Alexandersmap

    Tag: Mary Oliver

    • 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.

    • 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.

       

    • The Bay

      “But water is a question, so many living things in it,
      but what is it, itself, living or not? Oh, gleaming
      generosity, how can they write you out?”
      – Mary Oliver, Some Things, Say the Wise Ones

      These past few days I’ve gotten re-acquainted with our old family friend Buzzards Bay.  This particular body of water has always been a living force that demands attention. And I’ve paid attention. A steady stream of boats and ships and barges move across the surface. Osprey hover above until the thrilling moment they plunge to the water for a fish. Cormorants work their drama under the surface, swimming about in our world until they suddenly dive underwater in search of fish, then surface in unpredictable places that betray the chase that happened below. There’s always something to pay attention to around the bay, so full of life and activity in the warmer months, but especially I pay attention to the Bay itself.

      The tides sweep in and out, marked by ripples in the channel and the pull of boats on moorings. Big beach, tiny beach, big beach, tiny beach over and over again in a timeless gravity dance with the moon.  The tide is a big topic around these parts, whether people go to the beach or not.  I greatly prefer the ease of a high tide, but plunge in either way.  It only changes how far I walk.

      Above all, the Bay is a mother, birthing and hosting millions of lives every year in her nutrient-rich waters.  Like a mother she tolerates a lot from the kids playing games around her.  The Bay is a chameleon: changing colors with the sky. A palette of blue, green, silver, gold, orange and dark gray flecked in white announce the mood of this old girl, and you’d best pay attention. She has no patience for those who don’t respect her moods.  I’ve learned to give her respect, and I’m grateful for her generosity in the times when I didn’t pay enough respect. It will not happen again.

      I clearly remember the first time I swam in Buzzards Bay, tasting the saltiness of the water, and the relative warmth compared to the water north of the Cape.  I was in awe then, and still am in many ways.  I’ve raised my own children to love the Bay and hope they’ll pay it forward for future generations.  I think she’ll be in good hands.

    • Sharing Light

      “Let tenderness pour from your eyes
      The way the Sun gazes
      warmly on the earth.”
      – Hafiz, If It Is Not Too Dark

      There’s enough darkness in the world. Enough anger, accusation and bitterness. Outraged darkness. Indignant darkness. Resentful darkness… it’s not for me. I prefer to share light.

      Have I been outraged, indignant and resentful? Of course! There’s plenty of material out there to work with. But why throw yourself into that toxic bonfire? Trolls need people to pay attention to their fire to fuel it.  But don’t follow them into the flames, or you’ll just burn up with the others.  Their bonfires don’t warm, don’t sustain, don’t comfort.

      The alternative is sharing our light. Light is energy, just as the sun casts warmth and vitality on the earth. The friend offering reassurance and the resolve to stick with you through it all. The parent offering unwavering patience and love to a child. Seems a better place to be.  And that’s where I tend to roam, quietly pouring tenderness from my eyes and doing what I can to brighten things up.

       “We live in a flash of light; evening comes and it is night forever.” – Anthony De Mello, Awakening

      Life is a short little burst of energy followed by darkness, or if you will, the unknown.  All we have is this little sprint we’re collectively running together.  Some fall by the wayside, others think they can win this race by tripping others up or taking a shortcut.  But most of us just sprint along at the best pace we can, full of all the human reactions to the challenges and surprises along the way.  It seems that we ought to dance and sing a bit more on this march across time instead of grumbling the whole way. Inspiring and building each other up, and lighting the way for those who are lost. It seems a better path, don’t you think?

      “Let us hope
      it will always be like this,
      each of us going on
      in our inexplicable ways
      building the universe”
      – Mary Oliver, Song of the Builders

      I had one more sunrise by the bay before I make my way back to the northern woods. I debated whether to post a picture or not, but ultimately reminded myself I post pictures that highlight the beauty I see in the world. When you find something beautiful, shouldn’t you share it?

    • Horses and Butterflies and Viruses

      “For years and years I struggled
      just to love my life. And then

      the butterfly
      rose, weightless, in the wind.
      “Don’t love your life
      too much,” it said,

      and vanished
      into the world.”
      – Mary Oliver, One or Two Things

      I woke up restless. It builds rather than dissipates as I go through my morning ritual of hydration and caffeine and reading. I recognize it immediately. The writing will be more difficult today, I thought, and surely it has been. I struggle at times with structure: chafing at rigidity and schedules and routine. But I chase these things anyway, thinking a proper to-do list brings order to life. My morning routine saves me more than it imposes on me, and today will be no different.

      Yesterday I walked four miles at lunchtime to shake off the feeling. In the last mile of the walk I saw the horses by the fence and eagerly anticipated saying hello to them when I reached the bottom of the hill. As I was thinking this another walker came into my vision, marched purposefully to the fence with his camera phone rising above his head and spooked the horses away. Resentment at this intrusion boiled in me until I realized it would have been reversed had I been in his shoes and he mine. The horses didn’t care which of us intruded first, only that they wanted no intruders. They stood at the edge of the fence because they’d found their end point of freedom. Yet rebelliously snuck their heads through the slats for a nibble of grass on the other side. I finished my walk with mixed feelings.

      Like most of the world I need to fly away from the cage; to weightlessly catch the wind and let it carry me away. To vanish into the world and return again someday, maybe. Such is life in the cage, it seizes the restlessness inside you and amplifies it. Serving the greater good staying in place offers mixed feelings as well. The virus doesn’t care who it intrudes upon, only that it has room to grow, and careless or prudent hosts alike offer that given the opportunity. The virus is restless too. Who’s patience will run out first?

    • Here We Are

      Google maps is still helpfully telling me my car is parked 90 feet away. My car hasn’t moved since I went to restock the groceries Monday. But I appreciate the reminder of why someone wrote that code anyway. They were thinking of their normal – our collective normal – not this current abnormal.

      “Wherever you go there you are.” – Jon Cabot-Zin

      Here we all are. Collectively working through the latest normal like I’m working through this cup of coffee. Our lives are like a cup of coffee in the collective universe; insanely brief flashes of heat and water and a bit of flavorful energy transferring from one place to another. Is that enough? It depends on where you transfer that energy, doesn’t it?

      Mary Oliver wrote of Walt Whitman, “Clearly his idea of paradise was here—this hour and this place.” This hour, and this place, they’re all that matter. It’s the magic hour, wherever you are. What shall we do with it?

      “We are temporary visitors in this world; after we are educated, we are called to different places, and we pass away. But the general education of mankind goes on, very slowly but without interruption.” – Leo Tolstoy

      Maybe that’s the gist of it, we’re all individuals in the giant collective that marches on picking up wisdom and passing it on to the next individual. Timeless. The great conversation. Different voices in the infinite choir lending our song and trying our best to harmonize with the universe. A few bad apples singing a different tune along the way who ultimately get drowned out by the harmonies of the rest. Seems about right to me.

      Well, the coffee is finished and the mug is cooling back to room temperature. The magic hour is up. Thought I’d something more to say? The day calls once again: the next hour is at hand. We stack hours up like stepping stones, slowly climbing to wherever the time takes us. Where shall we go with the time that is left?

    • Living Heartily

      “I’m not the river
      that powerful presence.
      And I’m not the black oak tree
      which is patience personified.
      And I’m not redbird
      who is a brief life heartily enjoyed.
      Nor am I mud nor rock nor sand
      which is holding everything together.
      No, I am none of these meaningful things, not yet.      ”
      – Mary Oliver, I’m Not The River

      I walked outside barefoot to a chorus of woodland song early this morning. Robins and cardinals and even those clever rascals the crows were all singing to each other at the edge of the woods where humans begin. Birds don’t give a thought to human worries about COVID-19 or mortgage payments or how many steps show up on your watch. No, they go on living heartily, not thinking about the briefness of the duration but working hard to ensure this particular moment isn’t their last.

      It’s Spring in New England. The world wakes up similarly to the way it woke up yesterday, but there’s a slight shift in attitude. The mild winter and a pandemic cancelling everything normal in life and Mookie Betts dumped for money and Tom Brady moving on all make this Spring feel different from any other in my memory, but walking out into the morning chorus you see it’s all the stories we tell ourselves. We’re all just living this brief moment and trying to live another day. Stoicism offers a guide to living more powerfully.  To accept fate (Amor Fati) and our ultimate fate (Memento Mori), and to apply this knowledge, this understanding of the world, to embrace every moment.

      “It’s time you realized that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      I’m working on things just as we all are. Holding things and people together, working to be patient with this world around me, working on small, daily improvement. Living heartily might seem a challenge right now, but it’s more important than ever. I’d think it was a lot more challenging a hundred or a thousand years ago. No, we live in relative comfort compared to those before us. They’d surely laugh at the things we call hardship. We can hold it all together and get beyond this too. Walking barefoot out to greet this first day of Spring and embrace the chorus seems a good first step. But there’s so much more to do with this day, isn’t there?