Alexandersmap

    Tag: Brian Doyle

    • Shards of Light

      “We’re only here for a minute. We’re here for a little window. And to use that time to catch and share shards of light and laughter and grace seems to me the great story.” – Brian Doyle, from the Forward of One Long River Of Song

      The news about the Sycamore tree at Hadrian’s Wall reached New Hampshire perhaps around the same time that it reached everywhere else in the world. That one person can bring light or darkness to an inordinate amount of people is secretly understood by most of us, but we all hope that people will choose light. Surely, most do, or our species would never evolve and grow. And yet we must be prepared for the darkness.

      The obvious thing about my writing is that I remain almost singularly focused on the positive. This is a reminder to myself and anyone who might stumble upon this blog that there is grace and beauty in this world, in spades, and it’s often the common ground that illuminates all of us. Sometimes it’s a simple thing, like a dahlia holding on to summer after the rest of the garden fades away. In a way that tree along Hadrian’s Wall was like that dahlia, holding on long after the rest of the forest was swept away. Do we focus on the beauty in that realization or the darkness of how it came to be?

      Like a muscle broken down through physical stress, darkness brings with it the opportunity for growth and improvement. Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls this antifragility, in which we grow stronger collectively in the face of the stressors that life throws our way. But only if we learn and grow together. Alternatively, we might shrink back within ourselves and atrophy. We must choose growth, and go to the light.

      Forget Instagram-worthy singularity. I’d plant a thousand trees where one stood at Hadrian’s Wall. Return the forest to the land. Bring beauty back a thousandfold to honor the last holdout. That would be a great ending to a dark story.

    • On Humility

      “I began, slowly and dimly, to realize that humble was the only finally truly honest way to be in this life.” – Brian Doyle, The Final Frontier

      “You must trust that you being the best possible you matters somehow. That trying to be an honest and tender parent will echo for centuries through your tribe. That doing your chosen work with creativity and diligence will shiver people far beyond your ken. That being an attentive and generous friend and citizen will prevent a thread or two of the social fabric from unraveling. And you must do all of this with the certain knowledge that you will never get proper credit for it, and in fact the vast majority of things you do right will go utterly unremarked.” – Brian Doyle, The Final Frontier

      There are recurring themes in Brian Doyle’s writing; of wonder and humility, of facing hardship and death with dignity and grace, and of striving to do your best in the face of it all.  This frantic, breathless, clickbait world could learn something from reading Doyle. But mostly they’ll read 7 Easy Steps to Millions or watch a TikTok video instead.  Doyle is for thinkers and seekers.  Count me amongst the shivered, Brian.  I’d like to believe I’m a thinker, but that wouldn’t be very humble, would it?  No, more a student I suppose.  So I seek his writing out the way I linger on Mary Oliver poems or ponder Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

      Humility is the path to happiness in this insane world.  But humility isn’t celebrated, isn’t sexy, and most of all doesn’t drive traffic to your web site or prompt viewers to binge watch your work.  And so there’s a disconnect on how to live and how the world projects how one should live.  I believe most people live in distraction to avoid the naked truth of existence.  They puff themselves up into characters that startle and awe the crowd, and are celebrated for being larger than life by other people seeking distraction.  It all explodes into an orgy of narcissism and ego and greed and hunger for more.  Empathy and humility are shoved aside as signs of weakness by the loud talkers and outraged finger pointers and the UPPER CASE WRITERS who want to be seen as the experts on all such things.

      Last night I took a walk in air so thick I could swim in it.  Just me and the bats swirling above, and nobody else lingering in the soupy air.  I noticed more contrails splitting the atmosphere than I’ve seen in some time.  Perhaps things are getting back to normal again, or maybe it’s just planes full of Amazon Prime packages floating across time to the waiting arms of consumers everywhere.  Either way there were more planes than before.  But thankfully more bats swirling in their chaotic dance across the dusky sky.  The silence was broken by the roar of a testosterone-fueled, would be Fast & Furious stunt driver with modified muffler accelerating on the main road to speeds well above safe limits.  I quietly saluted him as he roared past, oblivious to my presence on a side street nearby, but surely celebrating his Right (capital R) to express himself under God and the Constitution he’s never read.  On the face of it he and I don’t have a lot in common, don’t listen to the same music, don’t watch the same movies (I’ve never seen a Vin Diesel car movie) and might not even vote the same way.  But we’re both living at the same point in history, dealing with the realities of a pandemic and economic uncertainty and climate change and political divisiveness, albeit in different ways.  In short we’re roughly the same, just handling things differently.

      “I thought
      how the sun
      blazes
      for everyone just
      so joyfully
      as it rises
      under the lashes
      of my own eyes, and I thought
      I am so many!”
      – Mary Oliver, Sunrise

      I’ve found people to be the same all over the world, largely generous and caring.  We tend to focus on the outliers and the boisterous instead of the humble and kind.  A reminder that we’re all in this together is helpful now and then.  For all my anger at images of the very small percentage of uninformed, outraged misfits burning masks or some such thing, there’s a vast majority of people handling things with dignity and a healthy dose of humility.  And that gives me hope for the future.  Humanity has made a lot of mistakes in how we handle the environment and each other, but we mostly want to get it right so that those we care about can have a good life too.  Humility is thinking beyond your own needs and ego, of recognizing there’s something bigger than you in this world, and for all the madness of 2020 I see far more reasons for hope than despair.

       

    • Realizing the Path

      “The path of water is not noticed by water, it is realized by water.… To study the way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to awaken into the ten thousand things.” – Brian Doyle, from the Forward of One Long River Of Song

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

      I’ve been thinking about why I write this blog every day. Surely it isn’t for money, or to influence the masses, or even for the thrill of likes and affirmation. Fame? No thanks. A form of immortality? Come on now… No, each post is a step down the path and a vote for identity. I’m a bit overdue to walk this path, but I’m happy to be on it now. Ironically, spending a hour or two writing every morning clears my head enough to be more productive in my day job. I guess it clears the plaque out of my brain cells. It also makes me more focused at home and more engaged with the world around me. All wins in my book. I think that’s enough.

    • Consider The Hummingbird

      “Consider the hummingbird for a long moment…. Each one visits a thousand flowers a day. They can dive at sixty miles an hour. They can fly backward. They can fly more than five hundred miles without pausing to rest. But when they rest they come close to death: on frigid nights, or when they are starving, they retreat into torpor, their metabolic rate slowing to a fifteenth of their normal sleep rate, their hearts sludging nearly to a halt, barely beating, and if they are not soon warmed, if they do not soon find that which is sweet, their hearts grow cold, and they cease to be… The price of their ambition is a life closer to death; they suffer more heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures than any other living creature.”

      “Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise, and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old.”

      “No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside.” – Brian Doyle, Joyas Voladoras

      I get a bit breathless when I read something as stunning as Joyas Voladoras, and perhaps I share too much of it here.  It’s from a collection of essays by Brian Doyle in One Long River Of Song.  I’ve been saving it until I saw my first hummingbird of the season, figuring it would be a nice way to mark the occasion.  Well, that happened over two days ago, and I’m happy to share the sparkling light of Joyas Voladoras with you now.  Welcome back, hummingbirds, I’m glad to see you return to the garden.

      I play my part in keeping them from retreating to tupor with as many hummingbird-friendly plants and flowers as I can justify cramming into the sunniest corners of my backyard.  And in return they keep me from returning to tupor, if only for this short season.  For that I’m grateful, and I keep finding more excuses to add maybe just one more plant.  The bees return first, followed by the hummingbirds, and soon the butterflies will return too and the garden will be complete.  Or maybe it’s me that will be, or maybe all of us, in this together with our collection of heartbeats thumping to the song of today.

      Reading an essay like Joyas Voladoras swings the spotlight onto my own work, and I recognize that I have a ways to go in the writing.  But the blog serves as my apprenticeship and I keep putting it out there even if it misses the mark or is welcomed with grateful indifference.  I’m silently plotting an escape for my ambitions, one post at a time.  Words and structure of sentences are one thing, but weaving sparkling light and magic into those words is another.  What makes you breathless as a reader?  We all churn inside, don’t we?  How do we share that with the world?  Bird by bird, today and tomorrow too.  There’s enough tupor in the world, we all need a bit more warmth.

    • Grateful For The Connection

      They say the Striper return to New Hampshire waters when the lilacs bloom. By “they” I mean a guy standing in front of me talking to another guy six feet in front of him. That the statement was overheard in a COVID-19 mandated line to get into a store is a curiosity of our times, but interesting to me if only because I don’t generally participate in fishing talk. I’m not much of a fisherman, more a fish eater, but I instinctively heard the truth in that statement.

      I’ve been in the woods of New Hampshire for a month now, and other than two trips to visit the in-laws from afar I haven’t strayed out of the 603. I’m plotting covert salt water visits in my mind. I scroll through old photos on my phone and think about excuses to visit Cape Cod once again. Salt water is just out of reach… damn. I’m told that social isolation helps flatten the curve and like most people in the world I hear the truth in that statement. I’ll remain here in the woods for now.

      “Sometimes we are starving to see every bit of what is right in front of us.” – Brian Doyle, The Shrew

      I’ve learned the truth about myself over the years. Especially now I suppose. I’ve learned that it’s easier to listen when you turn off the flow of distraction the world offers. I suppose that’s why people turn on the flow; for distraction. Or to feel connected to the world. We all do, in some measure. The truth about me is I don’t need much distraction. But I do need connection. I learned long ago to have connection you need to reach out for it, because most people are dancing with their own distraction. I turned to the poets and songwriters because they offer connection in spades, even when they’re long gone from this world. If they are so bold as to reach out to me I ought to listen to what they have to say.

      As I stood in that line waiting for enough people to exit that I might enter the store, I found silent connection with a couple of fishermen. It was a bit like stealing because I picked up pieces from them but didn’t give anything back in return. So instead I paid it forward with others I’ve spoken with since, and now with you. Connection is a chain, and we are the links. Distraction weakens the link, attention strengthens it. It doesn’t always seem like it, but I do try to pay attention. And since I have yours, let me say I’m grateful for the connection.