The Heart During Winter

In Winter, the heart holds reflection,
Knowing the solitude of self-determination.
It looks for echoes and significance,
In the exchange of a familiar hand.

Yet, wintertime draws one inward.
Beckoning firelight warms a hope within.
The winter heart lies snug inside,
Revisiting a day’s sunny ski slope.

Now is the time to discover meaning.
Defying control. Fostering consciousness.
Lifting viewpoints. Raising awareness.
Assessing plans for the future.

The heart in winter longs for rebirth,
To peer through the dark for a reason,
To ask and question. The Why.
To seek out a coming season's identity.

Terra Incognita

Maps made road trips with Dad a blast. Since a ten year old couldn’t drive, said ten year old was the navigator. Needless to say, this kid’s world held maps as a huge fascination. That makes today’s Google Earth a bit like porn. But that is another story….

 

Urban legends show that cartographers put down unmapped areas such as “Here Be dragons”, claiming crazy beasts or serpents to exist in the far corners of the earth (see Lenox Globe). One ponders if this was a major inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkein and the whole Hobbit series. In fact, the much maligned quote from the books and then the junior high play “over the Lonely Mountains through Mirkwood and the Withered Heath” rings in my head still today (if Joe was here he'd smirk and recite his monologue).

I crave old, paper maps. They are sketched-out canvases for the travel imagination, should one like to explore out of the comfort zone, that is. Old maps show lands yet untraveled or seen. They offer a matrix of material requiring one to fill in the path by foot or car or cross-country ski. Exploring maps helps us know places in our minds as fantastic, bizarre, shocking, or, well … flat and boring.

Never the less, a trusted map helps know the place before setting foot and eye into the setting. Before going to Spain last year, I utilized Google Earth to identify the alley and block around our rental apartment in Barcelona. It was good thing to have in mind as there were a few hours of adventure and stress before finding out the secret knock and Scottish password to get beyond the scary door (see above). THAT was not on the map.

The other day I street mapped our next destination.  Loreto, Baja Mexico. Can’t wait! I’m all mapped up and rarin’ to go. Though, I’m down just a notch as I’ve already seen it.

Even as I anticipate and support the emergence and development of digital, hand-held phones with GPS, I lament the disappearance of regular, paper maps. There is little space left for imagination to fill in the gaps as you can now see it in the palm of one’s hand. Today’s maps show a greater reality and leave little to resourcefulness of the mind. The need to know ahead of time has formally supplanted a wondrous experience of surging forward into an “in the moment” unknown.

The maps of old may have tantalized people with Terra Incognita, sea monsters, and large expanses of the unknown, but that didn’t stop explorers from traversing mountains or setting sail to the edge of the earth. So, why the urge to know a place ahead of setting foot there?

Ultimately, we have misplaced the imaginary destination. We have lost fiction before fact. RIP the last digitally unrecorded place on earth.

Broader Concerns

Martin Luther King said it best...

"No man has learned to live
until he can rise above the narrow confines
of his individualistic concerns
to the broader concerns of all humanity.
Length without breadth
is like a self-contained tributary
having no outward flow to the ocean.
Stagnant, still, and stale,
it lacks both life and freshness.
In order to live creatively
and meaningfully,
our self-concern must be wedded to other concern."

Remains of a Man's Day

That haunting movie was on again the other day and, after hours on the road within the last few weeks, it hasn't quite left the brain. The other day the t.v. remote found the instinctive impulse to stop and take another peak, if only to remind oneself of the soft underbelly of a respectful, middle-aged man. It isn't quite the Halloween scare you'd think, but rather a mental numbness of another sort.

It has been over 20 years since I was dragged kicking and screaming to see the movie The Remains of the Day. Yet the image of Anthony Hopkins, Mr. Stevens the Butler, sticks in one’s mind. Although the character is a man of honor and dignity, he is, for the most part, alone and unfulfilled. Empty. It is a fairly dark image of a man countered by a hefty respect for long hours, hard work, and putting the needs of others first.

It isn't currently important, really, just timely. When the movie was released in the early late 80s I saw it and I understood it, but did not truly get it. Fresh out of college, not yet married, and just starting a professional life of work, I was still in the making. The movie should have been forgettable and unremarkable to the college self save for the fact I knew men like Mr. Stevens. I worked with them. They were former professors. They were the middle class dads of friends and collegues who grew out of the depression era influenced generation ahead of me. It is a bit of my own father, who devoted his artistic soul to a vibrant career in music to struggle with early retirement and only a handful of gigs to satisfy his soul. And it is now me, twenty years into a career of giving my talents and dedication to one work project after another and coming home to happily cook, chauffer the kids, and attend to all the elements divorced/re-married dads do.

The Mr. Stevens character tapped into the silence and the unspoken hush of most dignified men. His self reflection is not lost on me. It is the dark, tacit part of us men not often shared. Though it could be Halloween-esque, it isn’t really a scary depressing place at all. It resembles center stage of an empty theater with a single, glowing bulb. It is a cigar, a glass of scotch, and an hour by oneself on the back patio. It is fishing or driving in silence. It is being. Respectful. Contemplative. Alone.

Men don’t share it because the answer is almost too simple. Get into the game. Stay in the light. Just leave the darkened mind-set and let that Emma Thompson character know of your true feelings and life can be complete. Yes, it can. I have. And, I am immensely happier for making the leap and trusting again. I didn't follow the script. But...

Apologies if you have read to this end with no real conclusion to offer up. All this rambling makes for incredibly boring reading, I'm sure. Most blogs of note get much further in today’s on-line culture by loudly bitching about something. But, to mer there is a sense of celebration in the balance between a man’s light and dark. One thrives in this balance. And that is ok.

Although he wasn't a role model, per se, Mr. Stevens taught me something once. And it has become clearer at the end of this day.

On the Eve of the First Debate

It would seem the majority of the people
Lean toward the two poles
Of mistrust and belief.
Grudgingly polarized
Between disenchantment and hope.
Disillusionment controls,
Yet, belief maintains the upper hand
In the calamity that is today.
Politics is a trench war run via circus management.
The partisan’s ability to compartmentalize
Prevents both bewilderment and imminent.
It feeds the conflict between belief or mistrust.

The Standard of Care

Why do you care?

Because, somebody has to care and I can’t help myself. I care because it is my job as a friend, husband, a father, and Marketing Director. And, if nobody cares it all just stagnates into mediocrity or falls apart altogether.

You know what this means.  Winemakers use pretty much the same fruit. But the ones that put that extra thought, the attention to detail, are the ones getting the WOW moment. The other wines down the road that cost the same are just ok. I might or might not be back.

My son’s grades are atrocious because he doesn’t care. Nobody else seems to care either.

The service at the sandwich shop is made up of non-caring college students just putting in their time to get the beer money. The customers don’t care. They just want a sandwich.

The cork flooring we ordered for the house is back ordered for months. We are incredibly inconvenienced, but the company getting our money could care less. None in the supply chain want to make an effort.

Well, that is all about to change because I do care. That alone makes a difference. If it is worth doing at all, it has value. You should care. I’m shopping again for a flooring company that actually wants me to buy their product. That was the last sandwich from that deli. My son has no choice IF he cares about a car someday. And, I only allow myself wine club memberships having a WOW factor.

When will you all learn the value of actually caring and going beyond mediocrity?

We, of the Individual

We, of the individual, possess a creative brain,

Voracious intellectual inquisitiveness,

In spite of basic function.

We, of the individual, have a memory,

A supremacy to reason and sway,

In spite of absentmindedness.

We, of the individual, formulate resolutions,

With a capacity to be subtle,

In spite of bad habits.

We, of the individual, possess potential,

A power to realize that potential in actuality,

In spite of the limits endured.