James Joyce aside, there’s a complexity to simplicity we humans create seemingly for the joy of wallowing in the confusion that results, and seeing the puzzlement it brings to others. An instance of this can be found in A Listening Thing, wherein Stephen tries to make sense of Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable, which, like Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, have been causing confusion for ages, some of which is quite […]
I have no idea what possessed me, just as I have no idea what possesses me now. Possessed, in the way a leaf or bubble is possessed by a slowly moving river, just before it reaches the falls. Three Drawings — I invite you to look at these. At the time they were first published, very few did, Poems, Notes, and Drawings then being only in its third installment. I […]
I gave up on Leopardi’s Zibaldone long ago. I’ve read thousands upon thousands of pages of other things since, so it was not because of its length, which I still regard as one of its saving graces. I stopped because I found it too generally negative in tone. My friend and fictional alter-ego, Stephen Monroe, was also negative, but his negativity was leavened with humor; also, he knew he was […]
Very well, then — if I am an underground man, the least I can do is be frank and open about it. Seven years after writing Window Thoughts, I find myself much changed on the surface: less hair, grayer hair, a longer, grayer beard, and more wrinkles, especially on my age-spotted forehead, with a deepening crease plunging downward towards my nose past my left eyebrow. At the same time, I […]
Not long ago, in a letter, I told a friend that, these days, The blog kettle is on low, on the back burner…. pending a time when I find I have something to say that I haven’t said already many times before…. Since then, I’ve been thinking about that, and what it might truly signify. For one thing, over the years, upon beginning any new piece of writing, it has […]
The cherry knows, the oak, the pine, the walnut; the shore, the tide, the moon; all embody the art of taking the long view, and each is a stirring example of how to live and let live. Whatever comes, goes; whatever rises, falls; whatever breathes, thrives for a time, then dies. The sun burns away. The storm ends. The ones we hated, condemned, and feared go crying to their graves, […]
Once upon a time, there was always something to say. Now, saying it seems a transgression against the silence we so desperately need. Silence can heal or cure anything; especially the silence of the grave. To write from that kind of silence, without breaking that silence; to make ourselves felt and known from Hamlet’s undiscovered country — is that not the only writing there is left for us to do? […]
William Michaelian 