnegut nugget that stays with you if you’ve ever read Slaughterhouse-Five because it’s repeated so often throughout the book that it hammers home in the memory bank. I’ve read it at three distinct phases of my life just to see what changes as I’ve changed. From the abundant horror of Dresden comes a fatalism born of experiencing it. One may ask, why? Just don’t expect an answer.

      “Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?” “Yes.” Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three lady-bugs embedded in it. “Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

      To write a book that someone would be inclined to read a few times over, instead of simply reaching for the next book on the pile? That’s notable. To write a book well enough that people are drawing quotes from it generations after it was written? That’s timeless. Surely something to aspire to in our own writing.

      But I digress. So it goes, in the context of the book, is a fatalistic acceptance of death. That’s not exactly how I used it in the opening paragraph of this scattered blog post, but it applies in one key way: Amor fati (love of fate). Or if you prefer a playful tune with a somber message, Que Sera, Sera (whatever will be, will be, with a nod to Doris Day). Whatever method we choose to understand the message, we ought to learn to embrace it in our own lives. Sure, we have agency, but within the context of everything out of our control that life throws at us.

      We will all have our rainy days. If we are blessed, we will also have our share of sunny days full of warmth and comfort. We must build a life that mitigates the impact of our worst days while maximizing the potential derived from our best. Whatever will be, will be, but we may apply leverage as appropriate. There’s just no telling which plot line in our story leads to greatness.

      So Nietzsche, Vonnegut and Doris Day all met in a blog post… proving once again that anything is possible if we just let our creative selves run free now and then. We ought to have more agency in our lives, even as we accept that some things are out of our control. So long as we don’t sell ourselves short on what we can in fact control. Some paths are dead ends, some lead to the highest summit. And so it goes.

    • This is Our Dance

      At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
      Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
      But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
      Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
      There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
      I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where. And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
      — T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

      “Of what is the body made? It is made of emptiness and rhythm. At the ultimate heart of the body, at the heart of the world, there is no solidity… there is only the dance.”
      — George Leonard, The Silent Pulse: A Search for the Perfect Rhythm that Exists in Each of Us

      Read enough and you begin to hear echoes in the work of one writer to the next. As with music, there are only so many notes to play with, and sometimes you hear the hint of one song whispering to you from another. So it is that Leonard’s quote reminded me of T.S. Eliot’s poem. Eliot and Leonard aren’t really writing about the same thing, and yet they each come back to the dance with phrasing that catches one’s attention. Whispers across time and place, where past and future are gathered, dancing in the wind.

      Our lives are stillness and motion, emptiness and rhythm, past and present with a dream of tomorrows. We write and observe and play with words and thoughts and ideas. Just as we live our lives as best we can given the circumstances, so we pull together everything we have in the moment and write what we can with what we have at our disposal. Sometimes we find magic, sometimes we simply live to fight another day. We’re changed either way.

      I write this, not from stillness, but in the midst of the dance. Like that hike through the wild mustard I wrote about yesterday, the path is uncertain and each step presents a new challenge. The only answer is to push on through, finding the path with each step. This is our dance.

      Do you see the path? It’s hiding right in front of us.