Alexandersmap

    Tag: Memento Mori

    • As Best We Can

      “I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.” — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

      It’s been a while since I’ve quoted Henry. I think it was the bumper crop of acorns that prompted me to revisit his work. When you live amongst the oak trees, you experience the full gamut of seasons with them, from catkins to acorns to stubborn leaves that hold on long after the maples and ash trees have gone bare. The oaks were here first, and (hopefully) they’ll be here long after I leave this place. I am but a steward of the land in my time.

      We know that time is flying rapidly along, because we experience the fruits of our own seasons. My catkin season is long past, I’m gathering as many acorns as I can before the harvest is over. With any luck, my own leaves will hold as an oaks, and not a swamp maple’s. Time will tell.

      The lesson, of course, is to learn to live according to our nature, but also in harmony with nature. Those who thrive in a lifetime do so with vigor, but also balance. So it is that I got back to my kettle bell workouts, and read in earnest, and yes, write this blog to keep growing and flourishing as best I can. We all ought to strive to deeply root ourselves with a sense of place and time and see just how far we can stretch ourselves towards the light. To exist otherwise isn’t really living at all.

    • Do You See?

      Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, “You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams.”
      Said the leaf indignant, “Low-born and low-dwelling! Songless, peevish thing! You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing.”
      Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept. And when spring came she waked again—and she was a blade of grass.
      And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, “O these autumn leaves! They make such noise! They scatter all my winter dreams.” — Kahlil Gibran, Said a Blade of Grass

      Stepping out with the pup, the acorns thudding across the yard, the crisp welcome of change in the air. A perfect day for an autumn tale, and Gibran’s classic fits the bill nicely. Why haven’t I used this before? Have I, and don’t recall? Everything is recycled eventually, given enough time.

      We have a few weeks to go before the leaves really begin to fall vigorously. It’s still harvest time for most everything. There’s still time to track the changes, to be aware, to present. Dare wait a day and look at all we’ve missed!

      I’m reminded of a rower I once coached who came from a different part of the country. Autumn in New England was all new to him, and he marveled at everything. Every day he would get to the boathouse early and look at a maple tree to register the changes from the day before. He did that for the entire fall season, from green and leafy to bare tree limbs, never taking a picture, just being present with that one tree every day. And in his shared awareness, I began to see what was right in front of me all along.

      A lot of years have passed since that time. I wonder what ever happened to that rower, and all of those rowers, really. Reflecting on the accumulated distance, I feel compelled to be more aware myself. For the changes come quickly as the days grow shorter. What’s here today will change tomorrow. The cycle continues well beyond our time here to witness it all. Do you see?

    • With Urgency and Focus

      “Do that thing that honors life.” — John Kenney, I See You’ve Called in Dead

      I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating. I have people in my life who question me for writing about death. I remind them that Memento mori is not a morbid fixation, it’s a call to action. We must acknowledge our ending in order to begin living fully, with urgency and focus.

      John Kenney’s book is delightfully funny with an underlying sadness that washes over you in alternating waves. It’s a lot like life in this way. We fully savor joie de vivre precisely because we experience darker moments in our lives. How can we know the good if we never experience the bad?

      If I repeat myself, it’s simply a reminder to do more of the things that honor life. We are each blessed to be alive for this brief window of time. Optimizing that which makes us most alive seems prudent given the certainty of our eventual expiration. Dance with life, even as we accept the reality that the music will end.

    • In Magnificent Glow

      “I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.” — Jack London

      Happy Labor Day for those who observe it. We might use this occasion to confirm that the path we are on is a sound one. We might even dare for more in our lives than the answer to that very American question, “So what do you do?”

      I was challenged recently about purpose. Specifically, what will I do one day when I retire. If our careers are widely thought of as our purpose and identity, it follows that when we retire (or otherwise lose a job) both purpose and identity would take a massive hit.

      Perhaps. Then again, if your purpose and identity were never quite wrapped around some job or title, then maybe we will be just fine without some resume filler with dates attached. Maybe there’s far more to us than a string of career milestones.

      Do we aspire to be ground to dust in some job du jour, or follow passion to its logical end? I tell you, we must embrace the brevity of life! Not celebrate it, mind you, but know deep within that this is it, and we must then do with it all that we may in our brief dance. Memento mori…. So carpe diem the heck out of each day.

    • The Alexander Hamilton Farewell Tour

      “Those who stand for nothing fall for everything.” — Alexander Hamilton

      An interesting, if slightly morbid twist on travel is to visit the graves of famous people who died young, and combine it with a visit to the place where they met their demise. Some places, like Normandy, with the D-Day beaches and cemeteries, are obvious opportunities to combine the two. Other opportunities sneak up on you through serendipity.

      A visit to Metro New York afforded such an opportunity. Walking past Trinity Church on the way to Ground Zero and the 9/11 Memorial, we realized the opportunity to pay our respects to Alexander Hamilton at his gravesite in the graveyard adjacent to the church. As with most graveyards, we walk in history along ground that has largely remained the same since the interred last saw daylight. In Lower Manhattan, with modern skyscrapers all around you, the opportunity to walk amongst 400 years of untouched history is sobering.

      The next day, we took the ferry from Manhattan over to Weehawken, New Jersey to the place where Aaron Burr shot him in the most famous duel in American history. To see the rock where Hamilton bled out on encaged at the top reminded me a bit of Plymouth Rock. Who knows if it’s really the rock or not? But it offered an opportunity to see roughly where he died, which was about 20 feet above the Hudson River.

      It turned out all that climbing wasn’t necessary to actually see the Weehawken Dueling Grounds, but those grounds are either train tracks or otherwise paved over at this point. No matter, the views from the Hamilton Memorial were absolutely worth the climb up the stairs to the top of the cliff. It turned out to be a fine way to say farewell to New York and its famous resident too.

      Alexander Hamilton’s memorial
      Eliza Hamilton
      That rock
      The million dollar view from Weehawken

    • A Thrilling Something

      Do you still remember: falling stars,
      how they leapt slantwise through the sky
      like horses over suddenly held-out hurdles
      of our wishes—did we have so many?—
      for stars, innumerable, leapt everywhere;
      almost every gaze upward became
      wedded to the swift hazard of their play,
      and our heart felt like a single thing
      beneath that vast disintegration of their brilliance—
      and was whole, as if it would survive them!
      — Rainer Maria Rilke

      August is ending, and so are longer days. I don’t mind the darkness so much, for it opens up other opportunities. Have a look up and see all that we miss scurrying about in the daylight. Just this morning the brilliant kaleidoscope of sunrise greeted the pup and me as we ventured beyond the threshold. She had her nose to the ground, while my own was pointed at the skies. We survey all but the middle, the pup and I.

      The Perseids came and went this year, with the inevitable ill-timed overcast skies blocking the show at peak where I live. Still, I saw a few shooting stars this month—enough to keep me looking for more. A meteor is a shock to the senses as it streaks across the sky. Where a moment before there was vast sameness, for an instant there’s a thrilling something burst upon the scene, before it disappears as quickly as it came.

      We aren’t so different from shooting stars, are we? We think we will live forever until we realize we won’t. That realization in itself is a jolt to the vast sameness of living. Memento mori. Make this streak through the dark a little brighter, buckaroo! We ourselves are a thrilling something, if we seize the day. Hurry now: the ride goes quickly.

    • Rigidity Will Be the Death of Us

      Here is an amazement—once I was twenty years old and in
      every motion of my body there was a delicious ease,
      and in every motion of the green earth there was
      a hint of paradise,
      and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.
      — Mary Oliver, Am I Not Among the Early Risers

      Back-to-back posts quoting Mary Oliver? There’s no arguing that she is a frequent guest in my writing and in my mind. In fact, I quote her so often that I make it a point to avoid quoting her. The blog isn’t a fan page for a specific poet, it’s a series of observations put into words one day to the next.

      Earlier this summer I simply stopped writing. I’d had a writing streak of a couple of thousand posts and ended it deliberately. Even as I began writing again the inclination to publish every day became less essential. When I have something to say I’ll say it. I don’t expect the world will grind to a halt. The only thing we are assured of is an ending one day. Memento mori.

      Once I was twenty. Where does the time go? The trick is a healthy body and sharp mind, kicking bad health down the curb as long as possible. But more, it’s walking through life with a healthy sense of curiosity and wonder. Life is fluid, and we ought to be too. Rigidity will be the death of us. Endings are simply beginnings for something else. Stay open, keep moving, and be curious.

    • You Are Young. Live!

      “Live all you can. It’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t matter what you do — but live. This place makes it all come over me. I see it now. I haven’t done so — and now I’m old. It’s too late. It has gone past me — I’ve lost it. You have time. You are young. Live!” — William Dean Howells

      I’m writing this on the opposite end of the day from the norm. The reason is a keen inclination to live today, despite the usual distractions that life throws at us. And oh, the distractions! But it’s now or never, when it comes to living. Tempus fugit.

      It doesn’t matter what we do, so long as we live. There are no do-overs, there are no second-chances, there are only regrets if we wait any longer. There is only now.

      As The Grass Roots put it, Sha-la, la-la-la-la, live for today. Sure, plan for tomorrow, but never defer that living part. We are young, or at least as young as we’ll ever be. So carpe flippin’ diem, already.

    • Something Gritty and Tangible

      Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
      Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
      So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
      Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
      — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Theologian’s Tale; Elizabeth

      We modern time travelers are forever busy, distracted and hustling on to the next. We ought to remember that many encounters we have will be our one and only exchange with a fellow time-traveler. Or it may be the last of many. The lesson? Savor the time together, however fleeting it may be. For we will never pass this way again.

      Since his untimely passing last week, I’ve been on a Glen Hansard binge. This often happens when an artist passes—we are reminded of their work, and seek to know more about what they’ve left behind that we may have missed. And with Glen Hansard, there is a whole catalog of brilliant, stunning music and film to choose from. Dare I say, he was the Van Morrison of Gen X.

      One might say the deck is stacked against us reaching even a small percentage of our potential, let alone our potential time with others. We must prioritize, and hope that we encounter the right ships in the night along our way, and at just the right time. This requires our receptiveness, active awareness and diligence, before the opportunity slips away forever.

      We can’t possibly experience everything, or know everyone. Inevitably something slips right through our grasp. Like sand, we can’t grab hold of it too tightly or too much squeezes through. But we can grab our share and hold on just tightly enough to feel we’ve got something gritty and tangible on our hands even as the rest flows past us in a whir. Sometimes, maybe that’s enough.

    • RIP Glen Hansard

      I’m workin’ on the high hope
      And if it all works out, you might just see me
      Or hear from me in a while
      I’m gonna make it across this tight rope
      Then I’m comin’ for my prize
      No more I’ll be waitin’ ’round
      While life just passes by
      Maybe when our hearts realign
      Maybe when we’ve both had some time
      I’m gonna see you there
      — Glen Hansard, High Hope

      Hearing this morning that Glen Hansard was killed in a motorcycle accident in Dublin earlier today, leaving behind a wife and young child. Hansard joined the soundtrack I keep just for myself, in quiet times, when I’d grown weary of the noise and clutter of the world. He’ll live on there in my soundtrack, and perhaps yours too. Still, I think of those he leaves behind, and the shock of it all.

      I’m reminded of that Sting song at moments like this, about how fragile we are. Memento mori. And I’m reminded again to meet this moment squarely, for the gift that it represents. This is indeed all we have. Rest in Peace Glen Hansard.