The movement of birds, leaves, and insects; the changing patterns of light and shade; clouds; a walker passing by; all accompanied by subtle changes in humidity and temperature — these are the things we miss when we stay indoors and focus for too long on books and screens. Not only do we miss them, we miss the naturally beneficial medicine of our physical engagement and response to random stimuli, our […]
The waning moon; a gentle arc of planets; a run that ends with a sprint — the ship is crowded, aye, but the deck is clear while the stars are out. Yesterday our eldest son climbed Mt. Whitney — a twenty-two-mile hike, four and a half hours to the summit, three hours down, the entire descent in a thunderstorm with hail and icy water all around. Back in Lone Pine, […]
Ingratitude, dissatisfaction aren’t diseases in need of a cure, but failed, obsolete teachings thoughtlessly, one might say religiously, even fanatically, passed down. This year’s apricots are as good as ever, ripe early and quite large because the crop is so small due to the erratic spring weather, which included frost during bloom. The first fell, sweet and juicy, three days ago. Yesterday evening, two came off in our hands, as […]
Cloudy and calm, with an occasional glimpse of the moon. All through the neighborhood, the robins were silent this morning. While I was growing up, there was one telephone in the house. It was in the kitchen. When we went somewhere, to stay for a week in the mountains, for instance, no one could call us. And while we were away, the only clock we had was my father’s dollar […]
The grass seed farmers have started cutting their fields. The summer scent of drying grass is intense this morning, like childhood and death in one divine breath. The streets were so quiet during my run at four-thirty, it seemed the houses were all empty. I wonder how many times the world has ended today; I wonder how many times it will begin. While I was watering the hanging basket, the […]
This morning we visited South Falls, Lower South Falls, and Frenchy Falls. On the way there, we talked about learning and doing things slowly, simply for the sake of learning and doing them, with no thought of achievement, results, or how long they might take. One could focus on learning to play an instrument, for instance, or take up a language; I could learn English, even how to write poetry. […]
I go on reading things in Emerson’s journal he thought would never see print. And yet here they are, more than a century and a half later, and so here is Emerson. Almost word for word, I remember many things said by my grandparents. And so here they are. Friends, parents, relatives, animals, places, here they are, to be forgotten and remembered for however long. And here we are. Glaciers. […]
Dragonfly season here is a show of grace; color; delicacy. The insects rise and pause and land with an ethereal weightlessness we don’t associate with the much larger dragonflies of our youth in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where they stood on air and rumbled about in our classrooms at school, entering and leaving freely through the open doors and unscreened windows. During the warm months, which seemed to last most […]
I was sitting on the front step at first light, just as the robins were beginning to sing, when I noticed the soft, blurry shape of an animal a few feet away under the lacy green maple. Was it a cat? No. It was a raccoon. I stood up. Surprised to find someone so near, it quickly moved away. I sat down again. More light. More robins. More light-robins. More […]
Warm days, clear nights. The junco babies are frantic with hunger, and keeping both of their parents busy bringing food to the nest. The early-morning watering ceremony continues. Frantic, yes — but when evening comes all grows quiet and the birds sleep through the night, their tiny bodies resting and growing until dawn wakes them again. Circadian perfection will guide them all of their lives, while we torture and punish […]
William Michaelian 