In what seemed for a time a kind of dance or wrestling match, I moved the split-leaf philodendron from its white-stained, root-bound clay pot to a much larger, lighter, clay-colored plastic pot. Unfortunately, I had to break the clay pot with a hammer in order to take out the plant — except that technically, when I was done hammering, the philodendron was already out. The operation was performed next to […]
Cloudy, calm, sixty-one degrees. Twice during this morning’s run, I was met with the scent of star jasmine, and once with that of a cigarette. Then someone, perhaps unable to bear the dark and the quiet, or the idea of facing another day of meaningless, underpaid drudgery, set off a loud firework somewhere to the east. The silence, though, didn’t mind; it held the noise close until it died in […]
This year on Mother’s Day, our eldest son arrived with a large hanging flower basket he bought from someone who’d set up a display on Highway 99E a little north of the town of Corvallis. He’d been hiking and running in the woods near there and was on his way home when the display caught his eye. The man had stuffed just about every plant imaginable into his baskets — […]
So many things live only for a day — flowers, insects, rain, and sometimes people — yet see how different, how strange the world would be without them. Love it all. Never look away. To embrace, rather than resist, the ephemeral nature of sharing one’s thoughts online. Helped, and also haunted by, mechanical memory. The neat, efficient archive (see cemetery rows, honeycomb) is for oneself, for the idle many, the […]
Like April, and again like May, June has been a cool, cloudy, rainy month — much more so than what is considered normal, but of course normal is nothing but an average of the dry years and the wet years taken together. Last June, for a stretch of several days, we had to cover our cucumbers and dahlias with sheets to protect them from record high temperatures, which registered, at […]
The big rhododendron by the front door’s in full bloom. Each bud, when open, holds about a dozen flowers. It would be meaningless to say they’re red — just as it would be meaningless to say that this is the first day of June. What I hope will not be meaningless, tho’ it matters not one way or the other, is that I’ll be stepping away from my online publishing […]
William Michaelian 