Any day now, our ninety-year-old neighbor on hospice will take his last breath; and any day now, the young couple who live across the street will become parents of their first child. Knowing this, it would be arrogance on my part to be in any way dissatisfied with my own circumstances, or even particularly pleased. For one thing, I could die before either of the events take place. For another, […]
Yesterday, not quite asleep and not quite awake in a chair after lunch, I thought, What a wonderful dream it would be if I dreamed I was awakened by my mother, and found myself a boy again, with the sudden knowledge that what I had so long assumed was my life and its many experiences, was really just a dream. All my life, it’s been this way — I’m a […]
Child, I remind you that you’re a miracle, And that anything you may do, Any work or dream you may fulfill, Will not make you greater Than you already are. Miracles can’t be improved upon. By their nature — and that nature is yours — They live and breathe to bring about more miracles. I can’t tell you what you should do, or be, or become. I can only tell […]
I’m enjoying Melville’s Omoo, and am now about one hundred twenty-five pages in. More story-like than Typee, it’s worth reading for its sailing and sea vocabulary alone. And it’s certainly not without its descriptive humor, as shown in the opening of the twenty-eighth chapter: In a few moments, we were paraded in the frigate’s gangway; the first lieutenant — an elderly, yellow-faced officer, in an ill-cut coat and tarnished gold […]
I hope this note finds you well, and that you’ve been doing something today that you truly love, however simple or seemingly mundane — housework, for instance, which is what we’ve been doing, along with other pleasant chores, such as washing clothes and making bread. We ran before dawn, and we’ve both done a little reading. And I’ve spent a total of about five minutes looking at the computer, if […]
I simply can’t pass my remaining years this way. It’s better to be in my library, mumbling in languages I’ll never quite understand, English among them. I’ve no more patience with the internet. It drains me, lames me, tames me. I knew more about the world When I was seven: Sunshine is love. So is wet mud. And both are their own perfect heaven. ~ [ 2079 ]
I ran a little later this morning, though I was done well before sunrise. Still, light was growing in the east, and I was treated to the first early-morning round of robin-song I’ve heard this late-winter, early-spring. One bird was perched on a low retaining wall, singing as it watched me go by, a scene that repeats itself every year, and which always remains new. I’ve run every day now […]
One neighbor on hospice, another confused. Sun finds its way through the woods. ~ [ 2077 ]
In my seventy years I must also have walked twenty-three hundred miles or more. Of course not every step was taken in peace, for peace. If only they had been. Alas, many were wasted. But I’m learning. ~ [ 2076 ]
If you were to ask me what I really do, I wouldn’t know what to answer, except that it appears to be very little. I write decently, and say some decent things, but I’m probably at my best when I’m not writing, and even better when I’m not saying anything at all. Sometimes I think that if I were to remain silent long enough, the meaning of my lifetime of […]
William Michaelian 