Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • A Day Among Days

      “Yesterday nobody dreamed of to-day; nobody dreams of tomorrow. Hence the weather is ever the news. What a fine and measureless joy the gods grant us thus, letting us know nothing about the day that is to dawn! — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      I caught up with a neighbor yesterday. It seems that he quit his job a year ago to write and I never realized it. He simply did his outdoor chores, came and went and never talked about what he did the rest of the time. Now he’s going back to a job and debating whether to publish his writing or to

      remain anonymous. I encouraged him to publish even as I failed to mention in our conversation that I’ve published something every day for years. Who’s the anonymous one?

      The same day a business associate encouraged me to apply for a VP position in his company. I didn’t say no, but I definitely didn’t say yes either. Am I a creative person if I chase titles? Does my work suffer if I don’t explore all of my options? A day writing is similar to a day climbing the corporate ladder: what we produce determines the value we perceive in the time spent. Just what defines personal excellence for us anyway? There’s your value.

      Each day greets us with questions like these. And honestly, aren’t they really about what to do with our brief time? Whether we rise to meet the moment or let the opportunity slip away comes down to a combination of mindset and routine. Thus, our attitude, habits and grit determine the day. Stack enough together and we build a life. As we greet each new day with the tools we have at our disposal, we ought to remember to see this one like a tree in the forest: a day among all our days, but unique just the same.

    • An Authentic Poet

      “And I tell you that you should open yourselves to hearing an authentic poet, of the kind whose bodily senses were shaped in a world that is not our own and that few people are able to perceive. A poet closer to death than to philosophy, closer to pain than to intelligence, closer to blood than to ink.”
      — Federico Garcia Lorca (translation by Steven F. White)

      Federico Garcia Lorca was a Spanish poet who was either assassinated or murdered at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. The historian in me thinks about such things as wars and the silencing of voices forever through violence. The student in me seeks out the poetry that was so incendiary that someone was prompted to silence the poet. The philosopher in me sees that we are all on the road to find out, and it we would be prudent to use our own voice before it too is silenced by the infinite beyond.

      In my favorite Navy pilot’s last year on earth, he took me aside and told me that he liked my blog. He said he didn’t think I had it in me to quote philosophy and poetry, because these were things that I’d buried deep within while sorting out how to be a working adult in a world very much focused on churning forward. My only question to myself in that moment wasn’t about how to answer him, but rather, what took me so long?

      A couple of thousand blog posts later, I’m still sorting through things. I’ve realized that I’ll be doing that to my last day on earth, physically or mentally, whichever takes me first. I’ve become less a working adult and more a lifetime student, and the identity fits me just fine, thank you. Walking the pup last night, feeling the pollen burn my eyes, I wondered about the future, plotting moves and countermoves like a chess player, with me the pawn. For every action there’s a reaction, but a good mental map shortens the gap between stimulus and response.

      My favorite Navy pilot was an avid reader and likely wasn’t awed by my writing style. He was simply pleased with the progress he saw in my journey, noting a leap forward he hadn’t anticipated from me. That doesn’t translate into a lack of faith in my leaping ability, more an acknowledgement that I hadn’t shown much of an inclination to transcend the normal path. I still think about him when I write, wondering if he’d note the progress. We can promise more for ourselves, but we must learn to meet that promise through boldness and action. To do otherwise would be inauthentic. And that’s not who we’re striving to be, is it?

    • What We Do Not Know

      “We shall either find what we are seeking, or free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.” — Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine

      Some of us remain lifetime students, some feel they have it all figured out. It often depends on how insular a life we choose to live. The comfort zone of insularity is nothing but a weighted blanket, and no great leaps occur while we’re curled up underneath it. We must venture into the unknown and challenge our assumptions if we are to grow and become something more.

      Imagine the brittle hollowness of a life with all the answers? Being a lifetime student is a delightful journey of discovery. We may be curious and not act on it, getting so busy with other things as we do. And then one day something sparks our curiosity and we seek answers. Writing a blog surely kicked my curiosity into another gear. One question answered leads to another awaiting attention. Writing is a thrill when we are seeking to fill something within ourselves and share it with our fellow students.

      Renault used the quote above twice in her book. Once as something Socrates said, then as a direct quote from Plato. No surprise, really, for a student to be saying something the teacher has said before. We are all turning the same questions around in our minds. Is it any wonder that the insights of one generation should be embraced as their own by the next? We all think we’re so different from those who came before us, when all we are is a different draft of the same creative work.

      I have a stack of books resentful that yet another book should leap ahead of them, gathering dust as they are awaiting my interest to return to them. All those books on shelves represent the aspirations of who we once were, looking towards a brighter future of enlightenment. That potential still resides there on the shelf like buried treasure, should we return to it one day.

      We will all leave this world with unanswered questions. Like books on a shelf we never got to, even with the best of intentions. It was always meant to be this way—we just have to discover that fact at our own pace.

    • The Work Itself

      Is it time for the next project
      because the clock or calendar
      say it’s time,
      or because the work itself
      says it’s time?
      — Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

      I have people in my life who think it’s eery when I can hear someone pull into the driveway when everyone else in the room hears nothing. Yet I struggle to hear people in a crowded room. It’s a different kind of hearing, I believe. The former is more about feeling or sensing a change. The latter is picking out one voice in a crowd and completely hearing that person.

      What does all this mean? Maybe that I’d be a great therapist but a lousy waiter. Or maybe simply that I ought to get my ears checked one of these days. We must learn what our strengths are, but also our weaknesses.

      When we do work that doesn’t matter to us, we feel the grind. Time drags and it all feels meaningless. Even work that once felt exciting changes as we change. We drift from the purpose that brought us there. In that drift, we often find ourselves asking, “Where do we go from here?’ The answer is whispering, but we don’t always hear it.

      When we are wrapped up in work that matters, we sense the path we’re on is the right one. We are attuned to our creative voice or muse as it whispers to us. Sensing it’s what we were meant to do in this moment, transcending time and place. Flow happens. And if we’re lucky, so does that elusive byproduct, magic.

    • Summing Impetus

      ““The impetuous wind can ignite the fire or put it out.”
      ― Regina O’Melveny, The Book of Madness and Cures

      I was thinking about moments, which led me to momentum, which brought me to P (p = m v) which brought me to impetus (which is where the P is derived from in the equation). Impetus in turn brought me to Regina O’Melveny, which brought us here. That’s the truth of the matter. And this is how the mind of a writer works when we begin with a blank slate.

      Honestly, I’m too busy with work to bother writing at all. And yet there’s nothing more important for me than to sit down with myself and sort through things, catch a few (but seemingly never all) typos and release this to the world. Some days I exceed my average reader count, some days it lands with a thud, but either way I’m on to the next blank slate. And this is how we move through life.

      When we know just how fast the time is going (tempus fugit), and how we are only granted just so many days to do with what we will, we must then seize these moments as our own and make the most of them. That’s what living is to me. We are either stoking our fires or watching them peter out from inattention. The days fly by either way.

      An editor is silently screaming as they read this blog post, and I offer them my sincere apologies. Too many parentheses, too many commas, and the post is all over the place. This is what writing unfiltered brings to the table, and it’s beautifully effective in drawing out thoughts and ideas that would otherwise lie dormant. But as a finished blog post? Goodness. I ought to cut the entire mess down to the O’Melveny quote and leave well enough alone. After all, what is the impetus of this post anyway?

      Remember that formula; p=mv? It means momentum (p) is equal to mass (m) times velocity (v). We are what we choose to focus on and repeatedly do. The impetuous wind can ignite the fire within us or put it out. But we have agency. We must keep stoking the fires that mean everything and let the winds of time and persistence fuel a life of purpose and fulfillment. There will never be a better time to attack our why than now. After all, we are the sum of our days.

    • Honor

      “The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be; and if we observe, we shall find that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.” — Socrates

      The world is full of honor, but it is also full of people who fall short of honorable behavior. We may be rightfully outraged by the dishonorable, but we ought to remember that we live in a glass house before we throw stones. The question of honor always begins with the one person we can control. When we realize this and begin to hold ourselves to a higher standard, we tend to rise to meet it.

      To simply do what we tell ourselves we’re going to do is so very easy, and so very hard all at once. I’m still writing every day, not because I aspire to clicks and comments, but because I promised myself I’d do it. On the flip side, I have a rowing ergometer gathering dust because I can’t seem to find the time to row for a few minutes in my busy days. There’s honor in showing up. There’s no honor in finding excuses. And still there’s hope for us if we’d only try another day.

      The act of being is a journey of discovery. We learn something new about ourselves every day. Sometimes we like what we see, sometimes we recoil in disgust, but we ought to learn to be patiently persistent with the student. No matter what the world does, we may become more honorable every day, so long as we keep showing up aspiring towards improvement. Personal excellence demands our best. Our best begins with honor.

    • Gaps Closed

      “How can you love someone whom you do not even see?”
      ― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      Sometimes having something to say doesn’t mean we ought to say it. Sometimes keeping those thoughts to ourselves is the best contribution we can make in the moment. A great filter has saved me countless times. A poor filter has derailed me more often than I care to admit (imagine what an unfiltered mind would do if it were running the world? …uh, never mind).

      Writing this blog will not change the world. It’s currently clunky to navigate, impossible to categorize, has horrible SEO, and, if we’re being honest, is a bit repetitive. But it quietly navigates time at its own pace, like its writer, being what it is. And it will be what it will be. With so many choices of which information to digest, you the reader may choose to read or ignore it. Playing with the law of small numbers, we learn to keep score in our own way with the success of any given post. My way is measured in gaps closed.

      This odd little writing habit keeps on going, even when I decide it ought to take a break for a while. Does its quirkiness and place in this world make it a waste of time? Who’s time is being wasted in writing it? Each post is a revelation at best or a meditation on the moment at worst, but they’re each a declaration of who we were when we clicked publish. Writing doesn’t keep us from something else, it’s a path towards a greater self. The more we look the more we learn to see.

    • No Straight Road

      Oh what a crush of People
      Invisible, reborn
      Make their way to into this garden
      For their eternal rest

      Every step we take on earth
      Brings us to a new world
      Every foot supported
      On a floating bridge

      I know there is no straight road
      No straight road in this world
      Only a giant labyrinth
      Of intersecting crossroads

      And steadily our feet
      Keep walking and creating
      Like enormous fans
      These roads in embryo

      Oh garden of white
      Oh garden of all I am not
      All I could
      And should have been

      I know there is no straight road
      No straight road in this world
      Only a giant labyrinth
      Of intersecting crossroads
      — Federico García Lorca, Floating Bridges

      Oh, the twisting, turning road that brought us to here! We believe it would have been easier to have the straight path from there to here, and here to wherever there might be, but that’s not the life we humans have signed up for. We’re here to meander and discover the truth within us, the plot forever thickening, until one day we surprise even ourselves. All we can do is work to make it a real page-turner.

      There are a few turns we ought to have made, it’s clear now. The road looked easier the other way. Easy, it turns out, wasn’t the road to take. Complexity may perplex and frustrate us, but we gain so much for having gone through it. Tell that to the person we once were, as if they’d listen! But that whisper applies to the road ahead, friend. Just what kind of life do we want to look back upon anyway?

      We ought to glance back, but focus ahead. Remembering that we are not just travelers, but builders. We build our life with every choice, one action taken or deferred at a time. So move forward on the path we believe to be right, trusting the choice but verifying we tread on solid ground with each step.

      Tempus fugit, friend. Look up and a third of the year has flown by. How are we filling the time? What kind of road are we on anyway? Knowing the truth that time reveals, be deliberate with these steps ahead, lest we lose the ripe potential of this time forever. There’s still so much yet to be revealed in this epic adventure we call our own. And the road never will be straight or clear. Doesn’t that make it a wonder?

    • A Series of Somethings

      No one can change everything, but everyone can change something. If you choose to live a life with impact, it’s in your control to do so.” — Seth Godin, Powerlessness

      Godin’s post yesterday offered this nugget of wisdom as a reminder that we have agency. We may change something, should we choose to. Don’t ever tell yourself otherwise, for to do so is to rob this world of one more voice of positive change.

      What does change look like? It’s how we treat people. It’s how we treat ourself. It’s holding a standard for how we’re going to move through this world and holding the line on that with every interaction. We’ll fall short of those standards more than we care to think about, but we’ll also rise to meet them. And we’ll realize now and then that we’ve exceeded the old standard and set a new one. In this way we learn and grow and become something more than we were before.

      That person, the something more person, has momentum and influence. We float through life leaving a wake behind us—a ripple if you like. Each day we impact the life of someone. We may impact them, not directly, but by the impression we made on another, who in turn influenced that person—and so on across time. That’s the ripple of influence we may hardly be aware of in the moment. Each is a series of somethings we made out of what would otherwise be nothing. We must not simply fill the void, but fill it well.

      Writing this blog, I may reach a few people I’ll never meet in my lifetime. The intent isn’t to influence you, dear reader, but it also isn’t to shut you out of the conversation. Every day, flying by as they do, the blog is a postcard to the world. Read by some, glanced at by others, ignored by the vast majority. And that’s as it should be. This is part of my something, even if it isn’t everything.

    • No Small Thing

      What does one do with the post after 2500 posts? We begin again, naturally. For what are we to do with the next but demonstrate that we’ve grown a bit in these hours? To spoon away at infinity is no small thing. And perhaps stop carrying on about numbers and immerse in poetry once again. Here’s one by Pablo Neruda that left me awestruck and stays with me still:

      I am one of those who live
      in the middle of the sea and close to the twilight,
      A little beyond those stones.

      When I came
      and saw what was happening
      I decided on the spot.

      The day had spread itself
      And everything was light
      And the sea was beating
      Like a salty lion,
      Many-handed.

      All that deserted space was singing
      And I, lost and awed,
      Looking toward the silence,
      Opened my mouth and said:
      “Mother of the foam,
      Expansive solitude,
      Here I will begin my own rejoicing,
      My particular poetry.”

      From then on I was never
      Let down by a single wave.
      I always found the flavor of the sky
      In the water, in the earth,
      And the wood and the sea burned together
      Through the lonely winters.

      I am grateful to the earth
      for having waited
      for me
      when the sky and sea came together
      like two lips touching;
      for that’s no small thing, no?—
      to have lived
      through one solitude to arrive at another,
      to feel oneself many things and recover wholeness.

      I love all the things there are,
      And of all fires
      Love is the only inexhaustible one;
      And that’s why I go from life to life,
      From guitar to guitar,
      And I have no fear
      Of light or of shade.

      And almost being earth myself,
      I spoon away at infinity.

      So no one can ever fail
      To find my doorless numberless house—
      There between dark stones,
      facing the flash
      of the violent salt,
      there we live, my woman and I,
      there we take root.
      Grant us help then.
      Help us to be more of the earth each day!
      Help us to be
      More the sacred foam,
      More the swish of the wave!
      — Pablo Neruda, This is where we live

      I realize I haven’t posted any of Pablo Neruda’s poetry on this blog before this one. It’s an oversight on my part, partly because of an inclination to post the entire poem, partly because I don’t speak Spanish and rely heavily on the translation. But what a translation! And with that in mind, I hope to explore more of his work in future posts. Semper discens, semper crescens (always learning, always growing).