Brothers in Arms, and Riddles of Quotes
Pete visits from Vancouver, and celebrating 100 days of career pause with a few riddles.
Hey guys,
San Francisco mornings tinge with Fall, and the freshness of morning provokes a toque once again.
First sips of morning light are sluggishly rising nearer seven o’clock than six, and a ghost of egos past has been tapping on my shoulder, reminding it’s a whole season now since Rumspringa - career pause - began.
“What the fuck have you been doing?”, he whispered, one morning, casting a shadow up the ochre wall of dawn sun. “Still behind schedule”, I snapped back with a smile that was mostly proud, with a twitch of anxiety from the ‘ambitioner’ inside.
In other news, Pete descended, sliding down the flight map from Vancouver. The visit was a warm reminder that we’re just a half-inch pencil line apart - ‘down the road’ in our family constellation. And an envious reminder of his oceanman talents, dropping into a wave at my rigorous local break, Ocean Beach, after just ten or so minutes in the water - despite having perhaps one-fiftieth (one hundredth maybe) of the hours in the water that I’ve hauled through addictively. Ocean Beach is not an easy place to read the oncoming wave and stroke into it in a handful of paddles, landing the fast-moving drop. It’ll usually take me an hour to get the timing right, and that’s not an ageing thing. “Git!” as we’d say as teenagers…
In other other news, I quenched a twenty-year thirst to one day learn how to free dive, making first dives during a course in the swaying kelp forests of the Monterey Bay (with Fins and Foam Freediving). The instinct to learn some more about the art and science of long breath-hold ‘free diving’ all started one day off the island of Ko Thao, Thailand in 2002, observing a Swedish gal who dove to the ocean floor with just a snorkel and fins. And, chasing her, I noticed that I was much more in tune with this simple mode of underwater ambition over the bells and dials and whistles of scuba diving. Freediving won’t displace the endless instinct to surf, but it was great to finally learn more formally about a skill I can pull out of the bag on a road trip or holiday (and safely so).
Brothers In Arms
Minutes after Pete was in the door, unpacking his stuff in my spare room, a memory randomly launched to the front of my mind.
I threw on the Dire Straits’ 1985 Brothers in Arms. Lil’ bro recognized those opening aching chords in an instant… “these mist covered mountains” Mark Knopfler whispers.
And both of us were whooshed back to memories of Polesden View in Bookham, Surrey, our L-shaped home with Pete’s room above the corner of the L (direct view in from Mum and Dad’s and downstairs) and mine over the garage down one end of the L.
After moving in around the age of 11, I had quickly started to put up posters and magazine picture cuttings on different parts of life that moved me. Random placings across different walls eventually organized into a ‘Jazz’ wall, an ‘Athletics’ wall (Linford Christie, Jonathan Edwards and Carl Lewis dominated), a wall full of the most interesting Independent on Saturday magazine covers that I had cut out (great photography), a U2 wall (and flag of the Joshua Tree Tour hanging from the ceiling).
But, facing the door as you opened it was the main wall, with a giant wall-length poster of the zany neon album cover of Money for Nothing:
Music paints a picture in an instant, working from the canvas a thirty-year old memory in a single chord.
And it was great to have three days of surfing and driving together, with random reminiscences of all the dots and lines that have had us Brothers in Arms since. And too the wrestling conversations that come with a second ale :)
Riddles of Quotes
Last week marked 100 days of my Project Blank Canvas indulgence.
I wrote a whole slew of words on this enjoyable era, to mark the occasion, but the editor - swine! - cut it for being ‘overly inwardly gazing ramble babble’. I promised to never show up with such copy again on this page, and so it sits scattered over the cutting room floor. Perhaps we’ll come back to that, perhaps not!
Though, I have to share that flicking through a notebook, it was fun to see a quote from the English-Irish poet David Whyte from the early days of career pause.
Mid-way walking home along the waterfront, from the dentist, on the first Friday after leaving work, I had this interview with David Whyte in my ears. The timing of listening to this interview was apt, as the conversation meandered into a discussion about seasons in our lives, and how slowly we evolve during.
Indulging in the feeling of time being able to stretch to my own whims, I wandered into a cafe for a tea, just to re-listen and write down an excerpt:
“You always meet the new you - in the mirror - in the the form of a stranger.
And, you should know that you always turn away from that stranger because you are afraid of them to begin with.
The beauty of being alive is that you get the time to turn your face back. And you have to get to know the person you are becoming.
I’ll often think that most humans are a good 7-10 years behind who they’ve actually become. Our strategic mind hasn’t caught up yet with the central imagination that has already arrived on the other side”.
Whyte continued to share his observation that we really have three marriages in life (eh hem, let’s play along…!), with which we’re in continuous conversation: our partner, there is our work…and then there is ourselves.
Each of these, especially our relationship with ourselves, and who we really are - “that tricky moveable frontier” as Whyte playfully calls it - needs an anchor to a long-term horizon to which we’re dedicated in the long run.
And, we keep these three relationships alive through continually bringing a lens of delight and curiosity. In our work in particular, we have to keep letting the attachment go, to see how it comes back to us, to keep an eros of our work alive. (By 2023, after 15 years of very challenging ‘Fund I’ capital raising, I’ll admit to my eros getting a little flaccid…).
I liked the reminder as to just how rich and important the ‘inter regnum’ periods are - spaces where nothing is allowed to happen, giving us the time and space to be valuably saying no, until we get to a big new “Yes” (and how this concept in his life was rooted in the Catholic theological tradition of Via Negativa, a reference that is not to being negative, but rather to saying ‘no’ until we feel a clear ‘yes’).
I should add that poet Whyte’s caution is that we can be constantly choosing too early in these marriages, our strategic mind throwing up black and white and binary questions (noted!) - “because this is the easiest way to approach things” - while there is so much to explore in between.
Accepting that our ‘strategic mind’ is many years slower than our ‘imaginative mind’ (which I suspect, never gives up on some of its dreams), we have the riddle of how today can we be some kind of ancestor, or parent within ourselves, to the kind of future that we want a bundle of years down the line.
It was funny too, last week, to finish flicking through Kevin Kelly’s Excellent Advice for Living: Advice I Wish I’d Known Earlier, and see another riddle in Kelly’s closing quippet of wisdow:
Oh, the riddles of these wise philosophers.
Onwards, and “let’s not be too serious” as Dad would say….!
Questioning…
When solving some kind of problem, or making a decision, that could benefit with a shortcut to get going, consider:
What is the one call I should make?
In the spirit of ‘simplify’, I loved this…:)
Mentions and Sources
David Whyte’s wonderful interview with Sam Harriss Identity and Conversations was within the Waking Up subscription membership. I’ll happily share a link that will give access on ‘sign-up for a free trial’, and you can here similar themes in this interview in On Being.
Modern-day philosopher, famous in the streets in China for his perspective on technology and the future, Kevin Kelly. As well as Excellent Advice for Living, I several years ago enjoyed The Inevitable.
With my nerdy interest in all things mobility, I loved this interview with 86-year old icon of Physical Therapy Dr. Shirley Sharmann (here), and the follow-up video made about Dr. Sharmann’s daily exercises to keep it all moving in the right direction (here). These are particularly oriented to older folks, for posture and mobility (Dad get ready for practise in Donegal :)).
Stay well,
Kevin