How many hours a day are my feet in contact with a natural, earthen surface? How many hours are my eyes, my body, my mind, exposed to artificial light? What must it have been like for our primitive ancestors, for whom food was the only real physical necessity, and shelter and fire the greatest of conveniences? O, the things we take for granted, the things we want, the things we […]
I’ve lived a fair span; it would be greedy to depend on more; yet it isn’t good grace to count the years, or close the door. . Read the forty-third, forty-fourth, and forty-fifth chapters of Middlemarch. Read The Rambler, Numb. 9. Tuesday, April 17, 1750. Chuse what you are; no other state prefer. — Elphinston The philosopher may very justly be delighted with the extent of his views, and the […]
Writing is one more way of living forever, like digging in the garden, making bread, and bathing a child. It’s a city lot, but if I walk the same narrow path through the yard to its every corner each and every day, my footsteps will form a scenic nature trail. Out, back, and around, in every direction and through all the seasons — who knows what I might see? We […]
Early this afternoon, someone’s grocery delivery was left on our doorstep. We called the store, the name of which was printed on the bags, and told them it wasn’t ours, but no one there knew anything about it, and we learned in the process that the store doesn’t make deliveries. We thought perhaps the food items were meant for our neighbors next door, and I was on my way to […]
I collect sentences as I collected sticks and feathers when I was a boy, and then I forget them when night-time comes. How much of pain can be attributed to its original cause, and how much to the fear it will grow worse, and maybe not end? If I’m still alive at suppertime, I think I’ll set the table with the yellow dishes my parents often used when I was […]
I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers. — Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam. . Ideally we will hold no opinion, and therefore have none to defend. For what’s an opinion but one more way of living in, and clinging to, the past? We may believe nothing has changed since we arrived at the […]
My eldest brother has been gone a year and a half; our mother, ten years; our father, twenty-eight; our father’s mother and father, thirty-three; our mother’s father, sixty-nine; her mother, forty-two. Friends, family friends, relatives, loyal canine companions — the list is long. Teachers, schoolmates, barbers, insurance men, mechanics, storekeepers, fruit packers, janitors, farm help; doctors, dentists, accountants, farmers from the old neighborhood; grocery checkers, retired men in overalls, librarians, […]
How does a child learn to lie? It’s in the air, it’s in your eye. Word-drift. Intonation. Body language. Sigh. And when, a short time later, is disbelieved, is brought to deceive, little by little, by and by. . We were on a first-name basis. Now we just smile and nod when the wind blows. . Read the thirty-seventh chapter of Middlemarch. Moved daffodils from the plastic pot they’d bloomed […]
Stars and low-racing clouds. A spirit at the switch, grinning fall. My eldest brother is alive again. He’s forgotten to bring his driver’s license. Standing beside our mother’s old car, I tell him I’d better drive, though we have no particular destination in mind. With the arrival of rain and cooler temperatures, I’m reminded that the easiest way to adjust to seasonal weather changes is to spend as much time […]
Today’s a good day to do very little, and to do it so slowly and thoroughly that it’s impossible for it all to be done; and to do it in a manner not of who and what, but of an absorbed, fully engaged child. Attention isn’t a spotlight, a narrowly focused beam, but a way of life, a state of being. I may focus on an ant, and indeed I […]
William Michaelian 