Benched Week 35: monumental decisions

If anyone lived larger than life, it was Theodore Roosevelt.  And here he was, looming over me on an island named after him, tucked in between Washington, D.C. and Arlington.  I had arrived in late afternoon, hastening over the footbridge to try to get a look around while the light lasted.



It’s a popular walking spot, especially on a faux spring day.





There were plenty of benches by T.R.  I chose one and pondered his pose.  It seemed a bit awkward in my eyes.  His brows were set just short of a frown.  His eyes were open slightly more than a squint. 



His hand was raised, not quite clenched. 



I imagined him thundering, “Who in blazes took my glasses!?”



That led me to wonder what pose I’d want to represent my life.  I would hope it wouldn’t be too true to life.  A bronze Bruce hunched over a laptop would make a rather unmemorable memorial.  Ditto for me sitting on a bench.

It’s easier to imagine signature stances for others.  My good friend, Scott, the nature-writer: binoculars raised, standing dramatically on a rock.  My wife, Alison: paused, gesturing in mid-story, surrounded by our smiling kids. My son, Nathan: dressed like Batman.

After a while, I rose and wandered the island.  Clumping along the boardwalk over the wetter areas, I had another question bubble up: can we alter that characteristic pose, even late in life?  Can we get a makeover, like D.C. did, leaving behind its century-old reputation as a fetid swamp?



I’m in a bit of a makeover right now, having initiated a few Do-It-(On)-Yourself projects in the new year. I’m not ready to be set in stone quite yet.

The sun was quickly setting and I knew the park gate closed at dusk, so I headed back to the walk bridge, stopping as I crossed it for shots of the city lights glimmering on the river.



What could be my pose?

Let it be something that captures my desire to share my gifts with the world around me.

You know, one arm reaching skyward and the other outstretched works just fine.

With or without the glasses.

Benched Week 34: in the gloaming

I was looking forward to finding my first bench in Birmingham, Alabama, until I discovered that I was not going to be anywhere near the city center.  Instead, I’d be staying my entire time in a golf resort.

I know.  Tragic.  I’m sensing a palpable lack of empathy.

The resort is impressive, but in a Disneyesque way.  The main building has hints of a Scottish castle.  The grounds are manicured.  It's all so... perfect.



Looking in vain for a bench, I wandered out onto the deserted golf course, discovering a stone building and waterwheel that had a strong feeling of my native Pennsylvania. But as pretty as they are, they’re fake. Carefully constructed to be something they’re not.





I’ve been thinking about narratives a lot lately.  They used to be my life, as I presented to school kids the essence of stories.  Recently, one of the facilitators I work with asked me to help him think through how to teach storytelling to corporate execs.  It felt odd to have those two worlds collide.

But then again, I’ve never really gotten away from stories.

I ferret them out wherever I go – from my colleagues at these events.  From cab drivers.  Fellow plane passengers.  Hotel workers.  Friends I occasionally stop by to visit.

That’s what disappoints me about these resorts.  They’re so sanitized.  Removed from the real world.  I can’t get a sense of a place unless I can walk through the midst of people working and walking and talking and living life.  I had a strong urge to ask the cabdriver to stop and let me out at the little Baptist church we passed before entering the complex.  But there’s not time for that.



Above me, the sun began to set, the first genuine thing I had seen here since I started wandering.

Then the bagpipes started.

I rolled my eyes.  How corny – to pipe bagpipe music over the speakers.  I started back toward the one bench that I had seen to wait it out.



And to my surprise, there was a real person generating the caterwauling.  I sat and listened. After he played, I talked with him for a while. Jim is retired, having grown up in Grove City, PA, and learning the pipes in Pittsburgh, he keeps busy with gigs – this being one of them.  Every night, in the gloaming.

Even at Fakerburg Castle, there are stories to be found.

Benched Week 33: the wisdom of rocks

I had asked my friend, Linda, to find me a bench when I took an extra day this week in Denver to visit her and her family.

She did more than that. She took me to Red Rocks, where a famous amphitheater is dramatically nestled into the foothills of the Rockies.  It had benches in bunches. 



We climbed to the top and chose a dry row, sat and talked. More athletically minded people around us used the stadium for workouts, while a team of shovelers methodically tossed snow to lower levels.  I was thankful that my original concept for this series hadn’t been “Steps.”




After a bit, we went for a walk among the boulder and scrub brushes, dappled with white.
I was struck by the dramatic simplicity of the surroundings.  With its strong shapes and lines and varying textures, it’s a designer’s delight. 



But it’s also an austere landscape, brought home to me by the small herd of mule deer scraping for bits of grass in among the roots of bare bushes.  “Having lived in Pennsylvania where everything grows, this can look like scrubby barrenness,” Linda said.  “But I see the beauty in it now.”



That led our conversation into a more philosophical vein. Linda told me about how a tour guide in the Middle East once explained to her about how the desert is far from the lifeless world it seems at first glance. It can indeed sustain a person, if one knows what to look for.  She likened challenging times in life to such a desert – daunting at first, but potentially full of wisdom to be learned, if one could learn to notice.



We debated this analogy for some time.  Are those desert lessons to be taken with you as you pass through to greener fields? Or are they instructions on how to stay and survive?

To put it another way, when is restlessness a useful catalyst and when is it simply a lack of contentedness?  Thomas Edison once said that restlessness is the starting point for progress.  My impetus for this blog has been and continues to be an internal itching for something more significant to do with the time that’s left to me.  What is that something?  The answer may involve large-scale changes.  But, then, it may be to live more acceptingly.

I’m sure there’s not one answer to that question.  Our conversation certainly didn’t provide any clear Aha! moments.  But it did remind me of a most valuable lesson.

A good friend can make even a bare landscape more welcoming.

Benched Week 32: reflections

The blue sky promised to me in Seattle turned out to be overcast, but I was thankful it was, at least, dry.  Dreary beats drizzly any day.

I left my hotel in mid-afternoon, walking through a rather drab neighborhood made even less appealing by ample road construction.  I didn’t need a map to get to my destination.  A few blocks away the Space Needle loomed, smaller than I had imagined it, but still impressive, iconic.  And gray.



I quickly found color, though.  Riotous, vibrant, outrageous color.

First was the exterior of a museum, against which I captured this young woman, framed serendipitously against a violet wall. 



Then I found it in a great, red sculpture that looked like a giant’s construction toy. 



And finally, color came alive in the work of Dale Chihuly, glass sculptor, carefully lit in dark chambers of another museum, that seemed to bottle up the rainbow in spheres and worm-like ribbons.  What impressed me wasn’t just his use of color, but how he used light and reflection to augment it.

In this room, glass pieces were strewn across a transparent ceiling, allowing light to filter through.



And in this experiment, he floated his pieces in a simple Scandinavian boat on the ocean just to see how light would interplay with the hues.



I found myself reflected in this sphere, resting in the garden outside.  In another sense, I found myself reflected in much of the work – in the imperfections that made each simple globe unique.  I’m good at imperfections!







We are all drawn by beauty, in all its hues and shapes and seemingly infinite variety.  It fills us and thrills us because we see in it a reflection of a greater loveliness that our souls long for.  C.S. Lewis put it well when he said that those things of beauty “are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”  Or an intensity of a color just beyond the reach of our senses.



I have to admit an admiration bordering on jealousy for Chihuli’s work.  Color will never be my strong suit, but to find a form to explore, and define, and to give to the world – that would be sweet indeed.  To bring some beauty into another person’s life.  To point toward that greater loveliness.  Sweet.  Indeed.

And as to highlight the point, when I left the museum, the setting sun lit up the Space Needle, making it seem to glow from within.  But I knew better.

It was only reflecting.

Benched Week 31: a snowy invitation

There’s nothing like this time of year for a fresh start.

I began my usual year-end review a few days ago, in which I consider the good and the bad that has happened in the family’s life in the past twelve months.  That mixture was swirling in my mind like stirred hot cocoa as I drove back from State College, having dropped off a son at the Megabus.  As I passed a favorite park of ours, I decided to turn in and find a bench.



It’s ironic that we’ve never visited a park with such a name in the wintertime.  We call it by its nickname, Halfway Dam, and love to grill here in the summer, when the beach is crowded with people and the water is just a shade less frigid.  Today, I found it had quite a different personality – hushed as if hibernating or holding its breath until spring. 

There were a few people who had come to enjoy the cold,though.  Young hockey players warmed up.



And a family had a half-hearted snowball fight.



It’s good to see a familiar landscape in a different light.  It’s not unlike my daughter’s room this morning, after she spent yesterday rearranging the furniture – all the same elements viewed from a different angle.  I think that’s why I do my year-end review.  Distance gives a new perspective on personal scenery.

But it’s not just about looking back.  It’s just as much about looking forward.  And as I sat on my bench and gazed across the beautiful, unmarred snow that covered the icy lake, it struck me how a new year is like a fresh layer of snow over familiar ground.  Sure, much of this ground has been trekked before, but there’s a pleasure in setting out, making a mark –feeling like one is on a journey of discovery.

The metaphor becomes even more powerful to me when I change the time frame: not just each year, but each day is a fresh field of snow. Every day brings an invitation to make a mark, to chart a course.  Or to switch metaphors just a bit – every day is like a blank canvas, just waiting for a new work of art.  (Or in one case when Grace was little, the snow was both.)



So, I think I’m ready to make my mark on today.  Whether it be something whimsical, or just a simple walk on a renewed landscape.

Fresh snow -- a fresh day -- awaits!

Benched Week 30: guarded moments

My second trip to Manhattan in two weeks brought me to an inevitable spot.  Rockefeller Center and its bejeweled tree had drawn crowds even in the late afternoon, when the lights were not yet piercing and the skaters weren’t yet pirouetting below. I joined the throng.

I had hoped for a bench, and I was happily surprised one lining each side of the garden that approaches the view.  With people swirling around me, I sat and watched.



With the fast turnover of the crowd, it didn’t take long to pick out the one person who didn’t move on. And it wasn’t this rather grim-faced guy, who stood for some time alone, unmoving against the wall.  Even he eventually melded back into the crowd.



The one constant was a young guard who had been given the duty of telling people to stop standing on the benches.  Or climbing into the garden. 



Most often, they were after a clearer, more dramatic shot.  But he commanded –politely – that they get down.  Or get out of the plants. And scarcely a minute went by without him approaching someone. 



I decided I had to talk to him.

“Tough job,” I said when I sidled up.  He nodded. I added,  “Anyone ever get angry?”

 “Nah,” he answered.  “They’re tourists.  They listen. Thing is, they don’t realize those benches are slick.  Don’t want anyone to get hurt.”



Little life lesson there.  Rules aren’t usually just to curtail fun.  They mean to protect – not only delicate displays from trampling tourists, but trampling tourists from themselves.

I’ve been feeling a bit lately like challenges in life are like security guards just putting a damper on the fun.  Standing in the way of a great shot, as it were.

But according to a dear friend I talked with as I drove today, challenges can be a way to get our attention – to stop and take stock, to pay attention to what we’re doing.  To think about the decisions we’re making. And the ones that we might need to make.

There might just be a new angle, a new approach, a new road to take.  

Now only if I could find a herald to announce which direction that would be.

Benched Week 29: long walk in Longwood

Who knew that Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA, famous for its indoor and outdoor flora, would have a plethora of delightful benches?  I passed many as Alison, Grace and I wandered the grounds, settling on this grand stone one as my official bench of the week.



But we weren’t there for the benches.  We were trying to get into a holiday mood.

I have a like/dislike relationship with Christmas traditions.  Over the years, we’ve committed to less and less of the usual rituals, dropping by the wayside baking cookies, Christmas cards, and regularly submitting to holiday music.  I’m afraid that if Alison didn’t drive the decorating, I’d cut a sprig of holly from the neighbor’s tree and call it a day.

In fact, I’m finding myself increasingly allergic to rituals of all kinds.  For a theme-and-variation guy, traditions feel like the cage I’m left to pace in.  Same songs. Same movies.  Same sappy sentiments.

Can we say, “Bah, humbug, children?”

But Longwood taught me something.  This time of year has a tremendous potential for infusing beauty into one’s life, if even just for a month.  (Hear that, Madison Avenue?  One month.)  As I walked and looked at the displays – with both an eye and a camera lens – I felt my senses filling up with color and texture and design.

Then, as I was just cropping photos, it hit me: traditions are a frame for the beauty.  They give us cause to decorate and the pause to appreciate. Just like a frame hones in our vision to just the key elements the artist or photographer wants us to see, holiday traditions frame up those simple joys, those fundamental truths that usually get swept up in the everyday.  They put a shine and a sparkle on them.

So, in the coming days, I’m going to share with you my framing of the beauty that I saw – not so much the outdoor splendor of lit trees, floating on water.



Or the lavish color of the fountain show.



But the small, touches of design and color, made (hopefully) more delightful because of the framing. May they add a few moments of beauty to your holiday season.