Alexandersmap

    Tag: Mary Oliver

    • Graced with the Ordinary

      “Let the world
      have its way with you,
      luminous as it is with mystery
      and pain –
      graced as it is
      with the ordinary.”
      – Mary Oliver, Summer Morning

      Today, for his birthday, I used the camel hair shaving brush while shaving. He gave it to me in a ceremonial way, as if turning over command of the Bridge, about eighteen months ago. Hard to say when, really, but it was clear it meant something to him and he wanted me to have it. And to use it. Well, old habits die hard, and when you shave your face every day you form deep habits. Still, I’d use the brush now and then because it performs. Nothing lathers your shaving cream like a good shaving brush.

      The small, ordinary things stand out for me. Maybe it’s the writing that draws my eye to the commonplace, but honestly I think it may be the other way around. I’ve always had an inordinate focus on the small things around me, and those small things seek a voice in the universe. We honor the things we amplify.

      The old Navy pilot would pull me aside and talk of my writing, such that it is, and encourage me to keep going with it. He read a lot, he knew good writing, and he saw something in mine that sparked his interest. It was shortly after that that he gave me the shaving brush. Maybe he had it in mind for me all along, but it felt connected. And I feel the connection with him when I use it to shave.

      Happy Birthday Pops.

    • Agamenticus Sunrise

      “It is a serious thing
      just to be alive
      on this fresh morning
      in this broken world.”
      – Mary Oliver, Invitation

      I woke up twenty minutes before the 4:30 wake-up call and contemplated skipping the planned sunrise hike. But I wouldn’t skip an early morning business flight, so why skip on this? With no good answer I got up and dressed in the dark.

      Driving an hour, it stuck me how many people were already up. Cars lined up at a traffic light heading to some job or other, while I drove the opposite way. I had work to do today as well. But first this. Arriving at the access road, I read the sign informing me the gate wouldn’t be open until 7 AM. I was the only car in the lot next to the gate to start this sunrise trek. Others would follow soon enough.

      I geared up and started hiking the half mile up the road. Hard to even call it a hike… a brisk walk up the hill? Semantics don’t matter, the destination did. It was already brightening enough that I could slip my headlamp into my coat pocket. This walk would be just enough to warm my core for the cold breeze at the summit.

      Mount Agamenticus is an old mountain, worn down by time. It’s more of a hill now at 692 feet, but does have a prominence of 522 feet. But 220 million years ago it was part of a 20,000 foot tall volcano. They say it was once part of Africa. Now you look out and see the Atlantic Ocean and a long way to the continents that were once joined. A lot can happen in 220 million years; continents shift, mountains erode, people come and go. That’s what? Eight billion sunrises? For the sun and for this mountain it was one more in a long string of greeting each other.

      This morning it was my turn in a long succession of people standing atop this old volcano gazing out at the sun rising to begin another day. Billions of sunrises and this morning I got to share the reunion between the mountain, the ocean and the sun. And it was indeed a serious thing just to be alive to see it.

    • Life As You See It

      “Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music—the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.” – Henry Miller

      “The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.” – Julia Cameron

      Paying attention is a gift, and writing about it sharpens the focus. I believe that blogging has done more to wake me up to the wonders of my immediate world than anything save the birth of my children. Having children developed my habit of capturing moments in pictures, but the years my kids were growing up were also years the writing quietly lay dormant, biding time. You don’t have much quiet time when the mad dash from diapers to packing school lunches to soccer and dance recitals to driving to away games to picking colleges is happening. And yet I wish I’d written it all down anyway.

      Now, after the mad dash, the writing stirred awake from its slumber. I look around at all there is to see in this world. All there is to learn about the world. All there is to read and taste and see and most importantly, to do. Faraway places will have to wait once again, but there’s so much to see right outside.

      Read a Mary Oliver poem and you see that you’ve been blind the entire time. Chastened yet challenged, you look more deeply at the world in front of you and deeper into the soul. And you write.

    • The Other Side

      “What happens to the leaves after they turn red and golden and fall away?”
      – Mary Oliver, Roses, Late Summer

      I walked out just before bedtime for a quick look at the sky. The Northern Taurids peaked the night before, but we had overcast skies and alas, nothing to see here. A quick scan revealed another disappointing cloud cover masking the show. And still Mars shone through the passing clouds, offering hope that if I tried hard enough, maybe I’d see through to the other side. I went to bed instead.

      The Leonids offer a second chance, peaking on Tuesday night. The forecast doesn’t look favorable for the peak, but Monday night looks promising, and I promise myself I’ll stay up late to see them. We’ll see.

      Promises to ourselves have a way of falling away, like those leaves on the tree. I know where those red and golden leaves go: right over the fence into the woods by the tarp-full. I see them now; mounds of brown, damp leaves transforming back to mulch to feed their kin. And I see them gathering once again on the front lawn, mocking previous hours of work. And I wonder, where did all of these ones come from?

      The other side is that place we can’t see but we know it’s there. The other side of a fitness goal is evasive when you’re looking at the scale or your splits and don’t see much progress. The completed novel, the perfect job, the perfect marriage, and whatever it is on the other side of life all tantalize us with how close they are, yet how elusive they remain.

      All we control is what we do now. The direction we point ourselves. The consistency and honesty of our effort. Accepting this for all that it is. The rest blows in the wind, landing where it may.

    • Willing to be Dazzled

      “Still, what I want in my life
      is to be willing
      to be dazzled—
      to cast aside the weight of facts
      and maybe even
      to float a little
      above this difficult world.”
      – Mary Oliver, The Ponds

      Maybe it’s the dulling effect of years staring at screens, where every moment is designed to dazzle you into staying. Don’t click away! Stay! Wait, look at this! I believe too many people have lost their willingness to be dazzled by the world. And that’s a shame. The world can be dazzling indeed.

      I quickly fall behind when people start listing the shows they’ve watched. I’ve watched a few, but I just can’t commit to binge-watching every episode of every series that’s been recommended. I feel like I’m missing out when I watch an early afternoon football game, not because I don’t love the game, but because its three hours of time that I might have spent outdoors or in conversation with someone of significance. I recognize that this makes me a bit different than the norm. I never professed to be normal.

      We’re halfway through September. Personally a rough month in a year so rough many would soon forget it. The weight of facts are overwhelming. There’s far more on my mind than being dazzled this week, but that’s the very time to open your eyes to the world and find the magic. For its out there waiting for you should you take the time to see. The sun still rises and sets, mountains and oceans still mark time and the world keeps spinning. There’s a Carolina Wren singing to me even as I write this as if to remind me the world is still here. And so must we be.

    • Unfolding Your Own Myth

      “Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” – Rumi

      There are a lot of stories out there. Stories of accomplishment, stories of conquest, stories of adventure and love and tragedies overcome. Humanity is full of stories. The ones we tell others to make them believe we’ve got it all figured out. The ones we tell ourselves to make ourselves believe we haven’t got anything figured out. Stories rule our lives.

      There are stories of who we’ve been, and what we’ve overcome to get here. And those stories are admirable. But lately I’m thinking more about where are you going now stories. Here we are, good, bad and all that lies in the middle. Thankfully we all woke up today, so what are we going to do with it?

      I like this Rumi challenge; unfold your own myth. Aren’t we all just works in progress doing the best we can with the pile of skills and experience and instinct that we woke up with this morning? Aren’t we all slowly unfolding our own myth? Is that myth a fighter of social media troll battles or a climber of mountains? Couch potato or fit and active? The person who hides in their job or the linchpin that keeps things going? Aspiring writer or actively writing?

      “Rise free before the dawn, and seek adventures.” – Henry David Thoreau

      Today is a random Wednesday in a string of weeks that make up 2020. We all have obligations to consider and honor, of course, but what of the rest of our time? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Just what kind of myth are we unfolding anyway? Make it a good one.

    • 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.