These days I’m in the process of dusting books and cleaning shelves — it’s spring-cleaning time in the library. Along with it arrives this thought: What if I were to lose all three thousand books in a fire, and what if that same fire destroyed our collection of irreplaceable family photographs and other treasured heirlooms and odds and ends? At one time, the thought that followed would have surprised me. […]
When I say this is all a dream, I mean everything — the entire universe, all of history, everything known and unknown, the rapidly approaching end of life as we know it as it’s absorbed by artificial intelligence — not just the rise and fall of my own brief experience measured out in days and nights, breaths and heartbeats, acts of kindness and thoughtless habits. The flesh falls away, the […]
I’d just gone to bed, and taken a slow deep breath, Whereupon, without a single thought, I, or someone, said, This is all a dream. Another breath — and, with an almost overwhelming sense of gratitude, I closed my eyes, and fell immediately to sleep. And so it is. ~ [ 2103 ]
The river is high. Moss covers the bare maples, upon the bark of which sprouts the new growth of ferns. Near the ferry crossing, perched high in the bright sun atop a dead cottonwood, are two bald eagles. Beside us, a towhee spins a few notes, as if trying to catch our attention, while a crested blue jay calls out, No! Look over here! Everything is right. Perfect. Such is […]
Something I wish I’d learned during my growing up years, and that had been stressed above all at home and in school, is the importance not of proving myself as an individual, but of embracing and cultivating my natural talents in a spirit of contribution and cooperation. Instead, I was caught up in the cult of individuality, wherein I mistakenly equated self-worth with accomplishment on the dead-end terms of a […]
I think of Joe, our cat, who, in the years before he died of old age in 2015, would sit in peace behind the house and look off into space as he listened to the birds and the squirrels making their rounds. Finally, after a very short illness, which of course was no illness at all, death took hold of him and shook him from head to tail, and wrung […]
The text ends here, gives way to a whisper. The congregation dies in a song. The sermon is an old man planting flowers. The earth and the sky hum along. ~ [ 2098 ]
I’m one of the crazy people who know — yes, know — peace is possible in my lifetime. I also know that the only time peace is possible is now. Something else I know: peace is not possible if I’m not at peace myself. The rest — is simple mathematics. ~ [ 2097 ]
Peeling an onion — no one should die in a war — fingers turning red. ~ [ 2096 ]
William Michaelian 
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